For many sales teams, outbound prospecting involves hours of manual research before the first email is ever sent. Reps need to identify the right companies, find the right contacts, and personalize every message - leaving less time for actual conversations with potential customers.
HubSpot Prospecting Agent was designed to automate much of this work. It helps identify prospects, research contacts and companies, and generate personalized outreach while allowing sales teams to stay in control of the sales process.
This article focuses on the latest Prospecting Agent experience, which introduces plays, buying signals, and contact sourcing. Depending on your HubSpot subscription and account, some of these features may not yet be available.
What is HubSpot Prospecting Agent?
HubSpot Prospecting Agent is an AI-powered sales agent that helps sales teams identify potential buyers, research prospects, and automate personalized outreach. Using buying signals, contact sourcing, and customizable plays, it can continuously identify new opportunities and prepare outreach with minimal manual effort.
The agent researches each contact and their company, then prepares personalized outreach based on that research. Depending on your configuration, emails can be reviewed before they're sent or sent automatically, while sales reps stay in control of the overall sales process.
For businesses that handle a high volume of outbound prospecting, Prospecting Agent helps sales teams maintain consistent follow-up and spend more time on conversations with qualified prospects rather than administrative work.
Use Cases for HubSpot Prospecting Agent
Prospecting Agent can be used in different stages of the sales process, depending on how your team qualifies and manages leads. While every business has its own approach, there are several common scenarios where the agent can help automate prospect research and outreach.
New Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
When a contact becomes a marketing qualified lead, they're often ready for an initial sales conversation. Instead of asking a sales rep to research every new MQL manually, you can enroll these contacts into Prospecting Agent. The agent researches each prospect, prepares personalized outreach, and helps your team respond more consistently as new leads enter the pipeline.
Companies Showing Buying Signals
If you've enabled Source contacts for me, Prospecting Agent can automatically monitor companies for the buying signals you've selected. When a company matches those signals, the agent can identify relevant contacts and prepare personalized outreach without requiring manual prospecting.
High-Intent Prospects
If your team uses lead scoring or Buyer Intent, Prospecting Agent can automatically start researching contacts once they reach your qualification criteria. This helps sales reps focus on prospects who are more likely to engage instead of reviewing every new contact manually.
Re-engaging Existing Contacts
Prospecting Agent can also be used to reconnect with contacts who haven't engaged with your business for some time. Rather than sending a generic follow-up, the agent researches the company again before preparing personalized outreach using the latest available information.
How to Set Up Prospecting Agent
To start the setup, navigate to Sales > Prospecting Agent and click Create Play.
Step 1. Define Your Audience
The first step is defining who the play should target. If you enable Source contacts for me, Prospecting Agent will automatically identify contacts that match your target audience. To do this, configure:
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- Company segments – Select the types of companies you want to target.
- Personas – Define the buyer personas the agent should look for.
- Monthly contact suggestions – Set how many contacts the agent can suggest each month.
- Buying signals – Choose which signals the agent should monitor when identifying prospects.
Note: To source contacts outside your HubSpot CRM, you'll need to connect a supported contact data provider.
If you leave Source contacts for me disabled, you can still enroll contacts manually or automatically after the play has been created.
Step 2. Configure the Selling Context
The Selling context helps Prospecting Agent understand your business and generate more relevant outreach. You can either let Breeze analyze your website to generate this information automatically.
Review the generated content and make any necessary changes before continuing. Make sure the descriptions accurately reflect your business, as they'll be used when creating personalized emails.
Step 3. Configure Your Outreach
Choose how Prospecting Agent should reach out to your prospects. You can choose between two outreach methods:
- Sequence – Creates a customizable outreach sequence with automated emails and tasks.
- Adaptive – Uses live signals to automatically adjust the timing and content of outreach based on prospect engagement and activity.
If you choose Sequence, you can fully customize the outreach flow by adding emails and tasks, changing the order of steps, and adjusting delays between them.
If you choose Adaptive, Prospecting Agent automatically manages the outreach sequence. It uses live signals to adjust email timing and content while following the outreach limits you define. You can also provide additional instructions to guide how the agent writes emails.
Step 4. Configure the Guardrails
Configure how Prospecting Agent should send emails on your behalf.
First, choose who the emails should be sent from. You can send emails from the contact owner, the company owner, or a single user. If the selected sender doesn't have a connected inbox, you can also configure a fallback sender.
Next, choose how the agent should communicate with your prospects. You can select a preset tone or use your company's brand voice.
You can also configure additional sending preferences, including:
- Enable multi-language outreach.
- Limit emails to business days only.
- Set a preferred email send window.
- Choose a default time zone for contacts without one.
Step 5. Configure Automation
Choose whether Prospecting Agent should send emails automatically or wait for your approval before each email is sent.
Once you've finished configuring the automation settings, click Review and turn on to activate your play.
How Contacts Are Added to Prospecting Agent
Contacts can enter a play in three ways: they can be sourced by Prospecting Agent, enrolled manually, or enrolled automatically through a HubSpot workflow.
Contact Sourcing
If you enabled Source contacts for me when configuring the play, Prospecting Agent will find contacts based on the company segments and personas you selected. It can find contacts in your HubSpot CRM or through connected data sources and suggest up to the monthly limit you configured.
Manual Enrollment
Open the play you want to use and click Enroll in the top-right corner. Choose whether you want to enroll contacts or companies.
If you select Manually enroll contacts, choose up to 25 eligible contacts from the list, then click Next.
Review the play and guardrail settings, including the sender, review settings, tone, send window, and unenrollment rules.
When everything looks correct, click Start enrolling.
Automatic Enrollment
Prospecting Agent also lets you enroll contacts automatically. You can either use the built-in automations available in Prospecting Agent or create your own HubSpot workflow.
Built-in Automations
To configure one of the built-in automations, go to Prospecting Agent → Automations.
HubSpot includes several pre-built enrollment triggers, including:
- Page view
- Form submission
- Days since last engagement
- Added to a list
Open the automation you want to use, click Edit, and choose:
- the play contacts should be enrolled in;
- the selling method (Sequence or Adaptive);
- the automation mode (Review before sending or Send without review).
Once you've finished configuring the automation, click Save.
Custom Workflows
If you need more advanced enrollment criteria, you can create a contact-based HubSpot workflow and use the Enroll in prospecting agent action.
This allows you to enroll contacts using your own workflow enrollment criteria, giving you more flexibility than the built-in automations.
Prospecting Agent can save your sales team time by automating research and outreach, but the quality of the results depends on how well it's configured. A well-defined play, accurate CRM data, and regular reviews of the generated outreach will help you get the most value from the agent.
Start with a small group of contacts, test your setup, and refine it as you learn what works best for your team.