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News · Oct 20, 2026 · 13 min

What sales blogs wrote, October 20. AI finds the reason, a person makes the call

HubSpot doubled outbound conversion with an AI agent, SaaStr on how to raise win rates, Kawasaki Engines and its dealer portal, Jeb Blount on year-end budgets. Short facts, my opinion, a link to the article.

I read what the main sales blogs published over the last few days. They share one idea. AI finds the reason to reach out, reviews calls and brings back forgotten leads, while the talk and the decision stay with a person. I added what I think about each piece and what a car dealer can take from it.

Main in this issue

HubSpot doubled outbound conversion when AI found the reason and a rep made the call

On October 16 Kelsey Craddock described a pilot inside HubSpot on its sales blog. Before, the team ran one outbound campaign per month, and each one took about 10 hours. Per cycle a rep could reach only 10–20% of their cold accounts, and conversion did not move.

In April 2026 one team put almost all of its cold accounts into Prospecting Agent. The agent watches for signals at target companies. These include funding rounds, new executives, product launches and a spike in research on the HubSpot website. For each signal it writes a personal message, and when the prospect engages, a rep calls.

HubSpot says booked meetings grew more than 10 times, and conversion doubled compared with its most targeted manual campaigns. The article gives no baseline numbers. The agent finds a reason to write to 78% of enrolled contacts, and more than 700 reps now use it. The key line of the article is this. AI finds the signal, a human makes the call.

My opinion. This is a company talking about its own product, but the pattern works without HubSpot too. The gain came from the reason and the timing, not from the text of the email. The agent writes when something happened at the customer, not on the day of a campaign.

A dealership has its own signals. A loan is ending, the car is five years old, or the customer looks at one model twice in a week. I would give AI the job of finding these reasons in the database and keep the call with the salesperson. But a signal exists only where every conversation is in the CRM. No record, no sales team.

Source HubSpot Sales Blog

Deals stall in a room the seller is not in, the buyer's internal discussion

On October 16 Mary Flaherty wrote on the HubSpot blog about the decision a buyer makes without the seller. The champion has to defend the budget, explain the change to the team and push the project up a crowded priority list. This is where deals get stuck.

She cites a survey by RAIN Group. 83% of respondents see longer sales cycles, and 82% lose deals because the customer decides nothing. 80% see more people involved in the decision, and 79% hit buyer budget limits.

Her advice is to learn early who shapes the decision, prepare answers for each person and help the champion build the case. Managers should stop asking only about the next step. Ask what the buyer committed to and who else must weigh in. Ask where the deal will stall and what happens if the buyer does nothing. She says directly that activity is not progress.

My opinion. In car sales this room exists in almost every deal. It is the kitchen where the buyer talks about the car with a partner or with the company accountant. The salesperson cannot get into that room, but they can give the customer something to take there.

At the first meeting I would ask directly who else will make this decision with the customer. And I would give the customer one page with the price, the monthly payment and the trade-in value. In a deal review I would ask her question as a manager. What did the customer promise to do before the next call?

Source HubSpot Sales Blog

Owner.com raised its win rate from 38% to 53% when AI started scoring every call

On October 16 Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr, listed ways to raise win rates. His math is simple. Going from 10% to 15% on the same pipeline gives 50% more new bookings with no new leads or reps.

The most practical example is about calls. Owner.com raised its win rate from 38% to 53% in 10 weeks. The company uses AI to score every call against one rubric and coaches reps on the results. Lemkin says a strong manager reviews about 5% of calls, while AI can review all of them every day.

He quotes a rule from Kyle Norton. Reps should not run their own agents, so there is one scoring system for everyone. Another tip is about lost deals. At PayPal about 8,000 leads a month were never called by a person. With agents, meeting conversion grew 50% in 14 weeks.

One more number from the article. Agentforce worked about 1,000 ghosted leads, and the win-back emails had a 72% open rate. Lemkin calls lost and stalled deals the cheapest pipeline you have.

My opinion. In a dealership the manager also listens to five calls out of a hundred, and usually not the right ones. AI that reviews every call against one rubric does not replace the manager. It shows who did not do the work.

The second step I would take this week. I would pull the leads from the last six months where the customer said "I'll think about it" or went silent. Then I would give them to an agent with an honest reason to reach out. At dealers 40% of inquiries come outside working hours, and part of these leads had no one to answer them.

Source SaaStr

Kawasaki Engines opened a 24/7 dealer portal and sold $6.5 million in 90 days

On October 16 Juliana Sosine described a project by Kawasaki Engines on the Salesforce blog. The company makes engines and parts for lawn, landscape and other equipment. It sells through equipment makers, distributors and independent dealers, and it supports more than 7,700 dealers.

The old ERP system had reached its limit. Dealers had to switch between systems that did not talk to each other, and the support team did a lot of manual work. Salesforce partner ForeFront built a portal where dealers can order parts, pay invoices and file warranty claims at any hour. An Agentforce agent handles dealer support.

The companies say the portal brought in more than $6.5 million in the first 90 days, five times the target. The average order grew from about $100 to $450–550. The portal gets more than 1,000 visits a week, and support works around the clock with no new hires.

My opinion. This is a vendor case study, and the numbers come from the people involved. But the lesson for a dealer is direct. The average order grew five times when the customer could see the catalog, stock and price and order at night.

I would look at the parts department and fleet customers this way. A taxi fleet or a building company wants to order filters and brake pads in the evening. It does not want to wait for a manager in the morning. An AI agent takes the order and answers questions about stock, and a person decides on a disputed warranty case.

Source Salesforce Blog

Jeb Blount says to call customers with leftover budget before December

On October 19 Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy, wrote about leftover budgets. Buyers hold back spending early in the year, and by the fourth quarter they have money that will expire. They will not call you, so the seller has to call them.

He suggests calling four groups. These are current customers, past customers who stopped buying, deals lost earlier this year and stalled deals. He says to open with a question, not a pitch, and ask how they feel about business heading into the end of the year. Then ask directly if they have budget that must be spent before year-end. And link it to a problem you solve.

He says the real deadline is earlier than December 31, because approvals and paperwork take time. Calling on December 20 is too late. If the buyer says nothing is left, he suggests asking about next year's budget. In the article Blount recommends spending the leftover money on sales training, which is his own product.

My opinion. For a dealership this is a direct play for business customers. Companies, leasing firms and small business owners have budget and tax planning at the end of the year. A call in November is on time, and a call in late December is not.

By mid-November I would pull the business customers and everyone who said "we'll think about it" this year. I would start with his question, with no price and no promotion. AI can build that list from the CRM in one evening, but a person should make the call.

Source Sales Gravy

Also published

The Salesloft Blog did not open, and the list of posts did not load on the blog page or in the resource center. The Apollo.io blog opened, but its posts show no dates, so I could not confirm any post from this period. LinkedIn Sales Blog, The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarino, RAIN Group and The Bridge Group had no new posts in these days.

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#sales blogs#sales#ai

Roman Spitsyn. I build sales teams where AI agents do the work and people close the deals.

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