What Is HubSpot Sales Hub? Features, Tiers, & Prices for 2023

I recently had a new client (and HubSpot devotee) describe HubSpot's Sales Hub better than I had in my 6 years of digital marketing. This B2B company's employees almost universally avoided using HubSpot until management forced the issue in 2023.

The client's CEO explained:

"I told them it's like having a bunch of guys swinging wildly with a hammer at all these nails, when all along there's been a nail gun sitting at their feet."

To translate this toolkit metaphor: HubSpot Sales Hub frees up time by making sales activities easily repeatable at scale. It also puts all your precious data in one spot for a true closed-loop selling process.

To give you a more concrete idea of how HubSpot Sales works, we'll answer your top FAQs:

• What is HubSpot Sales Hub?
• What are its key features?
• What comes with each price tier?
• How do I know if I need HubSpot Sales?

What Is HubSpot Sales Hub?

First off, for those living under a digital rock the past 10 years: HubSpot is a developer of sales, marketing, and customer service software. Its platforms combine to form an all-in-one CRM (customer relationship management) system for nearly any size or shape of business.

Sales Hub is one of those software platforms, offering a complete ecosystem for running a sales team. It offers customer- and data-management tools to support sales efforts from start to finish:

• Sort and track leads
• Reduce tedious, time-sucking tasks
• Report on performance and forecast future results
• 1,100+ tech & app integrations (i.e. Gmail, Facebook Messenger)
• Cross-functionality with HubSpot’s other Hubs -- including synced data!

Perhaps best of all, HubSpot intentionally designed all this to be easy to use for sales teams. Meaning, even though they’re powerful digital tools, you don’t need a technical team to babysit the whole process.

HubSpot Sales Features

So, what exactly do you do with HubSpot Sales?

Its exact capabilities depend on your investment level, but generally speaking, there are several time- and money-saving features you should investigate:

Lead Tracking & Management

HubSpot's CRM (customer relationship management) system lets you manage 1,000s of contacts and leads, creating records as detailed as you want them to be. With a well-organized single source of truth, you can leverage company and prospect data to segment leads for more personalized strategies.

You can even segment and nurture contacts based on a preset (but customizable) lead-scoring system.

By adding deals, dates, and demographics about your customer, you can more easily diagnose pipeline health.

Pipeline Automation

Beware: Another tool metaphor is coming.

There's an early scene in the new Super Mario Bros. movie where the animated plumbers nearly complete their first big house call. Sadly, the client's unattended, aggressive dog attacks the brothers, impeding and eventually undoing their hard work.

How many times have you (or the marketing team) watched a great opportunity get clogged somewhere on the path from prospect to payment? Too often, solid leads are left unattended and fritter away, or an overeager salesperson comes on too strong and scares the lead away.

Pipeline automation makes it simpler to attack the sales consistently, with the right message, and at the right time.

You can use the Workflows tool to automate everyday processes so tasks switch ownership and the appropriate team member gets a notification. For example, when a website visitor uses your "book a meeting" calendar, the workflow can notify the attached salesperson of the new prospect.

You can set these actions to begin based on a variety of other triggers too -- task completion, engagement with an email, and so on. By barely lifting a finger (or wrench), you can push leads further down the pipeline.

Templates

Sequences and templates are a game-changer for both internal and external organization. Premade assets (with a touch of personalization) make it simple for you to email prospects and customers at scale.

Here are the benefits of using templates and premade email sequences with Sales Hub:

• Save time: Quickly craft and fire off emails without starting from scratch each time
  
  

• Custom: Build templates with images, videos, and other features to keep emails engaging

• Personalization at scale: Automatically fill in personalized information (i.e. name, industry, and company) to send one-to-many messages that still sound personable

• Consistency: Share access teamwide means there's cohesive messaging and branding going out to customers

We also recommend Snippets. Similar in concept, these short text blocks are reusable on records, email templates, logs, and chat conversations.

Reporting & Forecasting

HubSpot's sales software allows you to track performance in one space for end-to-end transparency.

The tools empower you to not only monitor pipeline health and deal waterfall reports, but also forecast future deals. Because HubSpot Sales is user-friendly and collates all data in one spot, it gives your team more time to take action based on these insights.

