Articles from March 2025

I have always found the best approach to getting the highest email open and conversion rates — all while evading junk folders — is to write a captivating email subject line.

I know I’m not alone in that assessment. Surveys found that 64% of respondents said subject lines determine whether they open or delete an email, and 69% said subject lines determine whether or not they mark an email as spam.

Meeting your goals for open rates, click-through rates, and CTA conversions relies on the power of your sales email subject line. Sounds like a lot rides on 60 characters or less, doesn’t it?

But never fear. Once you understand what makes a great subject line, you’ll know how to craft impactful email subject lines that convert to leads, progress opportunities, and help close deals.

Table of Contents

• What makes a good email subject line?
• Catchy Email Subject Lines for Sales
• Professional Email Subject Lines
• Email Subject Lines for Reaching Out
• Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines for Sales Emails
• The Best Sales Email Subject Lines
• Cold Email Subject Lines
• Follow-Up Email Subject Lines
• Best Email Subject Lines After No Response
• Email Subject Lines for Meeting Requests
• Your Guide to Writing the Best Sales Email Subject Lines

It may surprise you to learn that the average open rate of emails across all industries is 37.27%. The way to reel in those opens? Write a creative, catchy subject line that identifies:

• Why you are emailing the prospect.
• When the reader should act on the message (usually, right now).
• The benefits the reader can expect to gain by opening the email.

I like to use the following tips to improve my sales email subject lines.

1. Keep it brief.

The ideal length of an email subject line varies between mobile, desktop, and tablet devices, so keep this in mind as you craft the perfect one-liner for your sales email.

On average, the maximum subject line is about 60 characters long before it gets cut off by the email provider. Campaign Monitor recommends a subject line of 41 characters so that each word appears on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. And Regie.ai found that subject lines with seven words have the highest open rates.

But while you’re watching your word and character counts, you also have to spark your prospect’s curiosity and make it clear why they should (nay, must!) open your message.

I like to tailor the subject line to the priorities my prospects care most about:

• Their own job security and reputation inside and outside their organization.
• Increasing revenue generation, customer satisfaction, and profitability.
• Boosting employee morale, engagement, and motivation.
• Mitigating risk, complexity, and distractions.
• Their company’s reputation, competitive positioning, and market viability.

2. Personalize it.

Personalizing the subject line to include the prospect’s name is always a smart way to go. In fact, Campaign Monitor found that 74% of marketers claim to enjoy an average 20% increase in revenue when personalizing emails. People want to hear from, talk to, and buy from other people, not from big brands and companies.

So, before emailing my prospects, I like to put myself in their shoes. Would I be compelled to read the email to solve a problem or gain an advantage? Or would it make me feel like the salesperson is taking a “spray and pray” approach, or is it tailored to me and my business niche?

Here are some more of my personalization tips:

• Make your emails feel like an invitation to a one-on-one conversation with a trustworthy advisor who understands their needs and motivations.
• Take the time to personalize the subject line with the recipient’s name and other customer-centric messaging. This goes a long way to boosting engagement.
• Don’t use generic subject lines like “Meeting Request.” Use “Quick chat to discuss employee retention,” which directly highlights the advantage for the reader.
• I suggest using an email address or an alias that includes your first name. It makes your message resonate with more humanity and helps build rapport and trust.

Pro tip: HubSpot’s Sales Hub makes personalizing subject lines easy. Set up automated personalized email sequences, templatize your most effective emails to further streamline your outreach, and more. Campaign Assistant is another great (and free!) tool that uses AI to help with your campaign creation.

3. Make it interesting.

We’ve all been taught not to judge a book by its cover, but sales email subject lines don’t count. (Apologies to Mrs. Walker, my fourth-grade teacher.)

The primary goal of your subject line is to get the prospect to click, read more, and decide if they’re interested enough to respond or take action. However, an interesting subject line means different things for different scenarios.

Here are a few ways to create subject lines that capture the attention and imagination of your audience:

• Reference a recent news story in their industry that’s relevant to problems you can help them solve.
• Include a new statistic about trends in their industry that helps support your case.
• If you know about a project on their agenda, can you help them improve their results, or help them address errors they made along the way?
• Ask for their help. Appeal to the prospect’s desire to do a good deed for the day.

The key to each of these angles is this: They’re all about the prospect. You’ll have plenty of time to pitch your product in the body of the email and on future calls.

Pro tip: I like to use A/B testing to verify whether a subject line interests my prospects. There are a lot of great A/B testing tools on the market to help you do this quickly and effectively. AI can help, too!

4. Offer value.

When writing a subject line, I make sure to describe the measurable and intangible benefits of working with me.

I had a sales coach named Marty Nuckles who said this approach works because everyone’s favorite radio station is WIIFM, or “What’s In It For Me.” The WIIFM sales principle focuses on the value of your offerings to the prospect, and it’s a great way to start building rapport by demonstrating empathy.

Pro tip: I like to personalize my emails by including a specific benefit for the recipient in the subject line. For instance, instead of a generic subject, I use something like “Let’s discuss how [ProspectCo] can increase deal win rates.” This directly highlights the advantage of opening the email and ideally, responding to it.

5. Create urgency.

Time sensitivity is a common filter that many of us use to prioritize our inboxes, so it’s understandable that our prospects operate their inboxes the same way. Even if your prospect isn’t particularly interested in making a purchase right now, there’s still some benefit in knowing that they could miss out on a benefit if they don’t explore the limited-time-only promotions.

I have several emails in my inbox right now with “Don’t miss this deal!” subject lines for promotional pricing. I’ve received other time-sensitive offers for SaaS trials and event registrations.

In my experience, creating urgency — where appropriate — is a tried-and-true tactic to get your emails opened and read, but don’t rely on this all the time. If prospects don’t take you seriously about empty promotional warnings, your overall credibility is compromised.

6. Avoid clickbait.

Using clickbait headlines doesn’t just cheapen your outreach messaging — they increase the likelihood your emails will be caught in spam filters.

Don’t let your email subject lines make claims that your company or its products or services can’t live up to. Falsely insinuating urgency, value, or benefits can damage your reputation as a salesperson, and may even result in your company being fined by regulators.

Pro tip: For an added layer of assurance, cross-check your subject line against our list of spam trigger words to avoid.

7. Include trending keywords.

Keywords are another way prospects filter and organize their inboxes. So, including specific keywords in your email can help yours make it into a folder the prospect will review later.

Google Trends, Search Console, or HubSpot’s Traffic Analysis tool are a few tools you can use to help you generate subject lines that align with how people are finding your company.

Pro tip: Run some A/B tests to determine what keywords result in the highest open rates compared to other versions.

The Best Sales Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines provide vital context to help you prioritize which messages to read immediately, what to file away, and what to send spinning into the digital ether. Your prospects are constantly prioritizing their email inbox, even setting up filters and rules to organize their messages in order to respond to important and urgent notes as efficiently as they can.

Below, I’ve gathered a bunch of proven sales email subject lines from highly successful salespeople and organized them into these categories:

• Cold Email Subject Lines
• Follow-Up Email Subject Lines
• Best Email Subject Lines After No Response
• Email Subject Line Examples for Meeting Requests

Cold Email Subject Lines

I know you might be thinking that your cold sales email won’t make the prospect’s priority email list, but the following cold email subject lines can stoke the fire of curiosity and get that prospect to open up your email.

1. “Quick question about [goal]”

Your question will vary widely based on your industry and the goals that drive growth within it. Ideally, the question will pique the prospect’s curiosity and they will open your email to find out what you’re curious about. Make sure the question is relevant and thought-provoking to the target recipient.

You might think (as I once did) that a prospect wouldn’t want to answer such a bold question from a stranger. Yet if a prospect is willing to respond, your icebreaker question may have hit on an issue that is top-of-mind.

Resist the urge to pounce on the reply with a sales pitch. Ease into a dialogue with some more of the questions on this list. Answers to this question are like having a fish nibble at your bait. If you try to haul the prospect into the boat immediately, you’ll probably break the line.

2. “[Mutual connection] recommended I get in touch”

Referrals are a powerful way to break into a prospect’s circle of trust. If you share an acquaintance with your prospect, be sure to put that person’s name in your email subject line. The more your prospect trusts your referrer, the more compelling your email will be.

Just make sure you actually have the mutual connection’s consent to drop their name, as it’s unlikely you can rebuild trust after a false claim at the start of a relationship.

3. “Hi [name], [question]?”

This question is similar to the first, but it adds a measure of personalization I described earlier. Questions provoke answers. Emails with question subject lines provoke opens and replies. Incorporating their name makes the email more personal, which will help it stand out in their inbox.

Asking a prospect a question can also be a psychological trigger that compels them to want to demonstrate their expertise and how they’ve contributed to their company’s success.

4. “Did you get what you were looking for?”

I find this one is good to use when following up with an inbound lead or a website visitor. They’re clearly looking for information to address a business initiative — so ask how you can be of service.

Be sure to establish standards for how soon to reach out after a prospect visits your website or interacts with gated content. Getting a call or email before you finish reading the first page of a guide or the end of a webinar seems desperate.

When I was following up on inbound leads, I would subtly introduce myself as a resource a day or two after the prospect’s information was captured, and follow up with a stronger pitch a week or so later.

5. [the e.e. cummings subject line]

Most people incorporate title case capitalization when they draft emails (although some go a little CrAzY). In contrast, an all-lowercase subject line will stand out, although you should confirm with your marketing or management team to confirm whether this style is acceptable.

Younger audiences and startups are embracing this style; however, many companies are shifting towards sentence case and only capitalizing the first word in the subject line. Additionally, conservative audiences may not appreciate the tone this style conveys.

6. “Ready to help”

The age of the hard sell and aggressive Always Be Closing mentality is dead; the best salespeople today adhere to ABH (Always Be Helping). Put this sentiment front and center — prospects will appreciate your candor as well as your willingness to be of service.

Advisory sales methodologies like SNAP Selling recommend educating, not pushing aggressively, to move a deal through the pipeline to a close.

7. “A [benefit] for [prospect’s company]”

I explored the power of business benefits earlier in this article. Here are some examples of how this subject line might look like in practice:

• A new HR strategy for Business Inc.
• A savings of $25k for ABC Corp.
• An all-time revenue record for Organization Y.

If the prospect sees the value in the benefit you describe and they let their guard down because of the personalized subject line, you have a better chance at “setting the hook” and booking a sales meeting.

Pro tip: Using the prospect name or company name is a great way to set your email apart from generic pitches. When in doubt, personalize — nobody wants to feel like just another email address on a spreadsheet.

8. “X tips/ideas for [pain point]”

People love numbered lists (hence, the rise of the listicle). Insert a number into your subject line to drive interest. Your list should be snack-sized with four or five ideas to whet the prospect’s appetite.

Keep some of your best nuggets of wisdom for your discovery call.

9. “Idea for [topic the prospect cares about]”

A free idea with no strings? The prospect will likely be willing to invest a click to see what you have up your sleeve. This subject line is a good way to extract value from your website, lead, and social sentiment analytics to determine what prospects care about instead of making assumptions.

10. “2x [prospect‘s company]’s pipeline in 10 days”

Throwing out some buzzy numbers can generate some immediate interest. Make sure your company and its products and services can live up to your claims. Customers will often remember the sting of falling for a dishonest sales pitch far longer than they remember passing on an opportunity and staying with the status quo. However, if they realize the benefits of your promotion though, they are a great testimonial candidate.

11. “I found you on LinkedIn through our mutual connection, [mutual connection’s name]”

Again, don’t underestimate the power of mentioning referrals in a subject line. Many salespeople leverage second- or third-degree connections as ways to build out their network.

If you haven’t been able to get the mutual acquaintance or friend’s permission to cite them as a referral, be honest about how you discovered them. I’ve always felt that if you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you should be upfront with them as to your motivation.

Send a LinkedIn message with this subject line, or if you can source their email address, send your introduction that way before sending the connection invite.

Nobody wants a cold connection with a sales pitch chaser two minutes later.

12. “We have [insert fact] in common…”

Spend five minutes looking through your contact’s LinkedIn or Facebook accounts. I bet you can find at least one thing you have in common — even if it’s just that you’ve both been photographed eating spaghetti.

At the same time, be careful. Don’t mention something too personal or something they clearly want to keep private, or it will come off as creepy. Pick something that the prospect made publicly known on their social profiles.

13. “So nice to meet you, [Prospect]!”

Whether they downloaded a piece of content or visited your pricing page, let your prospect know you’ve noticed their interest and are happy to finally touch base. This is a warm and friendly way to initiate first contact.

Don’t go high-pressure sales inside the email; maybe suggest another content asset that eases the prospect down the sales funnel.

14. “Feeling [insert emotion]? Let me help”

Tap into current events in your prospect’s industry. Targeting marketers during the busy weeks before Black Friday? Try “Feeling stressed? Let me help.” Then, share how your product or service can lighten their load.

15. “Hoping you can help”

People generally want to help other people. If you’re reaching out to someone for the first time, ask something like, “I’d like to learn more about your marketing conference schedule this year. Would you be able to connect me with the right person to speak with?”

If you’re looking for a referral to a decision-maker, look for a champion who can help your cause without feeling like they are being drawn into a sales cycle they have no authority over.

16. “This is a [your industry here] sales email”

You’d be surprised how far humor, honesty, and transparency will take you. By opening with the primary reason for your email, you’ll break down the wall your prospect has up when they’re being sold something.

After openly identifying the 800-pound gorilla in the room, you can use the body of your email to get your point across. If you are bold enough to use this subject line, don’t dilute your message by being generic about what you have to offer.

17. “Your yearly [X] target”

Every professional has KPIs to meet. Pair the target with the persona or prospect’s priorities, and test out what targets generate the most traction.

18. “[Situation] at [Company]”

For example, “Sales Training at Business Inc.” or “HR Services at Organization Y.” Whatever it is that you sell, connect it with the company you’re prospecting into for a subject line one-two punch.

Pro tip: Are you using an AI-powered news source (like a Breeze agent) to alert you about events that impact your prospects and accounts? You can increase the impact of this subject line by identifying the best times for you and your team to approach the accounts in your market segment.

19. “Who is in charge of X at [company]?”

Seeking an introduction to the right contact at the buyer‘s organization? There’s nothing like getting right to your point in the subject line of the message.

I recommend you do your research before sending an email like this, though, and to try and get within one or two degrees of org chart separation. Being way off the mark will just get your email swept into the delete folder.

20. “Have you tried [restaurant in prospect’s town]?”

The salesperson who suggested this said it has an insanely high open rate, and I’m not surprised.

To use this line, do a little digging to discover A) where the prospect’s company is located and B) one of the top-rated restaurants in that area.

And you don’t have to pretend you’ve gone there. Inside the email, say something like, “If I ever visit [location], should I go? Does it deserve the hype?”

With luck, you can start a rapport-building conversation, show you did your homework, and make the prospect feel like a local expert in one fell swoop. People like to buy from people they know, like, and trust. And everybody’s gotta eat!

21. “I understand you speak sign language too?”

That’s an example of a tidbit you can easily learn from someone’s bio, personal website, LinkedIn profile, or X account. Personalizing your email subject line — even if it has nothing to do with the purpose of your outreach — will earn you lots of opens.

According to Ali Powell, a former principal account executive at HubSpot, the secret to writing a phenomenal sales email subject line is to make it something about them. Mention something that couldn’t apply to anyone else. If you can draw a common thread to your own life, you’ll see better results.

22. “Let’s cut to the chase”

This subject line manages to be both intriguing and matter-of-fact at the same time. Your reader instantly thinks, “Cut to the chase about what?”

According to curiosity drive theory, people find uncertainty unsettling. Conversely, clearing up areas of uncertainty is mentally satisfying.

23. “I might be off-base here, but …”

What could it be? The prospect will have to open your email to find out.

Similar to “Let’s cut to the chase,” this subject line plays on the buyer’s curiosity. If they don’t click, they’ll never learn what you’re potentially wrong about.

Research is key here, because if you are completely off-base, you could be perceived as wasting their time.

24. “Your peers tell me they struggle with [common pain point]. Do you?”

As a salesperson, you have a bird’s eye view of your prospect’s industry. They often only know their organization’s circumstances and that of their network. That means what might feel like a unique problem to them may actually be a widespread challenge.

I often find you can harness your broader perspective in three ways:

• Grab prospects’ attention with this subject line.
• Demonstrate your credibility with testimonials or success stories.
• Reassure them you may have some answers.

Few executives like to reinvent the wheel or feel alone trying to overcome an obstacle. Thanks to the bandwagon effect, the fact that other people are sharing or have experienced something is often enough to sway opinions and drive action.

Framing this subject line with “tell me” makes you sound connected, whereas if you write “your peers say,” it sounds like you may have just read a survey.

25. “Can I make your life 20% easier?”

I think this eye-catching subject line is a great option if your solution makes your customers more efficient, accurate, or productive. Combined with a personalized email, this opener helps you immediately focus on value.

Make sure your email demonstrates that your company or your products or services can deliver on this claim with evidence or a testimonial, or your claim may come across as clickbait.

26. “[Name], I saw you’re focused on [goal]”

Pack a one-two punch with this subject line. You can get points for personalization and customer intelligence with this one. Not only has research shown that people respond positively to hearing their names, but the phenomenon of implicit egotism also holds that our name-based preferences extend to the cities we choose to live in and what occupations we pursue.

Pro tip: Locate this information by leveraging your marketing automation software, which tells you which web pages on your site they’ve visited or what content they’ve downloaded. For example, if they just read three of your company’s blog posts about accelerating their invoice to cash cycles, it’s safe to say they are improving their cash flow management, operational efficiency, and accounts receivable processes.

27. “Will I see you at [event]?”

If you know your prospect will be at the same event as you — either based on a credible attendance list or social media — I recommend this friendly question.

Even if your prospect doesn‘t respond to your email, your name and the event will be linked in their mind. That means they’re more likely to wander over to your booth and check out your demo while exploring the floor.

And if they do respond? You can schedule a conversation or demo.

28. “Can I help?”

Use this subject line to tell the buyer you’re looking to help solve problems, not just take their order for your products. Modern salespeople must differentiate themselves as problem solvers and trusted advisors — especially when selling commodity goods or services.

Plus, as soon as your prospect sees this in her inbox, they’ll wonder, “Help with what?” There’s only one way to find out…

29. “Tired of salespeople who never give up?”

The rep who passed along this subject line to me said that in the body of her email, she writes:

Yep, me too. That’s why I promise I won’t keep contacting you if you’re not interested. 🙂

Just let me know if you’re [seeing, dealing with] any of these three things, which my customers in X [industry, role] often are:

– Issue #1

– Issue #2

– Issue #3

I think this subject line works because honesty is appealing — from the outset of your relationship, you’re showing your prospect you’re a straight shooter. This approach also lets you empathize with them (let’s face it, we are all tired of overly aggressive salespeople).

30. “[Name] suggested I reach out”

Referral sales expert Bill Cates notes that salespeople who get referred to new prospects “borrow trust” from the referral source.

This means that instead of coming in cold, the relationship between the rep and the prospect automatically becomes warmer, thanks to the relationship between the referred prospect and the referral source. In my opinion, this subject line effectively uses that connection to your advantage.

Getting referred up through organization chart levels is often easier than starting at the top and getting referred down when you haven’t built a relationship at an executive level. That said, a referral from an executive can increase the likelihood of a response if the person you are referred to reports to the executive that refers you.

31. “Contacting you at [Referral]’s suggestion”

This is a slightly more formal version of other referral subject lines on this list. Use it if you’re emailing someone in a less casual industry; for example, I’d suggest this subject line for a finance professional or higher-ranking employee.

All the salespeople who recommended this subject line passed on the same warning to me — if you didn’t get a referral, don’t use this line!

32. “[Referral name]”

This is another one from Ali Powell’s arsenal. “Just put the full name of the person in the subject line and nothing else. I promise this works!” she writes. For example: “Jane Smith” or “John Doe.”

The simple “referral name” subject line draws on the power of referrals without providing details. But there’s another reason it works — in a sea of emails labeled with verbs and adjectives, a person’s name (and one the recipient knows well) stands out.

33. “[Referral name] loves us & thought you might, too”

Follow up with your happiest customers and use this subject line to set the tone for your communication. As an extra bonus, include a personalized testimony from the referrer in the email or have them introduce you via email.

A referral with no context is just a referral, but one that leads with how happy the referrer is stands out — especially if you can snag an email introduction from your referrer.

34. “Fellow [University] grad here!”

This is less of a referral and more of a referring connection. Draw upon a similar hometown, state, or alma mater for instant rapport-building.

This subject line works because people love to feel connected to one another. In my experience, calling upon a similarity with your prospect forges an instant bond and can lead to easier rapport and a few extra minutes of their attention.

