Phone sales in a small business: calls, call-backs and reminders

Since 15 October there is a call button beside every phone number, on contact and company pages, and beside every person on the relationship map. The button dials on your own device (the phone, or a calling app linked to your computer), and the call window opens at the same time:

• It asks whether you reached the person.
• You type what you discussed right there.
• You book the follow-up, with quick picks: in an hour, this afternoon, tomorrow at ten, in two days, in a week.
• If you did not reach them, the follow-up is not skipped: it suggests tomorrow at ten by default.

On saving, the call goes onto the timeline and the follow-up becomes a task. Every dated task gets a reminder a day before by default, unless you switch it off. Contact and company pages list upcoming tasks and calls, each with a call button, and in the internal calendar a task can be edited in place. This is part of the free plan.

A good call note is not minutes: it is enough for a colleague to carry on the conversation tomorrow. Three or four short lines are enough:

• Where things stand: what they need, what changed since the last conversation.
• What you promised: a quote, a sample, a call from a colleague.
• What the next step is, and who takes it.
• What affects the decision: a deadline, a budget, who else decides.

An example: “Reached. They move next month and need the quote before then. The managing director decides and is free on Thursday. Sending the quote by noon tomorrow, calling back Thursday at ten.” A colleague can tell from this what to do. Do not write anything you would not say to the customer's face, and do not record sensitive personal details the deal does not need.

There are two directions. If you called the customer and they did not answer, you mark “not reached” in the call window, and the system then always asks for a follow-up. So a failed attempt leaves a trace too: it shows how many times and when you tried.

If the customer called you and nobody answered, that is the harder case, because the call is stuck in one mobile's call list. That is what the paid Telephony module (paid module) is for: somebody hears about a missed call at once, not the next day, the call log filters to the missed ones, and if the caller is a known contact, their owner gets a call-back task due straight away. A call from an unknown number does not become a contact by itself, because a wrong number is not a lead.

In either direction it is worth agreeing one rule in the team, for example that a missed customer call is returned the same day.

While everyone calls from their own mobile, the free call button and call window are enough. The module pays off when the company has its own numbers and several people take calls:

• Company numbers: you see whether the sales or the support line rang.
• Every call on the contact's timeline, with its recording and transcript.
• The incoming caller is found among the contacts by phone number, even if it was written differently (+36 or 06).
• The call button starts the call through the company's phone system, when one is set up.

The module works through a connected telephony provider: Aircall, Twilio, or a generic phone exchange that sends a webhook. The provider sets its own fees. The module can be tried for 3 days.

A call recording and a transcript are personal data, so recording is worth thinking through in advance. This is not legal advice, only a few sensible points:

• It is worth saying at the start of the call if the conversation is recorded.
• It is worth deciding what you record, why, and how long you keep it.
• It is worth going over the rules with a lawyer who knows data protection before you switch recording on.

Even if you do not record calls, the call note is still part of the customer's data, so the same standard applies: write down only what the deal needs, and what the customer could read without concern.

HelloCRM's GDPR tools are free: you can download everything held about a person in one click if they ask, and erasure reaches the copies too. The text of the regulation is on the European Union's official site (EUR-Lex).

The start of the day belongs to the call-backs you booked: your task list and the calendar show whom you promised what today. New prospects come after that. Lead scoring helps here, and in HelloCRM it is on by default: email opens, clicks, form submissions, page views, new deals and logged activities earn points, and old points expire, so someone who clicked six months ago does not land at the top of the list.

Once a week, in half an hour, it is worth going over the deals:

• Which deal has no next step? Either book a call for it, or close it as lost.
• Which deal has sat in a stage too long? The report compares it with that stage's own typical time.
• Which call-back slipped, and why?
• Who was promised a quote that has not gone out yet?

Deals, Tasks, the Calendar and Reports are part of the free plan; its limits: Users: 3; Contacts: 2,000; Emails / month: 500; Storage: 1 GB.