The best phone system for umbrella companies

Two markets to call at the same time, contractors and the agencies that supply them, from one tool.

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Hundreds of companies use to make every call pay off

The situation

What holds you back today

01

Two prospecting motions, contractors and agencies

02

Contractors only reachable outside working hours

03

Assignment tracking scattered across tools

The answer

What Skipcall changes

Separate calling sessions for each segment

The parallel dialer →

A work number on your mobile for evening calls

The mobile app →

A pre-CRM for assignments and availability

The pre-CRM →

Specific to your industry

Two audiences, two working days: when to call a contractor, when to call an agency

An umbrella company calls two worlds that do not run on the same clock. The contractor is on site with a client and is not free to talk between nine and six; the agency or the end client only picks up during office hours. One calling session cannot serve both.

The contractor on assignment: lunchtime and after hours

Between 12:15 and 13:45, and after 18:30, a contractor has stepped out of the client's open-plan office and can speak plainly. Before 09:00 works too. A call at 15:00 lands in a meeting and will not be returned, and that is context rather than a lack of interest.

The contractor between assignments: any time, and quickly

Someone whose contract has just ended answers during the day and is actively looking. It is the shortest-lived segment you will ever call: they will have signed elsewhere within a few weeks. Ask for the assignment end date on the first conversation and set the follow-up a few weeks before it, not after.

The agency or end client: 09:00 to 10:00, then 14:00 to 16:00

Recruitment consultants, resourcing managers and hiring managers answer their direct line during the day, less so on Monday morning and Friday afternoon. These calls need a different conversation from the contractor calls, and they work far better in their own slots in the week.

Friday, the contractor's day

Plenty of contractors are not on the client site five days a week, and Friday is when timesheets go in and admin gets done. It is the best day to reach a contractor and the worst to reach the people who hire them. Keep it for contractors and for live cases.

Calling at seven in the evening means not handing out your personal number. A work number carried on the mobile settles that, and every conversation stays attached to the contractor's record rather than to the handset of whoever made the call.

The script

The script for calling a contractor who is on assignment

You are calling a contractor you found on a job board or a professional network, in the evening or over lunch. They are on assignment, they did not ask to hear from you, and other umbrella companies have called them already. What you need by the end of this call is two things: their assignment end date, and their agreement to be called before it.

The opening

“Hi [first name], [name] from [company]. I found your profile on [source] and I am calling about your contracting work. Are you on site right now, or have you got two minutes?”

Saying where you got the number is information you owe them, and the question about context stops you burning a contractor who happened to answer from a client's open-plan office.

The reason for the call

“I am not trying to get you to change anything today. What I mainly want to know is how long your current contract runs, so I call you back when it actually means something.”

If they say they are already with an umbrella, or run their own limited company

“So you have already settled the structure question, that makes this simpler. Who are you with, and what margin are you paying at the moment? And is your current assignment inside or outside IR35? I will tell you straight whether there is anything worth talking about.”

Asking about the current set-up rather than arguing tells you in a minute whether there is a subject at all. The IR35 question does most of the work: on an assignment determined inside IR35 with a medium or large end client, a personal service company is not really an option and the umbrella conversation is the only one left. A contractor who is happy where they are will say so, and that is better than a pointless meeting.

If they ask what your margin is

“I will tell you now, but a margin on its own means nothing until you know what sits around it. What assignment rate are you on today? I will send you a written illustration on your real rate, not a number in the air.”

Refusing to give the margin gets you hung up on. Give it, then move the conversation to take-home pay and to the gap between the assignment rate and gross pay, since employer's National Insurance, the Apprenticeship Levy and holiday pay come out of the assignment rate before anyone is paid. Contractors who have been caught by that once will thank you for saying it before they sign.

If they ask to be called back when the assignment ends

“If I call you then, you will already have signed somewhere else. When does it finish exactly? I will call you a month before, and I will leave you alone until then.”

The agency side, in a separate session

“Since April, the PAYE on payments to workers you supply through an umbrella sits with the agency. How are you handling that at the moment, and how many umbrellas are on your list?”

Since 6 April 2026 the recruitment agency that supplies the worker, or the end client where there is no agency, is responsible for accounting for PAYE on umbrella payments. That has made agencies far more interested in who their contractors' umbrella is, and it is the opening that gets picked up. These calls belong in the daytime and in their own session: the same list and the same conversation do not serve both audiences.

At Skipcall, every call is recorded, transcribed and summarised, so the script gets corrected against what your reps actually say rather than what we imagine they say.

Avoid this

Three mistakes this industry makes on the phone

The mistake

Calling a contractor in the middle of the day and going straight into the pitch without checking where they are.

Do this instead

Open with the question about context and accept “I am in a meeting” without arguing. A contractor kept on the line thirty seconds longer from a client's open-plan office will never call back, and that number is burnt for a long time.

The mistake

Selling the umbrella on the margin.

Do this instead

Contractors compare take-home pay, not margins. Give the margin without ceremony, then explain what comes out of the assignment rate before gross pay, employer's National Insurance, the Apprenticeship Levy and holiday pay, and send a written illustration built on their real day rate.

The mistake

Hanging up without the assignment end date because the contractor is not ready.

Do this instead

That date is the only thing that makes the number worth calling again. Ask for it even when the answer is no, put it on the record, and set the follow-up before the date rather than at some arbitrary interval.

A calendar full of meetings starts with a call.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions, Umbrella companies & contracting

Between 12:15 and 13:45, and after 18:30: on assignment with a client, a contractor cannot speak freely from an open-plan office in the middle of the day. Early morning, before 09:00, works as well. Friday is often the best day, since many contractors are not on the client site five days a week and that is when timesheets and admin get done. An agency or an end client is the other way round, best reached in the day, roughly 09:00 to 10:00 and then 14:00 to 16:00.
Yes, as long as the sessions are kept apart. The two audiences answer at different hours and the conversation is not the same, so mixing the lists into one campaign damages both sets of results. Skipcall lets you build separate lists, each with its own call and SMS sequences, and keeps the history of both sides in the same pre-CRM.
You can, with a screening step that catches people out. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, a sole trader or an unincorporated partnership counts as an individual subscriber, so the number has to be screened against the Telephone Preference Service; a contractor working through their own limited company is a corporate subscriber, screened against the Corporate TPS. Directors of one-person companies routinely give a personal mobile as the business number, so screening both registers is the safe practice. The UK GDPR applies either way: a documented lawful basis, privacy information given to the person, the right to object honoured, and a notice at the start if the call is recorded.
Put the assignment end date on the record as soon as you know it, even approximately. The useful follow-up sits a few weeks before that date, when the contractor has started looking but is not yet free. A contractor who has been available for several weeks has almost always signed elsewhere. A pre-CRM carrying dated reminders and the summary of the last call stops you starting from scratch at every contact.
You are tracking two different objects: contractors, with their skills, their availability and their assignment end date, and agencies or end clients, with the roles they have open. Skipcall includes a pre-CRM for the calling phase and syncs natively with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce and Attio, with twenty-nine other tools connecting by API. The final choice is usually driven by whatever already runs timesheets, payroll and contracts, since prospecting has to sit alongside it without double entry.

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