Follow-Up Email Subject Lines

1. “Our next steps”

I think this is a great subject line to follow up after a first connection or to re-engage a prospect who’s gone quiet. Propose a short call to catch up on their business goals — don’t jump into sales mode before you reconnect. If the prospect has already gone quiet, being too pushy could make them continue to ignore your attempts to reconnect.

2. “X options you can get started on Y”

Sometimes a prospect needs help understanding how they can best do business with you. In the body of the email, pop in a few bullet points about how to kick off your relationship in the body text (a webinar, a phone call, an upgrade opportunity for current customers, etc.), and you’re good to go.

3. “You are not alone.”

This subject line hits home on two fronts:

• It’s intriguing.
• It’s human.

If you know the prospect is struggling with a difficult challenge, share stories of how others have overcome similar hurdles.

4. “Do you have 10 mins on [date]?”

Short, easy, and to the point.

If you can mirror this sentiment in the body of your sales emails, I guarantee the replies will be flying your way. Make it easy for the recipient to accept your offer or counter with another time that works with you both by sending a meeting scheduler link.

5. “A 3-step plan for your busy week”

You know the pain points of your ideal customer, so bullet those pain points in the email body and provide short, actionable tips on how they can overcome those challenges over the coming week.

6. “[Prospect], I thought these articles would interest you”

Include their name in the subject line, and fill the email body with content you know they need. I think this is a great way to test disengaged or completely unresponsive prospects for signs of life. It’s not aggressive, and shows you want to educate and advise them beyond sales-related conversations.

7. “Here’s that info I promised you”

I recommend always ending your call or previous prospect communication with several next steps and follow-up topics. This gives each side direction — and also gives you a reason to follow up.

8. “I’d love your feedback on that meeting”

If you just gave a demo or led a meeting with a prospect‘s colleagues, it’s a good idea to stay top of mind and immediately ask if you can answer any questions. This also helps gauge how things went and understand what the next steps should be.

When I used this tactic, I often recorded short videos or used screenshots to address any concerns that the customer had as opposed to getting on another call.

9. “I had this idea since we last spoke”

This subject line does two things:

• Encourages them to recall your conversation.
• Sparks interest in what your idea might be.

This interest will likely motivate the recipient to open the email, and ideally, they will want to reconnect on your idea.

Sales managers, technical specialists, or even other customers can be great inspirations for these ideas.

10. “I thought about what you said”

I think this subject line functions similar to the previous one but with an added edge: They may now be curious if you’ve addressed a concern or objective, giving them more leverage. If they believe they now have an advantage, they may be more willing to hear you out.

11. “Don’t tell my boss”

Leverage a little scandal to pique their interest and make them feel that your message is a secret just for them.

12. “What would it take?”

A rhetorical question that trails off (what would it take to what, exactly?) can open a dialogue and perhaps even compel them to reply.

13. “Here’s what I’ll do”

Some people’s love language is “acts of service,” so engage the law of reciprocity by offering something in hopes of winning their favor. I find that the mystery of what you’re offering and the promise of getting something will prompt them to open the email.

14. “Talk on [day] at [1:45]?”

The person who came up with this subject line gave me a bonus tip: “Asking for an appointment on the :45 feels less demanding than one that begins on the hour or half-hour — because it suggests you‘re only going to need 15 minutes of the prospect’s time.”

15. “[Prospect], I loved your post on [website/publication name]”

Who doesn’t like compliments? Do a bit of research on your prospect. If they’ve written an article or shared an insight on LinkedIn you found interesting, let them know. I like this tactic because it gives you a good opener for contacting them and also demonstrates that you appreciate their expertise.

16. “Hi [Prospect], we met at [event]”

This prompt is great for connecting post-event. I like that it’s to the point, but most importantly, I like that it reminds the recipient who you are and why you’re contacting them.

17. “Still undecided? This might help”

Have you already reached out about your product or service and haven’t heard back yet? Use this subject line to help persuade your prospect to purchase.

Go back to the prospect’s pain points and think about how your product fixes them. Did you roll out a new feature, or are you now offering a discount for them to try? Once you have your new angle, include it in your email message to persuade them to convert.

18. “Try [product/service] for free”

Sometimes you need to gain someone’s trust before they’ll try your product. One way to do that is removing the risk of them trying your product. I’ve found that leading with a free trial offer in the subject line gives the recipient a reason to open your note because it explicitly states the benefit to them.

Best Email Subject Lines After No Response

1. “Do not open this email”

If you’ve ever spent time with a toddler, you know that telling someone not to do something tends to prompt that very behavior. This concept also works on adults. Reverse psychology for the win!

2. “Should I stay, or should I go?”

If you haven’t heard from a prospect in a while, pull out this subject line and pair it with a cleverly crafted breakup email.

3. “Know this about [topic of interest]?”

I like this subject line because offering a helpful tip or statistic about a subject the prospect is interested in establishes your credibility and gets the conversation flowing.

4. “Permission to close your file?”

This breakup email subject line puts the onus on the prospect to move forward. Whether or not they respond, you’ll know where they stand.

5. “Wishing you and your business the best”

If you’ve made multiple attempts to connect with someone and they aren’t responding, see what happens if you indicate you are prepared to move on.

This is similar to the previous question, but I’ve had better luck with this approach because the prospect may call your bluff on closing their file. I would end the body of the email saying that I didn’t want to interrupt their busy day with unwanted calls or emails, but they were welcome to contact me if they need anything.

6. “If you change your mind about partnering with [your company]”

Break up radio silence by putting the ball squarely back in a quiet prospect’s court.

7. “Am I assuming correctly?”

If a prospect just isn‘t responding to your emails, send them a quick note saying, “Usually, when I don’t hear back, it means this isn’t a priority for your company at the moment. Am I correct in assuming this?”

8. “HBO Go password?”

If a prospect simply isn’t responsive to traditional outreach, I think it’s fun to shake things up with a funny email subject line. You might just earn a second look.

9. “Be honest, are you ghosting me?”

I received this bold and hilarious subject line from a sales rep earlier this year, and it is one of my favorites. It may not work in every industry, but it certainly got my attention, made me open the email, and gave me a chuckle.

10. “Reaching out once more (LMK either way)”

This is a good option to use for your last attempt to connect with a prospect. I like this one because, while they still may decline your services, it encourages them to respond regardless.

Email Subject Lines for Meeting Requests

1. “15 minutes this week?”

We’ve all got an extra 15 minutes, right? If you’re simply trying to connect with a prospect for the first time or restart a stalled relationship, I think this low-commitment subject line can be an easy way for your prospect to re-engage.

2. “Requesting a meeting on [day]”

I suggest using this subject line when your prospect is expecting a meeting request from you. It’s best for follow-up correspondence when you’ve already worked out the details offline.

3. “Time for a quick touch base?”

This is another low-pressure way to engage new prospects or reconnect with stalled ones. You should have had some interaction with them so that your request doesn’t come completely out of left field or as if you’re trying to trick them into meeting with you.

4. “Meeting invite: [Date]”

This subject line leaves out the purpose or content of the meeting to encourage your prospect to open your email for the details. Don’t forget to include a meeting scheduler link to make your calendar transparent.

5. “[Company name] + [Company name]: [Date]”

If you are sending a formal meeting request to a prospect, use this subject line. It’s respectful, concise, and purposeful. I think it works well when setting up meetings with C-suite or enterprise clients.

I personally use my name and the prospect’s name in this scenario so it doesn’t sound like I’m proposing that I show up at their office with a busload of my colleagues. That takes more planning than an email out of the blue.

Thirsty for more? I’ve curated more email subject lines below that you can quickly read through and repurpose for your sales efforts.

Psst — looking for both marketing and sales subject lines? Download 100 more email subject lines that our team loved from both marketers and salespeople.

Your Guide to Writing the Best Sales Email Subject Lines

Even though email subject lines are short, they carry a lot of weight when it comes to the success of your sales emails. I think the best cold email subject lines that work are creative, compelling, and informative without giving too much away. A good subject line that piques interest is the difference between a prospect opening or ignoring an email.

To see the most success in your email subject line, I recommend you be flexible, always test, and get creative for the best results.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

As a sales manager, your team’s daily activities are your most powerful performance indicators. Tracking metrics like sales calls, VP-level meetings, and qualified opportunities gives you the insight needed to drive consistent results.

Effective sales activity management helps you make data-driven adjustments to your sales strategy, set clear goals for your team, and directly influence revenue and business outcomes.

In this post, I’ll go over tips for how to manage sales activity (with insight from experts) and recommend software that can help along the way.

Table of Contents

• What is sales activity management?
• Reasons to Track Sales Activity
• 3 Steps to Implementing Sales Activity Management
• Top 10 Sales Tracking Software

While your reps focus on making calls, scheduling demos, and talking to stakeholders, you’re responsible for determining which activities actually move the needle. Effective sales activity management uses key sales metrics to guide the creation of repeatable processes and clear goals that enable you to predict and improve revenue outcomes.

Nikita Sherbina, Co-Founder & CEO of AIScreen, emphasizes that it’s not just about tracking numbers: “The key to turning [sales] metrics into actionable strategies is to focus on the quality of activity, not just the quantity.”

Sherbina says that this process worked for him when he identified a rep who was putting in the work but not closing many deals. He dug into their process, found areas for improvement, and set up a coaching plan: “The shift from just tracking activity to analyzing the effectiveness of that activity made a huge difference. Since implementing this, we’ve seen a 20% increase in conversion rates across the team.”

Reasons to Track Sales Activity

1. Increased Revenue

Sales activities directly impact your bottom line (revenue). As a sales manager, identifying key daily behaviors, tracking them, and helping reps optimize their processes helps you create a framework for consistent revenue growth.

When your reps know exactly what activities drive success and how they can master them, they’ll close more deals.

Even minor, targeted adjustments based on activity can yield revenue gains: “I once worked with a team struggling to hit quotas. By analyzing their call-to-close ratio, we identified that increasing follow-ups by just 15% lead to a 20% improvement in conversions” says Brandon Leibowitz, Owner of SEO Optimizers.

2. Streamlined Processes

Sales activity management helps you eliminate wasted effort and focus your team on what works. You can pinpoint which activities consistently lead to wins, create clear and repeatable processes that scale, and streamline best practices across your team.

Harmanjit Singh, Founder and CEO of Website Design Brampton, says that looking at top performers is a great way to determine what should be part of your streamlined processes. He calls this creating success patterns: “We discovered our top closers weren‘t necessarily making more calls, but were spending more time researching prospects before reaching out, resulting in more meaningful conversations. We turned this insight into a pre-call research template that boosted our team’s conversion rates by 30%.”

Singh adds, “The key is turning [sales] metrics into stories that reveal what works, then systematizing those successful approaches.”

3. Boost Team Morale

Managing sales activity also boosts team morale and helps reps feel empowered by providing clear direction and allowing them to focus on activities they can directly control.

Joseph Passalacqua, Owner & CEO of Maid Sailors, recommends “[Breaking] large quotas into smaller daily achievements to maintain forward motion.” You empower reps by connecting their daily work to meaningful outcomes, and day-to-day morale becomes more manageable when reps know exactly what to focus on for success. Plus, they get an additional motivational boost as deals start flowing in.

Activity-based contests can even create a sense of healthy competition to energize your team while driving behaviors that lead to sales.

4. Increased Visibility and Reporting

Sales activity management magnifies visibility into overall team (and individual) performance, provides early warning signs when metrics lag, and clearly indicates where coaching is needed.

For example, if you missed a revenue target, activity management would help you identify where the issue arose and implement targeted corrections rather than just a general “we need to do better!” pep talk.

It also gives you cleaner reporting to show higher-ups precisely how your efforts translate to revenue growth.

In other words, getting the business results you want hinges on managing the activities that precede them. Now we’ll go over an easily replicable process for sales activity management.

3 Steps to Implementing Sales Activity Management

1. Determine key selling activities.

To determine your key selling activities, I recommend you:

• Lay out the structure of your sales organization. Define the sales activities that lead to won deals and note each selling role and where it fits into the sales process. For example, do your sales development reps generate leads and then distribute those leads to account executives? Or are your field sales reps handling deals from start to finish with their assigned territories?

• Define the critical activities for each role. For SDRs, you might have them focused on meetings scheduled and sales accepted opportunities. On the other hand, for a field sales rep, those activities might be opportunities discovered, VP-level conversations, face-to-face meetings, and proposals sent.
• Gather input from your team. Interview your sales managers and reps for their perspectives on key activities. You can ask top performers about their daily activities to uncover what’s helping them succeed.

Use all of the information you’ve gathered to analyze best practices, define the core sales activities that drive the most success, develop techniques and strategies for mastering them, and share that information with your team.

Ryan Moore, Founder & CEO of Pheasant Energy, emphasizes the importance of looking beyond sheer volume when determining key activities. “In the energy sector, where sales cycles are long, and deals are complex, focusing solely on activity volume like call counts is shortsighted. Instead, I’ve learned that metrics like qualified meetings, site visits, and offers made are the true leading indicators that eventually drive revenue.”

His tip applies, regardless of industry: identify the meaningful activities that genuinely move deals forward, and emphasize their importance.

2. Reverse-engineer your sales process.

“Sales activity metrics are only valuable if they translate into smarter actions. The real differentiator isn’t just tracking calls or deals closed…Sales is a numbers game, but smart sales is about playing the right numbers,” says Anupa Rongala, CEO of Invensis Technologies.

How does that translate? To me, it means using your historical sales activity data to reverse engineer your sales process and pinpoint the activities required to meet your goals.

Here’s an example of how to do this, starting with your highest-level goal: Revenue.

Let’s say your annual target is $70 million in bookings, and your average deal size is $35,000.

$70 million (revenue needed) ÷ $35,000 (average deal size) = 2,000 deals

If you have a 25% proposal-to-deal conversion rate, your salespeople will need to send out 8,000 proposals. That, in turn, requires 2,000 meetings. For those meetings to occur, your reps must have 128,000 conversations.

Now break down the activity metrics by timeframe:

• 2,000 deals ÷ year = 167 deals per month
• 8,000 proposals ÷ year = 667 proposals per month
• 32,000 meetings ÷ year = 640 meetings per week
• 64,000 calls ÷ year = 256 calls per day

Assign a corresponding number of activities to each salesperson. Let’s assume you have 100 reps on your team.

• 167 deals per month ÷ 100 reps = 2 deals per month
• 667 proposals per month ÷ 100 reps = 7 proposals per month
• 640 meetings per week ÷ 100 reps = 7 meetings per week
• 256 conversations per day ÷ 100 reps = 3 calls per day

3. Monitor metrics and course-correct performance.

Proactively manage sales activity metrics by monitoring them daily and reviewing them in one-on-ones and team meetings. I suggest using a sales activity management system (I recommend a few options later on) because it automates tracking, calculates pacing, and gives you an overview (sometimes in real-time) of sales activities and what reps are accomplishing.

You can also use the data from your activity tracking tool to find bottlenecks in your pipelines. For example, if reps send the right number of proposals but don’t win deals, you might want to host training on writing high-impact proposals.

When Shankar Subba identifies a problem area, he takes a step-by-step approach: “If discovery calls aren’t converting, I listen to recordings to spot where the pitch needs improvement. If proposals keep getting rejected, I adjust how we present value to make it clearer and more persuasive. When close rates drop, I don’t just tell my team to make more calls; I work with them to refine their approach so every conversion moves the deal forward.”

Top 10 Sales Tracking Software

I’ll get right to the point: manually tracking your team’s sales activities can be a monumental task, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Instead, use an automated tool that logs sales activities as they happen to help you track, analyze, and optimize your team’s performance.

Here are my favorite software picks for sales activity management.

1.HubSpot

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: HubSpot’s Sales Tracking Software gives you complete visibility into your pipeline to help you understand performance, and custom reports make tracking rep activity straightforward.

Key Features

• Reporting dashboard gives visibility into rep activities and tasks
• Easily measure team performance against goals
• Pipeline performance reports to quickly identify bottlenecks within your cycle so you can implement further coaching

Free Trial: Free forever tools (max two users)

Price: Paid plans start at $20/mo/seat billed monthly or $15/mo/seat billed annually

2.Pipedrive

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Pipedrive’s Sales Dashboard gives you insight into rep performance, making it easy to analyze critical activities and identify wins in a no-frills pipeline management dashboard.

Key Features

• Dashboard to track team activities (calls made, emails sent, etc.) in real-time
• Customize reports to the key activity metrics that matter most for your reporting (i.e., new deals, number of activities completed)
• Measure activities against goals to quickly identify coaching opportunities

Free Trial: Yes

Price: Paid plans start at $24/mo/seat billed monthly or $14/mo/seat billed annually

3.Salesforce

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Salesforce’s robust customization options let you create a reporting and activity tracking dashboard that aligns with your team’s needs.

Key Features

• Advance customization options make tracking pipeline activities that matter most for your goals easy
• Show reps key insights deal insights to help them plan accordingly and move the process forward
• Weekly pipeline change signals help you spot risks early to provide coaching

Free Trial: Yes

Price: Plans with tracking and management capabilities start at $100/mo/user billed annually

4.Monday.com

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Monday.com’s intuitive and customizable CRM makes it easy to track sales activities to stay on top of performance; no technical expertise required to set up or maintain.

Key Features

• Activity and performance tracking dashboard updates activities and deal progress in real-time
• Visual progress indicators make it easy to spot potential issues and provide guidance to reps before deals are impacted
• Team goal monitoring can help you set healthy competition among reps

Free Trial: Free forever plan (max two seats)

Price: Paid plans starting at three seats max start at $12/mo/seat billed annually

5.Nutshell

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Nutshell comes loaded with valuable sales reporting features for intuitive activity management and no steep learning curve.

Key Features

• Built-in reports help you see how reps spend their days
• Activity outcome reports show what actions have the most impact on won leads and closed deals
• Performance trend visualizations and loss reports help you spot what works and keep reps on track

Free Trial: Yes

Price: Paid plans with activity tracking begin at $32/mo/user per billed monthly or $25/mo/user(billed monthly

6.Copper

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Copper, a CRM designed for Google Workspace users, automatically captures lead data and sales activities and synthesizes them into easily digestible dashboards for monitoring performance.

Key Features

• Real-time activity feed gives insight into what’s going on with all contacts and accounts
• Customized reporting tools allow you to build a visual of your pipeline to see how deals progress
• Sales activity-based leaderboard can help you spark healthy and motivational competition among your team

Free Trial: Yes

Price: Paid plans start at $12/mo/seat billed monthly or $9/mo/seat billed annually

7.Close

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Close automatically logs sales activities and turns them into easy-to-read reports to help you focus on encouraging behaviors that move the needle.

Key Features

• Activity overview report gives you a holistic view of team or individual rep progress
• Opportunity funnel reporting to track sales velocity and quickly identify coaching opportunities
• Sales leaderboard to inspire and motivate reps

Free Trial: Yes

Price: Paid plans start at $29/mo/seat billed monthly or $19/mo/seat billed annually

8.Ambition

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Ambition is poised towards sales management, with powerful tools for tracking, coaching, and gamifying sales activities.

Key Features

• Real-time activity and performance visibility show team progress-to-goals
• Create activity scorecards to help reps understand target metrics and link them to monthly objectives
• Leaderboards, competition, and performance recognition to gamify and inspire your team

Free Trial: Demo available

Price: Contact for pricing

9.Freshsales (by Freshworks)

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Freshsales is an easy-to-use CRM for tracking sales activity and managing contacts and deals to keep your team on track.

Key Features

• Custom reporting to track sales activities and pinpoint what brings in conversions
• Multi-channel activity tracking to monitor activities in a unified dashboard
• Platform intelligence analyzes activities, historical data, and offers recommendations to help you accelerate the sales cycle

Free Trial: Yes

Price: Paid plans start at $11/mo/user billed monthly or $9/mo/user billed annually

10.Agile CRM

Source

Why I like it for sales activity management: Agile CRM offers powerful reporting features to manage rep activity across channels (social media, email, etc.) and gamification options to encourage reps to reach activity-related goals.

Key Features

• Reports that give a view of pipeline health and how reps are performing against activity goals
• Pipeline management tracking to monitor stages and deal milestones to keep the sales process on track
• Gamification options for team motivation

Free Trial: Free forever plan (max ten users)

Price: Paid plans start at $14.99/mo/user billed monthly or $9.99/mo/user billed annually

Managing Sales Activities

Sales activity management can help you identify best practices and amplify what works across your team. Start by using software to keep track of crucial metrics. From there, you can turn what’s working into scalable processes.

I find economics confusing. There, I said it. On the surface, it’s easy: If companies can match supply with demand, they can generate revenue. If they understand demand drivers, they can find the right price point.

Look a little deeper, however, and things get confusing. Consider the concept of price elasticity. It’s a measure of how demand and supply react to pricing changes. It comes with a host of formulas, some negative numbers, and some absolute values.

