Phone Calls Using the Dialer

Time to hit the phones! Phone calls with prospects allow you to create a meaningful connection between you and your potential customer while you increase their awareness of your product or service.

While there are huge benefits to speaking with a someone on the phone, standard call tactics can take up a lot of time and energy that you don't have to spare. 

SalesLoft’s dialer allows you to make calls directly from our platform. Seamlessly work through a series of phone calls, record them for training purposes, and log all of your information from one substantial dialer.

Making a call is as simple as hitting the “Call” button in the dialer, having a conversation with the person on the other end, and hanging up. Still, there are additional tools within the dialer that can contribute to your overall efficiency.   

In this article, you will learn how to place calls with the SalesLoft Dialer and the additional features the dialer offers, including:

• How the SalesLoft Dialer Works
• Access the Dialer Within SalesLoft
• Dialing in SalesLoft
• Phone Number Formatting
• Make a Call Using Pass Through
• Make a Call Using LocalDial
• Drop a Voicemail
• Logging a Call

How the SalesLoft Dialer Works

SalesLoft partners with Twilio, a cloud based communications platform, to provide our robust dialer. Twilio uses VoIP (Voice-over IP) to make calls. This means that any calls made occur over your network, so your calls will be completed from your computer and you no longer need to use your desk phone.

You have two options for making calls with the SalesLoft dialer:

• VoIP: Twilio dialer provider. Relies heavily on your network provider. You will need to set up QoS and follow twilios best practice guidelines.
• Pass through: Dialer method that allows the first “leg” of the call to use VoIP to call your cell or desk line (carrier provider). The second “leg” of the call will use your carrier provider (i.e. AT&T, Verizon). Since pass through uses your carrier provider, you don’t need to rely on VoIP/you network.

Whenever you make a call, we send the call info to Twilio. Then Twilio places the call based off of the information. Twilio uses your area to find the best server for you to connect to the person you are calling.

Once the call reaches the recipient, they will answer or ignore the call (you know, how calls go). If they recipient answers, this is where your network comes into play. Your network and Twilio work together for the duration of the call. This connection between your network and Twilio will be the primary factor behind call quality.

The more people on your network making calls or using the network, the more likely you will run into call quality issues. Imagine being surrounded by 500 people at a concert or stadium and everyone's on their cell phones. The network gets overloaded and won’t let you send messages, make calls, or post anything. This is the exact same thing that happens on a high traffic VoIP network.

If your team is experiencing dialer or network related issues, please check out our dialer troubleshooting guide.

Access the Dialer Within SalesLoft

When it's time to make your calls there are a few options to access the SalesLoft Dialer within the platform. Let’s explore those options below:

From the Top Navigation

Your SalesLoft Dialer is always accessible in the top right of the navigation panel within the SalesLoft platform.

1. Click the dialer icon and the dialer will pop up in the bottom right corner of your window.
2. Enter the phone number manually or contact information of the person you want to call.

From a Person’s Profile

For quick, one-off calls to specific people you can run your calls directly from a person’s profile page within SalesLoft.  

1. Navigate to the person’s profile page.
2. In the right panel, scroll to Quick Actions. Here you should see a blue phone icon. Don’t see the phone icon? Check the person’s contact information to make sure they have a phone number listed and edit the profile to add a number.
3. Click the blue phone icon to call. The dialer will appear in the bottom right corner of your window, and the phone number will already be dialed. Once the phone starts ringing, you will see the Call Log box appear to the left of the dialer.

From a Cadence

A SalesLoft cadence allows you to work through a series of call steps that are designed to keep you on task and proficient. 

In our Cadence category you can learn more about how to create a cadence with phone steps as well as how to run a phone step in a cadence. 

Dialing in SalesLoft

Calling through SalesLoft is a lot like calling from your cellphone, but it takes place in a web browser. 

To dial a number, use one of the following options: 

Enter the phone number on the dial pad

Once the dialer is open, click the dial pad icon in the top right corner of the dialer to view the full dial pad. Now you can type the number from your keyboard OR use your mouse to click the phone number.

Use the dialer to search for a contact 

Type in a Person’s name to search for their contact info within SalesLoft. Different search options with phone numbers will appear. Select the person you are looking for and their phone number will populate in the dialer. Hit Call.

