How We Price & Sell AI Solutions in our 100k /Mo AI Agency (Complete Guide)

Hey everyone, I'm Ben and in this video I'm going to break down our sales process and how we price AI automation projects in my AI agency. Last month, our AI agency did over $100,000 in revenue. Now, we're still learning and improving every day, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. Uh, but we've learned a few things along the way and hopefully can help you. Uh, pricing AI automation projects can be a bit tricky and as we're dealing with a new technology, sales can sometimes be hard, too. But getting these two things right is

key uh in my experience to building a profitable and successful AI agency. So in this video, I'll break down our lessons on the best uh sales process, how to qualify leads, how to handle common objections and pricing. Now, if you don't know me yet, I'm Ben. I run an AI agency since 2023. And I also run a community with founders, builders, and professionals getting a foot into the AI space themselves. And if you're a business looking to adopt AI into your business, you can also book us in for a free call in the description below.

So I'll be covering the following five topics. First I'll uh go over and cover quickly the market stage I think we're currently in for uh AI and automation adoption and the buyer characteristics of that market stage because I think it puts into perspective uh the challenges we might face when we price and try to sell these uh AI automation solutions. Then I want to go over uh how to position yourself which I think is very important to get right and to internalize for yourself before you even jump onto sales calls. Uh then I'll go over

what I think are the best uh pricing models for these AI services. And lastly, I'll break down our entire sales process from uh qualification to sales calls to objection handling and proposals. Now, one thing I do want to make clear before starting out is this framework of course is uh focused on making your AI agency more efficient in sales, in uh profitability, and growing your AI agency. But if you're just starting out and you haven't worked with any client yet, then your number one goal is not that. your number one goal is to get some

real world experience with clients, right? So, take this with a grain of salt if you're just starting out. I think it's still a good framework uh to have in mind for you for the long run, but your number one goal is to get some experience, real world experience uh with clients, right? And that might mean your pricing model or your sales process isn't perfect yet. Uh you might be a little bit underpaid or even do it for free because your main goal is to get experience, I would say, with the first two clients you work

with, right? So just want to make that clear. I still think it's a good framework for you to have in mind for the long run. So where are we at in terms of market maturity uh you've probably seen the innovation uh adoption life cycle. Now in this case of course I put it in the perspective of AI automation adoption for companies. So look at it through that lens. In this case of course we have the innovators the early adopters and we have the majority uh which is the mass market basically with the early majority and

the late majority and we have the lagards. uh now we are in my experience very much still in the early adopter phase most companies have done absolutely nothing with AI automation uh yet uh if they've done things with AI it's mostly uh through chat GPT or or or tools like that uh where employees use it but systems or AI solutions uh like I show on my YouTube channel or we're seeing all around on YouTube we are very much in the early adopter phase right and I think it's good to understand this because I think it

puts a lot of the buyer characteristics uh into perspective So basically the the characteristics of the early adopters uh is generally that they want to stay ahead of the game, right? They are usually a bit more risk-taking type of companies. Uh they want to stay cutting edge and want to stay ahead of the competition, right? So this this is sort of the ideal client we want to sell to right now because there is not there is no mass adoption yet. There's not lots of proof of these systems working in big companies or in companies yet.

So uh it's easier to sell to these sort of more risk-taking types of businesses who want to stay cutting edge although there might not be that much proof in the market yet. Right now sometimes uh we see that we also get the early majority uh type of clients in right uh in the earlier majority the characteristics of them is they tend to be a lot more pragmatic right uh they're a lot much more risk averse and want to see a lot more proof uh that these systems actually work uh before actually taking the leap and

and jumping in and trying this. So in my experience it's very hard to sell to these types of clients yet. Uh you do get them sometimes because I think there's a lot of FOMO in the market at the moment. everyone's seeing AI everywhere. Uh but in my experience, if they need a lot of proof and they're they're really waiting it out, it's hard to sell to them. So again, we're very much in the early adopter phase. You if you're watching this, uh you are also an early adopter. And that's actually a really good thing, right?

Because uh because we are in the early adopter market, uh it's not as competitive yet, right? As soon as we transition more into adoption from the majority, right? This is also where where the landscape becomes a lot more competitive, right? This is where mass adoption occurs. And of course, uh it's going to be a lot harder to stand out from the crowds once this this mass adoption occurs. So jumping into this right now, uh you can really uh market yourself and get the experience necessary to position yourself really well when this mass adoption occurs in

the upcoming years. Of course, this is just a a straight division. Of course, there's a little bit of an overlap, but it explains, I think, the buyer characteristics we see uh in our sales calls, and we've gotten in hundreds of sales calls by now. Uh so, let me go through them. So what are some of the common characteristics we see? Again, these depend a bit on the type of client, right? And how uh risk averse they are. Uh but in general, we see these sort of six points coming back a lot in in our sales

calls. Uh and the first one, of course, is uh there is still a very high degree of skepticism, right? Even from the early adopters, we're sort of a little bit more risk-taking. There is still sort of a high level of perceived risk. There are a lot of questions on the reliability, the ROI, and it's completely understandable, right? In the stage we're at, right? Think of it from a company's perspective, right? Most companies or founders don't know anyone else or any other company who's implemented these types of systems yet. And nobody wants to be the idiot,

