Activity outcomes streamline your prospecting workflow, especially when calling leads or customers. The feature is an easy way to log all your actions and reduce time you spend on each activity.
There's now a free upgrade to Activities. The new version is called Tasks, and contains lots of new features to improve your workflows, increase your insights, and save more time. Contact us for your free upgrade.
This article covers:
How it works
Use activity outcomes to keep track of sales-related tasks, and build up historical records of what's been done.
Activity outcomes are available in:
- Activity card
- Activity focus-mode
- Activities on company history timelines
Measuring completed activities
Close an activity by booking an appointment, creating an opportunity or order, or simply closing the activity when the lead isn't worth pursuing.
How do I know how many calls I've made?
Click an outcome means you can record:
- how many contacts you've reached/didn't reach
- how many resulted in appointments, opportunities, orders, etc
Suggestions when not having a contact in your activity
A good starting point is to use Upsales Marketing features to spark interest from your leads before calling them, like showing them online ads, sending email campaigns, etc. This helps you identify leads and making sure they know about your brand and services, making it a less chilly call.
But, if you don't know who to contact Upsales will help you out by listing the top-scoring contacts along with the company's online profiles:
Top scoring contacts
These are contacts already added to the company in Upsales sorted by marketing score. A higher score means they are likely more interested in you. Clicking a phone number or the email icon will automatically add that contact to the activity.
Online profiles
Often times companies display some contact information on their online profiles, a great way to find new leads.
Let's take Linkedin as an example; If you've added the company's LinkedIn profile in Upsales the button will simply link to that URL.
If the field for the company's Linkedin profile is empty, Upsales simply opens Linkedin and adds the company name inside the Linkedin search bar, showing you matching results.
How to activate Activity Outcomes
Activity outcomes are manually activated for the activity types you choose. This way, if you have types that don't include calling or finding leads, an admin-type for example, you simply don't apply outcomes to that activity type. Switching type inside the activity will then hide the outcome options.
Steps:
- You need administrator access to edit activity types
- Click Settings → CRM → Activity & appointment types:
- Click the activity type you'd like to apply outcomes to
- Click the checkbox to activate outcomes:
- Click Save
How outcome buttons work
Perhaps their phone was busy or they simply didn't answer. Either way, you didn't get to pitch and you need to call back later.
Clicking this button lets you postpone the date of the activity to a future date, sending an email, or simply close the activity.
Postpone the date
- Postpone the date
- Choose date/time presets or set a custom date
- Does not close the activity, simply moves the date
- Adds a row in the activity history displaying
- Old date
- New date
- Who performed the action
The date is by default set for tomorrow, if that suits you, just click the top button once again to confirm. Otherwise, select one of the available presets or set a custom date.
Send an email
- Send email
- Postpone activity until tomorrow (optional)
- Does not close the activity, simply moves the date
- Adds a row in the activity history displaying
- Link to email
- Date of action
- Who performed the action
Not getting through to them by phone? Send them an email. The best use for this action is to have your email templates set up for situations like these. Compose an email template using dynamic email tags, here's an example:
| Compose using dynamic tags: | What your recipient will see: |
|---|---|
|
Hi, {{Contact.FirstName}}. I've tried reaching you today. Please give me a call. |
Hi, John. I've tried reaching you today. Please give me a call. |
Close activity
- Close the activity
- Disqualify the company (optional)
- Leave a note (optional)
Sometimes it's not worth the effort if the recipient isn't ready to buy. Clicking this button shows you two different options and a note field: Close activity or Disqualify.
Closing the activity will simply mark it as done. Disqualifying is connected to the Journey status and will label the company and contact as Disqualified. Use this for companies that will never be able to be one of your customers, like competitors or partners for example.
I reached Firstname
A step in the right direction, you got to talk to a person on the other end! Woop! From here on there are many situations that can appear, we've tried supplying actions for most of them:
Postpone date
- Postpone the date
- Choose date/time presets or set a custom date
- Does not close the activity, simply moves the date
Speed actions to postpone the date. The best thing is probably to postpone it for tomorrow and to try another time of the day.
Talk to someone else
- Select a new contact already in Upsales
- Create a new contact and add to the activity
You got to talk to someone, but they referred you to someone else. Or, they were simply not the right person to speak to. Clicking this button gives you the option of adding another contact from the same company to the activity, or creating a new one.
Send an email
- Send email
- Postpone activity until tomorrow (optional)
- Adds a row in the activity history displaying
- Link to email
- Date of action
- Who performed the outcome
Perhaps sending some product or service information is a good path to take here. Choose from your templates or compose a new one. The email of the contact added in the activity will automatically be added as the recipient.
Postpone until tomorrow
Inside the footer of the card where you compose your email, we've also added a toggle for postponing the activity to tomorrow. This is by default active and you can choose to disable it. When disabled the activity date simply won't change.
- Closes the activity
- Adds a row in the activity history displaying
- Link to appointment, opportunity, or order
- Date when created
- Who performed the outcome
This is what we are all aiming for, Booking an appointment, creating an opportunity, or even an order. This option will bring the company, contact, and notes along to the thing you choose to create.
Your activity will then be closed and you should continue working inside the entity you just created.
Just postponing the date
- Postpone the date
- Choose date/time presets or set a custom date
- Adds a row in the activity history displaying
- Old date
- New date
- Who performed the outcome
Use this if you simply want to move the activity date without having to select one of the above options. The postponing of the date will still be noted in the activity log. But no progress will be made.
Reporting
With outcomes, you can now gain deeper insights into how you and your team are performing with your activities. Either see your progress in the activity Focus-mode or if you have the add-on Insights see reports for no. of activities done by a user, by type and with the time period you select.
Focus-mode statistics
When entering the activity focus-mode the footer displays your daily progress and also a top list of most booked appointments.
Total outcomes
This metric measures the total amount of outcomes set by you today. All actions below the main Not reached/Reached are counted as completed outcomes. Changing a contact or adding a note is not for example.
Report center
This is a work in progress feature that is planned to release in November 2020
This report displays the activity outcomes set per user. Tweak the date range with filters. Upsales Report Center is available for all Upsales Plans, you can find it in the Analytics-tab inside Upsales. Click the tab named "Activity outcomes".
What's the difference between the Activity tab and the Activity outcomes tab?
The Activity tab shows the old way of measuring activities; By only looking at closed activities. The Activity outcomes tab on the other hand measures the actual outcomes, like how many contacts a user has reached, how many appointments that's been booked, etc. We strongly recommend using activity outcomes for all call-related activities.
Total column
This column sums the Reached and Not reached column meaning the total amount of outcomes set by a user.
Reached and Not reached column
This column sorts all outcomes set after clicking the Reached buttons inside activities. For example, clicking Reached then Book appointment or Postpone adds to this metric.
Appointment, Opportunity, and Order columns
These columns show all how many appointments, opportunities, and orders that has been created from activities per user.
Insights reporting
Upsales Insights is an extensive reporting feature. We've made some basic reports for the activity outcomes but you will off course be able to build your own.
Click Analytics → Upsales Insights → Basic dashboards and scroll down to the activity section: