HighTempo: turning AI-powered sales intelligence into smarter target account lists
B2B revenue teams have more data, more sales, and information than ever before. Despite this, they struggle to identify which companies are worth targeting, with research showing that 71% of UK sales rep’s time is spent on non-selling tracks, according to Salesforce UK and Ireland.
This means that sales team waste hours researching prospects, and revenue teams struggle to know which accounts to prioritise. HighTempo, UK-based software development startup believes its technology can turn this fragmented business intelligence into ranked, source-backed target account lists to help sales teams spend less time researching and more time winning customers.
Founder, Morgan Phillips, breaks down his motivations in launching the startup, how the technology works, and what the future of AI-powered sales intelligence may look like.
What led you to launch HighTempo while studying Chemistry at Newcastle, and what gap did you see in the sales intelligence market?
I was an early adopter of Claude and spent all my spare time at university building AI workflows and systems. My first product was interview practice software for jobseekers, but I wanted to transition to B2B tech. Speaking to sales teams, I kept hearing the same story. A sales intelligence platform gets bought, two weeks later it’s half set up, and the business development reps (BDRs) have gone back to a spreadsheet and gut feel. That’s where HighTempo started. Studying chemistry shaped how I approached it. You’re trained to question every result until you can prove it, and I brought that same mindset to sales data.
Sales teams keep getting handed bigger databases, but no database tells a rep which accounts to call today, or why. Intent platforms serve so many clients that the signals end up generic, when a company really needs signals tied to what it sells.
Those teams didn’t need another login. They needed someone to hand them the answer, so HighTempo started as a service, not a platform. As a lean team, we work closely with each client to refine their ideal customer profile (ICP), learning from their best customers, their lost deals and the current market landscape to work out what really drives a purchase. Three to four days later, we deliver a ranked list in a spreadsheet, the format their reps already work in, ready to use from day one. That level of customisation is hard for the big platforms to offer at scale, and it’s the gap HighTempo fills.
How does HighTempo use AI agents to identify bespoke buying signals, and how does this differ from platforms such as Apollo and ZoomInfo?
It starts with a call with the client’s sales team. Together we work out who their ideal customers are and which events show a company is ready to buy. We then build a ranking model around exactly what they sell. For a compliance software vendor, that might mean looking for businesses entering a newly regulated market while hiring their first head of compliance. A signal that specific only applies to one company or niche, so it has to be built for them.
Our AI agents then research every account against each signal, reading the material the way a human analyst would. They draw on a wide range of sources that go well beyond the usual databases, including annual reports, Companies House and SEC filings, job postings, LinkedIn, and government tenders, to name a few. Signals that are too old to matter are filtered out. When two or three signals show up at the same company, that’s a strong sign they’re getting ready to buy, and the ranking model automatically moves that account up the list.
The agents also go looking for companies the client hasn’t found yet, and add any that score highly against the full model. Each signal is linked to the person most likely to own that problem, with their contact details, and every account comes with the background a rep needs, like company size, sector, and the software it already runs.
Apollo and ZoomInfo are brilliant for mapping your total market. Their signals are built to serve thousands of customers, so every company in your space sees the same alerts on the same day. HighTempo looks for the signals that only matter to your business, and checks every account for them, one by one. That tells your reps which accounts to call first, and gives them an opening nobody else has.
How do you ensure the signals your system identifies are accurate, relevant and backed by reliable sources?
We work to one rule. If we can’t prove a signal, it doesn’t go on the list.
Every signal is checked against its original source before a client sees it. We confirm it’s the right company, that the event really happened and when. The date always comes from the announcement or filing itself, never from when a page was last updated. That’s how we catch a funding round from years ago resurfacing as news, or two companies with similar names getting mixed up.
Relevance is agreed with the client before we start. Each type of signal has its own shelf life, so a job advert might count for three months, a leadership change for six and an acquisition for twelve. Anything older is cut.
We prioritise primary sources like company announcements, official filings, and live job postings. Every signal carries a short quote and a working link, so any rep can check the evidence in one click.
One wrong signal is enough for a rep to stop trusting the whole list. So we would rather deliver fewer signals and know that every one of them holds up.
Can you talk me through the work you did with FloQast, how HighTempo helped rebuild its target account lists, and what contributed to the reported near-doubling of BDR output?
FloQast had launched new products and opened new European regions, but its CRM data hadn’t kept up, and much of the knowledge about who to target lived in individual reps’ heads. The BDR, alliances and marketing teams all needed fresh target account lists.
We started with their sales and marketing leaders, building a separate ICP for each region and product line and agreeing which buying signals mattered most. We trained our agents on those ICPs, their current customers, and the deals they had lost, and refined the ranking with the FloQast team until they signed it off.
We then ranked their existing targets, accounts they had lost or spoken to before, and new accounts our agents found, all scored by the same ranking model. That gave them six ranked lists by region and market tier.
I’d put the result down to three things. First, the targeting was built for each European market, so reps in each region were going after the right kind of company for that market. Second, the lists were ranked, so BDRs could put most of their effort into the accounts most likely to buy. Third, every account came with a sourced, dated signal and a suggested angle, so every call or email started with a real reason to get in touch. FloQast’s EMEA Sales Director said the team saw “close to a doubling of output per BDR within the first quarter.”
Since then we’ve built lists for teams selling identity security, IT services, data analytics, hospitality technology, and sales recruitment. Because every list starts from the client’s own customers and signals, the approach works in any B2B market.
What do you think the future of AI-powered sales intelligence looks like, and how do you see HighTempo developing as the market evolves?
Getting hold of sales data is no longer the hard part. AI can produce ten thousand accounts in seconds, but that doesn’t help a rep who only has time to call twenty today. What will matter is knowing which accounts to go after first, and being able to prove why. I think the winning sales teams of the next few years will be the ones working from the shortest list, where every account has earned its place and every rep knows exactly why they’re calling.
HighTempo is building for that world. We’re going deeper into signals most sales teams never see. One tracks leaders who have bought a client’s product before and have just moved to a new company, where they’re likely to buy again. Another spots when a competitor’s customers are showing signs of leaving. The aim is to keep finding the evidence others can’t.
Long term, the goal is to build the highest-converting target account lists in the world, each one tailored to the team that uses it. Our clients’ results will always come first. I’m all in on HighTempo, and I won’t be satisfied until the best sales teams in the world refuse to work without it.
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