right? Who wants to be the idiot to to try this and uh just get a system that absolutely doesn't work and wasted a bunch of money and time, right? So, this this degree of skepticism is still in the market. Now in our experience which I'll get to in qualifying uh uh page two is if the perceived risk or the the degree of skepticism is too high which can you can maybe characterize them as an early majority uh type of client in general it's really hard still to uh actually convert those clients right so we are

still looking to sell to more of the risk averse uh sort of cutting edge type of clients uh at the moment right and the second thing we see of course is there is a lot of FOMO in the market right especially for these early adopters because they do want to stay ahead of the market, right? They want to be cutting edge, uh be the first to adopt these kinds of solutions and stay ahead of the of the competition, right? And we can really use this a bit in our our sales process to uh to try

to get them to the door. Then uh of course, there's a still a limited understanding of the tech of of what these automation uh systems and AI agents can actually do for their businesses, where they should start, what what use cases they should use them for. uh so they need a lot of guidance and and education uh in general when adopting these kinds of solutions and because there's a limited understanding of the tech uh the market what we see tend to look for concrete use cases uh instead of uh adopting it already as a long-term

strategic bet right it's also understandable uh because there's still a degree of skepticism companies are not convinced yet that this is really a strategic long-term bet inside of their their businesses they just want to sort of try it out with a concrete use case, but that's what we see, right? They tend to look for sort of concrete use cases to start out with. And the interesting thing we see is once they've tried one or two automations and they see the value of it, that switch to seeing it as a strategic long-term bet gets uh gets

made pretty quickly uh for these companies, right? So, that's why it's really important to get them through the door uh with one or two automations, right? With with quick wins. Then there's some security uh and data and of course cost concerns. Uh now this hasn't been a huge topic for us uh in particular uh it has come up sometimes but in general uh it it hasn't been a dealbreaker and I'll get to this this point in the objection handling too. And then lastly of course all of this is also caused because there's still a lack

of reference right there are not that many companies that have implemented this right so companies are just not entirely sure yet if they should jump in right now or maybe wait it out a little bit more. Now before talking about pricing and the sales process, it's important to understand how you're going to position yourself and your offer. Because if we specifically talk about uh offering AI automation services, uh you can basically position yourself in two ways. And the way I conceptualize it is by either positioning yourself as a builder or as an AI partner. Now,

I've gone uh through both. And I can highly recommend you to try and position yourself as a partner. And I'll explain you why. When I just started out, I presented myself more like a builder. It's like look, I now have these technical skills and I can implement automations for your business. In my case, uh specifically in marketing and sales. So the way I position myself is if you need a project or an automation, right, uh you can hire me and I'll execute on that automation. Now that makes sense when you're just starting out, right? Uh

you basically execute on a defined project. Uh you basically work uh per project. Uh you focus more on the technical implementation also in your offer, right? And therefore it makes most sense to you and the company to charge uh project based or maybe some people even time based. Now there's a big issue in this because in reality and also again because of the current market stage we're in most companies don't exactly know where to start, how to exactly implement an automation, which automation to start with, uh how what's actually feasible, what's not. Besides that, most

businesses are very messy. they don't have very clear SOPs or processes in place. So in reality when you're doing this sort of project based work in reality you're actually also doing a lot of education a lot of consulting you're redesigning their existing systems or processes to optimize them to actually resolve uh business problems and business needs. Right? So you're doing a lot more than just the technical implementation. Right? So if you do project based pricing you're going to run into a lot of issues. Right? Because uh rarely are these automation solutions perfect on the first

try. again because businesses are messy and they don't know exactly what they want at the first try which is perfectly fine right but in reality you're doing a lot more right you help them design systems that actually resolve business needs you help them optimize you help them create high ROI solutions you guide them along long-term AI adoption you provide a mix of education consulting and implementation and therefore I think the recurring fee makes so much more sense for these types of services and for the current market stage we're in especially considering ing that many people

were moving into the space have some background and some expertise in maybe marketing or sales and you're using that domain expertise to actually help the business improve their marketing or sales processes right so you're not only just doing technical implementation right you're doing consulting and improving uh how their business is run and the way I I switched and and sort of communicated that partner position is by calling I I call myself a fractional AI officer but just by communicating that you do more than just pure implementation You help uh you educate, you do consulting, you

help identify uh the best uh processes to automate uh and communicating that on your website or whatever wherever you sell and in your pitch and that you work longterm with clients and by just having a recurring fee model, you're already indirectly uh sort of communicating that you're more than just a builder, right? And it's important to get that across your entire salesunnel, right? From website to to sales process to pricing. And even if you're going to offer more niche service like lead generation through an AI system, you really want to communicate that lead generation part

to be able to uh position yourself as a partner instead of just saying, "Hey, I can implement uh this AI system that generates leads for you." Right now, I think you get the idea, but I just put a few more uh uh reasons why it's really important in my experience to position yourself like this. First of all, for you, right, you get predictable revenue through the subscription model. Secondly, which is a very big one in my experience, is you get reduced friction in the sales process because if you do project based pricing, the only way

