From scattered notes to searchable insights: Building a sales intelligence repository

TL;DR: Executive search firms leak candidate intelligence every time an associate leaves, a CRM field goes unfilled, or a 90-minute deep-dive interview fades from memory. A sales intelligence repository fixes this by turning individual conversations into a searchable, firm-wide asset. You need three things: bot-free capture that preserves the dynamic of confidential interviews, centralized storage your whole team can access, and natural-language search that lets you ask "who was that CFO with IPO experience we spoke to last year?" and actually get an answer. Granola provides all three without visible bots or audio stored anywhere.

The most valuable data in any executive search firm isn't sitting in your Application Tracking System (ATS) or a shared Google Drive. It lives in the exact words a sitting CFO used to describe why she'd consider a move, the comp expectation a candidate mentioned in passing during a preliminary screen, and the leadership story a VP of Engineering told you eight months ago that fits perfectly for a search you just opened. Most of that intelligence disappears, either into a private notebook, an unstructured CRM note field, or someone's memory when they hand in their notice.

Why meeting notes die in your CRM (and why it costs you placements)

CRM systems like Bullhorn and Salesforce store structured data well. They fail at retrieving conversational nuance. Notes entered after a candidate call are often too brief to be useful and almost impossible to search across at scale.

Three compounding problems drive this:

• The "write-only" database: Data goes in but rarely comes back out in useful form. Research on organizational knowledge loss shows that 60% of employees find it difficult or almost impossible to get essential information from colleagues before they leave. A detailed review of Bullhorn's CRM found that its Boolean search (queries built with AND/OR/NOT operators) has a significant learning curve, and that loading the search screen alone takes 5-6 seconds, too slow when you're trying to resurface a specific candidate mid-client call.
• The context gap: Manual note-taking during a 60-minute deep-dive interview almost always misses the soft signals. The hesitation before discussing compensation, the exact phrasing a candidate used about their board relationship, the specific metric cited from a previous turnaround. These details often separate a good shortlist from a great one.
• The turnover tax: When a senior associate leaves, they take two or three years of candidate assessments, relationship context, and market intelligence that no offboarding checklist will fully capture. Departing employees take their institutional knowledge with them, and their tenure-built expertise in a candidate market is rarely documented in a recoverable form.

The table below shows how the three most common note systems compare against what a repository actually requires:

System	Searchable?	Captures nuance?	Survives turnover?
Private notebooks	No	Yes	No
Bullhorn/Salesforce	Limited (Boolean only)	No (manual entry only)	Yes, if entered
Granola repository	Yes (natural language)	Yes (transcripts + enhancement)	Yes (transferable, shared)

The three layers of a sales intelligence repository

A functional repository for executive search isn't a folder of exported transcripts. It has three distinct layers, and each one needs to hold up under the confidentiality requirements of C-suite search.

Layer 1: The capture layer (bot-free)

Sitting executives exploring confidential moves will not speak candidly if they feel formally documented. Any visible recording participant in a Zoom call changes the dynamic of the conversation before it has even started. Directors ask why they're being recorded. You explain it's for notes. The conversation becomes more guarded.

Granola addresses this through device-level audio capture. Rather than joining a call as a named participant, Granola captures your device's system audio and microphone directly, transcribing in real time with no bot announcement, as detailed in Granola's security documentation.

"It doesn't record, so there's no need to interrupt attendees... For in-person meetings, the mobile app is just as precise as the web version." - Cory M. on G2

Tell candidates at the start of a conversation that you're using an AI notepad for accurate notes. There's no recording bot announcement, but professional transparency about your documentation practice maintains trust. For in-person meetings, site visits, and office interviews, the Granola iPhone app captures audio via your phone's microphone with one-tap start from the lock screen, and notes sync to your desktop immediately.

Layer 2: The storage layer (centralized and access-controlled)

Individual meeting notes captured locally don't build a firm-wide repository. The second layer is moving those notes into a shared workspace where your team can access them, with permissions you control.

Granola's shared team folders let you create dedicated spaces for candidate pipelines, active searches, or client account histories. Key controls include:

• Private-by-default notes until you add them to a team space
• Admin-controlled roles and data retention settings
• Note transfer between accounts or workspaces as team structures change

We encrypt all notes at rest and in transit via AWS infrastructure. We achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification (an independent audit of security controls) in July 2025, and we delete audio immediately after transcription with nothing stored anywhere afterward. What remains is the transcript and your enhanced notes.

Layer 3: The retrieval layer (queryable, not just browsable)

The difference between a folder of exports and a true intelligence repository is whether you can ask it a question and get a cited answer.

Granola's folder-level chat lets you query across all meetings in a shared folder using natural language. Ask questions like:

• "Which candidates mentioned relocation flexibility in the last six months?"
• "What did enterprise clients say about succession planning timelines?"
• "Show me every CFO with IPO experience we spoke to this year"

Granola searches every transcript in the folder, surfaces relevant passages, and provides inline citations with jump-to-source links. As the Granola 2.0 launch overview describes it, recruiters can ask "Where do our interviews keep stalling?" and get answers instantly with source-linked citations, rather than scrolling through individual records.

How to build your repository with Granola

Quick fix: You can have Granola capturing your next candidate call and notes syncing to a team folder within five minutes. Download the Mac or Windows app, sign in with Google, and grant microphone and system audio access.

Long-term approach: Build a structured folder system that maps to your active searches and persists after individual team members leave.