So, to save you the headache, I’ve done a deep dive on price elasticity. In this piece, I’ll tackle the big questions, including: How do you calculate price elasticity? What are the different types, and what do they mean for your business? Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

• Price Elasticity of Supply Formula
• What is price elasticity?
• How to Calculate Price Elasticity
• Price Elasticity of Demand
• Price Elasticity of Supply
• Cross Price Elasticity
• Practical Economics: The Case Understanding Price Elasticity

What is price elasticity?

Price elasticity measures how sensitive the demand and supply of your product are to changes in price. For example, the price elasticity of demand measures how many customers will continue to purchase your product or service if you increase the price.

Price elasticity can fall into one of three buckets:

• Price elastic — where price changes greatly affect the supply or demand of a product or service.
• Price inelastic — where price changes have a minimal effect on supply and demand
• Price unit elastic — where a price change is proportional to the change in supply and demand, and they move at the same rate

How to Calculate Price Elasticity

To calculate price elasticity, I divide the change in demand (or supply) for a product, service, resource, or commodity by its change in price. This figure tells me which bucket my product falls into.

• A value of one means that my product is unit elastic, and price changes reflect an equal change in supply or demand.
• A value of greater than (>) 1 means that my product is elastic, and price changes will cause a greater-than-proportional change in supply or demand.
• A value of less than (<) 1 means that your product is inelastic, and price changes will result in a smaller change in the supply or demand for your product.

Worth noting? Using this formula may produce a negative number. However, that doesn’t matter when it comes to price elasticity of supply or demand. Instead, answers are reported as their absolute value, which just means you’re removing the negative sign.

For example, let’s say I do my calculations and get a value of -1.5 for my price elasticity of demand. In typical mathematics, this number is less than one. When calculating price elasticity of supply and demand, however, we drop the negative sign and get 1.5, which means the demand for the product is elastic.

Here’s a chart that shows all three buckets:

Source

How can you apply price elasticity?

Price elasticity provides useful information on how to best price your products and services.

• If you have an elastic product:

Be cautious about raising prices since a price increase will greatly impact purchases (demand) and production (supply).

• If your offering is price inelastic:

You can adjust your prices more frequently since you know that the change will have a smaller impact on supply and demand.

Now that we’ve covered how price elasticity impacts your business, let’s break things down even further into price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply.

Price Elasticity of Demand

The formula below (also known as PED) is used to identify how a change in price affects the supply or demand of an offering or commodity. If people still buy a product, service, or resource when the price is raised, it is inelastic. A product is elastic when demand changes due to price fluctuations.

For example, research shows that rising fuel prices don’t change demand in the trucking industry — making fuel an inelastic commodity. Cable television, however, is a very elastic product. As the price of cable has increased, demand has decreased as more consumers “cut the cord.”

Substitutions like Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services have made the cable industry elastic.

Let’s say I sell 5,000 electric toothbrushes at $25 per toothbrush and then raise the price to $30 per brush and sell 4,000. This means my elasticity of demand is -1.22. This would be considered elastic because the absolute value of -1.22 is greater than 1.

Broken down even further to include the calculation of percent change, this formula looks like:

((QN – QI) / (QN + QI) / 2) / ((PN – PI) / (PN + PI) / 2)

• QN = New quantity (4,000)
• QI = Initial quantity (5,000)
• PN = New price ($30)
• PI = Initial price ($25)

Our numbers plugged into this formula would be:

(4,000 – 5,000) / (4,000 +5,000) /2) / (30 – 25) / (30 + 25) / 2)

Head spinning? Check out this free calculator.

This formula helps determine if a product or service is price-sensitive. Ideally, you want your offering to be a must-have (inelastic) that consumers consider non-negotiable during price fluctuation, not a nice-to-have (elastic).

Types of Price Elasticity of Demand

1. Perfectly Inelastic Demand

If your PED equals 0, price changes do not affect your product’s demand. Generally speaking, only essential items and services have perfectly inelastic demand. Very few — if any — products or services like that exist, making perfectly inelastic demand a mostly hypothetical concept.

For instance, if there were a life-saving drug on the market that people would pay any price to obtain, demand would remain the same no matter how much the price might rise.

Source

2. Relatively Inelastic Demand

If the percent change in demand is less than the percent change of the product’s price, the result is relatively inelastic demand. Necessary goods and services that people would be willing to pay more for have relatively elastic demand — in most cases.

This often includes goods or resources with no close substitutes, like gasoline which is a requirement for you to drive your vehicle. Losing access to it would have massive implications on your daily life.

For the most part, people are willing to pay price increases and keep their cars fueled up. That said, however, gas isn’t as critical as a life-saving drug, so some people would be willing to make the switch to taking the bus or riding their bike (if possible). This means demand for it is relatively inelastic.

3. Unit Elastic Demand

If the change in demand for a product or service yields a proportional change in price — meaning a price raise of X% leads to an X% decrease in demand — it unit elastic demand.

This type of price elasticity of demand is purely hypothetical. There are no actual examples of unit elastic demand in practice. Demand is never completely linear. Though there is a direct relationship between price and demand, that relationship is never exactly one-to-one.

Let’s say I run a shoe company and raise prices by 10% due to increased manufacturing costs. If I’ve established a loyal customer base, there will still be consumers who prefer my shoes to the alternatives and are willing to pay an extra 10%. As a result, a 10% raise in price won’t mean exactly 10% of existing customers jump ship. The real number might be closer to 6% or 7%.

Now, imagine I abruptly raise the price by 40%. This will likely anger a larger number of customers relative to the percentage change in prices. In other words, a 40% price increase might lead to 60% customer churn.

4. Relatively Elastic Demand

If demand change is greater than the change in your product’s price, you have relatively elastic demand. Here, a relatively small price change leads to a large change in demand. Relatively elastic demand is typically associated with items that have several substitutes.

For instance, let‘s say I run an electronics company that sells 40-inch smart TVs for $250. All of my competitors sell similar products for the same price — and those competitors’ TVs have virtually indistinguishable resolutions and features from mine.

If I decide to raise my price from $250 to $275, consumers would likely be less inclined to pay an additional $25 for a product that’s so fundamentally similar to its slightly less expensive competition. This means demand for my TVs would drop significantly, making demand relatively elastic.

5. Perfectly Elastic Demand

If demand falls to zero at the slightest price increase or demand becomes great with a slight price decrease, the result is perfectly elastic demand. This type of demand demonstrates that the demand for a product is 100% directly tied to its price.

Like unit elastic demand, there are no actual examples of perfectly elastic demand in practice. Demand for a product or service is never linear enough to make any change in price prompt an absolute drop in demand.

There will always be some people who have preferences that are often unshaken by slight price changes. If the price of a bottle of Sprite increased by $1, there would still be consumers willing to pay more for it over alternatives like Sierra Mist or 7Up.

While some offerings have particularly price-sensitive customer bases, there aren’t any that consumers will completely abandon as soon as that good costs even one cent more than it did before.

Source

Price Elasticity of Supply

The price elasticity of supply (PES) measures how responsive the supply of a product or service is when there is a price change.

If supply is inelastic, it might mean a company is too short-staffed to keep up with demand, needs a longer lead time to produce more of its product, or doesn’t have the resources to expand its facilities.

If supply is elastic, a company might have a surplus of available staff to increase supply. Knowing PES allows businesses to determine whether a price change will negatively or positively affect the demand for its product or service.

If supply is inelastic, an increase in price leads to a change in supply that’s less than the increase in price, meaning the PES is less than one. If supply is elastic, the price change yields a larger increase in supply, making the PES greater than one.

Let’s use the toothbrush example above to illustrate PES. We already know that the price changed from $25 to $30, which represents an increase of 20%. If we’re given data that shows available supply dropping from the initial 5,000 to 4,500, this gives a supply decrease of 10%.

Therefore, PES = 10% / 20%, or 0.5, which means that the price elasticity of supply is inelastic.

Cross Price Elasticity

The cross-price elasticity of demand measures how responsive the demand for a product or service is when the price for another product or service changes. For example, if Hulu with Live TV raises its prices to $45 per month, will customers leave the service for YouTube TV — a similar streaming service charging only $40 per month?

As the price of Hulu Live rises, the demand for its competitor’s service rises. Within cross-price elasticity, YouTube would be considered a “substitute good.”

If, however, the cost of televisions increased and the number of customers using subscription services like Hulu or YouTube decreased because of the price increase of televisions, this would be called “complementary goods.”

Cross-price elasticity allows businesses to price their products or services competitively, plan for risks, and map their market. If your product or service has no real competitor, you don’t need to consider cross-price elasticity because there is no substitute for your offering. However, if a complementary product or service sees a market fluctuation, you might need to prepare for cross-price elasticity.

In the case of cross-price elasticity, we don’t use absolute values. If the value of cross-price elasticity is positive, it means that changes in product B’s price increase demand for product A. If the value is negative, it means that price changes decrease the demand.

The value can also be zero, which means there is no correlation between the demand for product A and the price of product B.

Consider the streaming example above. If Hulu (product B) increases its price from $40 to $45 per month, this represents a 12.5% change. If Netflix (product A) sees a 20% jump in demand, the cross-price elasticity is 1.6. This means changes in the price of Hulu cause an increased demand for Netflix.

Practical Economics: The Case Understanding Price Elasticity

I’m still not an economics expert, but after my research, I’m confident I have a solid grasp on the price elasticity of demand and supply, with a bonus thrown in for getting the hand of cross-price elasticity.

The same applies to you. There’s no need to know everything about economics — you’d have to give up running your business if that was your goal. But, it is worth knowing how to calculate price elasticity and use this data to ensure your products or services are competitively priced.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 3, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When slow business hits, that simple “How’s business?” question feels like a punch to the gut. As someone who’s navigated slow business from every angle — in content marketing, sales, and freelancing — I know that pit in your stomach all too well. The casual “Great!” response feels a bit forced, doesn’t it? Especially when you’re secretly refreshing your inbox every five minutes, hoping for new leads or client responses.

Here’s the thing: Slowdowns happen to everyone. I’ve seen it working with sales teams, watching their pipelines dry up, marketing departments struggling to generate leads, and as a freelancer dealing with quiet periods. Whether it’s seasonal changes, market shifts, or bigger economic factors, the key isn’t just surviving the slowdown — it’s using it to come back stronger.

Jehann Biggs, president of sustainable luxury brand In2Green, puts it perfectly: “Slow periods offer a natural time for introspection, allowing teams to focus on long-term growth initiatives. By approaching slowdowns as a time to optimize and innovate, businesses can use these lulls to emerge stronger.”

In this post, I’ll share what I’ve learned about spotting slowdown patterns, understanding what’s really causing them, and — most importantly — how to use downtime strategically to fuel long-term growth.

Table of Contents

• What To Do When Business Is Slow
• What is slow business?
• Could a slow business ever be good?
• Symptoms of a Slow Business
• Why Is Business Slow Right Now?
• Turning Slow Periods Into Growth Opportunities

What is slow business?

A slow business period is when sales, customer inquiries, or overall business activity drop below normal levels. This can be caused by seasonal trends, economic downturns, shifts in consumer behavior, or internal inefficiencies.

While some slowdowns are expected — like retail dips after the holiday season — others may signal deeper problems. Understanding whether your slowdown is temporary or a sign of structural issues is key to making informed business decisions.

Iqbal Ahmad, founder and CEO of Britannia School of Academics, explains: “When investigating the root cause, we need to consider a range of factors — both internal and external — to truly get a holistic view of what has changed.”

Could a slow business ever be good?

In a world that glorifies rapid growth, scaling fast, and maximizing profits, the idea of intentionally slowing down can seem counterintuitive. But, not all business success is defined by speed. Some entrepreneurs are pushing back against the “hustle culture” mentality and are embracing slow business as a sustainable and intentional approach to work and life instead.

I’ve found that when business slows down, it’s easy to panic — but sometimes, those slow periods create space to step back and make more intelligent, more strategic moves. Rather than measuring success purely by revenue growth, slow business prioritizes thoughtful decision-making, work-life balance, and long-term stability over aggressive expansion. This philosophy aligns with the broader “slow living” movement, which encourages mindfulness, sustainability, and quality over speed.

Nicole Magelssen, founder and CEO of Alpine Virtual, a virtual staffing solutions company, puts it this way: “When you’re in the thick of running a business, it’s go, go, go all the time. But constant motion doesn’t always mean that you are making forward progress. A slowdown forces you to pause and actually work ON your business and not just IN your business.”

Similarly, Joy Gendusa, CEO of PostcardMania, a direct mail marketing company serving over 96,000 customers, has seen firsthand how resisting the urge to panic during a slowdown can lead to growth. “During the 2008 recession, we made the mistake of cutting back on marketing, and our revenue suffered,” she explains. “In 2020, we did the opposite — we doubled down on marketing and saw our revenue recover almost instantly.”

It’s important to note that rapid growth isn’t always sustainable. Recent data indicates that 90% of startups fail, with a significant number due to premature scaling. This statistic underscores the potential risks of prioritizing speed over stability.

I’ve also noticed that slow business isn’t the right approach for everyone, but it can be beneficial for:

• Creative entrepreneurs who want to focus on craftsmanship over mass production.
• Sustainable brands that prioritize ethical sourcing and mindful growth.
• Consultants and service providers who prefer deep, meaningful client relationships over high churn.
• Small businesses and solopreneurs looking for a balanced, intentional approach to work.

Embracing a slower approach doesn’t mean giving up on growth — it means defining success on your own terms.

Symptoms of a Slow Business

While embracing a slow business model can be a deliberate and strategic choice, not every slowdown is intentional — or beneficial. In some cases, a drop in activity signals deeper issues that need to be addressed. I’ve learned that it’s easy to brush off a slowdown as just a rough patch, but sometimes, small dips can snowball into bigger problems if you’re not paying attention.

The key is to recognize the signs early and figure out whether it’s just a temporary slump — or a red flag that something needs to change. Here are some of the biggest indicators that a slowdown might be more than just a passing phase.

Reduced Revenue

One of the first signs that something is off is a noticeable drop in revenue. While minor fluctuations are normal, a steady drop over multiple months could mean a bigger problem. Here’s what to look for:

• If revenue is down but expenses are steady (or increasing), it’s worth digging into which products or services are underperforming.
• I’ve found that looking at year-over-year trends (rather than just month-to-month) gives a better picture of whether it’s seasonal or a bigger shift.
• If your revenue is stable but profit margins are shrinking, it might not be a demand issue — it could be rising costs eating into your bottom line.

A 2023 CB Insights study found that 38% of startups fail due to running out of cash, making revenue tracking a critical early warning sign.

Reduced Profitability

Even if revenue looks fine, profitability might tell a different story. If profits are shrinking while sales stay the same, it’s time to take a closer look at expenses and margins.

Reilly James Renwick, Chief Marketing Officer at Pragmatic Mortgage Lending, a leading mortgage solutions provider, advises: “One of the first things to track is sales data over multiple seasons. Changes in lead velocity and analysis of your customer segments can reveal whether pockets of customers are becoming disengaged.”

From my experience, here’s what to watch for:

• Have you added new costs (new hires, software, operational expenses) that haven’t yet paid off?
• Are your highest-margin products or services underperforming while lower-margin ones sustain revenue?
• I’ve personally seen businesses struggle when they start discounting too much to attract customers — what seems like a quick fix can train your audience to expect lower prices, which ultimately hurts profitability.

According to Olivia Tapper, co-founder and COO of DTC SEO Agency, a specialized ecommerce growth agency, a key metric to consider is customer acquisition cost (CAC). “If your CAC is rising while revenue stays flat, your business is becoming less profitable — even if sales volume hasn’t dropped yet,” Tapper explains.

You’ll want to investigate the performance of your more profitable products against those less impactful ones. It’s possible that business is slowing for your “money makers” but staying the same or increasing for other offerings.

Dry Sales Pipeline

If revenue is down, the next step is to figure out why, and that starts with your sales pipeline. Here’s something I learned working with sales teams: A dry pipeline isn’t always about market conditions. Sometimes, it’s telling you something important about your sales process.

Start by checking your sales team’s closing rates against previous periods. Are your reps closing the same percentage of deals, just with fewer leads? Or has their success rate dropped? This distinction matters — a lot.

Andres Lares, managing partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute, a global sales training and consulting firm, suggests looking deeper: “If leads are taking longer to respond or failing to convert, map out decision-maker involvement — are you still speaking to the right people?”

I’ve seen this firsthand. One sales team I worked with was struggling with conversions, but when we dug into the data, we discovered they were spending too much time nurturing cold leads instead of focusing on warm ones. Their pipeline wasn’t really dry — it was just clogged with the wrong prospects.

Before you conclude it’s a slowdown, check these pipeline health indicators:

• Are your reps maintaining the same level of prospecting activity?
• Has your lead qualification process changed?
• Are deals getting stuck at specific stages?
• Have you adjusted your definition of a qualified lead?

Reduced Website Traffic

For businesses that rely on organic traffic, search rankings, or digital ads, declining web visits can be a huge warning sign. I’ve spent years in content marketing, and I’ll tell you this: If fewer people are finding your business online, it’s worth investigating why.

Here’s the thing about website traffic: It’s not just about the numbers. A 20% drop in traffic might sound bad, but if your conversion rate is steady, maybe those missing visitors weren’t your target audience anyway. The key is understanding the story behind the stats.

Start by checking these basics:

• Use Google Analytics or other marketing analytics software to compare website traffic trends over time.
• Look at your search rankings. Have competitors outranked you?
• Check your content calendar. When was the last time you published something new?
• Review your paid campaign performance if you’re running ads.

For brick-and-mortar businesses, measuring foot traffic is trickier, especially if you don’t have previous benchmarks. But you can start tracking now to spot patterns going forward.

Pro tip: Don’t just look at overall traffic numbers. Dig into your traffic sources. I’ve seen businesses panic over a drop in social media traffic only to discover their organic search traffic was actually growing — they were just looking at the wrong metrics.

Business Trends Are Negative

Sometimes, the issue isn’t internal — it’s the market itself. Even the best businesses feel the effects when customer demand drops across their industry. But I’ve learned that not every negative trend means your business is in trouble. Here’s what to watch for:

• Industry disruption from new technologies.
• Shifts in competitor strategies or pricing.
• Declining interest in your type of offering.
• Wider economic factors affecting buying behavior.
• Changes in how customers prefer to buy.

Pro tip: Use Google Trends to spot bigger patterns in your industry. It won’t tell you everything, but it can help confirm whether you’re dealing with a broader market shift or just an internal hiccup.

Jehann Biggs of In2Green notes that external trends often drive slowdowns more than internal inefficiencies. “We track repeat customer rates, social media sentiment, and industry-wide demand signals to determine if our slow periods are seasonal or a sign of deeper market changes,” she shares.

Final Thoughts on Diagnosing a Slow Business

Yes, seeing your numbers drop is scary. But I’ve learned that although slowdowns rarely fix themselves, they’re almost always fixable if you spot them early enough.

The key is staying curious instead of panicking. Ask questions. Dig into your data. Talk to your customers. The sooner you understand what’s really causing your slowdown, the sooner you can do something about it.

Remember that sometimes what looks like a crisis is actually an opportunity to make your business stronger. In the next section, we’ll explore why some slowdowns might actually be good for your business — and how to tell the difference.

Why Is Business Slow Right Now?

Not every slowdown is a crisis. Some industries naturally experience peaks and valleys, and even the most successful businesses go through slower periods. If you’ve planned for seasonality or are using this time to improve your processes, then a temporary slowdown isn’t necessarily bad.

That said, not all slow business is harmless. A downturn can be an opportunity — or it can be a warning sign. The key is knowing why business is slow and whether you need to adjust. I’ve learned that jumping to conclusions about a slowdown can lead you down the wrong path entirely.

Kristin Marquet, founder of Marquet Media and FemFounder, puts it perfectly: “The first instinct might be to panic, but the real key is to diagnose the root cause quickly and strategically. Slow periods can happen for various reasons — external (economic downturns, seasonal shifts, industry disruptions) and internal (marketing gaps, operational inefficiencies, shifting customer needs).”

Below, I’ll break down the most common reasons businesses slow down — and how to respond.

Holidays and Seasonal Patterns

Some industries naturally ride the waves of seasonal demand. I see this every year in content marketing — B2B content engagement typically dips during the summer months and holiday seasons. It’s not a crisis; it’s a pattern you can plan for.

According to Joy Gendusa from PostcardMania, “Summer is always slow for us. We’re B2B, and I believe this is common for B2B businesses. Our summer leads dip about 15%, and we go from averaging around 3,200 leads to 2,700 in the summer.”

Jehann Biggs highlights how recognizing seasonal trends can help businesses adapt. “One of the first things I track is sales data over multiple seasons,” she explains. “If sales typically dip at the same time each year, it’s a clear indication that the slowdown is seasonal, and I can adjust my marketing strategies or inventory planning accordingly.”