you're going to be able to estimate the amount of time and the cost therefore of this system is by scoping out the entire project, right? The entire solution. And for, you know, some of the bigger automation projects which happen a lot, uh you can literally spend weeks uh scoping out that project, multiple meetings, multiple email threads, waiting for data from the client. And at the end of these few weeks, this client might not even convert, right? In fact, in my experience, the the closer the window from first sales call to proposal send, the higher the

conversion rate. And when you're doing this for subscription based pricing through, you know, position yourself as a partner, you don't have to scope out the entire project. You can do a lot more of that during clients fulfillment and therefore you can keep the the friction in the sales process a lot lower. So, we actually saw increased conversion rate by changing to this sort of pricing model. Then also, you'll be able to build better solutions for clients. Again, clients don't necessarily always exactly know perfectly what the system should look like at the first try, which is

perfectly fine. These systems need to be iterated on, improved on um based on feedback and these solutions need to evolve with AI advancements, right? And by having sort of this aligned incentives, you can really develop and iterate on these solutions to make them better over time, right? You also get a higher LTV because you generally do more projects with clients or you iterate on on existing projects and because you can build better projects, you also see higher customer retention and in the end uh for me at least personally it's also a lot more fun to

work like this instead of just a project by project in in this company that company. You really build a relationship with the founders uh with the company. You really start understanding the company, their needs and you can really make an impact in their business over the long run. And for companies in the beginning this might be hard but therefore it's good to understand what the benefits of those of this model are also for the company because you you will get a bit of push back in the beginning is in the end the way we communicate

it is make AI and automation a priority in your business today and that's the way you're going to stay ahead of your competition right one project is great but it's not going to make a huge impact in your business I can tell you if you make this a priority today and you do this for 3 to 6 months you'll be ahead of 99% of the companies in your industry. Then of course they will also get a way better understanding of AI the use cases. uh in our experience as soon as they see one or two

of these automations they come up with a long list of of of new automations or processes they want to automate because they get a better understanding of what's possible right and that of course you do through that ongoing consulting and education again the solutions can adapt and improve with the AI advancements which we literally have on a monthly basis and in the end they can start with a lower initial investment because if we scope out this large project automation project they'll have to make a large upfront commitment instead of a a recurring model. Now, sorry

for the long rant on this uh but it's really important, I think, to position yourself uh as a partner. Now, after that long rant, you might be surprised to see that the number one pricing model I put here is actually project based and then subscription, right? The second is subscription only and the third is audio fee plus subscription. Now, why after this long story uh is number one project based plus subscription? It's because of the current market stage, right? Most companies again are still um very skeptical, right? And therefore they a lot of times come

with concrete use cases to sort of test out if this actually works, if they can trust this, if it actually makes an impact and if they can trust you as a provider. Right? So what makes sense a lot of times is to first deliver the first small automation uh through a fixed price or project based price and then switch over to subscription. Now why am I so big on that partnership framing is because we actually pitch number two when a client comes to us, right? So we pitch subscription only. So we are 100% sure that

they understand look we are here for the long term and this is going to be a subscription based model and we pitch that first. Now what we see is of course we get a lot of push back because the market is not completely ready for that yet right. So they go like ah can I just try it out right etc like and usually we just answer in the following way is first of all you can cancel anytime second of all if you're not happy with it we wire you back your money after month one has

yet to happen and sometimes these two reasons actually get them through right away but sometimes we still get push back and a lot of times we end up with this model and basically what we do is if they have a concrete use case we try to um reduce it down to the smallest part of that use case that can still deliver value to the client Right? And we promise them to implement that small part of the automation first. Uh so they can see uh that it actually works to see the value to build the trust.

But we are also very clear that after that we switch to the subscription uh model right and that's the big key here right that's why I'm so big on the partnership because if you're going to pitch project based uh only right then it's going to be impossible to change to subscription after right you really want to communicate that from the get- go even though a lot of times you first do uh the first automation on a project basis so again you can take uh their first use case and try to make it as simple and

as MVP as possible to deliver a quick win to the client get their trust build up and then switch to subscription only. And if they might not have a specific use case in mind, etc., it's also good to have maybe some uh automations in mind that you know can deliver value to a company quickly and that don't cost you a lot of time to implement. So for example, uh we know that in sales a quick lead research tool inside of their CRM, for example, makes a big impact and is easy for us to implement or

maybe a simple content repurposing system. So you can have a few of those two in in in the back of your head to to propose to them to build that initial trust. Right now the third one I put there which we don't use that often but sometimes we use for larger clients and especially the ones that might not know where to start yet and need a little bit more of that education and uh use case identification. uh we charge an initial audit fee where we basically look at their processes inside of their businesses and basically

identify uh which automations or projects we could start with first and then we move over to the subscription model and basically we just cover our initial cost of that sort of audit to check which processes we can we can automate in their business uh and then we get them over to the subscription. Now there's a fourth one which we've also used uh which if you're doing project based pricing can is the best one to use which is a scoping fee plus uh the project based pricing. So to avoid scoping for days or weeks uh and

then the client not converting what you can do is just charge uh an upfront scoping fee uh which just covers your cost of that initial uh mapping out the process and understanding exactly what the client wants in order for you to do the proposal. And then you can even take that fee off the of the proposal, right? if if you want. Now again, I don't recommend this. If you're not taking on huge projects um for for large clients, then this sort of scoping fee plus project based doesn't make a lot of sense in my experience.

