sales-skills/sales-salesmate

Salesmate Platform Help

Salesmate is an AI-powered sales CRM for SMB and mid-market teams — contacts/companies, deal pipelines, activities, built-in calling + SMS, email sequences, marketing automation, Smart Flow workflows, a ticketing/team inbox, and the Sandy AI copilot — with a RESTful v4 API and Zapier/Make connectors.

Step 1 — Gather context

If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated platform knowledge.

Figure out which of these the user needs (ask only if their prompt doesn't already say):

1. What kind of problem is this?
   • A) API / integration build (auth headers, pagination, syncing data in/out)
   • B) Sequences, Smart Flow automation, or marketing campaigns not behaving
   • C) Built-in calling/SMS or a telephony integration (e.g. RingCentral)
   • D) Pricing, plan gates, Sandy AI / sequence / credit limits, or which plan to buy
   • E) Choosing whether Salesmate is the right CRM at all
2. Which plan? Basic / Pro / Business / Enterprise — features and limits differ sharply by tier.

Skip-ahead rule: if the user's prompt already has enough context, skip to Step 2 or Step 3.

Step 2 — Route or answer directly

| Problem domain | Route to | |---|---| | Comparing Salesmate vs Pipedrive/Close/Freshsales/HubSpot or picking a CRM | /sales-crm-selection {user's question} | | Outbound sequence/cadence strategy across platforms | /sales-cadence {user's question} | | Email-marketing strategy (segmentation, deliverability) across tools | /sales-email-marketing {user's question} | | SMS-marketing strategy / compliance across tools | /sales-sms-marketing {user's question} | | Connecting Salesmate to other tools (Zapier/Make/native) | /sales-integration {user's question} | | Contact enrichment for CRM records | /sales-enrich {user's question} |

When routing, give the exact command, e.g. "This is a CRM-comparison question — run: /sales-crm-selection should I move from Salesmate to Pipedrive".

Step 3 — Salesmate platform reference

Read references/platform-guide.md for the full reference — capabilities & automation surface, pricing/plan gates, data model (JSON shapes), integration recipes (cURL + Python), and integration patterns. For raw API detail (endpoints, auth headers, search/pagination, error codes), read references/salesmate-api-reference.md.

Answer using only the relevant section. Don't dump the whole reference.

Step 4 — Actionable guidance

You no longer need the guide — focus on the user's situation.

• Getting a 401? Auth is header-based: accessToken = your Access Key (My Account → Access Key) and x-linkname = your account host (e.g. demo.salesmate.io). A 401 is almost always one of those two headers; a 403 means the user lacks access or the feature isn't enabled.
• Base URL is per-account: https://{link_name}.salesmate.io/apis/{module}/v4/.... Use v4.
• Listing/searching is a POST to /apis/{module}/v4/search?rows=250&from=0 with a displayingFields + filterQuery + sort body; pagination is offset-based (rows+from), with totalRows/totalPages in Data.
• Hitting limits? The cap is 1500 API calls/hour per link — batch reads with large rows, cache, and space out pages. Smart Flow automation is credit-metered; heavy flows stall when the monthly credit pool runs out.
• Feature locked? Sequences + Sandy AI = Pro+; power dialer/custom modules/SLAs = Business+.
• No inbound webhooks — push events OUT via a Smart Flow "API Call/Webhook" action or Make/Zapier "Watch …" triggers; write INTO Salesmate via the REST API.

If you discover a gotcha or workaround not in references/learnings.md, append it there.

Gotchas

Best-effort from research (2026-06) — review these, especially plan-gated features and pricing which change frequently.

1. Auth header naming is confusing. The header key is accessToken and its value is your Access Key — but the official Postman collection stores that value in a variable labeled sessionToken, and Make surfaces three fields (API Key, API Token, Session Token). You also must send x-linkname (your account host). Mismatched headers = 401.
2. v1/v3 are deprecated (slated May 1, 2023) — build on v4. A few resources (Products, Lookup Fields) still expose v1/v3 paths.
3. Pagination is offset-based, not cursor. Drive it with rows (≤250) + from, and stop on totalRows. Search/list endpoints are POSTs with a query body, not GETs.
4. 1500 API calls/hour per link, account-wide, with no rate-limit response header — track usage yourself or you'll silently start failing.
5. No inbound webhooks. You can't subscribe to events via the API; use a Smart Flow API/Webhook action or an iPaaS "Watch" trigger to push out, and the REST API to write in.
6. Sharp plan gates. Sequences and Sandy AI need Pro ($39); power dialer/custom modules/SLAs need Business ($63). Smart Flow credits (5K/10K/15K by tier) can run out mid-automation. Calling/SMS numbers are a paid add-on. 24/7 support is Enterprise-only.