Here’s how to handle seasonal patterns:

• Compare performance to the same period last year, not to peak seasons.
• Adjust sales targets and forecasts for known seasonal patterns.
• Use slower periods to prepare for upcoming busy seasons.
• Track year-over-year data to spot true seasonal trends.

Harrison Tang, CEO and co-founder of Spokeo, a people search engine, adds valuable insight: “To pinpoint the causes of slow periods, we analyze six months’ worth of data. This timeframe allows us to detect anomalies and correlations.”

Weather and External Events

Weather patterns can dramatically impact consumer behavior and business performance. I’ve seen this firsthand while working with various industries. For example:

• HVAC services see spikes during extreme temperatures.
• Roofing companies often experience increased demand after storms.
• Retail foot traffic typically drops during bad weather.
• Seasonal products (like sunscreen) show predictable demand patterns.

In January 2025, U.S. retail sales experienced a significant decline, partly attributed to extremely cold weather conditions. “The wildfires in Los Angeles, the second-largest metro area in the U.S., and severe winter weather in other parts of the country may have limited face-to-face shopping activity,” Jay Hawkins, a senior economist at PNC Financial, told Reuters.

Pro tip: Use tools like Google Trends to anticipate and prepare for seasonal fluctuations in your industry. I’ve found it especially helpful for content planning — you can see exactly when interest in certain topics starts to rise.

Economic Factors

The economy is probably the biggest factor on this list for affecting business right now. During economic downturns, consumer attitudes change. Those who lose jobs have less money to spend, and even those who retain work may change their consumer behavior as their positions seem less secure. The average buyer may make fewer luxury purchases and try to extend their dollars the best they can.

Olivia Tapper recommends watching these key metrics during economic slowdowns:

• Lifetime Value (LTV) changes.
• Average Order Value (AOV) trends.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) fluctuations.
• Conversion rate variations.
• New versus returning customer ratios.

She emphasizes, “If your LTV has decreased but AOV stays the same, it means that your customer isn’t coming back to buy more. Then ask yourself if something has changed with your offering or its delivery.”

These metrics tell a story. For example, if your CAC is rising but conversion rates stay steady, that might signal broader market competition rather than internal issues.

Consumer Trends and Market Shift

Through my work with various sales teams, I’ve watched consumer preferences shift faster than ever before. One quarter, you’re on top of the world; the next, you’re scrambling to understand why your tried-and-true approach isn’t working anymore.

An interesting example is the case of fidget spinners. Its popularity skyrocketed in late 2016, eventually accounting for 17% of online toy sales. But as competition grew and consumer interest fell, the craze quickly cooled off. While this is an extreme example, it demonstrates the boom and bust cycle of trends — and how certain industries are more vulnerable to it than others.

Here’s what to watch for:

• Generational attitude changes.
• Social media trends affecting buying habits.
• Growing environmental consciousness.
• New technology adoption patterns.
• Changes in how people prefer to shop.

Biggs notes an interesting trend, “We’ve noticed an increasing demand for sustainability-focused products even during slower retail periods. Despite fluctuations in consumer spending, eco-conscious shoppers continue to prioritize sustainable and ethically produced goods.”

Pro tip: Don’t just watch what customers are buying — pay attention to how they’re buying it. I’ve seen businesses lose ground not because their product was wrong but because they weren’t selling it where their customers wanted to buy it.

Legislative & Regulatory Changes

Sometimes, a slowdown isn’t about market conditions or customer preferences — it’s about adapting to new rules. I’ve seen this firsthand in content marketing when GDPR hit. Suddenly, everyone had to rethink their email marketing strategies.

Major regulatory changes can force you to:

• Shut down certain marketing channels.
• Change your operational model.
• Adjust how you handle customer data.
• Modify your products or services.
• Revamp your entire business approach.

Luckily, you usually get some warning with regulatory changes. The key is using that time to prepare rather than hoping the changes won’t affect you.

Market Disruption and Competition

One thing I’ve learned is that disruption doesn’t always announce itself with fanfare. Sometimes, it creeps in quietly until one day, you realize the game has completely changed.

Andrey Meshcheryakov from Recombinators, a strategy consulting firm, suggests watching for these disruptive trends:

• New competitors entering your space.
• Technology innovations changing industry standards.
• Shifting customer expectations.
• Changes in service delivery models.
• Emerging alternative solutions.

Think about what Uber did to the taxi industry, or how streaming services transformed entertainment. The businesses that survived weren’t necessarily the biggest or strongest — they were the ones that saw the changes coming and adapted.

Early Warning Signs

Whatever may be the cause of your business slowdown, it’s important to keep your eyes open for early warning signs to catch things before it’s too late. When you notice these warning signs, you can then determine the cause of the slowdown and if you need to be concerned — and possibly make adjustments.

According to Gerti Mema, marketing manager at Equipment Finance Canada, businesses should watch for these red flags:

• Inconsistent conversion rates across sales stages.
• Longer deal closure times.
• Declining response rates.
• Reduced inquiry volumes.
• Changes in customer objection patterns.

I’ve found that the businesses that best weather slowdowns are those that recognize these patterns early and respond strategically rather than reactively. Think of these warning signs like check engine lights — they’re telling you to investigate before you have a bigger problem on your hands.

From my experience working with various sales teams, the trick isn’t just spotting these signs. It’s knowing which ones matter most for your business. A drop in website traffic might be devastating for an ecommerce site but barely register for a B2B service provider with a stable client base.

In the next section, I’ll explore specific strategies for managing slow periods effectively — because spotting the problem is only half the battle. The real win comes from knowing exactly what to do about it.

I’ve learned through years of working with businesses that slow periods, while challenging, can be powerful opportunities for growth. Remember what feels like a crisis today might actually be your chance to build a stronger foundation for tomorrow.

Instead of panicking when business slows down, I recommend using this time strategically. Here are proven ways to strengthen your business during slower periods.

1. Analyze your CRM.

During slow business periods, it’s the perfect time to optimize your CRM and fine-tune your sales process. I’ve spent years working with sales teams, and I’ll tell you this: Your CRM data tells stories — if you know how to listen.

For example, your sales reps can dive deep into their contact details:

• Are company sizes and locations properly recorded?
• Do you know which industries your clients are in?
• Are you tracking the right metrics for your business?

As a sales manager, you can use data in your CRM to see how your team is performing. How long is the typical sales cycle for your reps? How often do they close-win deals versus close-lose?

To help you monitor your team’s performance, you can create a dashboard and keep track of metrics, including:

• Sales Activity Metrics
• Pipeline Sales Metrics
• Lead Generation Sales Metrics
• Sales Outreach Metrics
• Primary Conversion Sales Metrics
• Channel Sales Metrics
• Sales Productivity Metrics
• Rep Hiring and Onboarding Metrics
• Sales Process, Tool, and Training Adoption Metrics

These analytics will enable you to make decisions for your team. You can use CRMs like HubSpot’s Sales Hub to create reports and dashboards for your team’s performance.

2. Align your marketing and sales.

Here’s something that still surprises me: Only 30% of sales professionals believe their sales and marketing teams are closely aligned. I’ve seen this disconnect firsthand — marketing generates leads that sales can’t use, or sales develops messaging that doesn’t match marketing campaigns.

This misalignment can have big consequences, like lost revenue, wasted budgets, and gaps in the buyer’s journey. But there are plenty of benefits of alignment, such as:

• Improved sales performance.
• Enhanced customer experience (28% of salespeople report this).
• Stronger lead quality (26% of teams see this improvement).
• More effective content creation.
• Better understanding of customer pain points.

Think about it this way: Your marketing team needs to know what questions prospects are actually asking during sales calls. And your sales team needs to know what content is available to support their conversations.

Pro tip: Set up regular meetings between sales and marketing. I’ve seen teams transform their results just by having weekly check-ins where both sides share what they’re hearing from customers.

3. Focus on upselling and/or cross-selling.

I’ve worked with plenty of sales teams that see their biggest wins by focusing on existing customers. And it makes sense — according to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Sales Report, existing customers make up 72% of company revenue on average, while new customers account for just 28%.

With that much revenue coming from retention, it’s no wonder 26% of sales professionals prioritized existing customers over acquiring new ones this year.

But it’s not just about keeping customers happy — it’s about creating opportunities to grow those relationships. Almost 92% of sales professionals try to upsell, and nearly half of companies report up to 21% of their revenue comes from upselling. Cross-selling follows a similar pattern, with 87% of reps using this strategy and companies seeing up to 21% of revenue from cross-selling.

As Andres Lares from Shapiro Negotiations Institute points out, improving engagement strategies with existing clients can fuel even greater success.

“When one of our financial services clients experienced a significant slowdown, we helped them use this time to develop a more sophisticated stakeholder mapping and engagement process,” explains Lares. “This improved their current pipeline and substantially increased revenue per client, with much more cross-selling success.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about successful upselling:

• Build relationships beyond the initial sale.
• Stay in regular contact with existing customers.
• Understand their evolving needs.
• Time your offers based on their business cycle.
• Make recommendations based on their usage patterns.

The takeaway: It’s easier to grow accounts when you maintain strong relationships beyond the initial sale. Whether through upselling, cross-selling, or simply staying top-of-mind, investing in existing customers isn’t just good practice — it’s a smart, revenue-driving strategy.

4. Revisit your sales training.

If your reps continue to miss targets, it’s time to take a fresh look at your training and coaching initiatives. Here’s something that might surprise you: Approximately 70% of salespeople lack formal training, and 84% of sales training content is forgotten within three months.

I’ve worked with teams that assumed training was a one-and-done process, only to realize later that gaps in knowledge were holding them back. A little extra coaching can go a long way — not just in improving numbers but in building confidence and momentum.

As a sales manager, consider the following questions:

• Are your new or junior-level employees starting on solid footing, or could they benefit from more comprehensive training?
• Are your seasoned reps up-to-date on the latest technology and strategies?
• Are your reps leveraging your CRM to its full potential?
• What areas need the most improvement (prospecting, nurturing, closing, etc.)?

If training has been an afterthought, it might be time to take a closer look at where your team could use more support.

5. Refine systems and processes.

To sell successfully, your sales team needs a refined system to track prospects and monitor deals. But when was the last time you took a step back to assess whether those systems are actually working?

During slower periods, it’s the perfect time to audit your sales process and spot inefficiencies. As Cambria Davies, a former HubSpot product manager, puts it, “Consider what is and isn’t working for your reps and prospects to tailor your new process to better fit their needs, so more deals are closed and more customers are delighted.”

I’ve worked with teams that assumed their process was solid — until they looked at the data. Deals that should have closed were stuck in limbo, and reps were spending too much time on manual follow-ups instead of meaningful conversations.

Reilly James Renwick from Pragmatic Mortgage Lending tackled this issue by systemizing their sales process and automating follow-up sequences within their CRM, which increased conversion rates by 18.3% in a single quarter.

If you’re unsure where to start, observe your reps in action. Ask yourself:

• What does a typical deal look like from start to close?
• How much time passes between each stage?
• Where do prospects tend to drop off?

A clear view of your sales system makes it easier to identify what’s working and what isn’t. Small refinements — whether it’s adjusting follow-up cadences, improving CRM usage, or streamlining approvals — can make a huge impact on your team’s efficiency and results.

6. Create a sales enablement strategy.

Sales enablement helps reps sell more effectively by providing the right tools, training, and content at every stage of the sales cycle. A well-structured enablement strategy ensures new hires ramp up faster, experienced reps have resources at their fingertips, and teams consistently hit their targets.

And it’s only becoming more essential — 59% of B2B sales pros in the U.S. now use sales enablement content, a 48% jump from last year. Even more telling? Salespeople who leverage enablement content are 58% more likely to outperform those who don’t.

Why Sales Enablement Matters

• Higher win rates. According to G2, organizations with a sales enablement strategy achieve a 49% higher win rate on forecasted deals.
• Faster onboarding. Sales enablement can reduce onboarding time by 40-50%, helping new reps ramp up quickly (G2).
• Stronger sales performance. 76% of leadership teams believe sales enablement is crucial to driving results (G2).

Source

Your Sales Enablement Strategy Should Include:

• A sales content library. Product guides, competitor comparisons, case studies, demo scripts, and an internal knowledge base.
• Training & coaching programs. Continuous skill development, onboarding resources, and best practices.
• Technology & automation. CRM integrations, AI-powered recommendations, and automated follow-ups.

How to Improve Sales Enablement

• Audit your enablement resources. Are reps using what’s available? What’s missing?
• Set clear training and content goals. Focus on areas that slow deals down or create bottlenecks.
• Make enablement an ongoing effort. Sales training shouldn’t stop after onboarding.

I’ve seen how the right sales enablement strategy makes a difference. Having resources available isn’t enough — reps need a clear, structured way to access and apply them in real sales conversations. When that happens, they can engage buyers more effectively, handle objections with confidence, and close deals faster.

7. Develop a future-proof sales plan.

Successful sales teams don’t wait for market shifts to dictate their next move — they build strategies that keep them prepared for what’s ahead. A strong sales plan provides structure while allowing for adjustments as conditions change.

Whether business is booming or slowing down, planning for the future means setting clear financial benchmarks, identifying potential risks, and creating opportunities for long-term growth.

Financial planning plays a major role in building a resilient sales strategy. Sales teams that track revenue goals and break-even points are in a stronger position to adjust their approach when needed.

“Our sales team is aware of this break-even point to exceed every month, plus an extra 10% as a margin of safety,” says Iqbal Ahmad. This extra buffer helps businesses stay on track even when sales cycles fluctuate.

A future-proof sales plan also requires ongoing evaluation. Tracking key sales metrics, monitoring customer trends, and adjusting tactics based on performance data keeps teams prepared for changing conditions.

From my experience, teams that take a proactive approach to sales planning build a stronger foundation for long-term success. A well-structured plan should evolve with the business, keeping sales teams ready for whatever comes next.

8. Avoid burnout.

Let’s talk about something that often gets overlooked during slow periods — team burnout. Burnout isn’t just an individual issue — it affects team performance and workplace culture. A recent study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 44% of U.S. employees feel burned out at work, with 45% feeling emotionally drained and 51% feeling completely used up by the end of the workday.

In sales, where high-pressure targets and constant outreach are the norm, burnout can hit even harder.

I’ve seen how unchecked burnout leads to disengagement, lower productivity, and higher turnover. That’s why regular check-ins aren’t just helpful — they’re essential. When business is slow, take the time to reassess how your sales reps are doing. Are they feeling motivated? Do they have the right tools and training to succeed? Are they setting smaller, achievable goals to stay on track?

If you notice signs of burnout, here are a few ways to help:

• Encourage Open Conversations. Make it easy for reps to share concerns about workload and stress.
• Ensure They Have the Right Resources. Not having the right tools or clear processes can lead to a lot of frustration.
• Promote Work-Life Balance. Encourage taking breaks, unplugging after work, and using PTO.
• Offer Professional Development. Learning new skills can re-energize reps and help them stay engaged.

9. Work on professional development.

When sales slow down, it’s easy for motivation to dip. Instead of waiting for things to pick back up, reps can use this time to build new skills and refine their expertise. In my experience, teams that actively invest in professional development come back stronger, more engaged, and better prepared to close deals when business ramps up again.

Here are a few great ways to make the most of slow periods:

• Take courses. Learn new sales techniques, negotiation tactics, or industry trends.
• Get certifications. Strengthen credibility with recognized sales or product certifications.
• Read industry blogs. Stay informed on market trends and competitor strategies.
• Deepen product knowledge. Understand your offering inside and out to handle objections with confidence.
• Update your online presence. Refresh LinkedIn profiles, highlight achievements, and build personal brands.
• Attend conferences and networking events. Connect with industry peers and gain fresh insights.

When reps focus on professional growth, the entire sales team benefits. I’ve seen firsthand how stronger skills lead to better conversations, more confident selling, and a higher-performing team overall.

10. Perform a competitive analysis.

A slowdown isn’t always about internal challenges — sometimes, shifts in the competitive landscape play a role. Pricing adjustments, marketing moves, and product changes can all impact customer behavior. I’ve found that a well-executed competitive analysis not only clarifies where you stand but also reveals opportunities you might be missing.

A competitive analysis can:

• Identify gaps in the market. Look at what products or services competitors offer. Ask yourself questions like, “Are there gaps in their offerings?” and “Do we offer a product or service to fill that need?” These gaps can help your sales team position your product.
• Uncover market trends. If you find that a competitor has an offering that you don’t, think about why. Is a new trend emerging in your industry? If so, you might want to consider how new trends will fit in your offerings and/or disrupt your sales process.
• Sell more effectively. Get a look at how competitors are selling their products or services. Learn about their sales process and use it to inform your own process.

A strong competitive analysis starts with the right questions. I always recommend asking:

• How are competitors positioning their products?
• What sales channels are they using?
• Why do customers choose them — or don’t choose them?
• What objections do their buyers commonly have?
• What is their revenue?
• What do their programs or products look like? Do they work with partners?

During periods of slow business, understanding how your product compares to competitors can help you strategize for future success and growth.

11. Brainstorm new products or services.

Sales reps have the best pulse on what’s happening with customers. During slow periods, I’ve found that tapping into your sales reps and asking them to brainstorm ideas for your product team can lead to innovative solutions.

The numbers back this up. According to HubSpot’s research, companies that maintain innovation during slowdowns see:

• 25% higher customer satisfaction rates.
• 33% better employee retention.
• 40% faster recovery when business picks up.

Here’s how to make the most of this downtime:

• Identify customer pain points. Sales reps hear firsthand what customers are struggling with. Are they frequently requesting a feature that doesn’t exist? Is there a service competitors offer that your company doesn’t? These insights can guide product development.
• Refine existing offerings. Sometimes, customers don’t need something brand new — they just need a tweak to what already exists. Whether it’s improving onboarding, adding integrations, or adjusting pricing models, small changes can make a big impact.
• Look for market shifts. If an industry trend is gaining traction, slow periods are a great time to evaluate whether it aligns with your business and how you could adapt.

Renwick from Pragmatic Mortgage Lending has seen businesses use slow periods to rethink their approach and unlock growth. One of his clients used this quiet time to revisit the customer journey.

“That was where a decision to invest in an intuitive user interface was made, enhancing their digital experience,” Renwick explains. “This firm also refocused its marketing campaigns toward improving its customer loyalty programs. In just six months, this company was retaining 22.76% more of their customers.”

I’ve seen companies turn slowdowns into an opportunity for reinvention. By brainstorming with your sales reps, you’ll learn more about your customers and how to sell to them. Also, this can help your sales team grow better.

12. Conduct customer interviews.

Is business slowing down? If so, I’ve found that talking to customers is one of the best ways to re-engage and learn. A simple conversation can reveal things your sales team might not even be aware of — new pain points, unexpected wins, or fresh use cases for your product.

Customer interviews also help with creating buyer personas, customer testimonials, and case studies. Your sales team can use real customer stories to build trust and handle objections, making conversations feel less like a pitch and more like proof.

If you’re reaching out for customer interviews, keep it simple:

• Start with your biggest advocates. Who’s been vocal about loving your product? They’re the easiest people to approach. Send them a quick email introducing the idea. If they’re open to the idea, you’ll need to write interview questions, conduct interviews, and gather their stories in a digestible, distributable format.
• Ask open-ended questions. I always go with something like, “What were your biggest pain points before using our product?” or “How does our product help your team reach its goals?”
• Turn insights into action. The best interviews don’t just sit in a Google Doc — they get used in sales decks, case studies, and onboarding materials.

The best part? These conversations don’t just help your business — they help customers feel heard. And in my experience, that goes a long way in building loyalty.

13. Automate your sales process.

Slow business periods are the perfect time to clean up and automate your sales process. I’ve seen sales teams waste so much time on repetitive tasks — manually logging activities, sending follow-ups, or updating the CRM — when a little automation could free them up for more important work.

Aja Frost, a contributor to the HubSpot Sales Blog, points out that automation is especially useful for:

• Follow-ups. Automating email follow-ups ensures no lead slips through the cracks.
• CRM Updates. Automatically logging prospect activities keeps everything organized without extra manual work.
• Long Sales Cycles. For deals that take months to close, automation helps nurture leads without reps needing to check in constantly.
• Cold Leads. Instead of chasing low-converting leads, automation can segment and handle outreach so reps can focus on better opportunities.

And there’s a real payoff: Sales teams that automate their processes see a 15% boost in productivity and a 12% decrease in marketing costs. That’s according to a report from Kissflow, which highlights how automation saves time and money while improving efficiency.

If your team isn’t already automating parts of the sales cycle, here are a few easy wins:

• Create reusable email templates for outreach and follow-ups.
• Set up automated workflows in your CRM to log prospect interactions.
• Use scheduling tools to make booking calls seamless.