I think this is this is the best model. Now, and again, even if you're starting out, I I still think this this model makes the most sense. Of course, you don't want to overdo it and and charge huge subscription uh pricing, right? you start on the lower end, but you do make sure that you get this recurring uh income and this sort of uh client relationship over the long term. When I just switched to subscription based pricing, when I was still working alone, I charged around $2,000 a month. Uh now, of course, my agency and

my demand has grown. So, now we charge usually around $5,000 a month, but sometimes we charge even more depending on the client's needs, right? How fast they want projects to be delivered, uh the intensity of the collaboration. So, you can sort of change this depending on the client's needs. Uh now lastly what I do want to add is this doesn't mean you completely have to change the way you work with with clients or your offer right it's mostly about the positioning uh when I talk about consulting I'm not talking about it from a corporate consulting

way of of of of working right all I'm saying is you jump on a weekly or bi-weekly meeting you go through the progress the projects you've been working on you plan out the next ones you go back and forth and you collaborate with the client to plan out these new projects and this is part of the process anyway even if you do project based pricing this is going to be part of you know offering these kinds of services and because it's part of the process anyway you do want to position yourself like that and get

that retainer and that recurring revenue for yourself and then lastly uh the most common objection you'll get when you're pitching this subscription model is of course uh what can I expect to get right every month right for this price I'm paying right and the best way to go uh about that is in two ways first usually they come with these concrete use cases right uh and you can basically break that use case down and give an estimated timeline of how long that project would take. So they know sort of what they can expect to get

in a certain time frame. And the second thing we also do is we basically have a little bit of a portfolio of automations we've done common automations like lead research the one I mentioned some some content automations etc with estimated timelines for these types of automations. So they get an idea of what they can expect. Now in reality of course it's going to be different. All these workflows and processes are a little bit different in each companies. So it's not going to meet the exact timeline uh what you mentioned but the most important is giving

the client an idea and in our experience uh you know as soon as you start working with a client and deliver that sort of first win or first automation most clients are immediately convinced right and that collaboration comes very quickly after that. So in our experience, it's really about giving quick wins. Uh because companies will be impressed very quickly with even simple automations because the skepticism is so high. Even seeing a simple thing actually working will convince them and make them sort of understand that long-term strategic bet very quickly. Right? So that's the key in

our in our experience is just give them that quick win. Show them what's possible and then that long-term collaboration comes almost automatic. Right? So that's why again this model does make a lot of sense for the current market stage we're in. So let me go over our sales process. So I basically broken it down into five steps. First we have the research and pre-qualifying step. And this is basically we're trying to qualify uh if these are actually potential leads we can work with even before jumping onto the first call. And we have the discovery call,

the solutions call, uh the proposal and payment. So we try to limit our sales calls to max two calls before sending the proposal and the payment. Uh, and lastly, of course, you have onboarding and fulfillment. Now, for the pre-qualifying step, if you're just starting out and uh don't have that many leads yet, uh you probably don't want to go too hard on this pre-qualifi qualification step because it's good to get some experience actually sitting in sales calls and pitching your services, right? But of course, when you uh get more demand, you do want to have

some qualification criteria in place. Now, we've gotten in more than 1500 uh lead requests by now, and we have identified a few a few qualification criteria that we look for uh even before jumping into that first call to actually check is this going to be a potential client or not. Now, the first one uh is the company size uh which is probably logical to you, right? Of course, if you're especially if you're doing this recurring uh service of of 5K in our case, we need to know that the company actually uh makes enough revenue to

be able to afford a service like this, right? So, in general, uh for us, that is more than $100,000 a month in revenue. That's probably what they will need, right? To be able to pay a service like this for $5,000 a month, right? Now, of course, this uh revenue number is not always public. So, the best way to look for that is through the company size. We usually scrape this from LinkedIn to get an idea and uh 10 plus is really the minimum for us in our case. Uh if you have zero to 10, uh

most likely you'll know that this company might not be able to work with you with the price you're charging. Now, of course, if you're starting out, right, and you charge a little bit of a lower fee. Of course, this can maybe uh be lower to 50K a month in in revenue. uh and the company size could be maybe a little bit smaller but I would say in general minimum 10 employees is probably what you want to look for. Uh now lastly what we've seen uh which probably not surprising in general what we see is uh

