STOP Selling AI Wrong: What Business Owners ACTUALLY Want

most people are pitching AI Services completely backwards and it's killing their AI business over the last two years I've sold several $100,000 worth of AI automations to companies and I did this through a variety of ways cold email upwork communities and now organically through my own YouTube in this video I'm going to show you the three critical shifts in sales strategy that enabled me to scale my own AI automation agency from zero all the way to 72k per month and what's really interesting is none of them have anything to do with the technology itself let's get into it business owners care about outcomes not technology the biggest mistake I see AI automation agencies make is they obsess over the technology instead of the outcomes that technology delivers let me be brutally honest most business owners don't actually care whether you're using GPT 40 they don't care if you're using clad for using deep seek or any other custom llm that you might or might not have fine-tuned yourself uh what they care about are results when I first started pitching AI Services I would go into excruciating levels of detail about the models and the workflows and basically all the technical aspects I remember back in the day I this one call where I spent like 15 minutes just explaining to the CEO how the automation worked under the hood how the model was trained all the various technical aspects the parameters and stuff like that um they explicitly said to me that's great but how much money is this going to make me here's

what business owners actually care about will this make me money will this save reduce my risk will this give me an edge over my competitors before you mention a single technical detail essentially that's what you need to focus on so uh my recommendation for you is to nail down these three points focus on Revenue impact exactly how is this system going to drive more revenue is it because of the hyperparameters and how they were tuned no business owner really cares about that okay what they care about is how that system is going to interplay with the market usually with real customers or real clients in order to convince them to open up their wallets and checkbooks and pay the company more money so that's what you need to focus on the second big thing is cost reduction so how much money is this system going to save and the third is time leverage AKA specifically um whose time is this going to free up and what is that person going to do with that free and available time so when I shifted from saying stuff like I we'll build you a GPT 4 powered lead qualification system to something that's more benefits focused AKA I don't know we'll build you a system that converts 30% more leads without adding headcount uh my close rate went up significantly and yours can too businesses want proven Solutions not cuttingedge experiments the second iCal mistake I see is when people pitch novel and unproven AI Solutions instead of the more battl tested ones that I and many other people have used that have consistently delivered results for many years um I'm talking like NAD and AI agents I'm talking about more flexible Technologies mCP servers and stuff like that things that while really cool and are probably the way that the industry is headed aren't really capable of driving consistent and valuable return on investments today or if they are capable are not capable of delivering more than a Computing available technology like a traditional a automation for instance so when I first started my agency I was always chasing the newest capabilities I would experiment with different models day after day different approaches day after day and I figured that like I was just adding to my Rolodex right the more knowledge that I knew the more clients would be impressed by the technology um that you know I understood I had to learn a cold hard reality check which is that most businesses with real money to spend don't want to be your guinea pig they're not spending money on R& D or research and development they're spending money on marketing usually to produce some sort of Roi so businesses in General they want solutions that have worked for other businesses with a

proven return on investment here's an early picture of mine that failed miserably we can build you an AI system that uses the latest models to automatically write all of your marketing content it's revolutionary cuttingedge technology and nobody else is using it that sounds nice definitely a lot of words but do those words really mean anything to the customer I mean spoiler alert no so here's how to win take that exact pitch and phrase it in ways that the customer understands and can conceptualize your value what's something that most customers are concerned about they're actually concerned about reliability they're concerned about their reputation they're concerned about the amount of money this is going to take they're concerned that you haven't actually done this before they're concerned that they're going to get scammed okay there's this big list of essentially things that customers worry about at the back of their minds I'm not inventing any of this stuff is very tried and true it's been written about for much longer than I've been alive if you just take these ideas and you rephrase that previous pitch you might have something like this we've built the same system for three companies in your industry company a saw $420,000 of new Revenue in just 6 months company b reduced all of their costs by 65% and Company C generated 38 more qualified leads a day here's how it works I again had to find this out the hard way when I was building my own AI automation agency I would get on tons of calls and I was super jazzed about the technology obviously who wouldn't be but when clients actually responded to me when they actually you know gave me their business was only when I showed them specific systems i' built before for other clients and results that those systems had produced in other words I front loaded with social proof I showed them that you know I have been pre-selected I've been validated by other customers other people have trusted me enough to pay me their money meaning that the likelihood that I am going to be a total and abject failure for you is lower I wasn't focused on how Grazy and new and amazing the technology was customers actually care less about that than you might think they much prefer like proven repeatable reliable solutions that have worked for years um compared to ones that you know be new and and hot off the press in my community the members that consistently land clients are almost never the ones with the most technical knowledge and I've seen over, 1500 of them now they're ones that can clearly demonstrate proven results from systems that they've already built or they can imply experience and social proof with systems that other people would built so to

recap focus on specific problems that the customer has confirmed that they have show examples of solutions you've actually already built before and then provide concrete results wherever possible at the end of the day Innovation and you know the ability to revolutionize an industry these things get attention but it's proven reliability that ultimately gets the check business owners want Partners not tools the third major mistake I see AI agencies make is they position themselves as basically little tool providers instead of the owners of outcomes or partners of a business in reality businesses already have way too many tools they don't want another one they don't want a fancy chat box that they could send messages to that can add things to their CRM okay what they want is a system that invalidates the need for them to have to worry about putting anything into the CRM to begin with they have software Stacks upon software Stacks they have thousands I mean most businesses that I come into are spending thousands of dollars of extra money that they don't need to on tools that they never use so the last thing they need is another complicated system to figure out or waste their time on right what most businesses are actually looking for is they're looking for somebody to take ownership of delivering an outcome or deliverable I learned this lesson myself probably over a dozen times now it's a very hard lesson to learn but when I shifted from selling one-off automation projects to longer term retainer relationships where I guaranteed specific results my income went through the roof both because of Leverage but also because I stopped being just somebody that you went to get a specific job done or get a tool built or whatever and I started being a strategic partner that you know the person could rely on not to just build the spec that they were given but to actually come up with a new spec now in my automation agency I noticed something really interesting when I pitch clients on building an AI system the push back was always about price but when I started by pitching I will generate you X qualified leads per month using an AI automation system that I will build manage and take care of completely the conversation would completely change um basically the same concerns that I had before the ones about price disappeared and instead the price seemed reasonable because I was taking complete and utter ownership over the outcome the cost was less important than the deliverable that I was providing now it's not just my experience um in my community the most successful agency owners don't just drop off a tool and say good luck they stick around they ensure that it delivers the promised results they deliver a return on investment and you know when they

pitch people they don't pitch people as I will build you a system they generate you a return on investment I will make you $155,000 in the next 30 days or you don't pay they will conceptualize this as a no-brainer outcome not necessarily A Dream but like a definable goal that you can actually achieve so yeah sell the outcome don't sell the Tool uh take responsibility for delivering results if you are positioning yourself as a partner and equal to them you have to be willing to also accept the responsibility that entails and then ultim structure the pricing around the value of that outcome not how many hours it takes this approach doesn't just close more clients it also creates stickier client relationships and stick your client relationships in Automation and really if I'm honest any sort of agency space is the path to real wealth Mr the businesses that pay the most for AI Services aren't buying access to technology they're buying peace of mind that somebody is competent enough to handle an important business function for them and make a ton of money now that we understand that business owners want return and they want outcomes more than they necessarily want the fancy new deep seek model off the block let's talk about how to position your AI Automation Services to match and ultimately exceed those expectations um I've basically developed this framework that I've been using both in my community and also in my client relationships and I'm going to share with you this framework it's substantially improved my own ability to both close and then retain and it's something that I consider really integral to just my day-to-day work as an a automation agency owner so Step One is start with their specific business problem don't start by talking about AI just focus entirely on the problem that customer is experiencing I might say something like you mentioned you guys are struggling to qualify your leads quickly enough and you think that your sales team is wasting time on poor fit prospects is that right well tell me about that I don't actually bring up AI until I'm very clear what the problem is and usually to be honest when somebody jumps on a call with me they're expecting me to start talking about AI usually it gets to the point where you know I haven't talked about AI or automation or anything for like 20 or 30 minutes into the call and finally they're at the point where there's like Nick are you gonna talk about Ai and automation when are we gonna do that I'm like well we're gonna do that once I fully understand your business problem when I get to the point where I do and then I drop okay well here's the technology that's going to help it hits that much harder because we basically just spent the last 20 or 30 minutes focusing on their pain points anyway so that's step one step two is to quantify the cost of the problem that you've just

