Recipes / Reference customer match: happy customers in the prospect's industry

Reference customer match: happy customers in the prospect's industry

HubSpot + G2 + Intercom

IntermediateAEs

Who it's for

AEs who need a reference customer that looks like their prospect, and want a shortlist backed by G2 reviews and support history before they ask the account owner. HubSpot can be swapped for Salesforce, Attio or Pipedrive. Intercom EU works the same way for EU-hosted workspaces.

What you get

Reference shortlist for a logistics prospect. Sample output: every company and person in it is fictional.

Prospect: Tidewell Robotics (fictional), industry Logistics, about 400 employees.

HubSpot customers in Logistics: 7. With a G2 review we could match by company: 3. Checked in Intercom: all 7.

| Customer | Owner | Customer since | G2 | Intercom, last 6 months | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Larkspur Freightworks (fictional) | Priya Raman | Mar 2024 | 5 stars, Jun 2026: "Cut our month-end close from 6 days to 2." | 4 conversations, all closed, no complaints | Strong |
| Mossgate Labs (fictional) | Sam Whitlock | Nov 2024 | 4 stars, Feb 2026: "Setup took longer than planned, but support was quick." | 11 conversations, 1 open billing issue since Sep 28 | Ask owner first |
| Brindle Harbor Co. (fictional) | Dana Okafor | Jan 2025 | No review found | 2 conversations, both closed | Possible, no public proof |

Left out: Quarry Lane Analytics (fictional). Two escalations about data sync in August and an open renewal deal in HubSpot.
Not matched: 2 G2 reviews from Logistics reviewers with no company name. Not counted.

Next step for you (text only):
"Hi Priya, I'm working a logistics deal with Tidewell Robotics. Would Larkspur Freightworks be open to a 20-minute reference call in the next few weeks? Happy to work around their schedule."

No one was contacted and nothing was changed in HubSpot, G2 or Intercom.

Time and cost

Estimate About 15–25 minutes, most of it reading the support history.

Assumptions: One prospect, with about 5–10 customers in the same industry checked in each tool.

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

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.

Developer setup

Auth setup and mcp.json for Claude Code and Cursor
  • HubSpot: Sign in with OAuth in your client (run /mcp in Claude Code). Do it once interactively, and the client stores and refreshes the token.
  • G2: Sign in with OAuth in your client (run /mcp in Claude Code). Do it once interactively, and the client stores and refreshes the token.
  • Intercom: Sign in with OAuth, or pass an API key as a Bearer token for headless use.

Put this in .mcp.json (Claude Code, project root) or ~/.cursor/mcp.json (Cursor). Swap the example keys for your own, and don't commit real ones. Remove the // comment lines if your client requires strict JSON.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hubspot": {
      "url": "https://mcp.hubspot.com"
    },
    "g2": {
      "url": "https://mcp.g2.com/mcp"
    },
    "intercom": {
      "url": "https://mcp.intercom.com/mcp"
      // headless alternative: "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_INTERCOM_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Step-by-step prompts

  1. Find {prospect} in HubSpot and tell me its industry and size. Then find our current customers in the same industry: company, owner, customer since, deal amount, and any open deals. Show me a table. Don't change any records.
  2. Find G2 reviews of {our_product}. Match them to the customers in the table by company name only, and quote the matching reviews with the date, and the star rating if G2 shows one. List reviews from this industry that don't name a company separately, and don't guess who wrote them.
  3. For each customer in the table, look up the company in Intercom and summarize its conversations from the last {months} months: how many, how many are still open, and any complaint or escalation, with one short quote. Don't add notes or change anything in Intercom.
  4. Rank the customers as Strong, Ask owner first, or Leave out, with one line of evidence each from HubSpot, G2 and Intercom. Then write a short note I can send to the account owner of the top pick, asking if their customer would be open to a reference call. Text only. Don't contact anyone.

Run it on a schedule (optional)

Where this goes wrong

Gotchas

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 reference-match.md

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