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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
All five of HubSpot’s software platforms come in four tiers of features and pricing. For Sales, they are:
As you go up each tier, you’ll get everything in the lower tier(s) while adding new tools and expanding old ones.
| HubSpot Sales Tier | Fee (Monthly) |
Core Seats Included | Onboarding Fee (One-Time) |
| Free | Free | 2 | None |
| Starter | $15 | 1 ($15/extra seat) |
None |
| Professional | $90/seat | 0 | $1,500 |
| Enterprise | $150/seat | 0 | $3,500 |
(Note: These numbers are up to date for December 2024.)
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:
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.
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:
On the Pro level, there's a much stronger emphasis on automation and reporting.
Automation features include:
Reporting tools are also much better on Pro, as you gain:
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.
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:
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.
No matter your business size or type, there are several telltale signs your sales process could work faster and smarter with HubSpot
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:
| Tier | Business Type | Needs |
| HubSpot Sales Free | Individuals & small businesses | Sustain (rather than grow) current business |
| HubSpot Sales Starter | New or small sales teams no longer relying solely on inbound leads | Build positive habits as business grows |
| HubSpot Sales Professional | Growing teams that find Starter too limiting | Automation & scaling of sales processes |
| HubSpot Sales Enterprise | Large companies with broad teams or multiple brands under one roof | Manage & measure huge amounts of data without limits |
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:
To learn how feature-by-feature pricing works for HubSpot sales and marketing services, try out our free cost calculator tool: