If we had to pick one Slack feature that sales teams consistently underuse, /remind would be near the top of the list. Not because it is complicated. Because nobody ever showed them what it is actually for.
What it can do
You can set a reminder for yourself or for a whole channel. You can make it recurring. The syntax is plain English and it mostly just works:
every weekdayevery Mondayevery other Wednesdayon the 28th of every month
What you type is what lands in the channel. If you want emoji, use the shortcode format like :memo: or :white_check_mark: rather than pasting them in directly. Bold text, bullet points, and headers do not show up.
The reaction trick
When a reminder fires in a channel it is a real Slack message, which means the team can react to it with emoji.
Ask the team to react with :white_check_mark: when they have posted their standup. You can hover over that reaction at any point and see exactly who has responded and who has not, without sending a follow-up message or chasing anyone. The accountability is visible to the whole team, not just you. It is not surveillance. It is a shared scoreboard everyone can see.
Five reminders worth setting up
The best reminders do not just say “remember to do the thing.” They prompt a specific action or ask a specific question. “Update HubSpot” is easy to ignore. “Update your commit and best case categories in HubSpot tonight so we are not doing it live tomorrow” is harder to ignore because it tells you exactly what to do and why it matters right now.
Async standup
Fires every morning. Prompts the team to post in thread.
/remind #sales-team :sunrise: Morning check-in. What's your focus today and is anything blocked? Drop it in thread. every weekday at 9am
Tell the team to react with :white_check_mark: once they have posted.
Forecast call prep
Fires on Friday afternoon before a Monday call. Gives people the weekend to think rather than scrambling on the morning.
/remind #sales-team :1234: Forecast call Monday morning. Update your commit and best case categories in HubSpot before you finish today so we're not doing it live. every other Friday at 4pm
Pipeline review day
A personal reminder for yourself. Fires a couple of hours before the meeting.
/remind me :clipboard: Pipeline review with [rep name] at 2pm. Pull up their open deals before you go in. in 2 hours
End of month push
Fires on the 28th. Three days of runway.
/remind #sales-team :checkered_flag: Three days left in the month. If it's not in HubSpot it doesn't exist. What needs to move this week? on the 28th of every month at 9am
Deal gone quiet
A personal reminder to yourself before something falls off the radar.
/remind me :warning: Acme deal has been quiet for two weeks. Worth a nudge before the month closes. in 3 days
The limitations
- The reminder fires but it does not know if anyone acted on it
- You cannot edit a channel reminder once it is set, only delete and recreate it
- You cannot set a reminder for another individual user, only for yourself or a channel. If you want to prompt a specific rep, put it in a channel and mention them.
Managing your reminders
Type /remind list in any channel to see everything you have set, with a delete button next to each one. If you have been experimenting, worth doing that now before you end up with seventeen reminders firing at random times and no memory of setting any of them.