For example, a sales manager can see:

• How many sales emails were sent per rep, customer segment, & campaign
• How many were opened & by whom
• How many resulted in a response or click-through, & which links got the most clicks

HubSpot Sales Pricing & Tiers

All five of HubSpot’s software platforms come in four tiers of features and pricing. For Sales, they are:

• HubSpot Sales Free
• HubSpot Sales Starter
• HubSpot Sales Professional
• HubSpot Sales Enterprise

As you go up each tier, you’ll get everything in the lower tier(s) while adding new tools and expanding old ones.

(Note: These numbers are up to date for 2023.)

HubSpot Sales Hub – Free

Prospective buyers often compare HubSpot Free to what Salesforce offers. We’ll say this: There’s a reason we use HubSpot ourselves (though we've since moved to a higher tier).

The Free version of Sales Hub offers a variety of time-saving tools for adding and tracking data and outreach. Despite that "free" label, there's also no shortage of app and email platform integrations.

Other key features include:

• Contact management
• Deal pipelines
• Meeting scheduling
• Quote building

Of course, it's free for a reason -- you only get basic access to each of these features. Choose a paid HubSpot plan over a free one if you want more control or have a full sales team.

HubSpot Sales Hub – Starter 

On the Starter level, you gain access to basic reporting tools, allowing you to check on sales rep productivity and other metrics. There's also a wider array of templates and snippets start to whittle away those "time suck" activities.

Other important aspects include:

• Simple automation -- contact & task triggers
• Setting sales goals
• An additional pipeline
• Digitized customer payment 

HubSpot Sales Hub – Professional

On the Pro level, there's a much stronger emphasis on automation and reporting.

Automation features include:

• Sales sequences (i.e. preset outreach)
• Other ABM tools
• Internal sequences (i.e. deal stage updates, task notifications)

Reporting tools are also much better on Pro, as you gain:

• The HubSpot Sales Analytics tool
•  Expanded forecasting tools
• Custom reporting tools

You'll also get more templates and more calling (3,000 monthly minutes and three lines vs. 500 minutes and one line) than with Starter. 

HubSpot Sales Hub – Enterprise

Enterprise tops it all off by expanding customer data tracking. These features allows you to both keep tabs on the present and predict the future of your sales efforts:

• Predictive lead scoring & expanded forecasting -- thousands of data points and machine learning to measure and predict outcomes
• Custom objects -- Create any criteria by which you want to track or segment leads
• Playbooks -- Internal training tools

Ultimately, Sales Enterprise is a heavy-duty platform for large companies who can take advantage of tools such as HubSpot Business Units. These top-tier features keep huge databases clean and help you manage and distinguish multiple brands.

How Do I Know if I Need HubSpot Sales Hub?

No matter your business size or type, there are several telltale signs your sales process could work faster and smarter with HubSpot

1. You have a full-fledged sales pipeline or high number of inbound leads
2. Lead totals are high, but close rates are low
3. Sellers spend 70% of their time on menial tasks instead of outreach
4. Crusty old-schoolers are ignoring the massive pool of online prospects
5. The team operates out of an Excel or Google spreadsheet
6. Your team loses track of where leads are in the sales process

Getting full CRM buy-in from the sales team can take time, but HubSpot's many tools are specifically aimed to solve the problems above.

While these tools are largely amazing, they're also amazingly large. Not every company needs the full suite of features. Your sales goals, business model, and budget should determine the most fruitful level of investment:

Call Shots With Your Own HubSpot Playbook

In that conversion with my new B2B client, he later circled back to his metaphor:

"... Eventually they're gonna realize, 'How the hell did I do this all this time without a nail gun?'"

HubSpot's Sales Hub software helps teams save time, personalize at scale, and measure and predict performance. Its integrations with other platforms also help you see how marketing and customer service efforts are impacting sales.

Don't automatically spring for the Free version or the fully featured Enterprise tier! Make an investment that matches your growth goals and business model. 

Switching or upgrading sales platforms is a daunting change. It's possible to enlist a HubSpot consulting agency to help you:

• Onboard & train reps
• Integrate with other tools
• Troubleshoot

If you're on your own for now, it pays to learn more about making the most of HubSpot's sales tools. This free guide can get you started early and includes free sales and marketing email templates: