[Skip to content](https://www.hubspot.com#main-content) [](https://www.hubspot.com/startups) - [Resources](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/resources) Show submenu for Resources - [Fundraising](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/fundraising) - [Sales & Marketing](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/sales-and-marketing) - [AI Tech & Tips](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/ai) - [Tech Stack Guide](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/tech-stacks) - [Founder & VC Insights](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/scaling-smarter) - [Podcast](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/podcast) - [Stories](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/stories) Show submenu for Stories - [Digital Magazine](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/magazine) - [DocuSeries](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/docuseries) - [Case Studies](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/stories/customers) - [Community](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/community) - [Partner](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/partners) - [Apply Now](https://app.hubspot.com/signup-hubspot/hubspot-for-startups) - [Resources](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/resources) Show submenu for Resources - [Fundraising](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/fundraising) - [Sales & Marketing](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/sales-and-marketing) - [AI Tech & Tips](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/ai) - [Tech Stack Guide](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/tech-stacks) - [Founder & VC Insights](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/scaling-smarter) - [Podcast](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/podcast) - [Stories](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/stories) Show submenu for Stories - [Digital Magazine](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/magazine) - [DocuSeries](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/docuseries) - [Case Studies](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/stories/customers) - [Community](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/community) - [Partner](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/partners) - [Apply Now](https://app.hubspot.com/signup-hubspot/hubspot-for-startups) - [Home](https://www.hubspot.com/startups) - [Sales & Marketing Blog](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/sales-and-marketing) # Smart Deal Progression: How Series A Founders Are Using AI to Close Faster At Series A the bottleneck moves to the middle of the funnel. See how founders use HubSpot's Smart Deal Progression to close stalled deals faster. Written by: [Paige Bennett](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/resources/author/paige-bennett)[](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/author/phoebe-gill) Send DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend Data    If your pipeline review is a messy scribble on a whiteboard or even a confusing shared spreadsheet with your sales team (Didn’t we already have a meeting with that client? Who followed up with that prospect last week? When was this even updated last?! I shudder at the thought), I hate to say it, but you’re losing money to your competitors. Nobody likes to be ghosted. No one wants their emails left on read. But that’s what’s happening when you hit Series A and you can no longer manually keep up with every single prospect. When customers leave meetings and don’t hear from you again because you forgot about them, very few are willing to reach out to remind you they’re still interested. They’ll just go to a competitor who seems to put them on a pedestal by sending personalized follow-ups. You can’t continue using the same workflows you used at Seed in Series A. At Seed, you’re facing a bottleneck at the top of the funnel, and you solved that with better prospecting. But at Series A, you’ve got a steady flow into TOFU, but deals are stalling in the middle of the funnel. You need a different solution. You need Smart Deal Progression. *Before we dive in, I want to be clear that I’m sharing Smart Deal Progression. But it’s not just to pitch you on a HubSpot product. Startups who use this tool can unlock incredibly meaningful results that can help you hold your own against larger companies. We’re seeing startup sales teams saving up to 1.5 hours per day per sales rep on pipeline management with Smart Deal Progression.* *AI tools are essential for closing deals faster at Series A, but I recommend Smart Deal Progression in particular because of how easy it is to use right within your CRM for HubSpot users. Now, let’s jump into why it matters.*   ## __What is Smart Deal Progression in HubSpot?__ [Smart Deal Progression](https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales/smart-deal-progression) is an agentic deal management feature within HubSpot that considers CRM history and analyzes meeting transcripts to automate your sales process. The AI scans conversations, suggests CRM updates, writes follow–up emails, and recommends the optimal next steps based on typical sales workflows to ensure every prospect gets the attention they deserve, all while saving sales reps time formerly reserved for manual admin work that’s now better spent closing deals.   ## __Why your deals are stalling after meetings__ You have a healthy amount of people inquiring about your product. Your calendar, and your sales reps’ calendars, are solidly booked with initial meetings. But deals are stalling after meetings, and you can’t figure out why when prospects seem to be engaged and enthusiastic on the call. You’re ghosting your clients, and you don’t even mean to. Still, they feel neglected, and they’re bouncing to go check out a competitor instead. You used to be able to recall every conversation. You could remember how each meeting went just by seeing a prospect’s name on the screen. That level of recall works well at Seed, but by Series A, your pipeline is probably too full (steak too juicy, lobster too buttery, I know) to keep track of conversations and follow-ups just by memory. And your growing sales team certainly can’t pull that information from your brain. With a full pipeline, your reps are spending all day in back-to-back meetings with prospects. A meeting runs over, and that rep suddenly has zero time to shoot a quick recap email with the client. There comes a point where the volume of calls on the sales team’s schedule makes manual tracking impossible. Without a smart system in place, that earlier call gets lost in the heap. The client never hears back from the rep, and they move on to a competitor with reps who actually remember to check in. When you’re relying on manual notetaking and follow-ups for every single deal, some people are simply left behind, and that means deals stall and data goes stale. It doesn’t have to go that way, though. You need automations to track and manage the rapidly growing number of deals flowing into your pipeline, or risk getting a bad reputation for not following through.   ## __What Smart Deal Progression actually does for startups__ Smart Deal Progression is designed to ensure your team is always following up with clients, no matter what they’re asking for. This built-in tool operates directly inside HubSpot, making it a deal-intelligence tool that lives where the deals are happening; no need to sign up (and pay for) for yet another service to keep track of. HubSpot’s Smart Deal Progression records interactions with contacts, scans conversations, and flags the best next step based on each deal property. It also flags deals that are at risk of stalling, notifying your team when there’s a gap to prevent any customer from feeling ghosted. Smart Deal Progression automates the entire selling process, so your team isn’t trying to manually keep up with every lead and letting deals slip through the cracks. Instead, every customer gets that star treatment with hyper-focused follow-ups and personalized outreach.   ### __How can Series A startups use AI to close deals faster?__ Smart Deal Progression saves reps time that used to be spent reviewing transcripts, writing follow-up emails, updating contact details, and deciding what steps to take next after a call. Here’s how you can use AI to close deals faster. #### 1. Analyze transcripts for action triggers AI has made meeting notetaking a breeze, developing full transcripts and summarizing the conversation immediately after a call. But Smart Deal Progression goes a step further. This tool analyzes transcripts for key words and phrases (more on how to set those next!), so sales reps don’t have to re-read all the conversations they had last week. The AI flags important conversation points, like pricing inquiries or demo requests, which you can tie to specific actions. #### 2. Draft follow-up emails Don’t let a conversation go cold after the call. Deals stall when you forget to follow-up, and it’s easy to forget when your schedule is jam-packed with meetings. You don’t have to remember to follow-up with Smart Deal Progression. It drafts the follow-up automatically, and you can decide whether those send automatically or require human review. AI will also notify reps when they need to review follow-up emails and send reminders so no prospect is left in the dark. #### 3. Suggest next steps AI helps Series A startups close deals faster by suggesting next steps after each conversation. First, it analyzes the conversation for triggers. Then, those triggers automate suggestions for next steps. You have full control over the suggestions, and you can easily click into the transcripts to see why AI is making specific suggestions and edit or approve as you see fit. #### 4. Flag stalled deals Even with automated follow-ups, sometimes deals still stall. You can’t always see that just by looking through your CRM, but HubSpot’s deal properties flag when a prospect is in a deal stage for [20% longer](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/properties/hubspots-default-deal-properties) than the closed-won average for that stage. This helps your sales team identify who may need extra attention, with another meeting or an extra follow-up email. #### 5. Build cohesive workflows within sales As your number of sales reps grows, it can be harder to maintain a consistent customer experience. You don’t want a reputation of a brand that prospects may have to call a few times to get the best treatment depending on the rep who answers. AI builds cohesive workflows that apply to all reps, so every customer receives the same level of care and consistent follow-ups. This also takes the pressure off reps to remember every call and every follow-up.   ### How does AI decide the next best action on a deal? AI isn’t working alone on this. You (or the sales team) can control how AI considers the best next steps based on your existing customer data and behaviors. Here’s how it works. ____ #### 1. Navigate to data capture Your data capture settings, available under Data Management in HubSpot, is where human guidance and wisdom and AI’s automations come together to best serve your clients. #### 2. Create deal property descriptions In this settings page, you set the deal properties and create descriptions for each one. In the descriptions, you’re training the AI to recognize the patterns in your existing sales process. Say a potential customer asks about a demo in an initial call, the AI can flag that in the transcript and automate a follow-up with demo access. Maybe a prospect inquires about pricing, the AI will suggest a pricing proposal as the next step. These descriptions are what AI will consider when scanning transcripts and flagging triggers for suggested next steps, so be thorough. #### 3. Train the AI once to keep your entire sales team selling efficiently The founder or sales lead only has to train the AI on the typical next steps for each deal property once, just like training a new sales rep. From there, let the AI automate follow-ups and keep your reps moving toward closing deals.   ## __First, you solved Prospecting at Seed. At Series A, it’s time to solve Progression problems__ For Seed startups, the biggest hurdle is finding potential clients to even enter your pipeline. You need customers to scale, but when you’re starting out, you don’t have enough recognition for people to come to you. Instead, AI tools like [Prospecting Agent](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/resources/tech-stack/prospecting-agent-seed-vs-series-a) help you find those potential customers to invite to check out your product and try a demo. You just have a trickle of deals and not enough history to really dig in to deal progression just yet. At Series A, you don’t need to spend as much time reaching out to potential users, because they’re finding you through AI and search recommendations, organic traffic, and word-of-mouth. But at this point, you do need help keeping track of everyone in the pipeline and making sure your sales reps aren’t wasting time on repetitive, manual tasks. That’s where AI for deal progression comes in. At Series A, you already have many deals, both won and lost, that AI can use to establish clear patterns within your sales workflows and create automated tasks based on your existing deals data.   ### What is the difference between using AI for prospecting and using AI for deal progression? At Seed stage, you need to use AI for [prospecting](https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales/ai-prospecting-agent) to save you time on acquiring new leads to jumpstart your pipeline. At Series A, you have proved to investors that you have interest in your product, but you need automate to keep high-quality deals moving toward the bottom of the funnel. At Seed, AI tracks your target accounts, sources contact information, and helps you with outreach efforts as you look to secure your early customers. By Series A, you don’t need to spend as much time prospecting, but you do need automation to prevent the deals you do have on the table from stalling. ____ ### What Smart Deal Progression looks like in action You’ve implemented Smart Deal Progression. You set up deal properties. You’ve mapped action triggers. Now what? It’s 9 a.m. Your sales rep logs in and is greeted with a helpful list of notifications and reminders: review this follow-up email to send to a client you met with yesterday, check in with this potentially at-risk prospect, edit or accept the suggested CRM updates for a contact you spoke to this week. Manual admin work that used to take up those precious, productive early hours of the workday can now be handled in minutes. The agent takes care of the work, while your human reps have final approval over every task. Throughout the day, your reps take meetings, then turn transcripts over to the agent. Smart Deal Progression recaps the call, flags words and phrases that signal next steps, and suggests and drafts those next steps for review. Even if a rep doesn’t have a chance to check these details right away, they’ll get a reminder the next morning. Lather, rinse, repeat. Your reps save time on manual tasks, and every client feels heard and understood by your team, with no one falling out of the pipeline due to communication gaps. [](https://www.hubspot.com/startups)   ## __When should a startup start using AI to manage deals?__ The more data your company has, the better AI can parse the information and create meaningful recommendations that move prospects through the pipeline. You need to have enough closed-won *and* closed-lost deals logged in your CRM that there are identifiable patterns. You also need to have enough practice to know how your sales team ideally responds to each deal property in order to sufficiently train the AI to run smoothly. Typically, you’ll be in the best position to use AI to manage and close deals faster when you’ve closed a Series A round. By this point, your company has enough history for the AI to pick up patterns without having to fully rebuild long-standing systems with AI in mind.   ## __What changes when you stop eyeballing the pipeline__ Smart Deal Progression takes the guesswork out of pipeline management. Did you remember to reach out to that customer who asked for a demo? Did you remember to send over product documentation to someone who had questions following their demo? Did you follow up with the lead you had a call with last week? These questions used to keep us awake at night. Automation and consistency keep us sleeping soundly, knowing AI is moving deals through the pipeline 24/7. With automated follow-ups and smart suggestions for next steps, small startup sales teams can close deals like a long-standing enterprise. The founder spends fewer hours trying to track down conversations to ensure everyone got a response or a follow-up. Sales reps are also saving time with less manual logging and notekeeping. Sales reps follow a consistent progression path, so prospects all get the same top-tier treatment, no matter which rep they’re assigned to. Together, you’ll see improved pipeline health and more accurate forecasting that you can bring to the table for board meetings, important if your goals include scaling beyond Series A.   ## __You don’t need to hustle harder, you just need better systems__ Closing deals faster at Series A isn’t a hustle problem. Deals aren’t stalling because you aren’t drumming up enough interest or prospecting hard enough. At this stage, deals are stalling because your systems aren’t efficient enough. You can’t keep track of deals from memory or on sticky notes anymore. Get that information out of your founder’s head, and into an AI-powered system that works directly within your CRM. [Apply to HubSpot for Startups](https://www.hubspot.com/startups) to try Smart Deal Progression in Sales Hub. Let’s open up that MOFU bottleneck and start closing deals faster with AI. ## Send DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend Data Send DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend DataSend Data ## You might also like these...  ### Prospecting Agent for Startups: How to Use It at Seed vs. Series A Prospecting Agent does different work at Seed than it does at Series A. Here's how to set it up, what to track, and where to start based on your stage. [Read more](https://www.hubspot.com/startups/resources/tech-stack/prospecting-agent-seed-vs-series-a)  ### 15 of the Most Disruptive AI Tools for Startups in 2026 From creating content to handling finances to managing client relationships, these AI tools will help startups level up this year. 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