Hope everyone is keeping well! In this post, I will be talking about how we turned a cold lead into a client, and everything in between. This post will cover the ins and outs of how we first got in touch of the lead, how we nurtured the lead, how we build the solution and how we integrated it. I will try to go into as much depth as possible whilst remaining concise. Let's go! So, in the early days of our agency our main method of outreach was cold email and cold calls, we had run multiple cold email campaigns using instantly sending around 250 each day. Later on, we eventually dropped cold email, as the cost of getting high quality leads isn't cheap, and our approach was to just focus on cold calls, and use the money we would have spend on instantly and lead scraping to by subscriptions to low code software so we would be able to build out basic solutions for free, to get experience and testimonials. However, prior to us cutting out email campaigns, we were able to get one interest lead from around 8k cold emails. (That's the reality of cold emails especially in the AI industry) The lead was a marketing and branding agency that specialises in growing other food and beverage startups. Gavin, the founder and director, was interested in our AI services, and wanted to jump on a meeting as he was actually trying to build out an AI tool, and wanted us to check it out, and audit it in some respects. From the cold email saying he was interested in a meeting, we didn't end up having a meeting for multiple months due to various reasons and reschedules. Upon our first conversation on zoom, I gave Gavin my opinions and thoughts on his AI tool, and he liked the idea of us potentially working on this AI tool he was developing. It didn't look so good in terms of us closing him as a paying client, so I explained how we work as an AI agency, and how we build AI solutions that are aimed at interacting with potential leads, and offered him a free AI chatbot for his website - I didn't want to blow this opportunity.

Hi, my name is Thomas and this is my first post in this community (hopefully first of many). I am a co-owner of an AI Automation Agency called EfficusAI. My business partner is Finley Topping (if you go to the Leaderboards section Finley is in first place for both the monthly and weekly leaderboard!). My main role in this agency is sales, so I thought for my first post I would highlight, what I have found to be the two most important aspects to achieve success in selling AI. 1. THE FOLLOW UP I can't exaggerate enough the importance of keeping track of anyone who has shown interest in your agency and then continuing to follow them up, until they either sign with you or give you a definite NO. On so many occasions I have ended a sales call with the prospect informing me that they will speak with their team and then get back in touch with me and then they never do! I'm sure other agency owners can relate to this. However, this does not mean that they aren't interested anymore, whenever I give these prospects a quick friendly follow up call they are nearly always interested in jumping on another call with me and moving the sales process forward. Nearly always the reason for a prospect not getting back in touch is because they forgot, didn't see your email, were busy etc. NOT because they aren't interested anymore. So always remember to follow up, although of course don't spam your prospect with calls. 2. COLD CALLS If your a new agency, cold calling is quite simply the best way to get people interested in your services/solutions. Overall, If you are already an established agency the most effective way of creating interest is probably social media. However, if you are a new agency, you don't have the credibility and proof of success that you need to create interest in your agency through social media. Cold calling isn't fun but I have found it to be indisputably the most effective method of sparking the initial interest needed to then go ahead and sign a client.

It's been a while guys - hope everyone is doing well, been super busy with the agency and life! I recieved a lot of appreciation and kind words from my last post regarding phone agents, and what people do not tell you on youtube videos - Thank you for everyone who commented! Instead of click baiting these phone agents, I will talk about the boring stuff, which is highly valuable and will cover: -The most important part of building these solutions -Why I love Synthflow -A £1000+ solution me and my team are in the works of negotiating - and how real businesses see value in these things -Pricing -Deployment Let's go.... Okay, so with phone agents, what I have gathered is that it is a peak test of your prompt engineering skills. Everything about the call itself is within the parameters of the prompt, hence why these things are so expensive to run. The prompt ties in with custom actions - in order to have a consistent, and high quality phone agnet that does it's task effectively, you need to weave the action it is doing within the prompt itself. Furthermore, when using a model like GPT4, DO NOT underestimate how smart it is, if you clearly tell it what to do, especially on an inbound call, you can get it to use variable like you would an outbound just from prompting. In Synthflow (My prefered platform for building AI phone agents) You are not allowed to use custom variable within your prompt, which may be quite an issue for a lot of people. You want your phone agent to be able to reference the users name, regurgitate information and talk fluently as a human would. Tell it to ask for clarification when collecting information, or tell it to ask the user to repeat the the time they want a call scheduled, this allows your phone agent to not move forward on the call, unless it has the correct information to proceed, and this can all be prompted into your phone agent. You are quite literally able to supercharge your phone agents from quality prompt engineering, you can get it to do so much more from literally telling it what to do, and adding pointers in your scrip using:**

