Recipes / Pre-meeting brief from CRM + web

Pre-meeting brief from CRM + web

HubSpot + Perplexity

Who it's for

AEs and founders who want a one-page brief before every external meeting without opening five tabs.

What you get

One-page brief before a renewal call. Sample output: every company and person in it is fictional.

Meeting: Thu 10:00, Quarry Lane Analytics (fictional) with Sam Whitlock, Sales Ops Manager

Where the deal stands: Renewal + upsell, $48,000, stage 'Proposal sent' (12 days)
Since last touch: Sam opened the proposal twice; procurement contact added on Oct 2
Open tasks: Send security questionnaire (overdue 3 days)

News (last 30 days, with sources):
- Opened a Toronto office [1]
- New CFO announced [2]

Three questions to ask:
1. Does the new CFO change the approval path for the upsell?
2. Is the Toronto team in scope for this renewal?
3. What's blocking the security review?

Risks: overdue questionnaire; new budget owner.
Log this as a note on the deal? (yes/no)

Time and cost

Estimate About 3–5 minutes per meeting.

Assumptions: One meeting: a handful of HubSpot reads and one or two Perplexity searches.

• HubSpot: Reads only, plus one note if you choose to log it. Credit use not confirmed by HubSpot.
• Perplexity: One or two searches. Every call uses credits. Tool calls are billed at standard Perplexity API pricing to the connected API key or to the API organization chosen at sign-in; the organization's rate limits apply. Source: docs.perplexity.ai, checked 2026-10-16

Exact credit costs depend on your plan with each vendor. Check the tool pages before a large run.

MCP servers

Every server is confirmed in: Claude

• HubSpot Up · auth
  ClaudeChatGPTRead + writeCredits not confirmed
  https://mcp.hubspot.com
• Perplexity Up · auth
  ClaudeClaude CodeCursorRead onlyEvery call uses credits
  https://api.perplexity.ai/mcp

Set up in a chat app

Every server in this recipe is confirmed for Claude. Connect each one, then paste the prompts below into one conversation.

• Connect HubSpot without code (Claude, ChatGPT)
• Connect Perplexity without code (Claude)

Developer setup

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hubspot": {
      "url": "https://mcp.hubspot.com"
    },
    "perplexity": {
      "url": "https://api.perplexity.ai/mcp"
      // headless alternative: "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Step-by-step prompts

Copy all prompts

1. Find my next meeting's contact and company in HubSpot. Pull deal stage, amount, last 5 activities and open tasks.
2. Use Perplexity to get news about the company from the last 30 days, plus anything relevant to our product category. Cite sources.
3. Write a one-page brief: who they are, where the deal stands, what changed since the last touch, three questions to ask, and risks.
4. Optionally log the brief as a note on the HubSpot deal, after I approve it.

Run it on a schedule (optional)

• Run it each morning for that day's external meetings, or an hour before each one.
• In a scheduled run, deliver the brief to you (as a draft, a message or a doc) and skip logging the note unless you've decided that's safe.
• HubSpot uses OAuth. Sign in once interactively and let your client refresh the token for later runs.

Where this goes wrong

• The wrong meeting or contact. Several contacts at one company, or a meeting with only an email address, can pull the wrong deal. Have the brief start with the meeting time and attendee so you can spot a mismatch.
• Invented deal history. When the CRM has few activities, the model may fill gaps. Ask it to write 'no activity logged' rather than summarize, and to quote dates.
• News about a different company. Common names (for example 'Summit' or 'Northstar') return news about other firms. Ask for the company's domain to be checked in each source.

Gotchas

• HubSpot only shows records the connected user can see, so a rep's brief only covers that rep's deals.
• HubSpot uses OAuth 2.1 with PKCE. For a scheduled or headless run, do the OAuth once interactively and let the token refresh.
• Keep it read-only by default. Logging the note is the only write.

Download

Get the prompts, guardrails and expected output as one Markdown file. Paste it into a Claude Project or ChatGPT project's instructions, or save it as CLAUDE.md for Claude Code.

Download pre-meeting-brief.md

Vendor sites: HubSpot · Perplexity. If we join an affiliate program, these links will be labeled as affiliate links.