Related skills

• /sales-crm-selection — CRM comparison & selection — is Salesmate right vs Pipedrive, Close, Freshsales, HubSpot, Zoho?
• /sales-pipedrive — Pipedrive platform help — the pipeline-first SMB CRM most often compared to Salesmate
• /sales-cadence — Outbound sequence/cadence strategy across platforms
• /sales-email-marketing — Email-marketing strategy across tools
• /sales-sms-marketing — SMS-marketing strategy and compliance across tools
• /sales-integration — Connecting Salesmate to other tools — webhooks, Zapier, Make, custom API
• /sales-enrich — Contact enrichment for CRM records
• /sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill. Install: npx skills add sales-skills/sales --skill sales-do -a claude-code

Examples

Example 1: API returns 401 / how to authenticate (automation)

User says: "My Salesmate API calls keep returning 401 — I'm sending an Authorization Bearer token." Skill does: Explains Salesmate doesn't use Bearer — auth is header-based API Key: send accessToken (your Access Key from My Account → Access Key) and x-linkname (your account host, e.g. demo.salesmate.io) plus Content-Type: application/json. Notes the base URL is https://{link_name}.salesmate.io/apis/contact/v4, and that the Postman collection confusingly labels the access-key value sessionToken. Points to the cURL quick-start in the API reference. Result: User fixes the headers and the call succeeds.

Example 2: Sync Salesmate contacts to a warehouse (automation)

User says: "I want to pull all my Salesmate contacts into BigQuery nightly. What's the cleanest way?" Skill does: Shows the POST /apis/contact/v4/search?rows=250&from=0 pattern with a displayingFields/filterQuery/sort body, explains offset pagination via from + rows and stopping on Data.totalRows, and warns to stay under the 1500 calls/hour per link cap by using a large page size and spacing requests. References the Python pagination recipe in the platform guide. Result: User has a paginated, rate-aware export loop.

Example 3: Is Salesmate the right CRM / why is Sandy AI missing?

User says: "We're a 7-person team on the Basic plan and Sandy AI and sequences are greyed out — is Salesmate worth upgrading or should we look elsewhere?" Skill does: Explains sequences and Sandy AI are Pro ($39)+ (Basic is CRM-only), frames Salesmate's value as native calling/SMS + AI at SMB pricing, notes the trade-offs (credit-metered automation, no inbound webhooks, weekday-only support below Enterprise), and routes the cross-vendor decision to /sales-crm-selection for a structured Salesmate-vs-Pipedrive/Close/Freshsales call. Result: User understands the upgrade and gets pointed to the comparison skill for the final call.

Troubleshooting

"Every Salesmate API call returns 401 Authentication Failure"

Symptom: 401 on every request. Cause: Wrong/missing auth headers — Salesmate uses an API Key in the accessToken header plus the x-linkname account host, not a Bearer token. Solution: Send accessToken: <Access Key> (My Account → Access Key), x-linkname: {link_name}.salesmate.io, and Content-Type: application/json. Confirm the base URL is your own subdomain and you're calling v4. A 403 (not 401) means the user lacks access or the feature is off.

"RingCentral call logging keeps breaking / I have to re-authorize"

Symptom: Calls and recordings stop syncing; you re-authorize and it works for a while. Cause: The RingCentral integration's auth token expires/disconnects and must be re-linked. Solution: Re-authorize the RingCentral connection in Salesmate settings; for reliability consider Salesmate's built-in calling/SMS (numbers add-on) instead of a third-party telephony bridge, which avoids the re-auth loop. Log a support ticket if it recurs frequently.

"My Smart Flow automation stopped running partway through the month"

Symptom: Workflows that worked early in the month silently stop firing. Cause: Smart Flow runs are credit-metered (5K/10K/15K per user/month by tier) and the pool ran out. Solution: Check remaining credits, trim noisy/looping flows, move bulk work to off-credit paths (direct API), or upgrade the tier for a larger credit pool. Credits reset on the monthly cycle.