How Bullhorn Pulse Steps into CRM’s Future

I’m impressed. I just finished reading U.S. Patent 9,189,770 Automatic tracking of contact interactions. This was recently granted to Bullhorn, Inc. for it’s “Pulse” sales acceleration technology. The patent and the product point to the same future of CRM I am evangelizing here at SALESPHASE.  We differ in that Bullhorn Pulse is a magnificent step, versus SALESPHASE’s one-order-of-magnitude greater leap, into CRM’s future.  Bullhorn Pulse provides an automated data analytic method of analyzing actual customer interactions to get a clearer picture of which deals are winning and which are losing.  It uses its own patented remote access to contact tracking technology to automatically add a copy of any detected email message to the activity records of the sender and contact within the Bullhorn CRM system (or other CRM if I read the technology correctly).

I think Bullhorn Pulse advances sales pipeline technology in three important ways:

1. Automated, which for me means reduces wasted time, unnecessary effort and the potential for mistakes;
2. Analytic, which for me means it relies on measurement and not manager or sales rep guesses;
3. Qualitative, which for me means that it can interpret its measurements to determine which deals are simply “a bunch of activities” and which are “customer engagement.”

I agree completely with the co-founder and CEO of Bullhorn: “Sales activity reporting is dead,” Art Papas has stated, “Lots of activity and no engagement equals no results – we’ve learned this from listening to our customers over 16 years.”  Art’s insights resonate deeply with my past experience as a sales rep, account executive and business development manager. It is the same basic reasoning that lead me to found SALESPHASE.

Now that I’ve read the patent, I will start thinking about interesting ways to integrate Bullhorn’s Pulse technology with the advanced never-before-seen methods SALESPHASE will use to extract intelligence out of far-from-perfect information. Bullhorn Pulse analyzes specific customer interactions which it detects as relevant, such as an email to or from a customer.  SALESPHASE is what I call a deal characterization technology.  It provides a higher level of intelligence and feedback about deals without relying on guesses or any particular communications with customers: it doesn’t look at any specific mode of customer interaction and doesn’t care what the deal is actually about or what the buyer and seller’s internal processes look like, etc.  It is independent of any specific context and therefore it can stand on its own or play well with any established CRM system, whatever suits the user.  You might think, how is that possible? Follow me on Twitter @salesphase and keep an eye on salesphase.com for the beta test signup.  –John Clark