Article

Your CRM notes show why jobs were won or lost

By TrustPast

Published October 20, 2026 · Updated October 22, 2026

Your CRM is where every customer you ever had is listed. That is why owners assume it is the one system they would never let anyone near. But a CRM in a trade company holds two things side by side: who the customer was, and what the company did about them, call by call, for years. Polyshares pays to license records like these to train AI models. This page settles which half it pays for, what sets the price, what can stop a deal, and which half stays behind.

Why buyers want it

Open any customer card in your field-service software and look at what is on it. A name. An address. A phone number. A card on file. Then, under that, a list of things that happened. A call in March about a noise in the attic. A follow-up note. A quote sent, a quote chased, a quote lost. A service agreement signed two years later. Four maintenance visits. A note that the customer prefers mornings and the dog is friendly.

The top of the card is personal data. The bottom of the card is the company’s working record. They sit in the same screen, but they are not the same kind of thing.

Our own reading: what Polyshares pays for is the bottom of the card. Polyshares lists “CRM history” in what it calls operational data, on its home page and on its data licensing page. And on its data handling page it says what comes off the top: “Names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers, and addresses are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record. Roles, timestamps, and the work itself are kept.” A PII partner is a specialist partner that removes personal details.

So the customer becomes a customer. The house becomes a house. What the company did stays as it was written.

What sits in a trade company’s CRM

Owners use the word CRM for different things. Some mean the field-service software, where the jobs, the schedule and the customer cards live together. Some mean a separate sales tool for leads. Some mean a spreadsheet and a whiteboard. Here is what a CRM in a trade usually holds, whatever the system, as our own description:

the lead: where it came from, when, and what the caller said they needed;
the follow-up notes: who called back, when, what was said, what happened next;
the quote history: which estimates went out, which were chased, which closed, which went cold;
the reasons: why a quote was won, why it was lost, and the note the salesperson left about it;
the job history: every visit to that customer or that address, in order;
the service agreements: who signed up, at what level, when they renewed and when they lapsed;
the maintenance schedule: which visits were due, which were done, which were skipped;
the call notes: what the customer reported, what the office told them, what got booked.

Most of that is short. A line or two at a time. Ten or fifteen years of it is a full account of how the company found work, won it, kept it and lost it.

The lead notes show how a call became a job

A job doesn’t start with an estimate. It starts with a phone call, a web form or a neighbour who saw the truck. The lead note is the first thing anyone wrote down about it.

Here is a worked example, as our own description. A lead comes in on a Tuesday. The note says the air conditioner is blowing warm, the unit is old, and the caller wants a price on a new one. The office books a tech for a diagnostic, not a quote. That choice is in the note. The tech finds a failed capacitor and fixes it the same day. The follow-up note a week later says the customer asked about a replacement anyway, for next spring. A reminder goes in for March. In March the office calls, and a quote goes out.

None of that is on the invoice. The invoice says one capacitor. The CRM says how a call that sounded like a sale was handled as a repair, and how the sale came six months later. Polyshares says on its data licensing page that “The value is not in volume. It is in reasoning that was captured while the work happened.” Our own reading: a lead note is written before anyone knows how the job ends. That is what makes it reasoning and not a report.

Won and lost: the reasons are the record

Most CRMs have a field for why a quote was lost. Most offices fill it in some of the time, in a word or two: price, went with someone else, decided to wait, insurance didn’t cover it, never called back.

Each one is short and a little unfair. Read across years, they are a record of the market telling the company no, and why. The won reasons matter as much: came back after the second visit, chose the middle option for the warranty, referred by a neighbour.

The estimates and quotes page explains why the lost bids and the versions of a quote count. The CRM is where the reason for each outcome got written. The quote shows the price. The CRM note shows what the customer said about it. Put together, they show how a company learned to price and to sell, one decision at a time.

Polyshares says, on its data licensing page, that “A thread where two people disagree about a quote and work it out carries judgment that cannot be manufactured.” As we read it, a string of follow-up notes on a disputed quote is that thread, written down by the office.

The job history by customer and by address

The job history is the part of the CRM that looks most like a job file. In many trade companies it is the same system. Every visit to one address, in order, with what was found each time.

The job files and work orders page goes through what sits in one job. The CRM adds the line between the jobs. Five visits to one house over eight years. The first one a repair, the second a callback, the third a quote that was declined, the fourth the same fault again, the fifth the replacement that was declined in year three. That line is how a building aged and how the company kept up with it.

