[Closed] AMA (Ask Me Anything): Guided Selling | September 30 - October 4

[ncarbone]

Nick here from Sales Hub Product Marketing along with over a dozen product managers, engineers, and other product experts from the Sales Hub team! 

At INBOUND this year, we unveiled all-new AI-powered Guided Selling capabilities in Sales Hub that help sales teams leverage the power of AI and give their sellers the tools and guidance they need to create more pipeline and win more deals with Sales Hub.

You can learn a lot more about each feature on our blog, but here’s a quick list of what went live!

• The reimagined sales workspace 
• Guided actions
• Predictive deal scoring
• Deal insights
• Meeting assistant
• Selling queues 
• Dynamic sequences

Along with our new Guided Selling capabilities, we also announced the launch of Breeze Prospecting Agent. Our Prospecting Agent increases your team’s capacity by researching and executing personalized outreach strategies for prospects within the HubSpot Smart CRM, using your own data to create personalized outreach.

We know that multiple product updates can be overwhelming, which is why we are holding an exclusive Community event on Guided Selling! 

We’ll be hanging out in this space from September 30th - October 4th, 2024 answering any questions you have about our new features, how they’re used, and anything else related to AI in Sales Hub!

Do you have any burning questions about Guided Selling, but it's not September 30th yet? Drop them in this thread and we'll get back to you during the week of the AMA! 

[danmoyle]

Thanks for hosting this @ncarbone and for the tag @kvlschaefer! I'd love to hear a personal perspective from the team on a concern some folks might have. 

How do these new tools, powered by AI, affect sales teams? I'm thinking about efficiencies created, which are great, but also about how some sales management folks may see them as a way to get more for less from their teams, possibly replacing good reps with people who can simply run AI tools. 

Is this something you all have discussed? 

Thanks! 

[ncarbone]

Hey Dan! Good question. We want the AI tools in Sales Hub to do two big things:

1. Provide predictive insights to identify opportunities in your funnel
2. Offer prescriptive guidance that helps you capitalize on those opportunities

Those two things will make great sellers even better by helping them cut through the noise and build real connections with prospects and progress relationships. We want reps to work more efficiently, and we also want to eliminate some of the busywork we know they loathe. 

TL;DR, we're using AI to give the best sellers the info and guidance they need to do what they're good at - sell! 

Tools like deal insights, guided actions, and the meeting assistant provide suggestions and info, but it still takes a good salesperson to capitalize on all that. If anything, AI might help separate the good sellers from the not-so-good sellers by putting an emphasis on actually selling. 

What do you think? It's a good question, and something I think all roles - not just sales - are wondering about as we see more and more AI tools in the workplace!

[danmoyle]

Thanks for the thgouthful response @ncarbone. I agree on the sentiment in general for AI tools - they'll help the good get better and the not-so-great find a different path, perhaps. And I think that's perfectly acceptable in a world where we should always be learning and growing. Thanks! 

[GMannheim]

Hi Nick and team, 

Thanks for hosting this AMA! 

I read your blog post on Guided Selling and am interested in learning more about this topic. 

 Which HubSpot Academy courses would you recommend to someone who wants to learn more about Guided Selling and Sales Hub? 

Appreciate any insight! 

Kindly, 

Greta 

[ncarbone]

Hi @GMannheim! 

Thanks for reading! Here are a few quick videos you can watch. Note that you'll need to login to your HubSpot account to watch them. If you don't have one, you can create a free account and check them out!

• What is guided selling?
• What AI tools are in Sales Hub? 
• How to use the new sales workspace

[PGoldsmith]

Hi HubSpot team,

Thank you for hosting this AMA! 

My team of sellers are concerned that AI could replace their jobs. I've reassured them AI will help complement their day to day work, and let them focus more on their leads than manual tasks. 

Can you help me reassure them by providing a few examples of how AI Guided Selling is helping sales teams become more agile? Do you have any use cases you could share with us? 

Thank you,

Peter

[ncarbone]

Hey Peter - I think you nailed it. We want AI in Sales Hub to help out with the busy work and make sellers more efficient. The AI can generate summaries, to-do lists, and surface next-best actions, but it still takes a human to build a connection with a prospect and progress a relationship through the funnel.

Here's how one feature - AI-powered deal insights - helps sellers do just that...