Things to Note: The search for a contact function is only available from the dialer within the platform. In the Dialer Available Everywhere, use the Person tab to search for SalesLoft People. 

Select an alternative phone number 

If the Person has multiple phone numbers on their record and the user wants to auto-populate the dial pad with one of the other numbers, they can click on the dropdown arrow next to the current dial pad number and switch to a different one. 

Use the dialer to search for an Account name

This will pull up a list of all the contacts within an organization. Scroll through the dropdown and pick the specific person you would like to call.

Phone Number Formatting

While phone numbers may be entered into the dialer in the US standard format, we recommend using E.164 phone number formatting to complete your calls. 

I know what you're thinking, E.164 looks like a code, what does that even mean? 

E.164 is the international telephone numbering plan that ensures each device has globally unique number. So, while our standard numbers look a little something like this: (404) 555-1234, the E.164 format adds a country code to help specify the number. If you are calling internationally, you definitely want to enter phone numbers using this format. 

E.164 formatting for phone numbers follows this pattern (check out the parenthesis for an example):

1. Plus sign (+)
2. International Country Calling code (1 when calling countries in North America)
3. Local Area code (404)
4. Local Phone number (555-1234)

Make a Call Using Pass Through

Pass through calls allow you to take your SalesLoft call from an a different phone, like your cell phone or desk line. 

To learn more about using pass through from the SalesLoft Dialer, check out our Pass Through Calls article.

Make a Call Using LocalDial

When you are calling a new prospect, using a local area code can encourage the prospect to answer the phone. LocalDial dials your calls from a phone number that contains the same area code you're calling into. 

LocalDial must be enabled by an Admin before it can be used. For more information on enabling LocalDial, check out our full LocalDial article.

To use LocalDial in the dialer, follow the instructions below:

1. Open the Dialer. 
2. In the top left corner of the dialer, select the LocalDial icon to Enable LocalDial.
3. Complete your call. 

Drop a Voicemail

Drop-in voicemail messages, or voicemail drop, allow you to pre-record the perfect voicemail message so you don’t have to waste valuable time reciting the same message over and over.

To learn more about recording your drop-in voicemail messages, check out our Drop-In Voicemail Recordings article 

Logging a Call

Hanging up your phone call is actually the second to last step of your sales call. Your sales activities, including phone calls, need to be logged. Logging a call keeps a record of notes you may have taken during the call, as well as creating a record of the call itself in SalesLoft (and Salesforce). These logs allow you to reference notes during follow up calls and pull metrics and reports. 

SalesLoft makes it easy to log your calls to and record the outcome. When you are running a call step, the call log box will appear, allowing you to add notes and set the disposition and sentiment of a call. 

Breaking Down the Call Log box:

1. Call Notes: This is a box to take any notes during or about your call.
2. Disposition: Here you can record the result of making the phone call, e.g. "connected" or "no answer."
3. Sentiment: If you're able to connect with a prospect, sentiment allows you to record the outcome of the conversation, e.g. "company-bad fit" or "demo scheduled."

Logging Options

Once you have entered all the relevant details about your call, you can log the call to best suit your needs. It's important to remember to log your calls before moving on to further steps in order to save your notes.

Logging options will vary if you are logging a one-off call versus a call within a cadence. See the different log options below:

• The Log and Complete button will save your notes, disposition and sentiment. This information will be saved on your call step and on your contact's individual page in SalesLoft. Integrating with Salesforce? This information will also automatically sync over as a completed task in task details!
• When calling from a cadence Phone Step, select the down arrow next to Log and Complete,  to find a couple of alternative options for logging your call.
• Use Complete Only if the call was not actually made but you want to move to the next step in your cadence. For example, let’s say you have someone on a cadence call step, but you receive an email from them earlier that day. You no longer need to call them since you made the connection earlier in the day, but still want them on your cadence. Since there is not a call to log, you can mark the call as Complete Only.
• Use Log Only when you make a call but want to keep the person on that cadence step. If you call someone, but get stopped by a gatekeeper or they ask you to call back later, you want to log that a call took place for your records, but you don’t want to complete them to the next step in your cadence until you’ve had a conversation with the person.
• The Success button will log if that step helped you achieve your desired outcome.  For example, is the goal of your cadence to book a demo?  If this goal was reached during the call, you can go ahead and hit the Success button, which will help populate your analytics.