The way I see it, automation isn’t about replacing personal connections — it’s about eliminating busy work so sales reps can focus on actual selling. And during slow periods, setting up these systems makes sure your team is in the best position when business picks up again — so instead of scrambling to catch up, they can hit the ground running with a more efficient process.

14. Set goals.

Sales reps are usually focused on hitting their monthly quota, but that’s not the only goal that drives success. When business slows down, I’ve found that setting new goals — ones that go beyond just closing deals — keeps teams motivated and sharp for when things pick up again.

• Mentor goals. Meeting with a mentor once a week for fresh insights and coaching.
• Activity goals. Improving the quality of outreach by asking more “Why?” questions during sales calls.
• Win rate goals. Focusing on closing a higher percentage of deals instead of just chasing more leads.
• Incentivized goals. Rewarding specific behaviors with bonuses or recognition to keep motivation high.

And structured goal-setting pays off. HubSpot’s 2024 Sales Report found that 56% of sales professionals are exceeding their goals, despite 54% saying selling has gotten harder. Sales reps who focus on improving efficiency, targeting new markets, and refining their sales process are finding ways to stay ahead, even in a more challenging landscape.

Even small changes — like setting a goal for the number of discovery calls or prospecting emails sent each week — can have a big impact. Another strategy I’ve seen work well? Strategic promotions. If sales are slow, why not plan a limited-time offer that helps reps close deals while reinforcing their goals? A well-timed discount or bundled package can push hesitant prospects to take action.

I’ve learned that reframing sales goals during slow periods keeps teams engaged and improving, rather than just waiting for things to pick up. When you use this time to refine strategy, it pays off when the momentum returns.

15. Practice sales strategies.

Slow periods are the best time to sharpen sales techniques. I’ve learned that refining prospecting, pitching, and closing strategies during these times can make a huge difference when business picks up again. A strong sales cycle includes five key stages, and each one offers an opportunity to improve:

• Prospecting. Try new outreach techniques like social selling, warm emails, or personalization through research.
• Connecting. Strengthen discovery calls by asking more “Why?” questions, such as “Why is this problem a priority now?” or “Why hasn’t this challenge been solved before?” These questions help uncover a prospect’s motivations and whether they’re a good fit.
• Researching. Dig deeper into LinkedIn, press releases, and industry reports to uncover insights on a prospect’s company. I’ve found that researching and knowing what’s happening within a company makes it easier to build rapport and ask meaningful questions.
• Presenting. Roleplay is a powerful way to improve sales pitches and objection handling. If formal training isn’t available, I’ve seen practice sessions set up with colleagues and found that even informal feedback can help refine messaging.
• Closing. Experimenting with different closing techniques, such as:

• Soft Close. Presenting the benefits without pushing for an immediate commitment.
• Assumptive Close. Ask questions like “Does this sound like it would solve [pain point]?”
• Sharp Angle Close. When you change direction and catch your prospect by surprise by trying to close the deal. Respond to a request with a condition: “If we can include that feature, will you sign today?”

Sales is a skill like any other — the more you practice, the sharper you get. Using slow periods to fine-tune strategies means when business picks up, reps will be ready to engage prospects more effectively and close more deals.

16. Collaborate with other sales reps.

When I notice business slowing down, I’ve found that the best way to keep momentum going is through collaboration. Sales can feel like a solo job at times, but the most successful reps I’ve worked with don’t operate in isolation. They learn from their peers, trade insights, and refine their strategies together.

One of the most effective ways to do this is peer coaching. Setting up film reviews, where reps analyze and give feedback on each other’s calls, is one of the fastest ways to sharpen messaging and objection handling. If your team doesn’t already have a formal mentorship program, now is the time to start one. Pairing new reps with experienced ones creates a natural learning environment and helps the entire team level up.

Another strategy I’ve seen work well is knowledge-sharing sessions. Have reps bring their most effective sales emails, outreach messages, or discovery call techniques to a team meeting and break down what works and why. When sales pick back up, your team will be better prepared to tackle objections and move deals forward.

Slow periods can be frustrating, but they’re also an opportunity. Reps who take the time to learn from each other come out of these lulls stronger, more confident, and ready to close more deals.

Turning Slow Periods Into Growth Opportunities

Working on this piece gave me a new appreciation for how much opportunity there is in a slow business period, if you use it wisely. I went into this thinking about slowdowns as something to overcome, but after digging into expert insights, I see them differently. They’re a chance to refine, reset, and even get ahead.

Sales pros who thrive in the long run aren’t just great at closing deals when the pipeline is full. They also know how to optimize their process when things slow down. Whether that means improving sales enablement, automating tasks, sharpening techniques, or collaborating with peers, the most successful teams treat downtime as an investment in future success.

If sales are slow right now, remember this: There’s always something to refine, automate, or improve. The work you put in now won’t just help you through this slump — it’ll set you up to sell more effectively when business picks up again.

I stumbled into a sales career by accident. After a few years of freelancing, I realized my favorite part of work was meeting business owners and helping them figure out ways to overcome their biggest obstacles. Is that sales? It’s never felt like it — which is probably why I’ve always enjoyed it.

To say nothing of the really negative stigmas, there’s a common mentality in sales that success requires a grind. While I can certainly respect hard work, there’s another tactic that’s just as important to employ to see sustainable, long-term success: frictionless selling.

I’ll take you through what frictionless selling is, how you can reduce friction in sales, and why you should use this method.

Table of Contents

• What is frictionless selling?
• The Frictionless Selling Framework
• How to Reduce Friction in Sales
• Why Use the Frictionless Selling Method?

What is frictionless selling?

In case the name didn’t tip you off, frictionless selling is an approach to sales centered around — you guessed it — minimizing friction. That means implementing strategies to mitigate the objections, obstacles, complexities, and distractions that threaten to derail deals as they flow through the sales funnel.

The idea is to make the sales process as easy and helpful as possible for the customer, which is why frictionless selling is built around a consultative, collaborative approach instead of a transactional one.

Of course, you’ll never be able to achieve 100% frictionless selling, but the goal here is to remove as many hurdles as possible. By decreasing friction, you multiply the output of your sales reps without demanding more input — which can have a significant impact on their close rates.

If you’re already sold on frictionless sales, I highly recommend taking a deep dive into HubSpot’s Frictionless Sales Course and earning a certification. Otherwise, read on for a quick overview of the three phases of implementation, a few examples from my own experience, and a brief exploration of the benefits.

The Frictionless Selling Framework

Whenever I see the word “framework,” I’m ready for things to get overly complicated. Luckily, that’s not the case, according to HubSpot’s frictionless selling framework. What are the phases of the frictionless selling framework? Simple:

Let’s take a closer look at these individual stages and discuss specific tips you can apply in each one.

1. Enable

In many sales teams, reps — particularly less experienced ones — struggle to allocate their time in the most efficient way. Without clear strategies, their random and start/stop outreach is essentially looking for a needle in a haystack.

The best way to remove this type of friction is to help salespeople prioritize their efforts and spend more time selling effectively. How do you do this?

• Scrutinize your sales processes. Do they need to be updated? How can they be improved to maximize productivity?
• Evaluate your sales tools and technologies. Are there any redundancies? Are there any gaps that are compromising the team’s effectiveness? Are there any integrations that the team should be relying on to streamline the process?
• Take a closer look at reps’ day-to-day activities. What tasks are reps spending the most time on? What are the most painful parts of the sales process? What basic tasks can be automated so that reps can focus on more important revenue-generating or relationship-building activities?

Pro tip: Self-reporting (i.e., getting reps to provide feedback on what activities they spend the most time on) might be an easy option, but it isn’t always the most accurate. In my own experience, boring tasks like updating my CRM feel like they take forever, but in reality, it’s a blip.

For more sophisticated insights, get your reps to start using a time tracker app such as HubStaff. These kinds of solutions enable your team to track their hours more reliably and improve their time management skills. Armed with good data, you can also quickly step in to troubleshoot unproductive tasks or processes.

2. Align

Once you’ve enabled your team with the right processes, tools, and technologies, the next step is to align them with your target buyer. The goal here is to reduce friction and make it easy for your buyer to say “yes” to a sale — or “no” if they’ve been misqualified and aren’t the right fit.

You can do this by:

• Ensure that your team is available 24/7. Instead of only providing support during working hours in your time zone, set up live chat on your website and train freelancers from different countries to work as off-hours sales reps. If your team is always available, you’ve already removed a major source of friction.
• Make it easy for your clients to schedule meetings with you. Use a tool such as Calendly to minimize long email chains about finding time to meet. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can also use the built-in meeting scheduler to create a booking page like mine — it’s free and easy!
• Provide transparent pricing and discounts. The more open and upfront you are about pricing, the more trust you build with your prospect. You also help prospects with insufficient budgets opt out if they slipped through the cracks of your qualification process.
• Make it simple for buyers to cancel. Unless you’re selling something like enterprise software, trying to lock your buyer into a multi-year contract will be a major red flag. Outline clear, reasonable terms and give buyers an out if you don’t deliver what you promise.

Pro tip: I would start with the suggestions above, but they’re by no means the finish line. For more ideas on how to align your team with your target buyer, look through old prospect inquiries and identify which ones turned into quality customer relationships.

For instance, if you identify that many prospects have been asking whether your product can be integrated with another solution, there’s clearly a demand for it. Consider having your product teamwork on that integration so that you can provide a better user experience for your customers — and be able to say “yes” to more high-quality prospects.

According to Burt Lancaster, founder and CEO at edtech provider One to One Plus, “When our customers told us their schools were increasingly reliant on Google for devices, management, and professional development, we responded by building seamless integrations between our software and Google’s suite of education products.”

According to Lancaster, this approach ensures our clients benefit from a fully connected and efficient solution that maximizes their investment.”

3. Transform

The last stage of frictionless selling involves transforming your team by creating a company culture of learning.

Here, you’ll want to:

• Become data-driven. Stop using spreadsheets and start using more sophisticated data reporting tools that give you access to real-time data. Good reporting should be generated automatically — otherwise, it won’t happen at all.
• Encourage mentorship. Provide new or struggling reps with a more experienced mentor. At the very least, they should be equipped with playbooks and other training materials.
• Incentivize internal collaboration. Encourage all your reps to share their learnings and best practices with the rest of the team. Don’t expect this to happen organically — actively incentivize it. I suggest tracking the cost of the initiative and calculate its ROI each quarter.
• Manage less and coach more. Good sales reps don’t need micromanagers to look over their shoulders and confirm they’re hitting arbitrary activity benchmarks. They need coaching to help them shore up their weaknesses and leverage their strengths so they can achieve their goals.

Pro tip: If you want to encourage a culture of learning, it can’t be a top-down decree. Get in the trenches and help your reps identify which parts of the sales process are causing hang-ups (literal and figurative), and then work with them to come up with solutions.

If the sales team owns decisions like software investments, they’re more likely to put in the effort necessary to ensure those investments pay off.

How to Reduce Friction in Sales

The best way to reduce friction in your sales process is to identify the areas that cause delays or leakage in the sales funnel. Once you’ve spotted potential sources of friction, simply prioritize the ones that deliver the most bang for your buck.

Shortly after I started in my current role, I set up a meeting scheduling page. After just one or two occasions going back and forth via email and adding extra days to the sales cycle, I made this a priority. This change would deliver groundbreaking results, but it would deliver positive results in the 15 minutes it took to configure in HubSpot and integrate my Google Calendar. Plus, it was free!

Other improvements simply require your team to adopt sales best practices. Are your reps scheduling follow-up meetings while on the call with a prospect? If not, make this a priority. When I was first starting out in sales, a mentor made this recommendation. I was stunned that I hadn’t thought of it on my own. Don’t take for granted that all your reps know the basics.

As you chip away at the low-hanging fruit, the sources of friction will become more and more complex. Today, our marketing proposals are made pretty much entirely from scratch because we serve lots of different industries, and each client is unique.

As a result, it can take me a few days of back and forth with different specialists on the digital marketing team to deliver a polished and thoughtful proposal. That’s valuable time that should be used to identify and connect with the next prospect. I’m already building templates and investigating dedicated tools like PandaDoc to get from proposal to signature in record time.

Because your sales funnel is unique to your own organization and industry, it will have its own points of friction. Maybe you’re selling in the public sector and need to go through certain government hoops to get a signoff, or maybe you’re selling in a space where a single individual has purchasing authority. Regardless, there will be ways to optimize and improve your processes in service of that lofty aspiration, frictionless selling.

Why Use the Frictionless Selling Method?

I am a strong advocate of this method because of the benefits I’ve personally seen in my own sales career. It’s common sense that salespeople and prospects will be happier with a smoother sales process. Nevertheless, here are a few data-backed reasons to intentionally implement frictionless selling if you’re still on the fence.

You’ll build a more efficient sales team.

With reps spending 70% of their time on non-selling tasks, there’s a lot of room to decrease the friction on the seller’s side to increase their efficiency. If you can find the gaps, redundancies, and areas where automation can take over for your team, you will create a more productive sales team.

You’ll improve conversion rates.

Overly complex selling processes cause friction and turn prospects away. In fact, over 70% of B2B buyers report feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information they receive, the number of reps they talk to, and the various package and pricing options available. If you simplify your sales process, buyers are more likely to follow through, and your conversion rates will improve.

You’ll enhance customer loyalty.

If you provide a frictionless experience, customers are more likely to stick around. We found that 75% of customers will continue doing business with a company that provides excellent service — even after making a mistake.

Not only will your customers stick around, but 75% of them will give positive recommendations to others, keeping your funnel full.

You’ll generate more revenue.

Friction during the selling process leads to prospects giving up and lost sales for companies. In fact, it’s estimated that $22 billion in revenue is lost each year due to friction. By reducing the friction in your sales cycle, you’ll likely capture more business and increase your revenue.

Frictionless selling operates on this simple equation:

Start lowering sales friction today.

In my experience, sales can be fun and rewarding — provided I’m spending my time solving interesting, complex problems.

On the other hand, if we’re not careful, we can find ourselves in a real-life Office Space, spending hours meeting meaningless activity quotas, cross-referencing calendars to find viable meeting times (none of which turn out to work for the prospect), and repeatedly copy-pasting parts of one Google Doc into another until our eyes glaze over.

When I was introduced to the notion of frictionless selling, it immediately resonated. This North Star isn’t something that can be achieved overnight, but I try to make some small bit of progress each week toward a more frictionless process for myself, my team, and my prospects, and I would strongly encourage you to do the same.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my experience in sales, it’s that it’s a mistake to assume that a customer’s revenue potential ends after their order. Cross-selling unlocks a lot of opportunities for extra revenue — and increased customer satisfaction.

I’ve worked in sales and marketing long enough to contribute to numerous cross-selling campaigns. I’ve witnessed firsthand its profound impact on companies’ revenues and customer relationships.

In this guide, I’ll break down cross-selling as a sales tactic, highlighting how it works, its benefits, and its challenges. I’ll also share some proven cross-selling strategies you can implement today to start driving revenue growth.

In total, here’s what you’ll learn:

Table of Contents

• What is cross-selling?
• Cross-Selling vs. Upselling: What’s the difference?
• Advantages of Cross-Selling
• Disadvantages of Cross-Selling
• Preparing to Cross-Sell
• Effective Cross-Selling Strategies
• How to Cross-Sell Ethically

Cross-selling opportunities are available at various points of the sales process. For example, some of my favorite places to cross-sell are product pages, checkout pages, thank you pages, and post-purchase emails.

A 2024 HubSpot survey of more than 1,400 sales professionals across North America, Europe, and Asia reveals that 87% of salespeople try to cross-sell customers and prospects during the sales process.

To start a cross-selling strategy, I first recommend identifying products that satisfy additional or complementary needs not fulfilled by the initial purchase — or that increase its value or utility. Next, encourage the customer to purchase these additional products.

Cross-Selling vs. Upselling: What’s the difference?

Cross-selling and upselling are sometimes used interchangeably, but the approaches are quite different.

While cross-selling involves offering customers additional related items, upselling involves offering them an upgraded, more expensive version of the product they selected. To upsell, you need to convince the customer that the higher-priced version is worth it.

Returning to the customer who just ordered a burger: To upsell, I’d offer options to create a more elaborate burger — adding pickles and cheese slices, let’s say — for an additional fee.

In short:

• Cross-selling adds to a sale via additional, lateral products that complement the original purchase.
• Upselling enhances the original product by offering an upgraded or feature-rich version.

Examples of Cross-Selling vs. Upselling

Here are a few realistic scenarios highlighting the difference between cross-selling and upselling.

Mobile Phone Retailer

• Cross-selling: Suggesting a screen protector, case, and travel charger when a customer buys a smartphone.
• Upselling: Offering the same phone model but with a bigger screen and longer battery life.

​​Web Hosting Provider

• Cross-selling: Offering domain registration and SSL certificates to customers who sign up for hosting plans.
• Upselling: Recommending a higher-tier hosting plan with more bandwidth and storage.

CRM Software

• Cross-selling: Encouraging a customer to purchase a subscription to your CRM tool after they have purchased a subscription to your marketing newsletter.
• Upselling: Suggesting a higher lever subscription to your CRM with more seats and features.

Project Management Software Provider

• Cross-selling: Proposing training workshops and consultation services to corporate clients looking to improve team productivity.
• Upselling: Suggesting an enterprise-level subscription with advanced collaboration features, better integration capabilities, and dedicated customer support.

Air Conditioning Sales

• Cross-selling: Recommending a voltage stabilizer to protect the purchased unit from unstable current surges.
• Upselling: Offering a newer model of the same unit with smart technology integration and greater energy efficiency.

Advantages of Cross-Selling

Here are the main perks of cross-selling that I’ve personally discovered.

Increased Revenue

The most direct and immediate benefit of cross-selling is an increase in sales revenue. McKinsey reports that cross-selling can increase sales and profits by 20% and 30%, respectively. Furthermore, HubSpot research found that cross-selling accounts for 21% of their organizations’ revenues, on average.

This valuable source of revenue makes sense when you look at the numbers. The typical odds of closing a sale are 60-70% with an existing customer while it’s only 5-20% with a new one.

So, encouraging customers to buy complementary products typically boosts the average order value (AOV). If your current customers are spending more, your need to constantly acquire new customers will decrease. This is also good news because it costs 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current one.

Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

One of the biggest benefits I’ve seen while cross-selling is it helps me maximize customer lifetime value (CLV), which is the total revenue generated from each customer over the course of their relationship with my business.

I’ve found that when customers perceive my business consistently meets their needs via relevant product suggestions, they’re more likely to develop loyalty and trust. This encourages more purchases over time, meaning a higher CLV — meaning more long-term revenue.

Greater Customer Satisfaction

As a sales technique, cross-selling relies on products that enhance the overall utility, enjoyment, or longevity of the primary buy. A customer who just bought their first camera from me will probably benefit additionally from a tripod and a camera bag. Having those extra products will make their overall experience more satisfying.

When I’m a customer, discovering relevant offerings via expert cross-selling is a pleasant surprise that makes me feel more understood and appreciated by the business. If there’s one thing I know, a smooth and satisfying shopping experience breeds customer loyalty.

More Product Visibility

Cross-selling involves strategically placing related products in the customer’s line of sight during their purchasing journey — products they might not have been aware of. From impulse buys to newbies experimenting, I’m able to get more attention for my offerings and more purchases this way.

Disadvantages of Cross-Selling

Like any other sales tactic, cross-selling comes with some hurdles.

Annoying Customers

A pitfall I often see is annoying the customers. The line between making a helpful suggestion and unsolicited nagging is very thin.

To avoid this, what I do is closely observe customer reactions and engagement levels during the interaction. If I sense any hesitation or disinterest, I immediately ease off the pressure.

You don’t want customers to feel like every transaction is an attempt to sell them something more. If so, they are more likely to view your business as purely profit-driven, damaging their trust in the brand and reducing the likelihood of future engagement.

Catering to “Problem Customers”

Another disadvantage is that cross-selling can ironically be less profitable, even when used successfully.

A Harvard study found that the costs of cross-selling to certain “problem customers” — such as people who frequently return products, overuse customer support, and primarily avoid regularly priced items — can actually overshadow extra revenue generated from them because these types of customers account for as much as 70% of the average company’s customer loss (which is when the cost of goods and marketing exceeds the revenue generated).

To overcome this problem, Harvard suggests thoroughly examining your business practices, identifying any that may unintentionally attract or encourage problem customers, and making adjustments.

Additionally, analyzing each customer’s transaction data can help determine whether they fall into one of the problematic categories. Depending on what I find out, I tweak my sales strategies, like upselling them instead or choosing to focus on other customers.

Preparing to Cross-Sell

Effective cross-selling begins with thorough preparation. Specifically, you must take time to learn about your customers, map out their buying journey, and know your products inside and out. Here’s how to go about it.

1. Get to know your audience.

You may already know about buyer personas. But one area I think is often overlooked is getting to know your audience after they have purchased your product. Their needs and expectations may evolve significantly after the purchase, so it’s crucial that you keep up with them if you want to do business with them again.