The address is the thread that ties the visits together. It is also personal data. Polyshares says addresses are among the fields its PII partner removes or replaces. Our own reading: what is kept is that the visits belong to the same place, not where the place is.

Service agreements and maintenance schedules

A service agreement is a promise to come back. The CRM records whether the company kept it.

Here is what one usually holds, as our own description. The plan the customer signed up for. The visits it includes and when they were due. Which visits happened, which were rescheduled, and which were skipped. What each visit found. When the customer renewed, upgraded or let it lapse.

A maintenance schedule kept for ten years is a long record of the same equipment being checked again and again. It shows what wears first, what gets flagged and declined, and which flagged items turned into a breakdown later. It also shows the office side: how many reminders it took to book a visit, and which customers dropped the plan after a price change.

Call notes: what the customer said and what the office did

The call notes are the least tidy part of the CRM. Half a sentence typed while the phone was still ringing. A leak under the sink again, maybe the same as last time. Wanted Thursday, no slot, booked Friday. Upset about the bill, offered a free return visit.

Owners sometimes want to clean these up before anyone looks. Polyshares does not ask for tidy. On its data licensing page: “The messy working record is the point, not a defect in it.” A call note that says the office offered a free return visit is a decision, made under pressure, with a cost. A year of them is how the company handled complaints.

What sets the price

Polyshares prices each company after it has read the record. Its data handling page says: “Someone on the team reads the anonymized sample before Polyshares prices the record.” Three things move the number, in Polyshares’ own words.

Depth. Polyshares says on its home page that “Depth of operating history and how much visible reasoning the record contains move the number far more than raw volume does.” As we read it, a maintenance schedule is depth. The same unit, year after year, written down by the people who looked at it. Fifteen years of lead notes and lost reasons is depth of the same kind.

Reasoning you can see. Polyshares says two records that look alike can be worth very different numbers: “One is ten years of people working problems out in writing; the other is ten years of calendar invitations.” In a CRM, the follow-up notes and the lost reasons are the working out. A list of names with a last-visit date is closer to the calendar invitations.

What caps it. Among the things Polyshares says cap the price or kill a deal outright: “Personal information woven through the record in a way that cannot be cleanly stripped.” In a CRM, the personal fields usually sit in their own boxes, apart from the notes. The notes are where a name or a phone number can slip in. That is the part to raise on the call.

What Polyshares has paid is public. Polyshares says typical deals run from $100,000 to $2,000,000 and above (indicative, not an offer). Its case studies page lists four closed deals: a roofing company at $450,000, a general contractor at $300,000, a solar company at $275,000 and a global marketing agency at $110,000 (indicative, not an offer). Each is described as a “Perpetual exclusive license to the operational record. Anonymized before delivery.” Polyshares says “Company names stay confidential,” and it does not publish what each record held. A past deal does not predict an offer. The page on what companies have been paid goes through all four.

Worth two minutes to see your range? The estimate asks five questions.

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What blocks a deal, and the fix

Four things stop a CRM record. Each one has a fix, and Polyshares publishes how it handles each.

Records that belong to someone else

A property manager’s tenant list, held under contract, is not yours to license. Neither is a list of leads you bought from a lead service. Polyshares says material held on behalf of a client “cannot be licensed regardless of value, and only the contracts separate the two.” It also says customer agreements “often contain restrictions on use and disclosure that reach further than owners remember.”

The fix: read the contracts first. Polyshares says confirming ownership “is the one part that starts with the company, because only you hold your customer contracts.” It adds that many agreements expressly allow use “in aggregated or de-identified form.” As our own advice, leave purchased lead lists out of what you describe; the seller’s terms govern them, not yours.

Names, phones and cards on every customer card

Every card carries a name, an address and a phone number. Many carry a card on file. Owners assume that makes the CRM untouchable. Polyshares says on its legal answer page that “No buyer with regulatory exposure will accept a record carrying personal information, so removing it is what makes the record usable in the first place.”

The fix: don’t scrub the CRM yourself. Polyshares says names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers and addresses are removed or replaced by its PII partner, and: “If the partner reviewing the sample spots anything that reads as identifying, the record goes back for another pass before pricing continues.” Raise payment details and call recordings on the call, and ask that they stay out of scope.

Our page on whether a buyer sees your customers’ names maps where those names sit in each record a trade company keeps.

