Lead Qualification Call

Use this skill when a sales or marketing team has warm inbound leads that have explicitly consented to a call and wants one disclosed CALL-E phone call to qualify them. The call collects needs, budget range, timeline, decision authority, and interest level, and returns a fail-closed structured JSON result with a disposition a human or CRM can act on.

This skill qualifies a lead. It does not sell, book, close, or write to a CRM. A human reviews the result and owns every next step, including any CRM update.

When To Use

• Qualify leads from an opt-in form, callback request, or consent-gated campaign
• Collect needs, budget range, timeline, decision authority, and interest in one disclosed call
• Separate high-intent leads from low-intent ones with transcript-evidenced structured results
• Feed a disposition (qualified / needs_human / not_interested) to a human-run sales queue or CRM routing

When Not To Use

• Cold outreach, scraped lists, unsolicited marketing, or SPAM-style dialing
• Medical, legal, financial, emergency, collections, or political calls
• Selling, closing, negotiating, or collecting payment on the call
• Calling a number the user did not provide and authorize
• Hidden retries, recurring schedules, or provider-side campaigns
• Writing to a CRM or booking a meeting before a human reviews the result

Required Inputs

• lead_id: stable local identifier (3-64 chars of letters, digits, dot, dash, underscore)
• campaign_id: campaign or source-batch identifier for idempotency and routing
• lead_source: Google Form, website callback, ticket, partner, or other consent-gated source
• to_phone_e164: E.164, authorized
• consent: must be true
• authorized_reason: why this specific call is allowed
• company_name: business name disclosed on the call
• product_offer: what is being qualified (offer name or one-line description)
• timezone: IANA timezone for quiet-hours decisions
• qualification_fields: the subset of BANT fields the team wants, chosen from the schema contract

Optional: locale, language, region, lead_first_name, notes passed as call context.

Preflight

1. Confirm the user authorized this one qualification call and that consent is true.
2. Confirm the phone is E.164 and came from the consent-gated lead record.
3. Confirm the lead is warm: the record has an explicit outreach basis or callback request. If the lead is cold or do_not_call is true, refuse.
4. Build the compiled task from the goal template below and review a masked preview before any CALL-E plan.

Dry-Run Preview

Preview is the default. It performs no network access and no call. From the skill directory:

python3 -m json.tool assets/sample-lead.json

Review the compiled task, the result schema, the masked phone, and the idempotency key before touching CALL-E. All example numbers are reserved fictional numbers (see references/examples.md).

CALL-E Goal Template

You are an AI phone assistant calling on behalf of {company_name}.
Disclose immediately that you are AI and that this is one lead-qualification call.

Speak with {lead_first_name}. If you have the wrong person, apologise and end the call.

Purpose: understand whether {product_offer} fits this person's needs.
Do not sell, pitch, close, negotiate, collect payment, or give medical, legal, or financial advice.

Ask only the approved qualification questions:
- What problem or need is this person trying to solve?
- What budget range applies: under 1k, 1k to 5k, 5k to 20k, or above 20k? Mark not disclosed if they decline.
- What timeline applies: immediate, 1 to 3 months, 3 to 6 months, 6 months or more, or unknown?
- Are they the decision maker, or do they need to include someone else?
- How interested are they: high, medium, or low? Base this only on what they say, not on guessing.
- Would they like a human from the team to call back, and when?

Do not infer answers from silence. If the person declines to answer a question, record the value as unknown, not_disclosed, or low as appropriate. Never pressure, repeat an unanswered question aggressively, or invent an interest level. If the call is a voicemail, leave a short message and record disposition voicemail.

Structured Result

{
  "needs": "short text, empty if not disclosed",
  "budget_range": "under_1k | 1k_5k | 5k_20k | 20k_plus | not_disclosed",
  "timeline": "immediate | 1_3_months | 3_6_months | 6_months_plus | unknown",
  "is_decision_maker": true,
  "interest_level": "high | medium | low",
  "callback_requested": true,
  "disposition": "qualified | needs_human | not_interested | blocked_compliance | voicemail | no_answer | wrong_number"
}

A qualified result is an interest signal, not a closed sale. needs_human, voicemail, no_answer, and low-confidence answers all route to a human and are never auto-qualified. See references/qualification-schema.md for the full contract.

Live Planning

Only after explicit user authorization and CALL-E authentication:

export CALLE_API_KEY="<server key>"
calle call plan --to-phone <E164_PHONE> --goal "<reviewed goal text>" --timezone <IANA> --language English --region <REGION>

calle call plan is planning, not execution. Do not start the call unless the user separately confirms. Read references/calle-workflow.md for the exact plan/run/status sequence, preflight, and idempotency handling.

Cancellation And Idempotency

Idempotency key: lead_qualification:{lead_id}:{campaign_id}. If the user cancels before dial, do not execute. If a result is ambiguous, route to a human rather than calling again. Never automatically retry an error or unknown outcome; that would create a duplicate qualification call.

Safety Notes

Read references/safety.md and references/examples.md before any live planning. Read references/crm-routing.md before routing a disposition, and references/calle-workflow.md before the live sequence. No CRM write and no meeting booking happens without a human review.