I recommend you create updated personas for post-purchase customers with:

• Demographic information.
• Psychographic information.
• Direct customer feedback.

Service software helps you easily deploy, manage, and gather data from customer feedback surveys. Plus, it can give you additional insights regarding your audience’s main pain points by learning how customers interact with your knowledge bases and service agents.

I’ve found that taking time to get to know my audience helps me identify not only which cross-sell products are most likely to appeal to them, but also how to communicate the offers in a way that resonates.

2. Build out your customer journeys.

The customer journey refers to the path a person is most likely to take from initial awareness of your brand to purchase and beyond.

According to Up Inc., mapping out the customer’s journey is one of the most effective cross-selling strategies, leading to increased customer retention and fewer complaints — plus higher revenue.

Cross-selling can happen at any point in the customer’s journey; it’s just easier to cross-sell at some points than others.

Mapping the customer’s journey helps me identify the sweet spots of cross-selling. For example, I find that customers are most receptive to my cross-selling pitches after they’ve seen results from my products. Plus, they’ll naturally talk to other people about it, potentially driving referrals.

3. Learn your products.

You can’t be an effective salesperson if you’re not an expert on your entire product range. Identify each offering’s respective strengths and weaknesses. How do they address specific customer needs? Most importantly, learn how different items complement one another.

If I tried cross-selling without comprehensive knowledge and understanding of my products, I’d risk suggesting combinations that don’t make sense to the customer and don’t bring any value. That would erode customer trust by leading them to believe that my primary goal is to increase sales rather than meet their needs.

In contrast, since I thoroughly understand how my products interconnect, I’m able to make informed recommendations that genuinely enhance the customer’s initial order.

4. Enhance your listening and analysis skills.

Sometimes, opportunities to cross-sell can arise unexpectedly, such as during an unrelated phone call or email exchange with a client. Therefore, another move I recommend is identifying receptive signals from customers. This involves active listening.

These are the best practices I employ when speaking with customers:

• I pay close attention to their voice and tone. It provides insight into their emotional state and readiness to engage.
• I listen to what customers don’t say explicitly. Pauses, hesitations, and indirect comments can all provide clues for areas where your products or services can offer additional value or support.
• I encourage dialogue by asking customers open-ended questions instead of yes or no questions. Letting people express their needs and concerns fully allows me to see the bigger picture and to discover opportunities to serve them even better.

Effective Cross-Selling Strategies

Now that you know how to prepare for cross-selling, let’s explore a few top strategies to use once you’re ready. These are tactics I’ve personally used with tremendous success.

Personalize your cross-sale offers.

According to Forbes research, 81% of modern customers expect brands to deliver a personalized experience — with up to 70% of people expressing frustration when a company doesn’t know their history with the company.

When it comes to cross-selling, ensure that you tailor your recommendations to each customer based on their preferences, purchase history, and behavior. Just be sure not to violate customers’ data privacy.

Data analytics tools and AI have made that much easier to do. In fact, HubSpot research reveals that 86% of U.S. salespeople say leveraging AI helps them suggest the right products and services to customers at the right time.

Personalized cross-sales make your clients feel understood and appreciated by your business, which increases the likelihood of acceptance. But don’t just take my word for it.

Lisa Richards, CEO and founder of Candida Diet, tells us that sending automated, personalized product suggestions to customers (based on their initial purchases) is one of their most successful cross-selling strategies.

“Paying customers who received our personalized recommendations were 37% more likely to add at least one additional product to their basket and 25% more likely to increase their average order value,” she shares.

Richards further notes that these customers typically return to make subsequent purchases more frequently than general website visitors. The result is an impressive 12% more CLV from those who get personalized product recommendations.

Segment your customers.

I think segmenting your customers is an important step in personalizing your offers. Different selling strategies work better for different customer segments. Ryan Miller, founder and CEO of Etna Interactive, uses Sales Hub to segment his customers so he can better reach them with timely and relevant product recommendations.

Justin Mauldin from Salient PR is also a Sales Hub user and emphasizes the value of the data and analytics HubSpot provides for segmenting his customers:

“We focus on creating personalized campaigns by utilizing CRM data and setting up automated feedback loops for continuous sales insights, which help us tailor relevant offers to specific client segments, and integrating these elements provides us with a cohesive sales message.

“Our company traces patterns through HubSpot’s data-driven insights allowing us to identify high-opportunity areas and improve cross-sell strategies. This data-driven approach makes our campaigns more dynamic and impactful.”

Offer discounted add-ons.

HubSpot research from 2024 shows that 37% of U.S. sales reps who cross-sell cite offering discounts and promotions as one of their most effective cross-selling techniques.

Furthermore, 82% of online shoppers are more likely to complete a purchase if they have a discount code and coupon. Who’s surprised? Everyone loves a discount.

While I absolutely recommend you highlight the cost-saving benefit of your promotional offers or discounts, I think it’s even more important to emphasize how the add-on product enhances the customer’s experience and provides extra value.

Offer exclusive bundles and packages.

Another top cross-selling strategy is creating special packages and bundles that combine the principal product with complementary items. Often, the bundle is cheaper than ordering items separately.

One thing I like to do is position the bundle as a special offer available only to customers who buy a particular primary product. I’ve found that this often provides an extra incentive for customers to take advantage of the bundle.

Joel Popoff, CEO of Axwell Wallet, uses Sales Hub’s deal-stage automation to offer deal bundles before the transaction is completed. He asserts that the timing makes all the difference.

“For example, when a consumer adds an aluminum wallet to their cart, we don’t wait until they finish checking out,” he explains. “Instead, HubSpot sends them an email while they’re still browsing, displaying the ‘most popular bundle’ featuring our RFID-blocking cash clip. It feels like a natural decision, not an afterthought. That small change resulted in a 27% increase in AOV.”

To use this strategy effectively, I think it’s key to find the sweet spot in your bundle discount. A research study appearing in the Journal of Risk and Financial Management found that if a discount is only 20%, customers still prefer to buy individual products. If it’s 45% or higher, the preference for bundles is higher than for individual products.

Show products frequently purchased together.

Another great cross-selling strategy, particularly for ecommerce businesses, is to show products that other customers frequently buy alongside the main item.

I know when I see the “Frequently bought together” items on an Amazon page, I naturally hypothesize why it’s the case. If I determine the additional product has relevant value, I’ll probably add it to my purchase as well.

Monitor and analyze performance.

The key to keeping your cross-selling efforts sharp is to constantly monitor and analyze your performance. Personally, I track metrics like conversion rate, average order value, and customer satisfaction. Google Analytics helps me here.

Once I have that data, I analyze it to identify patterns and areas for enhancement. From there, it’s a matter of brainstorming ways to fine-tune my cross-selling tactics and optimize my offers.

Test different strategies.

Even when your current strategies are doing well, there’s room for improvement. Test different offers, messaging, placements, and bundles to see if there are more effective combinations.

Personally, I conduct A/B testing to measure the impact of variations and iterate based on my findings.

Leverage social proof.

Another cross-selling strategy I’ve found to be effective is using social proof to build confidence and trust in my offers. Display ratings, reviews, and testimonials from satisfied customers who have benefited from complementary products.

This increases the perceived quality and usefulness of the product, which will boost your customers’ willingness to accept the cross-sale. The Medill Spiegel Research Center found that displaying reviews can increase a customer’s likelihood of buying a product by up to 270%.

Train and empower your team.

Empower your sales and marketing teams with the knowledge and tools to maximize cross-selling opportunities. This includes providing comprehensive training sessions that focus on understanding customer needs, product knowledge, and effective communication.

Additionally, offer ongoing support and feedback to help your team refine their cross-selling approaches.

When I work with a sales team, I like to give them some autonomy within established guidelines. This allows them to personalize their approach to cross-selling, which I’ve found leads to more authentic interactions with customers, increasing the likelihood of success.

I spoke with two sales leaders who leverage tools in Sales Hub to empower their teams for effective cross-selling.

Fineas Tatar, co-CEO of Viva, says that using the call review feature in Sales Hub “makes it easy to listen to recordings with reps and pinpoint moments where a customer mentions a need that could align with other services we offer. We also use tracked terms to automatically find the calls where specific keywords related to cross-selling opportunities are mentioned and even automatically trigger the workflows that follow.”

He says the tool helps them catch opportunities that might otherwise fall through the cracks while training reps to be more attentive in future calls.

Leon Huang, CEO at RapidDirect, uses HubSpot’s playbooks for his team. The customized playbooks “facilitate cross-selling by turning our sales conversations into guided explorations of our client needs. We offer technically complex products, and the Sales Hub helps our team make sense and simplify so we can spot more cross-selling opportunities as they crop up.

“Instead of a rep simply taking an order for a sheet metal fabrication, for example, the playbook gives them pre-built questions to uncover their related needs. Regardless of knowledge levels, reps can ask follow-up questions like, ‘Have you considered the cost savings of using die casting for high-volume components? There’s real potential to save money here.’”

Huang appreciates Sales Hub’s playbooks because they’re interactive, allowing reps to learn rather than regurgitate templated answers. He says they’ve seen an increase in cross-sells, with a roughly 15% uplift in quotes that include multiple service lines since implementing the playbooks.

How to Cross-Sell Ethically

While cross-selling is a legitimate practice, you still need to approach it with caution. Here are a few guidelines I follow to stay within ethical boundaries.

Focus on the customer and their needs.

When cross-selling, the focus should always be on the customers and their needs. Don’t cross-sell just for the sake of it — make sure that every recommendation genuinely adds value to the customer’s purchase. Natalie Hogg, President and Head of Marketing at Method Q, says:

“If the cross-sell products/services bring additional value and enrich the customer outcomes, then it is less ‘selling’ and more ‘solving.’ The focus should be on what the customer benefits from, not what the salesperson needs to sell.”

Respect customers’ choices.

I’m sure you’ll agree with me: There’s nothing more annoying than a sales rep trying to sell you a product you’re clearly not interested in. Always respect your customers’ decisions when they decline cross-selling offers.

Whenever I’m cross-selling, I look for any verbal and nonverbal cues that indicate disinterest or discomfort. If I start a pitch but realize the customer isn’t receptive, I switch my focus to delivering excellent service and building rapport. This approach paves the way for future cross-selling opportunities based on trust and mutual respect.

Be transparent.

When taking advantage of a cross-selling opportunity, be transparent about the situational value of the product. Don’t say that a product does more than it does. If there are limitations or drawbacks associated with the additional product, mention them and offer workarounds.

As business development manager Yaz Hanley explains, being transparent about the value and costs of additional products “builds trust and helps establish a long-term relationship with the customer, which is far more valuable than a one-time sale.”

Maintain long-term engagement.

Stay in touch with your customers consistently throughout the year, not just when there’s an opportunity to cross-sell. Sienna Quirk, CMO at Invisory, explains the importance of maintaining long-term engagement:

“If your customer only hears from you during renewal season, you’ll come off as shallow and money-driven. If you continue a fairly steady beat of sharing content … you won’t seem as desperate.”

Boost Your Sales With Cross-Selling

Everyone wins when you execute cross-selling effectively. You increase your brand’s bottom line, and your customers get solutions that better address their expectations and ideals.

Sure, it requires a strategic and nuanced approach, but you have all the information needed to start. My top advice for you is: Stay in tune with how your customers feel, learn which features or products will benefit them the most, and calculate the perfect timing to introduce an extra offer.

Oh, and stay patient until your cross-selling efforts thrive.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Now that AI has been mainstream for over two years, you may be wondering: How is artificial intelligence changing sales? I’m here to give you the lowdown on how sales teams are using AI, how it has changed the sales landscape, and how you can use AI in sales, too.

I have mixed feelings about AI — I think it’s equal parts exciting and alarming — and I know many others do, too. But regardless of whether you feel AI is good for sales, your role, or humanity at large, the fact remains: It’s only getting more sophisticated and ubiquitous as time goes on.

So, it serves you, whether you’re a sales rep or leader, to understand how to leverage artificial intelligence in sales. That’s why I’ve compiled this handy guide to help you out on that front. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

• What is AI in sales?
• The Need for Artificial Intelligence in Sales
• The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence and Automation in Sales
• 11 Ways Your Team Can Use AI in Sales

I’ll preface this whole piece by saying that I’m extremely wary of AI.

Ever since the first time it had the audacity to autocorrect one of my texts, I’ve been convinced that it’s going to lead to mass professional displacement and/or humanity’s downfall — but until those things happen, I’ll try to be objective about its benefits and pitfalls.

Frankly, it has plenty of both for salespeople. Let’s take a look at some of them.

AI is further empowering buyers.

We’ve been living in the era of the empowered buyer for quite some time now. Prospects are as well-informed, confident, and independent as they’ve ever been — and AI is only expediting that trend.

Self-service resources for product research (most notably search engines) are already a staple of the modern buyer’s journey, but generative AI is becoming an increasingly prominent resource, shaping how consumers understand the products and services they invest in. Here’s how I see it changing the buyer and seller experience:

• Google is in the process of augmenting its search results with generative AI. This means more people will find the answers to their searches in AI responses.
• AI chatbots are growing in popularity with younger generations for consumer queries. In HubSpot’s State of Consumer Trends Report, 13% of Gen Z respondents cited it as their preferred method for finding answers to their questions online, compared to just 2% of Boomers.
• As AI’s popularity as a resource for product research grows, I think it could potentially undermine the salesperson’s traditional position as the more informed, consultative guide in a sales engagement.

As a salesperson, this shift could be helpful or frustrating, depending on how that research casts your offering. A prospect’s AI-powered research might frame your product or service in a positive light — immediately establishing it as a good fit for a prospect and offering you a leg up. Or AI’s take on your offering might be less than flattering, forcing you to sell from a more compromised position.

Salespeople are concerned about job displacement.

Beyond empowering buyers, AI’s emergence has some wide-reaching implications in sales — some of which can be unnerving. I touched on this at the beginning of this section (a bit tongue-in-cheekily), but AI has led to some real concerns about job displacement in the field.

That trend isn’t exactly specific to sales, but it still has a lot of sales professionals particularly worried. Our 2024 State of AI in Sales survey found that 59% of sales professionals are concerned about AI replacing their jobs in the next few years.

AI can free up salespeople to sell more effectively.

But even with job displacement fears looming, several salespeople still see AI as an invaluable resource in the modern sales landscape — one that supports their professional responsibilities as opposed to undermining them.

That same survey found that 78% of sales professionals believe AI can help them spend more time on the most critical aspects of their role, and 74% agree that AI can help them spend more time on the parts of the job they enjoy most. We also found that 43% of sales reps are now using AI in their jobs (up from 24% in 2023), but sales is still lagging in adoption behind other sectors (consider marketing at 74%).

I think there’s a growing need for salespeople to understand and adopt AI-related resources — let’s take a closer look at the “why” behind it.

The Need for Artificial Intelligence in Sales

Regardless of how you might feel about AI, the fact remains: AI is not going to un-invent itself. It’s already a staple of several fields — especially sales — and its role is only going to grow.

The way I see it, adopting AI-powered resources has transitioned from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have in sales. Our 2024 State of AI in Sales survey found that 76% of sales professionals predicted that most of the software they use will have built-in AI capabilities by 2030.

Notably, 87% say they’ve started using AI because it’s integrated with tools they already use, like the AI in HubSpot’s Sales Hub. This has led to better data analysis, forecasting, and overall sales efficiency.

While being extremely wary of AI, I’ve caved to using it — not because I wanted to, but because I came to understand that my position wasn’t practical. And a lot of salespeople are hitting that point as well.

AI is here to stay, and refusing to adopt it means you run the risk of being left behind. It serves everyone, from BDRs to CSOs, to start taking AI seriously and learning to leverage it, both individually and organizationally.

The “need for artificial intelligence” in sales boils down to this: not letting stubbornness interfere with organizational efficiency and effectiveness. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no real reason to avoid embracing AI in sales.

The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence and Automation in Sales

I’ve come to see that AI does actually offer some very real benefits in sales — and salespeople generally recognize those.

Overall, our 2024 State of AI in Sales survey revealed that AI offers time-saving capabilities, deeper data analysis, and stronger forecasting potential. Here are some other findings and the figures to support them.

AI can help automate tedious tasks to free salespeople up to sell.

• The number one use of AI is to automate manual processes, such as manual data or information entry.
• 64% of sales professionals save one to five hours per week using AI to automate manual tasks.
• 78% say that AI can help them spend more time on the most critical aspects of their role.
• 73% state that AI tools have increased their team’s productivity.

AI can support more thoughtful customer insight.

• 73% of sales professionals agree that AI can help them pull insights from data they otherwise wouldn’t be able to find.
• 65% say AI will help them understand their customers better.
• 52% use AI for data analysis, lead scoring, pipeline analysis, and forecasting.

AI can enhance personalization in sales.

• 69% of sales professionals strongly or somewhat agree that AI can help them personalize the customer experience.
• 61% also agree that AI can make prospecting more personalized.
• 22% actively use AI to personalize their outreach.
• 70% say that using AI increases their response rates.

Obviously, that list of benefits isn’t exhaustive, but you get the idea. AI expedites aspects of sales that many salespeople often find tedious or challenging. It helps structure better-informed, more streamlined sales efforts — even if its presence presents some reasonable, serious concerns.

11 Ways Your Team Can Use AI in Sales

Artificial intelligence in sales can be leveraged in many different ways. However, here are 11 applications that I think can transform your sales process.

Source

1. Access to advanced data enrichment, analysis, and applications.

Sound data enrichment — the process of pulling data into an organization’s database (typically a CRM) from third-party sources — is transitioning from an asset to a necessity for sales orgs. It allows you to create a more holistic, comprehensive, and accurate understanding of your prospects, leads, customers, and processes.

HubSpot’s Sales Hub is a robust customer relationship management (CRM) tool for salespeople and sales teams. I love how this platform offers a comprehensive solution. From forecasting to prospecting and even scheduling meetings, I guarantee you’ll find ways to improve your workflow.

Get started with Sales Hub today.

Sales Hub also leverages artificial intelligence to gather data from your prospects and customers.

Key features include:

• Data capture through the mobile business card scanner. This uses machine learning to pull contact data directly into your CRM from a business card.
• Data enrichment. AI automatically populates your CRM by pulling contact properties from email conversations with prospects, leads, or customers. This data could be phone numbers, geographical locations, job titles, and more.

Another interesting application of AI in data enrichment is Zoho’s DataPrep solution, which analyzes and transforms data into new “types.”

Source

Zoho uses AI to extract “meaning” from existing information in a CRM and uses its findings to create new data points, such as lead sentiments and topics of interest. These “new” data points can then be leveraged across several use cases. That includes lead scoring, lead prioritization, and outreach personalization.

2. Summarize meetings and calls with conversation intelligence.

Salespeople spend lots of time in meetings and on calls with prospects and customers. These are the most valuable touchpoints because you’re in live contact with your clients. After each call, it’s crucial to summarize what was discussed and highlight action items.

AI can now do that for you — with a high degree of accuracy.

Most sophisticated conversation intelligence software leverage some form of artificial intelligence to analyze sales calls and pull key insights.

A great example of one of these tools is HubSpot’s conversation intelligence solution. This platform uses AI to “uncover the why behind sales performance.”

Source

The program identifies key insights, such as trends and objections. This data can then be used to easily pinpoint areas of weakness or underperformance.

Another example of an AI-powered conversation intelligence tool is Chorus. This platform leverages artificial intelligence to recognize the context within a conversation, identify key moments within sales calls, and even note competitor mentions.

Source

3. Improve pipeline management and forecasting.

Although most sales reps follow best practices and periodically run sales forecasts, recent data has found that the majority of sales reps inaccurately forecast their pipeline. However, leveraging artificial intelligence allows you to significantly reduce the probability of inaccuracies in your sales team.

Consider Aviso, an AI-driven forecasting solution, to understand how this works.

Source

Aviso uses AI to analyze data and produce insights into deals and the overall pipeline. Some of these AI applications include:

• WinScore Insights. This is a score that represents the likelihood of successfully closing a deal.
• AI-powered forecasts. This can be used to predict the total number of new deals, renewals, and churn within a fixed period.
• Scenario forecasting. These dynamic forecasts take “what if” scenarios into account.
• AI-powered suggestions. These insights account for historical and current performance.

I think these AI-powered features can be the key differentiator in how well a sales team can build forecasts, draw insights from these forecasts, and make decisions.

4. Create and repurpose sales content.

Generative AI can be super helpful in creating and recycling sales content for a different purpose, a new audience, or a different format. We found that 47% of respondents use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper, and DALL-E to help write sales content or prospect outreach messages. Check out these prompts if you’re interested in exploring this use case.

HubSpot offers a generative AI tool that can help write, expand, or change the tone of your copy across your sales materials.