The software’s export rules

Your CRM sits in software, and each tool sets its own export rules. ServiceTitan says an administrator or manager must turn on “Allow exporting search results” before the export option appears on job searches. Zendesk says its exporting tools “are not available on Team plans,” and that “The account owner must contact Zendesk Customer Support to enable data exports in your account.” An owner who tries to pull fifteen years out in an afternoon finds these rules the hard way.

The fix: you don’t export anything to apply. Polyshares says: “Intake asks for record counts, not files or exports.” Count first. Our guide to exporting Zendesk tickets quotes the vendor’s plan limits and steps. Use it after an agreement, when the scope is written down.

Missing years

A switch of software often leaves the old notes behind. The new system holds five years; the ten before them sit in a lapsed subscription or a spreadsheet nobody opens.

The fix: count every system that held customer history (below, under what owners overlook). Polyshares says “The question worth answering is not how many gigabytes exist but how many years of judgment are visible inside them.” A gap in the middle is a gap, not a reason to count none.

What owners overlook

Which systems hold the CRM

Before you look at a range, know where the CRM history lives. Here is the count we ask owners to make, as our own advice.

The current field-service software, which most likely holds the customer cards, the job history and the service agreements. The software before it, which may still export if the subscription lapsed recently. A separate sales or lead tool, if the office used one. The spreadsheet of leads someone kept for a few years. The phone system’s call log and notes. The email account the follow-ups went out from.

Count the years, not the customers. A company with 15 years of customer history has 15 years, whatever the number of cards. Note the gaps too. The what data buyers want page sets out which files hold reasoning in each trade, and which hold only names and payments.

Call recordings

Some call systems also keep recordings. Polyshares lists “call recordings” in what it counts as operational data. As our own advice, a recording has a voice in it, and the voice belongs to a person. Raise recordings with Polyshares before you accept an offer, and ask your counsel what your customers were told when they called.

What this means for a roofing company

This is our own description of what a roofing company keeps in its CRM, not a list from any buyer.

The leads by source: the storm, the door knock, the referral, the yard sign, the insurance adjuster’s list. The inspection booked from each lead, and how many inspections became a signed contract. The follow-up notes on the claims that were still with the insurer. The lost reasons after a storm season, when three other roofers were on the same street. The warranty registrations and the calls that came in under them. The note on which customers referred a neighbour.

Read by year, that is how a roofer sold through good seasons and bad ones. The roofing companies page goes through the rest of a roofer’s record.

What this means for an HVAC company

An HVAC company’s CRM is built on service agreements. Who has a plan, at what level, and when each spring and autumn visit was due and done. The maintenance notes, unit by unit. The repair-or-replace conversations, and which way each customer went. The follow-ups on a declined replacement, and how many seasons later it came back as a breakdown.

The call notes on a hot July afternoon are their own record. Which callers were plan members and got booked first. Which got a slot three days out. This is our own description; the HVAC companies page has more.

What this means for a plumbing company

A plumbing company’s CRM ties the call to the ticket to the quote to the callback. The lead note says the drain is slow. The job history says the camera found roots. The quote history says a repair and a replacement went out, and the note says the customer chose the repair to get through the winter. Two years later the same address calls again.

The repeat addresses are the heart of it. The property managers who call for many buildings. The homeowners who call every few years. The follow-ups on a water heater flagged as near the end. This is our own description; the plumbing companies page has more.

What this means for an auto-repair shop

An auto-repair shop’s CRM follows the vehicle as much as the owner. The service history by vehicle, visit after visit. The reminders for oil changes and inspections, and which were answered. The declined work on each repair order, and the follow-up calls about it. The comebacks, and what the second look found.

The declined-work follow-ups are easy to overlook. A shop that recommended brakes in March and called in May has a record of its own advice and what the customer did with it. Across years and thousands of vehicles, that is how a shop decides what to recommend and when to call. The owner’s name and phone number are not the record. The vehicle’s history is. This is our own description; the auto-repair shops page has more.

How a deal works

These are Polyshares’ published steps, in order. The whole sequence, with what can stop each step, is on how a data deal works.

You see your range on our estimate. Five questions, two minutes. It is our estimate, not an offer.
You apply to Polyshares yourself, through the estimate’s link. Polyshares says: “Intake asks for record counts, not files or exports. Nothing leaves your systems until Polyshares has made an offer and you have accepted it.”
Polyshares reads an anonymized sample and agrees what is in scope. Its home page says: “An offer comes within one to two weeks, and terms are papered right after.”
You confirm ownership, and your counsel reviews the licence. Polyshares says the scope is “Defined systems, a defined term, and exclusive by default unless we agree otherwise. Nothing outside that scope is covered.”
You approve and share. The PII partner strips names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers and addresses before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record.
Polyshares pays “Net 30 to 60 once the data is approved, anonymized, and delivered.”