US-based and European-based companies tend to convert uh better too. Now then there's a sec second factor we we uh check and we've learned this because we got so many inbound leads. We basically have one field in our lead form which sort of asks them what uh what they're what are they looking for right what do they want to automate right so we ask that in a form and we've seen actually with that answer we can sort of pre-qualify a bit uh because we basically get four types of answers the first one uh first type is

companies that say I have no idea I I want to learn uh what's possible and what we can automate in our business uh then the second one is s concrete very concrete use cases so for example I in an inbound voice agent uh to book meetings uh in with my sales reps. Uh then the third one is also use cases but a little bit more vague. So usually it's sort of department focused like I need uh to automate sales processes or uh marketing automations. And the last one is uh which we see quite often too

is people say I want to automate my entire business. Right? Uh and in general what we see is the first one the the people have no idea what they want to automate yet and the last one I want to automate my entire business are usually a sign of a disqualification disqualified lead for us. Now I think the reason why is because people have no idea about uh what to automate or what's possible uh uh yet. They're basically very undereducated still on what the possibilities are with AI and and automation etc. So in the sales process

of course the skepticism tends to be a bit higher for those types of clients too because the lack of of know lack of knowledge makes them more skeptical. So a lot of education consulting showing what this actually can do is necessary and this of course break brings in a bit of friction into the sales process in general. We don't disqualify but we do see that people who have no idea are generally not the best converting clients. Right. And the last one I want to automate my entire business. That's probably the hardest disqualification criteria for us

because usually what we see is those people uh just have very unrealistic expectations on uh what AI can do, right? Uh and think they think AI can do a lot more than it's actually capable of at the moment. So that's usually a disqualification for us. Now another two points I want to mention is what we generally don't work with is we also see some companies or clients coming to us to basically trying to solve a broken business with AI. Right? you can see that they actually have issues inside of their business. They they they say

something like, "I need AI to generate leads for me. Uh because they actually don't have any lead generation process in place and they're basically trying to, you know, fix a broken business uh with AI in a magic way. Uh right, we we call them internally silver bullet seekers, right? That's sort of the the thing we look out for. And then lastly, we have some companies that come to us that want to build an entire business or uh want to change their internal product uh offering uh or build a SAS or partner with us or build

a company together and sell it. Now, we generally don't don't work with that because of course if we're going to really build a product with people uh we can just as well do it for ourselves and it's going to be a big commitment uh for us to work with a client like that. So that's sort of the qualification criteria you could look out for uh and is something we we've learned along the way. So basically if we check for those uh they're qualified and we jump actually on that first call. So then we get to

the first uh sales call the discovery call right and I've divided it into seven sections uh things you sort of want to cover in this first call. Now you might not be able to go over all of them uh so you can leave some of it for the second call the solutions call but uh you want to try and cover these uh seven points. So first of course you want to always prepare for the call right you want to get a basic understanding of the client and the company. So the way we do it is

we check the website and the LinkedIn of the person which usually gives you a good enough of an idea initial idea of the company you're dealing with. Now we do this through an automation but what you at least want to know is the business model. What do they actually do? What what service do they provide or or what product do they have? And then of course what I mentioned before you want to sort of guess the revenue and uh you want to know a little bit of the personal background of uh the person you're talking

to right like the location career university etc. And you do that to to uh build rapport first right uh when you just jump on the call you want to build a little bit of a relationship and you want to avoid talking business from the get- go right so you do that usually by through some small talk right either around the personal background or a little bit about the company. Now, of course, there's a little bit of an art to this build report. Uh, but the the important thing to keep in mind there is to not

go straight for uh talking business, right? Then, of course, we did the pre-qualification, but we're going to qualify in this discovery call if this is really a potential customer, right? And again, if you're just starting out, you might not go as hard on this, but it's really important also because we're in such early stages to properly qualify leads and to to see if they actually really are potential customers or not, right? And the four main things we look for and try to figure out are first of all, we want to really understand the expectations of

the client, right? So, you can do this through a simple question like what are you what are you looking for, right? Trying to understand what uh they expect, right? and if that expectation is actually feasible or realistic, right? That's what we're basically trying to figure out here because again the market is a bit undereducated sometimes. So sometimes it's just unrealistic uh what they expect uh these systems to do. Right? Now the second point which I mentioned before too in the pre-qualifying is what's their current level of understanding of AI because again in our experience most

of the time when clients have zero experience who have done nothing with AI yet uh that's usually not a good sign. uh because we needed to do a lot of education consulting the skepticism is tends to be a lot higher for these types of clients and we we have to show them a lot more and convince them a lot more. So in general this tends to be a disqualifying criteria for us. So what we see is the more knowledge or the more they use AI already the better right uh now of course they don't have

to have full automations running etc but even if they just run use chatpt on a daily basis to to try some things and to to automate some some uh simple tasks in their in their daily jobs uh or maybe they've tried to build a simple automation that's usually a good sign that this uh this client knows what AI is capable of and what it can do right then the third one of course is the budget right usually Usually we ask it with something like, "Okay, what do you expect uh something like this to cost?" Right?