• Easily understand the history of your deals, and get caught up easily before your next engagement with an AI-generated summary
• Leverage AI-powered buyer goal summaries to understand how you can best position your offering
• Prep more efficiently, without filtering and scrolling through a timeline in CRM

Here's a blog post that has many more examples and use cases - feel free to check it out!

[Noharoni1]

Dynamic Sequences: ML optimizes follow-up timing based on past engagement data.
AI Meeting Assistant: NLP generates relevant talking points using CRM data analysis.

[Adriane]

Thanks for tagging me @kvlschaefer , I have the following, rather technical questions:

1. How does the dynamic sequences feature utilize machine learning algorithms to optimize follow-up timing.
2. In what ways does the AI meeting assistant use natural language processing to generate contextually relevant talking points, and how does it integrate with HubSpot's CRM to pull in historical interaction data?
3. What machine learning models does the predictive deal score employ to analyze both historical and real-time data?
4. How does the predictive deal score weigh different factors such as engagement metrics, deal attributes, and company information to calculate the probability of closing?
5. What specific CRM data points and user behaviors does the guided actions feature analyze to generate recommendations?

Best regards

Adriane

[SBerryman]

Hi Adriane, thanks for the questions!

1. How does the dynamic sequences feature utilize machine learning algorithms to optimize follow-up timing?  
   The dynamic sequences feature doesn't currently use ML to determine follow-up timing
2. In what ways does the AI meeting assistant use natural language processing to generate contextually relevant talking points, and how does it integrate with HubSpot's CRM to pull in historical interaction data?  
   Since Meeting Assistant is built into HubSpot, it has access to all of your CRM data that is relevant to the upcoming meeting (such as call transcripts, notes on the contact/company, and emails exchanged with the prospect and logged to HubSpot).
   
   We pass that relevant CRM data into our generative AI tools for summarization and analysis.  The goal is to highlight key metrics and timelines communicated by the contact and to identify ways your company can address any pain points or needs mentioned during those CRM engagements.
3. What machine learning models does the predictive deal score employ to analyze both historical and real-time data?
   We employ HubSpot's own proprietary ML model for predictive deal score.  You can find more details here.
4. How does the predictive deal score weigh different factors such as engagement metrics, deal attributes, and company information to calculate the probability of closing?
   The current model only uses deal property values as inputs, although we do want to include other factors, such as engagement data, in future versions of our model, and the model doesn't explicitly assign fixed weights to these inputs like a linear model.
5. What specific CRM data points and user behaviors does the guided actions feature analyze to generate recommendations?
   You can find a list of guided actions with their corresponding creation and expiration criteria at this Knowledge Base article for the sales workspace.

I hope that helps answer your questions!

Have a great day
Steve

[kvlschaefer]

Hey team! Thanks for taking the time to host this AMA on AI Guided Selling 😄 

I have two questions: 
1) How does AI help sales teams with their follow-up and other manual tasks? Can you provide a few examples? 

2) How do the Guided Selling features help sellers hone in on their most important leads? 

Thanks! 

I also wanted to invite our community members to this conversation to see if they have any questions: 
Hi @Adriane, @Humashankar, @Josh, @Jnix284, @GRajput, @danmoyle - Do you have any questions or feedback about AI Guided Selling for the Sales Hub team? 

Thank you! 

Kristen

[ncarbone]

Great questions!

1) How does AI help sales teams with their follow-up and other manual tasks? Can you provide a few examples? 

We want the AI tools in Sales Hub to do two big things:

1. Provide predictive insights to identify opportunities in your funnel
2. Offer prescriptive guidance that helps you capitalize on those opportunities

Those two things will make great sellers even better by helping them cut through the noise and build real connections with prospects and progress relationships. We want reps to work more efficiently, and we also want to eliminate some of the busywork we know they loathe.

For example, 

• View AI-recommended guided actions
• Use a predictive deal score to ID the best-fit deals
• Use our meeting assistant to easily prep for and follow-up on meetings

2) How do the Guided Selling features help sellers hone in on their most important leads? 

Guided actions and the revamped sales workspace help sellers do that! Guided actions will surface the most impactful things reps should be focusing on at a given time - leads included. The workspace helps salespeople streamline outreach to leads through a purpose-built app that consolidates all of Sales Hub's tools into one space.