The best CRM doesn't just store data - it helps you know what to do next. SalesSheet.ai's AI continuously analyzes your contacts, deals, and activity patterns to proactively suggest follow-ups, identify at-risk deals, recommend outreach timing, and surface opportunities you might otherwise miss.
This guide explains how smart suggestions work, what types of recommendations you'll receive, and how to customize them to match your sales process.
Understanding Smart Suggestions
The AI generates suggestions by analyzing several data points:
- Communication patterns: How often you typically follow up with contacts
- Deal velocity: How long deals usually spend in each stage
- Engagement signals: Email opens, link clicks, meeting attendance
- Historical outcomes: What actions led to closed deals in the past
- Industry benchmarks: Typical sales cycles for similar companies
- Contact behavior: When contacts are most responsive
The AI doesn't just remind you to follow up - it tells you why, when, and how based on what's actually likely to work.
Suggestions appear in your dashboard, in the AI chat as proactive messages, and via notifications if you've enabled them.
Follow-Up Suggestions
The AI identifies contacts who haven't heard from you in a while and suggests personalized follow-ups:
Example suggestions:
- "You haven't contacted Jennifer Davis in 2 weeks. Based on your typical cadence, consider reaching out. She opened your last email 3 times, indicating high interest."
- "Michael at StartupCo mentioned wanting to connect 'next month' in your last conversation 4 weeks ago. Time to follow up?"
- "The Acme Corp deal has been in 'Proposal' stage for 18 days, which is longer than your average. Suggest scheduling a check-in call."
Each suggestion includes context about why it's being recommended and what the AI thinks you should do. You can act on suggestions with one click: "Draft that follow-up email" or "Schedule the check-in call."
The AI learns from your responses. If you consistently ignore certain types of suggestions, it will stop making them. If you act on specific patterns, it will prioritize similar suggestions in the future.
Deal Action Recommendations
The AI monitors your deal pipeline and flags deals that need attention:
- Stalled deals: "The Microsoft deal hasn't had activity in 10 days. Your won deals typically have activity every 5 days. Consider a status check."
- At-risk deals: "3 emails to TechCorp went unanswered. Engagement has dropped 80%. This deal may be at risk."
- Close opportunities: "The DataFlow deal has strong engagement and has been in final stage for 7 days. Your average close time from this stage is 5 days. Consider asking for the close."
- Next best action: "Based on similar deals you've won, the next step for Innovate Tech should be a product demo. Schedule it?"
The AI doesn't just tell you something is wrong - it suggests specific actions to get deals moving again, based on what's worked before.
Outreach Timing Optimization
Not all times are equally good for outreach. The AI analyzes when your contacts are most responsive:
- "Jennifer typically responds to emails within 2 hours when you reach out on Tuesday mornings. Consider scheduling your follow-up for then."
- "Contacts in the healthcare industry in your CRM have a 40% higher response rate to Thursday afternoon emails. Optimize your outreach timing."
- "Michael hasn't opened emails sent on Mondays in the last 6 attempts. Try a different day."
The AI can automatically schedule emails and tasks for optimal times based on these patterns. Enable this in Settings > AI Preferences > Smart Scheduling.
For cold outreach, the AI suggests the best time based on industry benchmarks and your historical data.
Opportunity Identification
The AI surfaces opportunities you might miss by looking across your entire CRM:
- Cross-sell opportunities: "3 of your contacts at Acme Corp use Product A. Based on their roles, they might be interested in Product B as well."
- Re-engagement candidates: "5 contacts in your CRM haven't been contacted in 6+ months but had high engagement previously. Consider a re-engagement campaign."
- Upsell signals: "DataFlow's contract renews in 45 days and they've increased usage by 120%. Good time to discuss upgrading their plan."
- Warm referrals: "You recently closed a deal with TechCorp. Jennifer also works in enterprise tech. Ask for an intro?"
These suggestions help you grow revenue from your existing network without manual analysis.
Pro Tip
Review your weekly "AI Insights" summary every Monday morning. This digest highlights the most important suggestions for the week: deals needing attention, high-value follow-ups, and identified opportunities. Acting on just 2-3 suggestions per week can significantly improve your close rates. You can also ask the AI directly: "What should I prioritize this week?" for a personalized action plan.
What to Expect
When using smart suggestions, you'll experience:
- 3-5 high-priority suggestions per day based on your pipeline size
- Increasing accuracy as the AI learns your patterns (improves 20-30% over first month)
- Suggestions tailored to your specific sales cycle and industry
- Contextual recommendations that explain the reasoning
- One-click actions to immediately act on suggestions
- Filtering options to focus on specific types of suggestions (deals, contacts, tasks)
- Weekly summaries of suggestions you acted on vs. ignored
Troubleshooting
Go to Settings > AI Preferences > Suggestions and adjust the frequency slider to "Conservative" instead of "Aggressive." You can also disable specific suggestion types if you find certain categories unhelpful. For example, if you don't want timing optimization suggestions, turn off "Outreach Timing" while keeping "Follow-Ups" enabled.
The AI needs time to learn your patterns. In the first 2 weeks, suggestions are based on general best practices. After a month of usage, accuracy improves significantly. You can also manually teach the AI by providing feedback: mark suggestions as "Helpful" or "Not Helpful." The AI uses this feedback to refine future recommendations. Additionally, ensure your deal stages and pipeline are configured correctly in Settings > Pipeline so the AI understands your sales process.
Check Settings > AI Preferences > Suggestions to ensure suggestions are enabled. If you have very few contacts or deals, there may not be enough data for meaningful suggestions (minimum ~10 contacts and 3 deals recommended). Also verify that your email integration is working - many suggestions depend on email activity data. If everything is configured correctly but you still see no suggestions, contact support as there may be a technical issue.