Just to get an idea of if the budget actually aligns with uh your service price, of course. And lastly, when do you want to start, right? Again, very important to figure this out right at the start, right? Is it actually uh urgent or a priority for the company or are they actually looking to do something with this in 3 to 6 months? Now, it's important to know this because if they're actually looking to implement something in 3 to 6 months, you don't want to jump onto the solutions call this week still uh you want to

probably book that second call then for uh in 3 months, right? So, that's the qualification and then I have four more points here. So, first I have to build trust again because we're dealing with a new technology, we do really have to build this trust and the best way uh we've seen uh this work is by uh through customer stories. Uh basically if you're unfamiliar with customer stories, you just reference past clients and projects you've done for other companies, right? And you can do this sort of in a sub way uh where you can just

reference a client. Ah, we actually did something similar for uh this company. And it's important where when you reference these clients to sort of describe the problem they had in the first place and what the outcome was after you um uh delivered the automation or the solution, right? This can really help build that trust, that initial trust. Also them knowing that you've done this for other companies is really important so they're not the first idiot to try this. Uh it's it's really helps, right? And maybe if you don't have uh experiences with other clients yet,

what also really can help is showing demos. Now in my case, the great thing is I get a lot of inbound leads through YouTube and of course I show solutions on my YouTube. So it sort of builds that trust already. they can they see that I I'm able to build these kinds of things. And that's why I think it's really a good strategy to sort of show everything you build on social media because you you can get that trust factor of is this guy actually capable of building these systems out of the way a lot

quicker. But if there's doubts, what also uh seems to work really well for us and for others is showing demos of simple automations that might be useful for them in uh in the sales call, right? So you can have a few uh prepared uh when you jump on the call like a simple lead research or a simple content repurposing system the one I mentioned just to show uh that you've built this these things and that they actually work right and they don't have to be huge projects just simple things usually for the skeptical clients they

it blows them away right and lastly you want to find uh if a customer comes to you with a concrete use case right you want to find a quick the quickest way to deliver a win to a client so you're not going going to talk about the entire project if they're looking for a big project. Uh how we're going to solve this, right? You're really going to focus on the shortest path to delivering value to the client. That's the way we think about it. So let's say client comes to us with look, we want to

automate all our sales or all inbound sales. So we want automated automated lead research. We want uh automated lead qualification, inbound voice agent and personalized uh inbound emails, right? We don't tackle all of this uh from the get- go. We focus then on okay what's the shortest path to value lead research would already be uh a win for this client. So we really try to focus on that because if we're going to scope out the entire project, it's going to take us so much more time, right? So we focus on that sort of first quick

win. And that's what you're trying to do in this sales call, right? Is trying to find that quick win for the client. Even if they don't have a concrete use case, you're trying to understand their business and try to find a quick win uh with an automation that delivers value to them, right? And that's the project you're going to try to scope out in this initial call. Now this scoping uh is not always completely possible in this first call because of time. Uh sometimes you you you won't be able to cover all of this or

sometimes the client needs to think about something or needs some data points uh to get back to you to actually scope it out properly. Now for this scoping uh part it's important to note that you don't want to scope out the project 100%. Right? First of all, we're focusing on that small part. And second of all, uh we're only trying to get the necessary information to um decide on the feasibility of the pro project. Is this actually doable? And second of all, to design an initial solution for the solutions call, which is the next call

where you sort of present the first project you're going to do for them. Right? So don't try to scope out everything. Uh right, all the nitty-gritty details you can do at the onboarding and during client fulfillment. You still want to get an initial idea and have enough information to be able to uh sort of present that initial solution. If you want to learn more about this, I have a full video on how we plan and scope uh projects for clients. I'll make sure to link it up here. So, five points I think you should cover

um for designing this initial system is first of all, you really want to understand the problem. Uh right, sometimes companies don't really cannot define it very well and they come to you with a solution already. But we really in the end they hire us to solve business needs and problems. So we really want to understand it to be able to design the best solution, right? Then we want to define together with the client possible outcomes. Now ideally you get some examples of possible outcomes. So let's say they want this personalized uh email sending, right? Then

it could be really good to get some examples of current emails they're sending to to their customers or an ideal type of of email they would like to send. And the reason why we do this is because we first of all reverse engineer from the outcome in these solutions, right? we work backwards from an outcome and second of all we know that if we can deliver that outcome the client will most likely be happy right now this sometimes the client doesn't have completely clear yet and therefore you can leave this also as a task for

the solutions call for example um and sometimes you can't get examples but it's still good to define clearly what this sort of required outcome uh should be then uh what you also want to know is what data do you have uh available if I take the lead research as an example it's like what data do we have in the first place. Do we have a company URL uh a name uh a LinkedIn URL? Because then of course we can use that to actually design the system and we know which data points we can work with.

