Half the rows on your call list are not calls. They are lookups.
You work down a list of twenty. One rings a switchboard, one is a dead line, three have no number in the field at all. An hour goes and you have spoken to four people, and none of that hour was cold calling. It was data entry with a headset on.
The number you dial, and the number you dial from, are the two least glamorous parts of outbound and the two that quietly decide how much of your day is conversation.
Every lead arrives with a number attached
A lead is not handed to you until a phone number is attached to it, and the rest of the record arrives filled in rather than blank.
Every number carries a label, so before you dial you know whether you are about to ring a mobile, a direct line or a main switchboard. That changes how you open, and more usefully it changes the order you work the list in.
If one does land without a number, there is a button on the card that goes and looks for one. That lookup spends a credit, which is the honest way to say it costs something.
What a direct line flag does not promise
This is the claim most worth being careful about, and the one most tools fudge.
A lead marked as having a direct line means a direct line is believed to exist for that contact. It has not been revealed yet. It is a signal about likelihood, not a number sitting in your hand.
Some days you will still get the switchboard. We would rather write that down than have you discover it on the fourth call and decide the labels are decorative.
Revealing the number itself
Contact details stay encrypted on the card until you tap to reveal them. The reveal is logged, and the same lead is never charged to you twice, so working a lead over several days does not cost you repeatedly for the same number.
Trial and pilot accounts are capped on reveals rather than unlimited. If you are evaluating on a trial and planning to reveal your way through a large list, that ceiling is real and you will meet it.
The number that shows on their screen
An unknown out of area number gets you sent to voicemail before you have said a word, which is why local presence exists as a category at all.
You browse real local numbers by country and area code inside the app and request the one you want. Your workspace then calls out from it, and when a prospect rings that number back it forwards to you. You can see the exact number your leads will see before you dial.
Local numbers are free. They are treated as a reason to use the product rather than a monthly line on your invoice, and that is a deliberate pricing decision rather than an introductory offer.
Now the parts that do not happen the moment you click, because this is where the category oversells hardest. Requesting a number is not the same as dialing from it. A request can sit in a requested state, and only an active number dials. Registering a number in a new market is still a step we run for you rather than something that completes while you wait. And some markets are excluded entirely, because carriers there screen local mobile caller ID and a local number would do you no good.
Rotation, and what it is for
Dial all day from one number and it eventually gets labelled as spam, after which your pickup rate collapses for reasons that have nothing to do with your opener.
Outbound calling can rotate across several of your numbers with daily caps, and a number whose answer rate starts sliding gets rested rather than run into the ground. Whether that is switched on for your workspace depends on how your account is set up, so it is worth checking rather than assuming.
Verifying your mobile does less than it sounds like
If you would rather talk on your handset than in a browser tab, you verify your mobile once with a six digit code and the system rings you first, then bridges the lead in. Calls still leave from the workspace number, so your personal mobile stays out of the call logs of every list you dial.
Here is the part worth reading twice, because the name of the feature invites the wrong conclusion. Verifying your handset connects your phone. It does not change the number the lead sees, and it does nothing about spam flagging. It is a convenience about where you take the call, not a deliverability feature, and anyone selling caller ID verification as a way to stop getting flagged is selling you something else.
Why this is the boring half of outbound
None of this is interesting and all of it is load bearing.
A list where every row has a labelled number is an hour of conversations. A list where half the rows need looking up is an hour of admin, and at the end of it you will conclude that cold calling does not work, when what did not work was the list.
Sign up and your first three calls are free. A call only spends one of the three if it connected and lasted at least ten seconds, so wrong numbers and dead lines cost you nothing, and your local number is free in every market we cover.