spent the last 20 or 30 minutes pressing on this might be something like so how much does a single lead cost you $155,000 okay um if you're losing $115,000 and your current approach loses you two to three customers a month how much is that in total 30 to 45,000 So based on what you've told me this cost you roughly 30k a month and wasted sales time missed opportunities and growth is that a fair conceptualization I will you know I don't just shove the words in their mouth essentially I will uncover exactly how much money the problem is costing them in their own words and then I'll usually have them do some sort of confirmation of it so now you know we've uncovered the problem we're not talking about AI or automation at all we're just uncovering the problem then we're quantifying the problem step three is you present Your solution in terms of its ability to solve those problems not in terms of their technical features so now that I understand the problem I solution is okay great I'll build you a system that pre-qualifies leads automatically it'll ensure your sales team only speaks with really high potential prospects you can keep your closers on the highest Roi deals you can Farm off anything that's not qualified or not high Roi to people that might be a little bit worse this is going to typically increase conversion rates by 10 to 20% we'll trial it out on you for a month don't achieve XYZ outcome you don't pay but I'm extraordinarily confident and will lastly step four is to back it up with proof so you don't just say Your solution you say I've implemented similar systems for clients in the retail vertical and they see an average Roi of 300% within the first 60 days right what you're doing now is you're positioning Your solution as the solution to their problem then you're saying and by the way if you're worried about this I've already done the same thing for all of these other people and last but not least you talk about pricing when don't worry about it okay don't it's not weird if somebody jumps on a sales call with you they're expecting to chat about pricing the best way to do it is to frame your pricing in terms of Roi not cost so you might say something like the monthly investment is 5,2 $25 which based on the numbers we discussed should deliver a 4 to 6X within your first month I of course guarantee my service and this is very important to me I want to make sure you generate multiples on your investment and so we're going to do everything in our power to make sure that is so I do this approach myself I've seen this approach work across dozens of Industries and hundreds of clients the key ultimately is that AI is barely mentioned it is just the means to the end it's not the star of the show okay don't lose the forest for the trees as an agency owner your job is solving business problems it's not building cool fun AI things so while AI is novel and it will give you that attention at least at the first interaction ultimately

nobody really cares about it um I've heard it said that nobody cares about the hammer they care about the house that it builds AI is just your Hammer the business outcome is the house all right so a lot of that's just Theory let's talk about how you can actually implement this approach in your pitches and your marketing immediately uh step one if you are watching this video right now and you think that you suffer from this problem audit your current messaging check out your website then check out your proposals pitch deck and really just check out anywhere that you're talking about your services count how many times you mention AI okay versus specific business outcomes if you're mentioning the tech more than the results that's a red flag um you know count up the number of times you're pressing on a paino versus just being like hey we have really cool technology and if you do the second more than you do the first you got yourself a major problem you need to reduce the number of times that you're talking about AI the second big tip is to restructure your Discovery calls when I work with clients in my community I usually give them a simple Discovery or sales call structure I spend the first 70% of the call asking the customer about their business problems and their goals then I spend around 20% presenting my solution which is always framed in terms of their business outcomes then I'll spend maybe the last 10% doing some sort of objection or concern handling or discussing next steps what a lot of people will do is they'll spend 10% of the time listening to the customer offering the solution then 80% of the time trying to handle objections I don't think you need to handle objections anywhere near as much as most people say if you're very studious with your consultative sales if you're robust and consistent in that approach you know you you've usually handled most of the objections up front by demonstrating what an Roi this would deliver so don't dive into technical explanations until specifically asked and even if somebody does specifically ask you keep it high level just always bring it right back to business impact and don't worry too much about the objections try and handle them all up front the third thing is reframe your case studies okay the simplest and easiest hack to do this if your current case studies are AI powered cold email system instead name that case study how client X generated 35 new meetings in 30 days using our AI system so focus on the result first then only worry about the system or the implementation at the very end if you have a case study your case study isn't I built an AI powered cold Outreach system that generated $100,000 it's I generated $100,000 with an AI powered cold Outreach system now a lot of people resist this approach because they want to show off their technical expertise but the thing is the people

