by Guest Blogger, Lena West, Chief Social Media Strategist at xynoMedia

One of the things that I love about marketing is that it encompasses so many aspects of your business; like, for example, answering the telephone and leaving voice mail messages. It might not seem like your telephone mannerisms and messages have anything to do with your business, but it does.

Right now, our outgoing message is a bit crappy (to say the least) so we've hired professional voice over talent to re-do it. Thankfully, two of my colleagues cared about us enough to tell me that it sounded like garbage needed work.

A few years ago, I did a teleclass with a well-known marketing expert and she barked coughed into the telephone throughout the teleclass - as if there's no mute button. What do you think that said to me about her business and how she treated her clients?

Here are a few pet peeves of my own:

1. If you sound like you just woke up, don't answer the phone. I'm the first person to understand if you have a sensitive voice. If I don't talk for several hours, I begin to sound like a transvestite (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, I'm just not one). I can't tell you how many times I've been called "sir". That said, if I ever feel like I sound like I'm just waking up, I'll let the caller know that I'm prone to a scratchy voice. No one wants to feel like they're dragging you out of bed.

2. If you have an attitude, don't answer the phone. It's not my fault that you're mad at the world/wishing you had never started a business/secretly hoping for another job. What matters to me is that I feel welcome when I call. I don't want to feel as if I'm imposing a death sentence on you just by picking up the phone. And here's a newsflash, if potential customers stop calling you won't have a business for long.

3. If you're busy and/or running out the door, don't answer the phone. Voice mail is a neat invention, use it. If I wanted to hear out-of-breath/heavy breathing, I would call a different number. Again, I don't want to feel as if my call is unwelcome or as if I'm rushing you. I also don't want to hear about how you have to pick up the kids, go take your walk or feed the dog. Just let the voice mail grab the call and call me back when you're free.

4. If you're leaving a voice mail, don't do other things at the same time. Recently, we got a voice mail from a woman who was trying to connect with me based on some media coverage we had received. Her voice mail was about 45 seconds and 20 of those seconds she spent losing her train of thought and rambling. It was clear that she was doing something other than leaving me a voice mail. It was annoying for me and I'm sure it wasn't the impression she wanted to make.

5. If you're leaving a voice mail, don't hit the gas pedal. You know your name and number. I don't. If you speed through your name, company name and phone number, I have to listen three or four times to get all the contact information correct. Slow down. Say your name twice and try writing out your phone number as you're saying it, this will encourage you to speak at a rate that's helpful for the voice mail recipient.

6. Have some inflection. Listening to someone drone on and on about their company and their capabilities is B-O-R-I-N-G. Add some lilt and base in your voice at the appropriate times. Please don't make me feel like I'm talking to a robot.

7. If you know you have a squeaky (or otherwise grating voice), invest in coaching. I have a tendency to speak loudly (no? really?). This works well when I have to project my voice or when I'm speaking and the audio equipment fails, but, if I'm not careful, can kill a person's eardrum when talking to them on the phone. I know this about myself and I worked with a coach to change this. Instead of speaking from the top of my voice, I relax my neck muscles and speak from my tummy...it works. It turns "HEY! HOW ARE YOU!?" into "Hey, how are you?"  I'm not asking you to change who you are...I'm just pointing out that your speech might be more effective if you worked on making it a bit more palatable to the ear.

8. Don't blather on and on. I had a conversation with a lovely woman the other day. She was very personable, smart, really funny and my brand of crazy. The only thing was she just wouldn't come up for air. Resist the temptation to tell everything you know during the first conversation. A good rule of thumb is, if you haven't heard the other person's voice in over 2 minutes, you're probably talking too damn much.

P.S. If you're going to be at the Executing Social Media conference this week in LA, look for me. I'll be speaking and leading a roundtable discussion on Day 1.