While understand the appeal of a chatbot I do not think they should build it.
PulsePoint isn’t struggling because they don’t have a bot. They’re struggling because their margins are thin, and their most important client has already said, very clearly, that they don’t want an AI interface. When a client who anchors your revenue politely refuses your big idea, that’s usually a signal worth listening to.
Jeannie is skipping straight to the shiny, exciting solution because it’s easier than wrestling with the internal discomfort of dissent. I don’t think that its necessarily inherently virtuous to be the “first to something” . Sometimes the most mature move a company can make is to slow down long enough to understand what game it’s actually playing.
Mark and Linda are raising real concerns, and Jeannie keeps brushing them aside with a kind of “the tech will catch up” optimism. But that kind of optimism can flatten people. It reminds me of when adults say, “you’ll understand when you’re older” — it ends the conversation without resolving anything.
What they could do instead:
- Run the experiment internally before handing it to clients: Let the bot be a tool for the sales team, not a replacement for it. Let it draft outreach, prep call notes, answer internal questions. Let people experience it as something that supports them rather than something that threatens them.
- Deliberately, find the clients who actually want this, if any: If Tyrell is uninterested, don’t turn him into a test case. Nothing erodes trust faster than forcing innovation onto someone who didn’t ask for it. But there will always be early adopters — clients who love being on the frontier. Start there.
PulsePoint’s identity has always been built on the idea that you can call a real human who actually cares about your business. If you replace that with the same generic AI interface every other company will implement, what differentiates you? What remains that is distinctly yours?
The technology will evolve quickly. But so will everyone else’s technology. If your only strategy is “we have a bot now,” then you don’t have a strategy. You have a hope. Sometimes the most radical, most courageous move is to pause. To not join the rush. To understand, with clarity, why you want to build something before you start building it.
