Through an opt-in beta called “Prospecting Agent Gets Smarter: Buying Signals and Contact Sourcing,” HubSpot’s Prospecting Agent can monitor companies for real-world triggers, like funding news, hiring surges, or a company actively researching your topics, and proactively recommend which companies and contacts to reach out to, rather than only executing outreach to contacts you’ve already selected. The whole system runs on user-defined “plays,” sets of instructions covering audience, selling context, outreach method, and guardrails.

If you’ve read our general overview of the Prospecting Agent and want the detail on specifically how signal-based prospecting works, this is that deep-dive.

What Counts as a “Buying Signal” in HubSpot?

HubSpot calls these intent signals, evidence that a company might be a good time to reach out. When building a play, you choose which signals the agent should monitor for that specific play, which can include company news (funding, product launches), and evidence that a company is actively researching topics you care about. You can customize the research signal by keyword or by your own company URL, so the agent is watching for topics that actually match what you sell.

How Do “Plays” Work?

A play is the full instruction set that tells the agent who to watch, what to watch for, and how to reach out. Each play has four parts:

• Audience: Which company segments the agent should monitor, and whether it should proactively source and suggest contacts for you, or only act on contacts you enroll manually. You also set a daily limit on new contact suggestions.
• Selling context: What your company sells, your value proposition, and the pain points you solve, either generated from your website or written manually.
• Outreach: Choose Sequence (personalized, multi-channel outreach with defined steps) or Adaptive (emails that adjust based on the prospect’s actual behavior and engagement).
• Guardrails: Who sends the emails, the tone (preset or brand voice), and the send window.

You can test a play before publishing it, generating sample outreach for a specific contact so you can see exactly what the agent would send before it goes live.

How Does the Agent Decide Who to Recommend?

Once a play is live, the agent monitors the companies in your defined audience for the signals you selected. Under Monitored companies, you can review:

• Recommended companies the agent thinks are worth reaching out to right now
• The specific intent signals detected for that company
• The agent’s reason to reach out, plain-language rationale for the recommendation
• Suggested contacts at that company, up to three per company matching your target personas
• When someone at that company was last contacted

This is the part that separates signal-based prospecting from a static list: the agent is continuously re-evaluating which accounts are worth attention today, not working through a list that was correct three weeks ago.

Can I Use My Own Prospecting Data Alongside This?

Yes. The Prospecting Agent supports connecting one external data source at a time, including Apollo, Surfe, ZoomInfo, or Seamless, to source additional contacts for a play beyond what already exists in your HubSpot CRM.

What Guardrails Apply Here Too?

The same deliverability principles from the standard agent carry over into plays: adaptive outreach frequency settings (minimum days between emails, maximum emails per enrollment) apply regardless of any custom instructions you add, and HubSpot notes these frequency guidelines can’t be overridden the way some other custom instructions can. That’s a meaningful detail if you’re evaluating whether signal-based prospecting increases spam risk: the “smarter targeting” layer doesn’t come at the cost of the safeguards already built into the base agent.

The FSM Perspective: Signals Tell You When, Not Why

Buying signals answer a narrow but genuinely useful question: is this company likely paying attention right now? That’s valuable. But a funding announcement or a hiring surge doesn’t tell you why a particular company is a fit for what you sell, that’s still a question your selling context and target personas have to answer, and the agent only performs as well as those inputs.

This is the same principle behind our Scalable Business Framework: better timing multiplies the value of good targeting, but it doesn’t substitute for it. Before layering a buying-signals play on top of your prospecting, it’s worth making sure your ICP, personas, and value proposition are specific enough for the agent to actually act on well.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a specific subscription to use buying signals? It’s an opt-in beta that a Super Admin needs to enable for the account, on top of the standard Prospecting Agent’s existing subscription and permission requirements.

How many contacts will the agent suggest per company? Up to three contacts matching your target personas, per company enrolled in a play.

Can I connect outside data sources like ZoomInfo or Apollo? Yes, one external data source can be connected at a time to source additional contacts for a play.

Do the frequency guardrails still apply with buying signals turned on? Yes. Minimum days between emails and maximum emails per enrollment apply regardless of custom instructions.

Want help defining the ICP and messaging a buying-signals play should actually be built around? Let’s talk it through.