I see so many AI phone agent tutorials that shows some youtuber implementing a basic system prompt, speed through important things that us agency owners need to know, fail to explain how these systems would work for agency owners outside the US, not show anything other than the agent speaking and overall leaving us intruged but without understanding. Here I will talk about some of the stuff you won't find on youtube: Are AI phone agents easier to build than AI chatbots? -Yes. (By far) Are you able to do them outside the US? -Yes, but it requires a custom twilio number. Well how much does that cost? -Very cheap, $1-2 / month and a pay-per-usage scheme (it's not a lot) Where do i build these? Vapi? Bland? Synthflow? -SYNTHFLOW!! The custom actions are relatively easy to use, and it sounds nearly as human-like as Vapi. Do I need to know any code? -No, literally none Synthflow is soooo expensive though? -It sure is, so buy a starter plan for $29 per month, use liam's code for 15% off (you're welcome liam) use your free 50 minutes to learn synthflow inside out, as well as basic zapier integration, connect with a twilio number AND THEN GET COLD CALLING - because you can now build an AI phone agent, you have built a demo, that supports this, and you can easily build a prototype for any agency to see? How would I integrate into a clients business? -If you are scheduling appointments: get log in permssions to their main calendar, connect with cal, connect with Synthflow, and set up action -How do I hand over the finished product? Just send them the phone number to use as a normal one with a summary and overview doc of your offer, how things work etc. Okay, well how do I get people interested in my phone agents? -Do I have to say it again - GET COLD CALLING!! Tell them how you won't ever need a call centre, or you can drop the one you are using for my AI Agent, or that we can build you another receptionist with AI to take the weight off your existing ones, that works 24/7, and is vastly cheaper.

Congratulations for booking your first meeting, from here you will see rapid growth of your agency, I can promise you that. And also, it shows that you are doing something right if business decision makers are intruged by your offer. Here are some tips for the setting of the call itself: 1: Try to be likeable, people buy from people they like, come into it with a smile, and remain in a positive mood. Also, throw in some lighthearted jokes and humour, don't make it too serious, treat them as a friend. NOTE: If you are young, and look young, I would recommend clearing the air and stating your age in a non-serious way, because they are most likely expecting someone older than you, and it is almost definitely their first thought if you look quite young, although they probably won't mention it. If you are transparent they will always be impressed and not concerned, in my case, I am 18, so i always say something like "Before we begin I know your probably thinking "how old is this guy", well I'm actually 18 and I do get asked quite a lot, so I thought i'd say that before we get started." (in a light hearted manner) -Honesty is always appreciated, and in my case this is neccessary, because I barely look 18 years old, so if this applies to the younger agency owners, please let them know before hand, you don't want to appear as if you are hiding it or that you are lying. 2: Keep your hands away from your face, try not to play with your hair or fidget, and ensure you have all of your attention directed at the call - use your hands whilst speaking, speak confidently and with enthusiasm. 3: Make it obvious you are taking notes (and of course actually do take notes lol), show that you have a pen in your hand to show that the call is taken seriously. 4: DO NOT SAY "UGH" - instead of saying "ugh" or "um" say "so" instead. Furthermore, do not say words like "like" (or should i say similar to lol), instead. For example, instead of saying, "which is like" say: "so in a sense" or "so in some respects" - this will help your speach stay fluid and professional.