HubSpot Update: New Features for the Sidekick Sales Tool

NOTE: HubSpot launched HubSpot Sales Hub in 2017.

Sidekick, HubSpot's standalone tool for sales professionals, lets users gain intelligence about emails sent to prospects. Users can see who opens their emails, when emails get opened and how many times the recipient has opened. It integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Chrome, Outlook, and Gmail. A "freemium" tool, it's something your sales team should definitely be using, if they aren't already. Now, with the offical launch of Sidekick for Business and an abundance of new features, Sidekick is more attractive than ever.

What is Sidekick for Business?

On May 19, 2015, HubSpot 'officially" announced Sidekick for Business, which brings all of your team onto a single sales platform. Key features include:

• Email templates that can be used across your team and measure which emails are the most effective
• Desktop-based call queuing with automatic CRM Logging
• Share documents across your team and gather data about which documents they're actually using.

Sidekick for Business lives within the HubSpot CRM.

Sidekick Improvements Your Sales Team Needs to Know About

Since May, HubSpot has been making improvements to Sidekick for Business to make it a more powerful, flexible tool for sales users. Here are three improvements to tell your sales team about now:

1. Improvements to Documents in Sidekick of Business 

The "Documents" feature in Sidekick lets sales reps share content and see how prospects engage with it. With the latest updated, you can:

• Upload a new version of a document and replace the old one. This version control measure helps ensure reps are sending out the correct, approved content.
• Upload Microsoft Word and Excel Files. Previous versions of the tool only allowed for PDFs and PowerPoint documents. 
• Faster Uploads. Backend updates have improved upload time.
• Better End User Experience. The same backend updates have improved the document viewer for prospects.

2. Your Sidekick Stream, Right Inside Hubspot CRM 

The Sidekick Stream shows sales reps how users interact with the emails and documents they have been sent. Now, when HubSpot CRM and Sidekick are integrated, sales users can see their stream directly in CRM without having to look at a separate tool. Reps can see:

• Email opens and clicks
• Prospect document views
• Contact visit notifications
• Company visit notifications

Users can access the stream by navigating to Sidekick > Stream in the CRM integration.

3. Sidekick Contact Profiles Now Available in Outlook

In addition to the product updates within the CRM, the Sidekick Team has added Contact Profiles to Outlook. Contact profiles. The Contact Profile sidebar shows users:

• A contact's name and job title
• History of tracked emails
• CRM integration: Add the contact to your CRM or ammend an existing record
• Social media intelligence

How to Get Sidekick

Sidekick helps sales reps send the right messages to the right prospects at the right time. It helps your sales team follow up with and more effectively work the inbound leads you've been generating for them - helping your close the loop and measure ROI. With reps closing more business, it's a win-win.