Source

Another helpful toolkit is Canva’s Magic Studio. It uses AI to help you in the content creation process, from writing to design. One tool I think is especially relevant here is Magic Switch, which can repurpose your content in seconds, whether you need a different format or to share content with a different prospect.

5. Recommend next steps for sales reps with AI-guided selling.

AI can help find and recommend the next best action for sales reps to take with every prospect in their pipeline. Instead of having to keep track of each relationship and every move each prospect makes, AI can take care of that for you. It can nudge you when it sees a prospect is ready for the next step or prompt you to reach out if a prospect is getting cold.

HubSpot’s AI-guided selling software helps you work with the right leads on the right deals at the right time. It helps you prioritize which actions to take with which prospects.

I find it helps sales reps take impactful actions and increases their overall efficiency.

6. Monitor your competitors.

Stop monitoring your competitors manually and set AI to keep an eye on them. It can scrape competitor websites, social media, and news sites for pricing, announcements, new offerings, marketing campaigns, and performance. It will then notify you with relevant updates and provide analyses on how they’re performing.

You will be able to identify emerging trends faster and make strategic decisions sooner. In other words, you’ll have an edge over your competitors with the real-time data AI can provide 24/7.

Source

Crayon, for example, uses AI to summarize any news about your competitors and analyzes changes in your competitive landscape with scores to help you know which are the most important — all delivered to your inbox daily.

7. Enhance lead scoring and qualification.

Knowing which leads are more likely to buy and which prospects fit within your target audience is key to successful selling. In my experience, there’s no point wasting time on leads who are not ready or likely to buy.

This is why lead scoring and qualification are essential tasks — made a thousand times easier (and more accurate) with the help of AI. For instance, HubSpot offers a predictive lead scoring tool that uses artificial intelligence to identify high-quality leads based on predefined criteria and the historical data of clients who’ve closed.

Source

Its AI-guided predictive lead scoring will help you identify and prioritize the best leads through customized scoring metrics based on real-time data. It provides scores based on fit and engagement so you know if they fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) and how much interest they have in your offering.

8. Streamline and optimize sales engagement.

Sales engagement consists of all buyer-seller interactions within the sales process — from initial outreach to customer onboarding. AI can help you leverage data and insights to streamline this process by helping you understand customer needs and pain points.

The top use case for AI in sales is to help representatives understand customer needs, according to Salesforce’s State of Sales report. Your knowledge of each customer’s needs informs every decision you make in customer interactions — from your pitch to your sales content and overall outreach approach.

While consumers can use AI to research potential solutions and companies, sellers have the same power in their hands and can use AI to research prospects who fit their ICP so their initial outreach lands well.

Moreover, you can streamline sales engagement with automation. Most customers follow a similar path with your company, so not every interaction needs to be re-invented each time. I’ve found leveraging automation for customer interaction is a fantastic way to keep customers engaged while saving reps time. And don’t worry. You can automate the personalization as well so customers don’t feel like they’re at the receiving end of rote communication.

A great example of a sales engagement solution that helps you do this is Apollo. By leveraging AI on Apollo or exploring similar alternatives, you can:

• Set up automated outreach messages using pre-defined customization fields.
• Optimize the performance of your outreach by running A/B tests.
• Access AI insights on your outreach campaigns, such as a prospect or lead’s interest level.
• Leverage the “rules engine” to update pre-determined sequences or outreach campaigns once certain criteria are met.

9. Personalize pitches and emails.

Generative AI has become extremely (or unsettlingly) sophisticated and is particularly great with personalizing customer interactions. I think it can be especially helpful in personalizing pitches and emails. I spoke with two experts who shared their personalization use cases.

Gregory Rozdeba, CEO of Dundas Life, claims that leveraging generative AI in InsurTech has been pivotal. Rozdeba notes that the team uses AI to personalize sales pitches and proposals, making every interaction with prospects feel tailor-made.

“By analyzing data on customer preferences and behaviors, AI helps us predict needs, enabling preemptive solution offerings. This not only increases engagement but also positions us as attentive and proactive. Moreover, AI-driven insights into market trends ensure our strategies remain agile, keeping us ahead in a competitive landscape,” Rozdeba says.

Generative AI’s ability to support personalization extends beyond personalizing pitches — it can also assist with email outreach.

Pat Schirripa, CEO of People 2U, says, “Forget robots taking sales rep jobs! Generative AI is a game-changer for our team. We use it to craft personalized email outreach that grabs attention.”

Schirripa shares that AI analyzes customer data and suggests email content tailored to each lead’s needs. That saves reps tons of time with personalized messages, making them more likely to resonate.

“It’s like having a super-powered research assistant for each salesperson, freeing them up to focus on building relationships and closing deals,” Schirripa says.

10. Refine sales scripts.

Sales teams can also leverage generative AI as a resource for creating and iterating upon more thoughtful, effective sales scripts.

Marco Genaro Palma, freelance CMO and SEO consultant at GenaroPalma.com, says, “One creative method I’ve found really helpful for boosting our sales effectiveness involves starting with a basic sales script and then letting generative AI tools tweak and improve it as we go.”

Palma notes that the AI can respond to real-time feedback, making changes to ensure sales pitches stay sharp and engaging.

However, Palma caveats, “Despite the advancements in technology, the personal touch in sales is still key, but these AI-enhanced scripts help us keep our approach fresh and effective.”

11. Train your employees with AI coaching.

AI can help new reps get trained and on the floor 42% faster than traditional training. Think of AI as a sales coach who can be available all the time.

Tools like Quantified create avatars for simulated sales calls for reps to practice. Afterward, Quantified will provide feedback on what the rep did well and where they can improve. Roleplay is one of the most effective methods for training sales reps, yet many teams find they don’t have time (or feel awkward) roleplaying with one another.

Quantified enables trainees to get the roleplay they need along with personalized coaching. Finally, Quantified trains the AI avatars on your messaging and product to provide a custom rubric with relevant, accurate feedback.

If you don’t want to hand over all coaching responsibilities to AI, Gong’s conversation intelligence can help by listening in on live sales conversations. It delivers data and insights on reps’ strengths and weaknesses to provide personalized and pointed coaching.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence Based on Your Sales Needs

There’s no single, one-size-fits-all way to leverage artificial intelligence that will work for every sales org by default. Sales processes vary, so it’s only fitting that the AI tools and tactics different teams use would vary as well.

With that said, if you’d like to become more deliberate about incorporating AI into your sales process, I think figuring out which aspects of your process can be simplified or optimized is a good place to start.

From there, it’s about identifying the tools that suit your unique needs.

Last week, I spent nearly two hours trying to schedule a single meeting with team members across three time zones. After countless back-and-forth emails and calendar checks, I finally landed on a time that worked — only to have someone realize they had a conflict.

Finding a meeting time that works for everyone is a universal challenge that even the most organized professionals face daily. As someone who coordinates dozens of weekly meetings with prospects, clients, and colleagues, I’ve learned that scheduling can eat up hours of productive time without the right approach — and the right meeting scheduling tools.

In this comprehensive guide, I’ll share the exact strategies and tools I use to find a meeting time that works for everyone. Spoiler: I really like HubSpot’s free meeting scheduler tool.

Table of Contents

• Tips for Finding a Meeting Time That Works for Everyone
• Tools to Find a Time to Meet
• How to Find a Meeting Time That Works for Everyone
• Find a Meeting Time With Google Calendar

How to Find a Meeting Time That Works for Everyone

1. Use a meeting scheduling tool.

As someone who schedules 5+ meetings per week with clients across multiple time zones, I‘ve learned that automated scheduling tools are non-negotiable. After trying nearly every option on the market, I’ve found that meeting scheduling software cuts my coordination time from 15-20 minutes per meeting to just 2-3 minutes.

I personally use HubSpot’s free meeting scheduler for most of my meetings. Here’s my exact process:

• I set my availability preferences once (9 AM – 5 PM EST; no meetings on Fridays).
• I create different meeting types (30-min intro calls, 60-min deep dives).
• I send my booking link to the attendees.
• They pick a time that works for them.
• The meeting automatically appears on both of our calendars.

What I love about this approach: It eliminates the back-and-forth emails completely. Plus, it automatically handles time zone conversions, which saved me from an embarrassing situation last month when I almost scheduled a 3 AM call with a client in Singapore.

Pro tip: I always customize my booking link settings for different types of meetings. For example, I add buffer time between sales calls to prepare, but keep my internal team meetings back-to-back to maximize efficiency.

2. Offer some multiple meeting time options via an email thread.

I‘ll be honest — I avoided email scheduling until last month when I had to coordinate with a client who preferred direct email communication for their executive team. While I’m a huge advocate for scheduling tools, I’ve learned that some senior executives and VIPs still prefer the personal touch of direct email coordination.

Here’s what I learned works best:

• Offer three time slots within the next five business days.
• Include time zones for each option.
• Give a clear deadline for responses.

Here’s my tested email template below.

Hi [Name],

I’d love to connect about [specific topic]. Would any of these times work for you?

• Tuesday, Jan. 23 at 10 AM EST / 3 PM GMT
• Wednesday, Jan. 24 at 2 PM EST / 7 PM GMT
• Thursday, Jan. 25 at 11 AM EST / 4 PM GMT

Please let me know by end of day Monday which time works best, or if you need additional options.

Best,

[Name]

Pro tip: I always add a calendar reminder to follow up if I don’t hear back within 24 hours. This simple step has increased my response rate by 40%.

What I’ve learned to avoid: Sending more than three options or asking an open-ended “When are you free?” These approaches typically double the number of emails needed to finalize a time.

3. Leverage a meeting poll resource.

When I‘m coordinating meetings with more than three people, I’ve found that polling tools like Doodle are a lifesaver. Last quarter, I needed to schedule a quarterly planning session with team members across three departments. Instead of dealing with 15+ reply-all emails, I created a poll that aligned us in under an hour.

Here’s how this may look on Doodle:

Source

What I’ve found works best:

• Share no more than 5-6 time slots.
• Set a clear poll deadline (I usually give 24-48 hours).
• Include a note about the meeting length and any prep work needed.

I always block off the proposed times on my calendar while the poll is active. Nothing’s worse than restarting the process because your top-voted time slot is no longer available!

Best for:

• Team meetings with 4+ people.
• Recurring meetings that need to be rescheduled.
• Cross-departmental coordination.
• Event planning with external stakeholders.

4. Find common free time on Google Calendar.

I occasionally manage a remote team across multiple time zones, so I‘ve become a power user of Google Calendar’s “Find a Time” feature. This tool has become my secret weapon for internal meetings, saving me hours each month in coordination time. (Psst: More instructions on this later on!)

What I love about this method:

• You can see everyone’s availability in a single view.
• It automatically accounts for time zones.
• You can quickly spot common free times.
• It respects people’s working hours and busy/free settings.

Pro tip: I‘ve found the most success using the “week” view rather than “day” view when scheduling team meetings. It gives me a broader picture of everyone’s availability and helps me spot patterns (like when team members typically block focus time).

Best practices I’ve learned:

• Always check the time zone indicator for each participant.
• Look for at least 15 minutes of buffer on either side of the meeting.
• Double-check against holidays in different regions.
• Consider setting up working hours in your calendar to make scheduling even easier.

Source

5. Record a meeting or async video and send it to stakeholders who couldn’t make it.

After struggling to find meeting times that worked for our APAC team members, I’ve become a huge advocate for async video recordings. I estimate this approach saves our team about 10 hours per month in coordination time, while ensuring everyone stays informed.

My async video workflow:

• Record a 5-10 minute video covering key points.
• Add timestamps in the description for easy navigation.
• Share the recording with a brief written summary.
• Set a clear deadline for questions or feedback.

What I’ve found most effective:

• Keep videos under 10 minutes (engagement drops significantly after that).
• Start with the most important information.
• Use screen sharing for visual demonstrations.
• Enable video playback speed options.

Best for:

• Status updates
• Product demonstrations
• Training sessions
• Project kickoffs
• Team announcements

Pro tip: I use Loom for most recordings because it automatically generates transcripts and allows viewers to leave time-stamped comments. This has increased our team’s engagement with async updates by roughly 60%.

Here’s what that can look like:

Source

6. Book a recurring meeting time.

After years of scheduling headaches, I’ve found that recurring meetings are the ultimate “set it and forget it” solution. When I took over managing our content team last year, I replaced ad hoc meetings with strategic recurring slots, reducing our scheduling-related emails.

My framework for recurring meetings:

• Weekly. Team standups and 1:1s.
• Bi-weekly. Project check-ins and sprint planning.
• Monthly. All-hands and strategy reviews.
• Quarterly. Planning sessions and reviews.

Pro tip: I always schedule recurring meetings for 25 or 50 minutes instead of 30 or 60. This built-in buffer prevents back-to-back meeting fatigue and gives everyone time to prepare for their next call.

What I’ve learned works best:

• Pick a consistent day and time (e.g., “Marketing Sync every Tuesday at 10 AM”).
• Set clear cancellation policies (we cancel if 50% of key stakeholders can’t attend).
• Review and adjust recurring meetings quarterly.
• Include a standard agenda template in the recurring invite.

After coordinating hundreds of meetings across multiple time zones, I’ve developed a reliable system that works consistently. Here are my top tips, refined through real-world experience:

1. Provide meeting details.

I‘ve learned that clear meeting details are essential — nobody likes that awkward moment where everyone spends the first few minutes figuring out the meeting’s purpose.

I always include a quick objective statement in the invitation to avoid confusion and get things moving efficiently. For example, I might write: “During this meeting, we’re going to cover key adjustments in our tech stack we’re making in Q1 — specifically our new CRM and conversation intelligence platform.”

Pro tip: I keep a common meeting objective template in my notes for quick reference. This saves time while ensuring I maintain consistency in how I communicate meeting purposes.

2. Prepare an agenda.

As 13-time World Series champion Yogi Berra wisely said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” I’ve found this especially true in business meetings — without a clear agenda, even the most promising meeting can go off track.

We all know tangents happen, but you need a framework that allows you to bring things back on topic when the conversation starts to go off the rails. It‘s the best way to respect everyone’s time, avoid irrelevant talking points, and remind everyone of the most pressing matters at hand.

Pro tip: I create my agendas with clear time allocations for each topic. For a 30-minute meeting, I typically reserve five minutes for updates, 20 minutes for core discussion, and five minutes for next steps.

Every meeting should have a purpose, and a thoughtfully constructed agenda is the best way to clearly outline what that looks like. Agendas also let you dictate the preferred pace of your meeting — you can allocate certain amounts of time for specific action items, ensuring that things stay buttoned-up and timely.

3. Communicate value.

Every meeting you schedule needs to have a purpose — otherwise, you‘re just wasting everyone’s time. I always ask myself, “What will the other stakeholders get out of this?” before sending any calendar invite. If I can’t identify clear value, I know the meeting should probably be an email.

Before scheduling, I make sure I can articulate the specific outcome we‘re working toward, whether it’s:

• Revealing a new process.
• Developing a strategy.
• Welcoming a new team member.
• Making a key decision.

Pro tip: I include a clear “Meeting Outcome” section in my invites. For example: “Outcome: By the end of this meeting, we’ll have our Q1 content calendar finalized and responsibilities assigned.”

Regardless of what the “why” behind a meeting might be, make sure it‘s actually worth everyone’s time. I’ve learned the hard way that being known as the person who calls unnecessary meetings can damage team relationships and effectiveness.

4. Determine the meeting type.

Will the meeting be a conference call, a video chat, or in-person? I’ve found that having this information clearly stated in the invite prevents confusion and helps everyone prepare appropriately.

What I include in every invite:

• Meeting format (video, phone, or in-person).
• Connection details (video link or dial-in number).
• Location details (conference room or virtual meeting link).

If you’re using Google Calendar, you can easily add a video link to the meeting by pressing the “Add Google Meet video conferencing” button. I also regularly use other platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which integrate smoothly with Google Calendar.

Pro tip: For in-person meetings, I always double-check room availability and include the floor number or room location in the invite. This small detail has saved countless minutes of people wandering around looking for the right space.

5. Consider all time zones.

Working with global teams has taught me the importance of time zone coordination. I learned this lesson after accidentally scheduling an 11 PM meeting for our Australian team members. Now, I rely on a combination of tools to get it right:

• Google Calendar’s built-in time zone display.
• Slack’s local time indicators.
• My go-to time zone converter for complex scheduling.

Pro tip: I maintain a simple document listing my regular collaborators’ time zones and preferred meeting hours. For example, I know our APAC team prefers early morning EST meetings, which align well with their afternoon hours.

Source

6. Schedule the meeting in advance.

Fun fact: Exactly zero people on planet Earth like being notified of a meeting without enough time to prepare for or plan around it — I learned this lesson quickly after seeing the panicked responses to my same-day meeting requests when I first started managing projects.

Here are my advance scheduling guidelines:

• Regular team meetings – At least 1 week’s notice.
• Strategic planning sessions – 2-3 weeks’ notice.
• Client presentations – Minimum 3-5 business days.
• Quick updates – 24 hours when possible.

Pro tip: I’ve found that sending a meeting invite with a draft agenda at least 48 hours in advance increases participation and leads to more thoughtful discussion points from attendees.

That‘s not just for their benefit — if you give meeting attendees preparation time, they’ll likely make more meaningful contributions and ask better questions. I always include any pre-reading materials in the initial invite to give everyone time to review.

7. Block off “no meeting” time on your calendar.

If you‘re the one getting invited to a ton of meetings, you’ll find it helpful to block time off of your calendar where meetings can‘t be scheduled. I’ve made this a non-negotiable part of my week, blocking off my most productive morning hours (9-11 AM) for focused work.

Some organizations even have weekly no-meeting days to provide uninterrupted focus time and reduce fatigue. At HubSpot, we have “No Internal Meeting Fridays” to combat burnout, which I’ve found dramatically improves my end-of-week productivity.

Pro tip: I color-code my blocked time differently from regular meetings, making it easier to spot my dedicated focus periods at a glance. This visual cue helps me protect these time blocks more effectively.

8. Don’t schedule a meeting when an email will do.

We‘ve all heard the phrase, “This meeting could’ve been an email,” and I’ve made it my mission to prevent my team from saying this about my meetings. Before scheduling any meeting, I ask myself: “Could I communicate this effectively in writing?”

When I choose email over meetings:

• Sharing status updates.
• Distributing reports or metrics.
• Providing straightforward instructions.
• Announcing minor changes.

Pro tip: When I need to explain something visually but don’t need real-time discussion, I use Loom to record a quick video walkthrough. This approach cut our team’s meeting time while maintaining clear communication.

After testing dozens of scheduling tools over the years, here are the ones I consistently recommend to my team and clients. Each has unique strengths for different scheduling scenarios.

1. HubSpot Meetings Tool

Price: Free

HubSpot’s free meeting scheduler connects with your calendar to automate meeting scheduling. Sales teams can create booking links for prospects, manage team availability, and track all scheduling activity in the CRM.

Start using HubSpot’s Meeting Tool

The meetings tool integrates directly with the free CRM to manage contact details and see who has booked a meeting with you.

What I love about it:

• Seamless integration with both Google Calendar and Office 365.
• Group scheduling capabilities for team coordination.
• Round-robin meeting distribution for sales teams.
• Direct integration with HubSpot CRM.
• Automated booking confirmation emails.
• Custom meeting duration options.
• Meeting buffer time settings.

Best for: Sales teams who need to coordinate multiple calendars and want CRM integration. I use this daily for client meetings and find the automatic availability sync particularly reliable.

Pro tip: Set up different meeting types with custom questions to gather information before the meeting. I’ve found this reduces follow-up emails by about 40%.

2. Doodle

Price: Free for individuals, $14.95/month per user (Pro), $19.95/month per user (Team)

Doodle is a polling tool designed specifically for finding meeting times. The host of the meeting suggests possible times for the meetings and sends the poll to the meeting participants. From there, they’ll enter their availability, and the meeting host selects the best meeting date and time based on the responses.

Doodle also has booking pages that allow you to send your availability to clients and have them book time on your calendar based on your shared availability. This feature also allows you to limit the amount of meetings that people can add to your calendar, block off times you don’t want booked, and send out meeting reminders to prevent no-shows.

Source

What I love about it:

• Simple, intuitive polling interface.
• Calendar integration for automatic availability checks.
• Customizable booking pages.
• Built-in reminder system.

Doodle has become my go-to tool for coordinating large group meetings. The polling feature is straightforward. I suggest possible times, participants indicate their availability, and I can quickly spot the best time slot for everyone.

Best for: Team meetings and events with multiple participants. I primarily use it for monthly all-hands meetings with 20+ attendees across departments.

Pro tip: I’ve found that limiting polls to 3-4 time options gets faster responses than offering too many choices. Plus, the booking page feature helps me control my calendar by setting buffer times between meetings.