And you want to define when this automation should be triggered, how often, from where at which moment. Then of course you want to know which softwares are involved also to define their feasibility of the project. Do they actually have APIs? Uh can we actually do what they they ask us to do? And uh what could be good to cover too is the budget for the usage cost of this specific automation uh just to make sure that also aligns. Now this has not really been an issue for us but it is good to to uh define

this in this initial scoping. Then of course you want to really pitch this recurring model right in this first call. Now really really important you clarify that you work uh on the long term with businesses to help them adopt AI make their effic business more efficient uh or whatever your specific service is. you really want to pitch that sort of partnership frame. The way we do it is sort of like look what this one project is great but it's not going to make huge difference. Making AI a long-term priority uh today that's what will put

you uh ahead of 99% of competitors and that's why we only work longterm with companies because that's what how we know we can really deliver value and bring high ROI uh for your company. Right now, of course, you're going to get push back pitching this like this. And the first thing we do is we try to derisk this deal, right? By saying, look, you can cancel anytime. This has to work for both of us. Of course, if this is not what you expected it to be, you can cancel anytime. And even if after the first

month, you're like, guys, this this is not good enough yet or this is this is not what I was looking for, we we even wire you back your money, right? That's the way we derisk it. And sometimes that gets them through the door already. And then the plan B of course is pitch that first automation that quick win as a fixed price or project basis and but still make clear that after that initial automation it's going to change to subscription pricing right and lastly uh I added there the 5minute drill. Now, the five-minute drill, it's

a bit uncomfortable, but it's really important. And what we've noticed, especially if you get more leads, you really want to qualify and make sure is this customer really going to buy from you or not, right? And this is a bit uncomfortable as I said uh because you have to ask sort of direct questions. Now, you can also sort of see this of course along this this sales call and this comes through practice too, but you basically want to figure out if there are tire kickers, right? Are they really looking to buy right now? And you

can see that for example when you pitched your pricing of course when you uh pitch your subscription pricing what's their reaction right but you can even even ask it directly which is uncomfortable but it really does help uh save time uh with a lot of these leads where you can go and say something like look after you heard all of this is this something uh you'd actually want to implement in your business uh and just leave it open like that and see what the reaction is and and if the customer says yeah well we have

to look look around a little bit more or uh you know we have to talk internally with team, then you know, you know already that they might not be 100% uh on board with this yet, right? And if they say, look, yeah, we're going to talk to one more uh one more agency, uh then you probably know, okay, these guys are pretty convinced and they're going to probably go ahead with automation in general, right? So, just getting a a feeling of that is really important and it's going to save you a lot of time in

the long run. Then, of course, you want to figure out when uh when they actually want to buy, right? Is this actually priority for now or is this something they look for look to do later, right? And then of course you always want to finish off the call with how do we move ahead right and in our case our next step is always the solution call where we tell them look we're going to present that initial uh solution and the automation we're going to build for you and uh we cover any other questions you might

have and sometimes we give them a task to to sort of have that scoping completely ready if if they don't have all the data in this first call yet. Right? So that's sort of the discovery call. Now, we try to book in that second call, the solutions call as soon as possible, ideally in the same week or maximum next week, uh, if they're ready to buy, right? If they're qualified. And what we do in the solutions call is if we could actually scope out the project entirely in that first call, we actually present them, uh,

with the plan of that first automation, the timeline. Sometimes we show them a diagram. Uh sometimes if it's too much of a complicated process, diagrams actually don't really work that well in our experience because they sort of get confused. But we go over that first automation and how we're going to approach it and what they can expect as an outcome and of course uh the timeline for that automation. Now if they if we couldn't scope out the entire uh project yet and we can't design the solution yet because we're waiting for more information from the

client then we go a bit more into detail in this call on how this automation should exactly work etc. So depending on uh that's sort of the the in initial focus of this call. Uh then we very clearly communicate how we are going to work together in the future. So we communicate clearly the communication frequency and channels. We usually work together with clients on Slack. Uh so they can contact us between certain hours anytime on Slack and we also expect them to be responsive there because of course we need a lot of back and forth

in general with clients to deliver on these projects. Uh we also usually do a weekly or bi-weekly uh meeting to uh go over the progress and uh to plan out uh next steps. Uh then of course we clearly communicate the the timelines and deliverables to manage the expectations and we uh cover the cancellation policy and the refunds which I I mentioned before too. And of course we handle any objections the client might have which I'll go over in in the next slide. And then we always clearly communicate the next steps in this call. So after

this solutions call we always send the proposal. Uh so that's where we they have a breakdown of the deliverables right of the timelines uh and uh all the details of what we talked through here uh basically and uh we also usually add an NDA just uh for the trust factor uh some companies might have some data concerns so we do usually add an add in an NDA uh if you want these templates and see what we use uh for our proposals and NDA uh we do have them in my community if you're interested uh in

in seeing them then we also clearly communicate that from the proposal they can directly pay. We use P panda dog uh where you can basically have a link right away to pay and we communicate that after payments come in we get started within 24 hours we send them a link to book an onboarding call uh that's where we set up the initial onboarding the integrations etc and from there we get going and get working right away so that's sort of the solutions call so then we have uh objections now I've covered actually most of these

already in the presentation but the the three most common ones we get is either price related trust related or time time or expectation related. So, for price, sometimes we get too expensive. Now, this is a hard one. There's really not a lot we can do here. If it's just too expensive for a company, it's probably not going to work out and it's probably not a qualified lead in that case. Of course, when you're starting out, it's the goal is not to be as profitable as possible or so you could try to uh lower your price

