Why bother logging your calls?

Most campaigns seem to have some intuitive understanding that they should be making a record of the calls that are being placed during call time. That intuition is good, but it is often insufficient.

In order to get the most out of your data, it needs to be collected and structured in a way that is mindful of how you plan to get value from it in the future. Otherwise, why bother logging calls at all?

For the purpose of call time and fundraising, the data you collect when logging calls can be valuable to you in two ways:

1. To use when building your lists for any follow up activity and/or subsequent outreach
2. As helpful context for the candidate/caller to have in front of him/her whenever making the next outreach

The second purpose (helpful context) doesn’t necessarily demand that you log calls in a particularly disciplined way; theoretically, you could just write a few notes about the call, and those notes would be helpful next time you return to this contact. But doing so is to fall into a very common trap — it may accomplish the second purpose, above, but it makes it nearly impossible to accomplish the first.

That’s why it’s important to build a call logging protocol that helps you build future lists — for follow up, for additional research, or outreach, etc. One helpful way to think about this is in terms of what kinds of queries you may need to run on this data in the future, in order to make your outreach highly intentional.

In other words, ask yourself: what searches will I want to run on this data in the future? If you’re not logging your data in a way that makes those searches possible, you’re likely missing out on opportunities to better maximize your fundraising.

Here are some specific approaches we recommend:

Record all Asks and Commitments

When you connect with someone, at a minimum it is important to record each ask that is made of them, and any commitments that came from those asks. Not only will this be valuable information each time you return to this individual, it is critical data to use when building your follow up.

In a prior article we discussed the wide variety of asks and commitments you may want to include in your fundraising, and each should be recorded in a way that allows you to build appropriate follow up lists. Ideally, for every ask you are making you have a way to record:

• What the ask was (i.e., Will you help raise money?)
• Whether you received a commitment from the ask (i.e., Yes)
• Any additional specifics about the commitment (i.e., Raise $5,000)

Having a mechanism to later go back and mark a commitment as fulfilled or otherwise dismissed is also helpful in using this data effectively.

If all of the above information is captured as a block of text, that may be useful next time you happen upon that block of text. But recording each of those pieces of data in a structured way will allow you to build lists that proactively target people for a particular purpose.

At CallTime.AI we have built a logging process that explicitly enables this kind of data collection and data querying, but no matter the system you are using, a properly recorded call will allow you to, for instance: call through anyone with an outstanding pledge balance; or anyone who committed to raise at least $5,000 for me in the last month; or anyone who agreed to host an event for me but hasn’t done so yet, etc.

Have a way to distinguish between meaningful “no connection” outcomes

The most common outcome of a call, of course, is that you don’t reach anyone. But not every “no connection” is the same, and it makes sense to distinguish between the types of “no connection” that may influence how you next attempt to engage that individual.

Here are some examples of specific “no connection” outcomes you may want to record, and how it might influence your follow up:

• No Answer: if you couldn’t reach anyone at this number, you can probably try this person again sooner than someone for whom you recently left a voicemail or with whom you recently spoke
• Wrong Number: you’ll likely want to take some follow up action to find an accurate number and clean up this data
• Left Voicemail: knowing a message was left should prompt you to provide a little more time before the next outreach, to give this person an opportunity to get back to you

Given all this, as you think about your own approach to managing call time, consider how your protocol does or does not allow you to record specific, actionable outcomes today, and- perhaps most importantly- use those outcomes to make even smarter decisions about your actions tomorrow.