3. NeedToMeet

Price: Free (Standard), $12/year/user (Advanced), $19/year/user (Premium)

NeedToMeet is a budget-friendly polling tool that doesn’t require participants to create accounts. Ideal for quick, simple scheduling across organizations.

Source

What I love about it:

• Simple, no-registration-required polling.
• Custom URLs for each meeting.
• Consolidated comment viewing.
• Real-time email notifications.

Best for: Teams looking for a straightforward, cost-effective polling solution without requiring participants to create accounts.

Pro tip: The free version works well for basic scheduling needs, while the Premium tier adds features like calendar integration and recurring meetings that benefit regular users.

4. Notta (formerly Airgram)

Price: Free plan available; Pro plans start at $14.99/month

Here’s something exciting: Airgram and Notta merged in late 2024 to solve a common frustration — switching between different apps to schedule, record, and document meetings.

The result? A single platform that handles everything from finding the perfect meeting time to creating detailed, AI-powered summaries of your conversations.

What makes this tool particularly interesting is how it learns from your meeting habits. As you use it, the AI gets better at suggesting meeting times, identifying key discussion points, and helping you stay organized.

For teams drowning in meeting coordination and documentation, this combination of smart scheduling and automatic note-taking is a game-changer.

Source

What I love about it:

• Advanced AI transcription and summarization.
• Calendar integration with Google and Outlook.
• Meeting scheduling and recording in one platform.
• Real-time collaborative note-taking.

Best for: Teams who want an all-in-one solution for scheduling, recording, and documenting meetings. Particularly valuable for remote teams who need to maintain detailed meeting records.

Pro tip: The AI-powered meeting summaries can help determine if a follow-up meeting is necessary, potentially reducing unnecessary scheduling.

5. SurveyMonkey

Price: $30/user/month (Team Advantage), $92/user/month (Team Premier), Contact for details (Enterprise)

With SurveyMonkey, you can choose a meeting date and time, create a poll, and send the link to the poll to meeting participants via email. The poll can also be embedded on a website or Facebook page to reach even more people. If they don’t respond to the poll within a certain timeframe, SurveyMonkey will send a reminder email.

SurveyMonkey can help you plan out team schedules, too. For instance, if you manage a large team with multiple shifts, creating a scheduling poll can help you view everyone’s availability all in one place.

Source

What I love about it:

• Versatile polling capabilities beyond just scheduling.
• Website and social media poll embedding.
• Automated reminder system.
• Advanced analytics for response tracking.

Best for: Large organizations managing complex schedules, especially teams with shift workers or multiple departments needing coordination.

Pro tip: The ability to embed polls on internal websites or intranets makes it particularly effective for company-wide event planning or training session scheduling.

6. Calendly

Price: Free (Basic), $12/seat/month (Standard), $20/seat/month (Teams), and Enterprise starts at $15K/year

Calendly is a meeting scheduling tool that connects to your calendar. It even lets you set your availability and send a meeting link to contacts. Meeting invitees can book a meeting at a time that’s convenient for them and that time is automatically scheduled on your calendar.

Calendly’s meeting poll feature helps you find the best time for team meetings. Plus, the workflows feature allows you to automate routine communications, like event reminders and follow-up meetings.

Source

What I love about it:

• Clean, professional booking interface.
• Automated workflows for reminders and follow-ups.
• Multiple meeting type configurations.
• Robust calendar integration options.

I use Calendly to manage my freelance client meetings, and it’s been a game-changer for professional scheduling. The automated reminders and follow-ups keep everything organized without the back-and-forth emails.

Best for: Freelancers, consultants, and small businesses who want to present a professional scheduling experience to clients.

Pro tip: Create different meeting types for initial consultations versus project check-ins, each with its own duration and buffer times, to better manage your freelance workflow.

Find a Meeting Time With Google Calendar

Want to meet with one person or multiple people? You can find a time that works for everyone using Google Calendar. Here’s how.

1. Navigate to Google Calendar.

Start out by logging into your Google Calendar account.

Pro tip: Make sure you‘re using the Google Workspace account associated with your organization to see your colleagues’ calendars.

2. Create a new event or edit an existing event.

To create a new event, click Create and a pop-up will appear. Then click the More options button to add your meeting details.

To edit an existing event, click on the event you want to update, and select the pencil icon to edit it.

Pro tip: Use keyboard shortcuts (press Shift + ? to see them all) to speed up your calendar management.

3. Add guests to the invite.

In the Guests field, enter email addresses for all participants. Google Calendar will automatically check their availability as you add them.

Best practice: Add required attendees first, then optional ones. This helps prioritize scheduling around key participants’ availability.

4. Click the “Find a Time” tab.

Select the Find a Time tab at the top of your event details. This view shows everyone’s availability in a convenient grid format.

Key features to use:

• Toggle between Day and Week views for different planning perspectives.
• Look for white spaces that indicate mutual availability.
• Check the time zone indicator for each participant.
• Use the scheduling grid to visualize conflicts.

5. Select a time.

Click on an available time slot in the grid to select it. The time will automatically populate in your event details. Click Save to send the invitation to all participants.

Pro tip: Before finalizing, check for adjacent meetings and consider adding buffer time to prevent back-to-back scheduling.

Schedule Meetings Hassle-Free

Finding the perfect meeting time for everyone doesn’t have to be a headache. I hope you’re convinced that with the right combination of tools and strategies, you can speed up your scheduling process and focus on what really matters: productive conversations that move projects forward.

Key takeaways to remember:

• Choose the right scheduling tool for your specific needs.
• Always consider time zones and participant preferences.
• Use clear agendas and meeting objectives.
• Respect everyone’s time with proper advance notice.
• When in doubt, ask yourself if it really needs to be a meeting.

Remember: The goal isn‘t just to find a time that works — it’s to create the conditions for effective collaboration and communication.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When it comes to nailing a sales presentation, remember to follow this basic rule: Care about what your customer cares about.

Keeping this at the forefront is what’s helped Doug Spencer, a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Bold Xchange, an online gifting software tool, secure roughly $1 million in outside capital. Some of his proudest moments include securing funding after only one conversation.

“With sales, you’ve got to know their language,” says Spencer, “so that you can speak to what they’re looking for.”

Whether it’s with a prospective investor, customer, or partner, understanding the needs and requirements of the person you’re selling to (plus, how you’re uniquely able to serve these needs) is the key to closing a deal.

Table of Contents

• What is a sales presentation?
• Best Practices for Planning a Sales Presentation
• Essential Steps to Help You Practice Your Presentation
• Tips for Delivering Your Sales Presentations

What is a sales presentation?

Think of a sales presentation as the ultimate pitching opportunity. It’s your chance to prove to your potential customer that your service or product is worthy of investment. It should include granular detail around the specific problem you’re aiming to solve, often with the support of visuals, case studies, and other relevant data.

Also, a sales presentation isn’t complete without a value proposition: Make sure you’re clear on what you’re offering, why you’re the right person to offer it, and exactly how you plan to execute.

Best Practices for Planning a Sales Presentation

1. Study your potential client and the industry.

I know internet stalking isn’t typically condoned, but when you’re planning your sales presentation, a deep level of research is crucial.

“The research step is really, really important, because then [the customer] is going to be like, ‘Hey, this person knows me,’” says Spencer. Your prospective client also wants to see that you have an understanding of the respective industry as a whole.

In addition to knowing the ins and outs of their company’s leadership and employees, “get acquainted with educating yourself about current trends, recent news, and your company’s competitors,” adds Erica Franklin, founder of EVF Consulting and global director of dales for Sistas In Sales.

2. Tell a story.

“Storytelling is winning,” says Franklin. While only 5% of people remember statistics during a presentation, 63% remember stories.

One of the best ways to storytell in a presentation is to incorporate case studies and real-world examples — especially ones that involve use of your product.

“I enjoy seeing presentations from companies that use their own products to convince customers to purchase those same products, like Monday.com and Gong.io,” says Franklin. “They are literally able to show you repeatedly why their products are successful.”

Storytelling is also what helped Franklin land a repeat client who was mulling over whether or not to renew the service. “Instead of accepting their hesitation, I crafted a renewal and upsell proposal that (I believe) shifted their perspective — not just on the current products but also on the future possibilities,” says Franklin.

She did this by showcasing the success of partnership via strategic storytelling and hypothetically presenting what growth would look like if they remained a customer. “They ended up not only renewing but also expanding their partnership,” shares Franklin.

3. Do the leg work — if you can.

Especially if your budget is tight, Spencer suggests putting together the presentation yourself rather than paying someone else to do it, and better allocate those funds to serve a business need elsewhere. It’s also how you get closest to the material you’ll be presenting.

Consider free resources from platforms like Canva, Keynote, Google Slides, and PowerPoint, many of which offer customizable templates.

AI, when used responsibly, can also be a help reviewing and formatting aid. Gamma is a new AI-powered platform on the market that I think is worth testing out.

4. Don’t go too text-heavy.

Forty percent of people prefer non-written visual forms of communication, so charts, graphics and other imagery are ideal.

Videos are even better. Plus, the more copy you add to your slides, the more inclined you’re going to be to read directly from the presentation. Text can be a crutch. Visuals are more of a guide. Likewise, “the more people are trying to read, the less they’re listening,” says Spencer.

Another benefit of non-wordy slides is that they also make for a more concise presentation. When it comes to ideal length, Franklin says, “Depending on the product, I would say 20-30 minutes, leaving a few minutes for discussion, so 45 minutes max.”

5. Remove the excess.

Another rule of thumb? Each slide should convey exactly one point, says Spencer. That way you’re staying on track and keeping the customer engaged.

He suggests thinking of it like this: “What are the chapters in my story?” Each slide should be a “chapter.” You don’t want to muddle your chapters with excess, so take note of any information that’s not pertinent. If it’s not adding to the story, it probably doesn’t need to be included. If it must stay, include it as an add-on or reference point, like a book’s appendix or bibliography, that you don’t necessarily need to present.

Essential Steps to Help You Practice Your Presentation

1. Repetition is key.

The more you practice, the more nuances you’re able to consider — and that will make your presentation more interesting.

Repeated practice will also prepare you to be unfazed by any curve balls thrown at you the day of. The more you know your stuff, the less you’ll need to rely on a script. You’re able to deliver a more natural presentation, and I think it makes you more confident when you need to improvise as well.

2. Practice with someone foreign to the project

When you’re the closest to the concept, it’s easy to miss what requires more explanation. Try practicing on someone who has zero or very minimal knowledge of what’s being presented. This was, you can ensure your pitch is clear and thorough no matter who’s on the receiving end.

“You always want to assume that the person you‘re presenting to doesn’t have the level of detail that you have,” says Spencer. “And that they’re not an expert, because often they’re not.”

Tips for Delivering Your Sales Presentations

1. Approach it like a conversation.

A sales presentation doesn’t have to feel like that boring lecture every student dreaded attending. Your client wants to learn, but they also want to feel included and engaged.

“Sales presentations have become much more conversational and less scripted or tied to a specific selling process,” says Franklin.

“While selling methodologies are great, sometimes just having real conversations about what is going on and what is needed wins. Trust-building is the key to closing deals.”

Building trust also means approaching the presentations like there’s an already-established partnership. Successful sales reps are 10 times more likely to use collaborative words like “us,” “we,” and “our.”

2. Allow the customer to speak.

Part of engaging your customer means allowing them to participate. Encouraging them to weigh in on the conversation positions you to address anything you may have missed, and you can sometimes drive your point home even further.

Franklin suggests asking your potential client open-ended questions like, “What does success look like for you?” or “What other products have you used in the market to address your pain points?”

3. Make sure your potential customer has a copy of the deck.

While the hope is that your presentation is clear — and that your prospective customer is taking notes — it’s important that they have reference points to refer back to later while deliberating.

“Presentations (even shorter versions) are helpful to your contacts after the meeting as they usually need something tangible and concise to help them sell internally,” says Franklin.

Send them an email with your slides before or after the meeting.

4. Wrap up with clarity around numbers and next steps.

Numbers are important. Always be clear on what yours are.

By the end of the presentation, your client should know exactly what you’re asking for and what the next steps are, should they choose to move forward.

Spencer says it’s important to be confident in the number you’re presenting. You should have already done your homework, so “don’t negotiate against yourself,” he says, and be sure to give your potential client room to think.

Equally as important, he adds: “Remember that you’re going to hear no.” Sometimes, it’s a firm no (which happens to the best of us); sometimes, that “no” means not right now, or not in this way. After all, 83% of potential clients won’t initiate a sale for 3-12 months.

“If they cannot buy everything right now, make a long-term plan,” says Franklin. Sometimes it’s about playing the relationship game.

Ready To Present

While sales presentations generally aren’t generally a rep’s favorite part of the job, the best sales reps know that, when done right, sales presentations are a high-earning skill.

After I spent time talking with experts for this post and reviewing their tips and techniques, the one that stands out the most for me is: practice. It might not prepare you for every scenario, but it’ll prepare you for most of them. Best of all, you’ll be confident in your talking points — and your product. There’s no better way to go into a sales presentation.

I hate to break it to you, but having a great product or service alone is not enough to succeed in today’s marketplace. Sales teams need the right tools, content, and data to talk to customers and close deals faster. That’s where sales enablement platforms help.

I’ve worked with businesses that spend thousands on software that sales teams end up barely using. Other tools? They become an indispensable part of the workflow — automating tedious tasks, surfacing key insights, and helping reps hit quota.

If you want to make your sales process easier, this guide will introduce you to five of the best sales enablement platforms in 2025. These tools help teams work better, close more sales, and make more money. Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

• What is a sales enablement platform?
• What do sales enablement platforms do?
• Revenue Enablement vs. Sales Enablement
• 5 Best Sales Enablement Platforms
• My Favorite Picks for Sales Enablement

According to HubSpot’s Sales Trends report, 52% of sales pros use sales enablement content and 79% of them say it’s important to making a sale.

What do sales enablement platforms do?

Sales enablement platforms can help sales teams in many ways — from content to analytics and more.

1. Content Management. Keeping all sales materials (like slides, brochures, and case studies) in one easy-to-find place.
2. Analytics & Reporting. Showing which sales content works best so teams can make better choices.
3. Training & Coaching. Providing guides, videos, and coaching to help sales reps improve.
4. CRM Integration & Automation. Automating follow-ups and keeping track of customers in one system.

Expert insight: According to Daria Shevchenko, CMO at Snov.io, data is one of the biggest reasons businesses use these tools. “Nowadays, all the decisions businesses make need to be based on evidence if they want to avoid losing time, money, and effort on things that don’t perform well,” she says.

“These platforms help track the performance of campaigns and content, which becomes useful in the future when you need to make budget allocation decisions. For example, if you see that one channel is bringing in good numbers, you would allocate a bigger chunk of the budget on it in the next quarter.”

For a deeper dive into how to apply these features, check out HubSpot’s Sales Enablement Training Workbook.

AI Integration and Sales Enablement

The elephant in any room when discussing software is of course… What is the impact of AI in this area? Sales enablement is no different.

According to several of the sales experts I spoke with, AI integration is one of the most powerful features that several sales enablement platforms offer — but still it’s not something talked about enough.

“One very important, almost ignored aspect involves AI integration. Most sales enablement tools, HubSpot included, have AI-driven features that make automatic recommendations of content to sales representatives based on lead behavior,” says Reilly James Renwick, CMO at Pragmatic Mortgage Lending.

“This personalization at scale ensures that reps are always using the most relevant materials, which can be a huge time-saver. In addition, AI keeps tabs on buyer intent and engagement for sales teams so reps can strike when a lead is in the perfect stage of their journey. It’s a game-changer for boosting productivity and upping sales.”

Revenue Enablement vs. Sales Enablement

While sales enablement tools focus on helping sales teams close deals, revenue enablement takes a broader approach.

• Sales enablement supports sales teams specifically by providing tools, content, and automation to improve close rates.
• Revenue enablement aligns sales, marketing, and customer success teams to optimize the entire revenue cycle.

As Renwick puts it, “If enablement as such focuses mainly on equipping a sales team with content and tools to actually close deals, then revenue enablement extends that support to the whole process of creating revenue, inclusive of marketing and customer success.

“Revenue enablement focuses on selling, marketing, and customer success alignment with seamless communication at each touchpoint in the Customer Life Cycle with consistent messaging across.”

Now, let’s dive into the top sales enablement platforms.

5 Best Sales Enablement Platforms

Instead of just listing features, I went straight to the source — real sales reps — to get their take on which sales enablement platforms actually make a difference.

1. HubSpot

Best for: Seamless Sales & Marketing Alignment

HubSpot Sales Hub is more than just a CRM — it’s an all-in-one AI-powered sales enablement platform designed to help teams work smarter, not harder. What makes HubSpot stand out is its seamless integration of marketing, sales, and automation, allowing businesses to track leads, automate follow-ups, and personalize outreach all in one place.

Source

Sales reps love that they can see a prospect’s entire engagement history, including what emails they’ve opened, what pages they’ve visited, and what content they’ve engaged with.

Core features:

• CRM with built-in sales enablement tools.
• AI-powered content recommendations.
• Automated follow-ups based on customer behavior.
• Deep analytics and personalized dashboards.
• Easy to use — intuitive UI and minimal setup time.

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $20 per seat/month (Starter) and go up to $150 per seat/month (Enterprise).

What I like: HubSpot’s integration between sales and marketing makes it a powerhouse for tracking lead behavior and personalizing outreach. It’s also extremely easy to use — which is why it’s a favorite for me.

Shevchenko tells me her favorite feature of HubSpot is its in-depth analytics, like the ability to track conversions. These allowed her to visualize the data with personalized dashboards with the metrics that mattered most.

2. Highspot

Best for: Sales Content Management

Highspot is a content-first sales enablement platform that helps teams create engaging, interactive sales materials. If your team struggles with finding the right content at the right time, Highspot is a game-changer. It centralizes all sales materials — presentations, case studies, one-pagers — so reps don’t have to waste time hunting for them.

Here’s a look at their approach to sales enablement.

Source

Core features:

• All-in-one GTM enablement platform that makes it easy for reps.
• AI-driven recommendations help reps pick the best content for each prospect.
• Interactive sales presentations with real-time tracking.
• Content analytics for sales engagement.
• Simple drag-and-drop editor for customization.

Pricing: Custom pricing based on team size. (Side note: I don’t *love* how complicated it is to find pricing information.) According to arrows.to, however, the average contract value for the platform is more than $90,000.

Source

What I like: Highspot is perfect for teams that rely heavily on sales content — it makes delivering polished, interactive sales materials effortless.

Renwick tells me that Highspot has helped his company improve sales productivity. “Highspot allowed our team to get to the right content for each prospect and present it in record time. Not only did this save hours for reps, but it also yielded higher engagement and a 15.47% increase in conversions,” he said.

3. Zendesk

Best for: Customer-Centric Sales Teams

If your business relies on great customer support, Zendesk Sell ties sales and support together seamlessly. It’s an ideal choice if you need a CRM that integrates with customer service tools.

Source

Core features:

• AI-driven sales automation.
• Omnichannel sales tracking (email, phone, chat, social).
• Seamless CRM and customer support integration.

Pricing: Starts at $19 per user/month.

Source

What I like: The support-to-sales handoff is seamless, ensuring no customer falls through the cracks.

4. Outreach

Best for: Sales Automation & Email Sequences

Source

Outreach is built for sales automation at scale. If your team sends lots of cold outreach emails, this platform optimizes sequences, tracks engagement, and automates follow-ups to save time.

Core features:

• AI-powered email sequencing and task automation.
• Deep sales analytics and forecasting tools.
• Built-in call recording and coaching.
• Great for outbound teams that rely on email sequences.
• Integrates well with most CRMs.

Pricing: Unfortunately you have to reach out for pricing on this one, too. Outreach does offer several different packages depending on what features you really need. However, some sales reps say that price is a downside to using this tool — and many email sequencing features, for example, can be found with a more affordable tool like Apollo.

Source

What I like: Outreach excels in automation, helping sales teams work smarter by prioritizing high-value prospects.

5. Seismic

Best for: Large Sales Teams

Source

Seismic is a direct competitor to Highspot, but users say it’s easier to use and has better training features. If you need sales content management + coaching tools in one platform, Seismic is a strong choice.

Core features:

• More intuitive UI than Highspot.
• AI-driven content personalization.
• Great training/coaching tools alongside content management.
• Engagement tracking for sales materials.

Pricing: Custom pricing available. Like Seismic, sales reps say that Seismic is expensive, and it’s one of the highest-priced options on this list.

What I like: Seismic’s AI recommendations ensure sales reps always use the most effective content, making outreach more strategic.

My Favorite Picks for Sales Enablement

If your team needs a simple, all-in-one system, HubSpot is my top choice. If you rely on sales content and presentations, Highspot is a great tool. For AI-powered automation, Outreach and Seismic are my top picks.

No matter which tool you choose, investing in a sales enablement platform can save time, improve sales, and help your business grow.