a bit where it still makes sense for you. Uh but you get that initial experience, right? So, that's what you could do at the beginning, but besides that, otherwise there's not a lot you can do with this objection. Now the second one is related to the subscription which you get a lot when you pitch the subscription pricing right I don't want to commit to a subscription and again right the three things we do is first we say look you can cancel anytime this has to work for both of us right of course if this doesn't

work for you long term you can cancel anytime there's no commitment here and second of all if you're not happy with this after month one this is not what you expected uh we literally wire you back your money right and we go really hard on that and sometimes that really does get them through the door we've yet to actually wire back money for a customer. Uh but that can sometimes convince them already. And then the plan B, the third option of course is to uh say, "Okay, I understand you're not ready to commit to this

yet. So what about we do the following thing? We take this first automation we talked about, right? We deliver this at a fixed price. Uh so you can see what we're capable of, if the the system actually works, and from there we if you're happy, we can uh go over to the subscription model, right? And that usually gets them through the door, right? Because again generally we want to just get a foot in the door because as soon as we can show something to most clients they're impressed and they want to work with us. Then

the second one is trust of course I've covered it before too. Now the most common ones you get is like have you built something similar for another client or will this actually work or questions about you know reliability hallucinations etc. Now best way to handle this again two ways. Firstly uh you use customer stories right? It's good to have a few in the back of your head if you have uh experience working with clients, right? Describe the problem they had and the outcome they got and that can really help build that trust. And second, uh

have some automations ready when you jump on a sales call. Some simple generic automations that can be useful for many companies and show quick demos, right? That can also really help build that trust and really make them see what these systems are actually capable of, right? And then the last one of course again which will come up with the subscription based pricing is what can I expect to get every month uh from this subscription pricing and the two best way to deal with that is break down their concrete use case right into an estimated timeline

so they get an idea of what they can expect in a certain timeline and second have a small portfolio uh ready to of of uh specific automations with estimated timelines. the exact timelines that's not not important, right? It's the it's giving them an idea of what they can expect, right? And every client will be different, every project will be different. So, these timelines will be a little bit different, but again, the most important is giving the client an idea of what they can expect. So, that's it for the for the objections. Then lastly, I have

here uh the proposal. So, basically, we uh structure the proposal in the following way. So, we have a little bit of the intro page where we have the client project, client name, proposal overview, date, etc. We have the plan of action where we give an overview of the timeline, the deliverables and dependencies because sometimes we are dependent on some extra information from the client or things like that to actually be able to uh deliver this project uh on time. Right? Therefore, we also have a joint accountabilities page in there where where we basically communicate what

we expect from the customer. Uh then we have pricing of course uh simple terms and conditions and uh the stripe link. Now we use panda dooc. So, as soon as they sign sign the proposal, they'll automatically be sent to a Stripe page uh to do the payment and we usually send uh the proposal together with an NDA just because it looks more professional and it might get over any data privacy concerns. Right? So, if you want to see more about our uh proposal, I I covered in more detail in my uh scoping video. Uh again,

that will probably be linked up down here, too. And we also have examples available in my community if you're interested in in in joining that. also for the NDA by the way. Uh so I I have a quick template here uh so you get an idea. I'll also make sure to link that one this one uh down here which is just in a Google docs. So here we have just the intro intro page with the logo, the name of the project, client name, the introduction with the date and the goal. We have the plan of

action where we break down the plan basically and the timeline. breakdown of phases if it's a larger project. Uh we break it down into phases with different deliverables. We have the text stack, the joint accountability section and of course the investment and then we have the terms and conditions here at the end. And here we have the the signature and again we use Pond do as soon as they sign they'll go to the stripe link. Now I added one more thing here which I think is part of the sales process um which is the post

payment uh uh email uh really important because there's this term which is called buyer buyer remorse. So basically as soon as you bought something there's sort of immediate remorse, right? So we want to show to the client as soon as they paid that we're on top of this. We're professional and the way we do it is by following up very quickly after that they made that actual payment, right? So, we have an automation for this where uh right after the payment or very soon after the payment, we send a quick follow-up through email. We acknowledge

the payment, we thank the customer uh for the trust, right? And and by only doing this, you already avoid a lot of this this buyer remorse and then we send another email, I think an hour after where we send the link to the onboarding call and basically say we we get started uh from now on. This can really solidify their decision to make that payment, right? to trust you uh and to show that you're professional, right? So, really important to to do this too, which a lot of people tend to forget. Now, that's it for

uh this video. Uh, of course, I'm not covering the onboarding and fulfillment uh part in this video. If you want to learn more about how we do that, let me know in the comments below. Uh this also a little bit of a different type of video I'm doing. Let me know if this is useful for you. And if you have any other suggestions or things you'd know, I'm I'm very open for suggestions, so just leave them in the comments below. Uh, now if you like this video, uh, if you got any value of it out

of it, I I'd highly appreciate a like and a subscribe. If you're interested in joining my community and learning more about building an AI business or an AI agency, that's really what we're trying to do in our community. So, if you're interested in that, I'd be very happy to see you there. Thanks again for watching and uh, I hope to see you in the next one.