that can afford to pay you well don't have the technical knowledge to really care or evaluate what any of this stuff means anyway the only thing they actually care about is how confidently you can deliver the outcomes that they want in the business World complexity does not sell it is Clarity that sells so have a lot of people bring up a variety of objections at this point some of them are valid some of them aren't I'm just going to cover like a big list of FAQs essentially then answer those FAQs and the number one objection I get is what if my clients are specifically asking about the AI technology and it's true some clients are going to ask you technical questions especially nowadays when AI is and trendy and these clients want to learn about Ai and they want to feel like they have a part in their Destiny when this happens I will give them a brief simple explanation but almost immediately after pivot back to business outcomes so I'll say something like uh the specific model we use matters far less than the results that model delivers we're using some variant of GPT 40 and based on our testing this approach will give you XYZ result maybe another objection might be something like well yeah Nick but I don't have a lot of business experience but I do have a lot of AI and Technical experience and I get it you want to show that you know your stuff but expertise is demonstrated through results not really fancy workflows or complicated systems in my experience if you throw on technical terms that actually often backfires on you um sometimes clients will think that you using that complexity to justify your high prices they will think that you are essentially gatekeeping knowledge um and that you're better than them and that you know you're G you're gatekeeping that knowledge you're G gatekeeping that information as a source of value and I don't think that that's true I mean it's like it's almost like a car deal like a car dealership or something like do you really need a car dealership any anymore just to be real with you I mean in the year 20 well I'm not going to mention the date cuz I was told by a YouTube strategist to never mention a date in a video but in certain current year do you really need to go to a car dealership and puddle around for 45 minutes to an hour going back and forth with uh you know some representative about something that you may or may not really need no it's an extraordinarily inefficient means of achieving your desired result which is to buy a freaking car okay uh it's kind of like that like when you start talking in Fancy words and big jargon and oh this puppet can fit 42 horsepower in there like you lose a lot of trust from the customer my goal is to make it as easy as humanly possible for the customer to understand what the return on investment is so that they could just decide ASAP really quickly so that if they're not into it I don't waste my damn time anymore that should be your goal as well another really common objection is what if they want to know

how it works and there's a difference between explaining the implementation process versus going deep on like AI architecture instead of saying oh you know uh that's a great question we actually trained our model using this multimodal approach and um I don't know we we're working off a fine-tune branch of you know deep seek R whatever focus on the workflow you know we'll set up the system we'll connect it to your existing tools we'll train it on your data and we'll have it operational within 14 days then we'll monitor performance and optimize based on the results and if we need to we'll actually add some more examples to The Prompt right you can talk about the AI and specifics so long as somewhere at the end of that you tie that back into what the customer actually cares about which is the return on investment another common objection is my prospects don't value what they don't understand and this is pretty backwards thinking most business owners don't understand how their website's code works or what it was built with but their website still makes them money right you don't need to understand every tiny feature or every tiny component in order to understand the bigger picture I mean scientists understand how the brain creates thought but not necessarily the underpinnings behind every single like you know atom in the cell right when I coach AI automation agency owners in my own Community I usually find ones that are struggling to close deals are almost always the ones that are overe explaining and over engineering their Tech the ones that close consistently are usually relentlessly focused on business outcomes I think if you make this shift you guys aren't only going to close more deals you'll also be able to charge significantly more for the same work and you might even be able to get away with doing it simpler and easier than you think I used to do freelance software engineering and I can tell you 100% that I charge much more money now dragging and dropping modules across the screen than I ever did before when I was building out some complex Black Box script all right so let me wrap this up by summarizing the key mindset shifts and strategies that you guys are going to need to make in order to sell High Roi AI Services the first is to focus on outcomes not AI technology the second is

to emphasize proven Solutions not cuttingedge experiments the third is to position yourself as an outcome owner so somebody that owns results not a provider of tools not just a little Code Monkey if you implement these three strategic shifts in your AI business I mean it's virtually guaranteed that both your close rates are going to improve but so will the quality of your relationships and general life if you guys have any questions just drop them in the comments below and for those of you that are serious about building a successful AI business I would highly encourage you to consider joining my community maker school we have over 1300 committed AI entrepreneurs growing together check the link in the description thanks for watching and I will catch all youall on the next one cheers