Here's the implementation workflow:

1. Set up and connect your calendar. After installing Granola and granting audio permissions, connect your Google Calendar. Granola will send a notification one minute before any scheduled meeting with two or more attendees, so you can open the call and start transcribing with a single click. You control what gets captured: Granola requires a manual start for each meeting, so nothing is captured without your intent.
2. Take rough notes during the call. Granola works as a notepad first. During a candidate deep-dive, jot the signals that matter: comp expectations, leadership examples, cultural indicators. Granola transcribes in the background while you stay focused on the conversation. As one user puts it:

   "I can just write down things I really care about and let Granola take care of the rest." - Jess M. on G2

3. Enhance notes after the call. When the meeting ends, click "Enhance notes" in Granola. Your rough bullets are fleshed out with context, exact quotes, and specifics from the transcript. The AI-enhanced notes feature captures specifics like "$285K base with 20% bonus target" accurately rather than approximated from memory.
4. Apply a search-specific template. Granola's template library lets you select or create formats that match your assessment structure. A "Candidate deep-dive" template can capture leadership competency examples, compensation expectations, equity preferences, relocation stance, and cultural fit signals consistently across every call. One reviewer found this particularly useful:

   "The AI Summary templates. Being able to choose what type of meeting it is and the notes being summarized accordingly." - Verified user on G2

5. Move notes into the firm repository. Drag completed meeting notes into the relevant shared folder for the active search or candidate pipeline. Granola's shared workspace gives every team member access to the same notes and the same chat interface for querying them.
6. Transfer enhanced notes to your ATS. Copy the enhanced notes from Granola into your Bullhorn or Salesforce record. You can also export notes for sharing with clients or archiving. This step keeps your system of record current without the full reconstruction burden of writing from scratch.

Repository build checklist:

• Download Granola for Mac or Windows and complete setup (under five minutes)
• Connect Google Calendar and grant microphone and system audio permissions
• Create a candidate deep-dive template matching your assessment structure
• Set up shared team folders for each active search
• Add workspace members and assign admin or member roles
• Run first candidate call with Granola open and jot rough notes
• Enhance notes immediately after the call and add to shared folder
• Transfer key details to Bullhorn or Salesforce record
• Query the folder after five or more calls to verify cross-meeting search is working
• Run monthly folder queries like "CFO candidates with private equity experience" to resurface talent for new searches

Preventing knowledge loss when associates leave

The most effective knowledge retention happens before any departure is on the horizon. Every meeting your team captures and adds to a shared folder is institutional knowledge that now belongs to the firm.

When a senior associate leaves, transferring their notes to the firm workspace means the candidate assessments, client requirement discussions, and stakeholder conversations they built over two or three years remain searchable by the rest of the team. You don't just keep the contact info. You keep the context.

This creates two practical advantages:

• Faster onboarding: New associates inherit a searchable history of how searches in their practice area have run, what candidates said, and what clients wanted. Research on employee replacement costs shows it can take new hires one to two years to reach the productivity level of high performers who left. A queryable repository of past conversations shortens that curve.
• Candidate resurfacing: Candidates assessed months or years ago can be surfaced for new mandates. The Business plan's cross-meeting intelligence means you can ask "Show me every CFO candidate with Series B to IPO experience we spoke to in the last 18 months" and get cited results across your team's full conversation history, not just what one person happens to remember.

"Easy to set up and runs quietly in the background. Accurate discussion summaries with the backup transcript available." - Joe M. on G2

A repository that works at the individual level is the prerequisite for one that works at the firm level. Build the habit with one consultant, then expand to shared folders. The institutional memory compounds over time.

Try Granola free on Mac or Windows. Connect your calendar, capture your next candidate deep-dive, and enhance your notes. When you're ready to extend it to the team, the Business plan at $14 per user per month adds shared folders and cross-meeting chat. Download Granola and start building the repository on your next call.

Frequently asked questions about meeting repositories

Is it safe to store confidential candidate data in a cloud repository with Granola?

Yes. We are SOC 2 Type 2 certified as of July 2025, encrypt all notes at rest and in transit via AWS, and we delete audio immediately after transcription with no audio stored at any point. Notes are private by default unless you explicitly share them.

Does Granola train its AI on my candidate conversations?

We contractually prohibit third-party AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic from training on your data, as detailed in our privacy policy. We may use anonymized data to improve our own models, with opt-out available in account settings. Enterprise plan users have model training disabled by default across the entire organization.

How do I search across my team's notes?

The shared workspace chat lets any team member query across all notes and transcripts in a shared folder using natural language questions. Results come with inline citations and jump-to-source links.

Can I use Granola for in-person candidate meetings or site visits?

Yes. The Granola iPhone app captures audio via your phone's microphone and syncs notes to your desktop immediately. One-tap start from the lock screen makes it practical between back-to-back in-person meetings.

What happens to notes when an associate leaves the firm?

Notes can be transferred between accounts and workspaces during offboarding, so the firm retains the full conversation history rather than losing it with the individual's account.

Key terminology for search intelligence

Sales intelligence repository: A centralized, queryable database of all candidate and client interactions that enables your team to surface past discussions, exact compensation details, leadership examples, and client requirements on demand, rather than relying on individual memory or keyword-limited CRM fields.

Institutional memory: The collective knowledge your firm accumulates from conversations over time, stored in a form that survives employee departures and remains accessible to current and future team members.

Bot-free capture: Transcription via device audio, where the AI notepad accesses your computer's system audio and microphone directly rather than joining the call as a visible participant.

Enhanced notes: Granola enriches your rough bullets with relevant context, exact quotes, and specifics pulled from the transcript. You control the structure. Granola fills in the supporting detail from what was actually said.