The company pays no fee at any step: Polyshares says “None. No fee, no commission. We pay you.” Polyshares also says “Listings are published without the company’s name, website, people, or exact locations,” and that “Two named people are the only ones at Polyshares who see a company’s identity alongside its data.”

What you keep

Polyshares says on its home page: “You keep the business and the underlying data. The license is defined and bounded.” It says the licence is for “Defined material for a defined term.” Its data handling page says: “A license is not a sale. The company keeps operating exactly as before, with the same data, the same systems, the same customers.” The difference is set out under licence and sale in our glossary.

Your CRM stays in your software. Your office keeps logging calls in it tomorrow. Your customers are yours. Polyshares says “No contacting your customers or staff,” and “The company is never contacted by a buyer; Polyshares is the sole counterparty.”

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain the process and give you a range with our estimate. The estimate is ours, not an offer; Polyshares makes offers, after it has read the record. The estimate names the buyer that fits your headcount; when that is Polyshares, you apply to it yourself, through the estimate’s link. Polyshares pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing. We never see your CRM. Our how it’s safe page says the same in plain words.

Before you apply

Four things to do first, as our own advice:

Count the years of customer history in every system that held it, as set out under which systems hold the CRM.
Don’t clean the notes. Keep the lost reasons, the half-sentence call notes and the follow-ups that went nowhere. They are the reasoning.
Line the CRM up with the estimates and the job files. The lead note, the quote and the job file together are one whole job.
Ask your counsel about your customer terms, your call recordings and anything you hold for a client. Only the contracts say what is yours.

Then answer the five questions. If the range is worth your time, apply.

What is never included

Here is what sits outside the record. Where Polyshares publishes the rule, we quote it; the rest is our own advice, not Polyshares’.

Contact fields: customer names, addresses, phone numbers, emails and account numbers. They are on every card, and they were never the thing being bought. Polyshares’ data handling page says those fields “are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record.” You don’t strip them yourself.

Marketing consent lists. The list of who agreed to get your newsletter or your seasonal reminder is a list of people and their choices, not how the work was done. This is our advice: leave it out of what you describe.

Purchased lead lists. A list bought from a lead service is not yours to license. The seller’s terms govern it. This is our advice.

Payment details. Cards on file, bank details for payment plans, finance applications. They are not how the work was done. This is our advice: raise them on the call with Polyshares, before you accept an offer, and ask that they stay out of scope.

Health information. A note that a customer is on oxygen, or uses a wheelchair, or needed a quiet visit. It is personal, and it belongs to them. This is our advice.

Anything a client owns. It stays out; the blocker above, records that belong to someone else, says why and what to do.

Staff personnel and payroll files. A technician’s file or wage notes that ended up in the CRM. This is our advice.

What is licensed is set out in Polyshares’ offer and the terms you agree, after Polyshares has read an anonymized sample. We can only tell you what is usually in and usually out.

TrustPast

Questions and answers

Does the buyer want our customer names and phone numbers?

No. The name, address and phone lines on a customer card are not what is wanted. Polyshares says those fields, with emails and account numbers, are removed or replaced by a specialist partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record. As we read it, the call notes and the job history are the work, and Polyshares says the work itself is kept.

Do we have to export our CRM to apply?

No. Your customer cards, call notes and job history stay in your software when you apply. Polyshares says its intake asks for counts of records, not files or exports. Nothing leaves your systems until you have accepted an offer from Polyshares.

Does CRM history count as part of the record?

Polyshares lists CRM history in what it counts as operational data, alongside email, support tickets, call recordings, and accounting and ERP exports. What is licensed is set out in Polyshares’ offer, after it has read an anonymized sample.

Can we keep using the CRM afterwards?

Yes. Polyshares says a licence is not a sale, and that the company keeps operating exactly as before, with the same data, the same systems and the same customers.

What does it cost us?

Nothing. Polyshares says there is no fee and no commission. Polyshares pays TrustPast a referral fee; you pay us nothing.

Is selling CRM data legal?

Polyshares says licensing a company’s own operating record is “a normal commercial transaction.” It names three questions that decide it: ownership, what the company’s customer contracts say, and whether personal information can be removed. Polyshares adds that its page is not legal advice, and that a company should have its own counsel review any license before signing.