How can I identify and validate a problem to solve for my automation agency?
The reality is that there are a million and one problems to solve, but the vast majority of problems in B2B businesses revolve around a couple of key things. Revenue‑oriented problems usually mean not enough leads – the very first thing any business must solve before making money is generating leads. Profit‑oriented problems are mainly too many expenses, which can be broken down into categories like payroll, staff, software, assets, etc.; for each expense type there is a problem the customer suffers from that can be solved with systems or business‑process optimization. Examples include too much payroll, too much marketing cost. The third category I call chaos, which concerns how the founder spends time, how organized they are, whether they have a single place to work, a usable CRM or project‑management system, and their management structure (daily, weekly, monthly check‑ins, stand‑ups, accountability metrics). After laying out these problem categories, I note that you can find systems to solve them. For leads I use a cold‑email system; for not enough sales I use a proposal generator that improves conversion rate; I also use an autoresponder‑style tool that improves front‑end conversion by responding quickly. To improve retention I improve the quality of the assets they make, possibly using AI, automated fact‑checking, etc. To cut payroll expenses I use AI to replace the majority of low‑value staff, letting go of about 20% of staff who were just leaching off the bottom line. For software expenses I apply process optimization to see if tools can be combined or replaced with better solutions. For excessive marketing spend I look for cheaper systems such as cold email or automated PPC ad creative generators. For founder time and organization I suggest daily submission forms, a CRM or project‑manager, and using ClickUp templates to transfer setups to clients. This gives you a framework to think about solving problems in any niche. I didn’t want to give a quick “fish” answer; instead I’m teaching you how to fish so you can adapt when market conditions change.
In terms of the checklist, I use an automation agency sales skeleton. Instead of a full script, which is hard to deliver naturally, I give a skeleton—a big list of topics to talk about. I start by building rapport, then set the schedule, and ask the big question: 'Why me now in this?' Because asking 'why now' usually gives the person all the ammunition needed to sell them. For example, they might say they need X, Y, Z, and that they love that I talked about X, Y, Z and think I'm the best person to help solve those. Then I know everything I need to sell them. Next, I ask about the actual audit questions: always map the customer journey from start to end of fulfillment. That means identifying where the customer first sees you—whether it's a Facebook inbound lead ad, a referral email thread, a cold email inbox, or a cold call. Then I walk through every step: lead generation, sales process (how a lead becomes a sales call, sending a calendar link, booking or not), closing the deal (proposal, agreement, invoice), onboarding, fulfillment, post‑fulfillment retention, and getting them back into the business. If any step is missing, I note what to do. By running the customer through this series and having them map their pipeline from start to finish, you usually know everything needed to make a reasonable analysis of their main bottlenecks and problems. Another useful question is revenue per employee (or cost per employee/contractor). For example, when I made over $100,000 a month with just me, my revenue per employee was $100,000, while most other businesses have $15,000–$20,000. This helps map businesses from high to low revenue per employee; the lower the revenue per employee, the more you can systematize the business, and the higher it is, the trickier it becomes. Finally, I also ask some sales history questions.
ai automationprocess auditcustomer journeyrevenue per employee
What a great question. This is more a consulting and strategy perspective than a building one. Naturally, if you're trying to make more money and thinking, 'Ooh, what's a way to make more money? I know AI is all the rage—maybe we'll add an AI chatbot to our website,' but if the chatbot doesn't talk to anybody, it won't make you more money. You've stumbled on a universal problem for many service businesses: they just don't have any leads. The real point of value, the bottleneck you could fix, is usually lead generation. I don't know how many people visit their site daily, monthly, or yearly, so it's hard to suggest exactly what to do next, but you're on the right track. The usual thinking is: get leads first, then worry about optimizing how you deal with them, nurture them, and improve conversion rates later. In your opinion, what's the best automation to sell? Could you make a video on it? The best automation to sell is something that increases or encourages lead generation, which we discussed. One of the main systems I sell is a cold outreach system where I build distribution for someone from scratch for about $200–$300 a month ongoing. They start with zero leads in their pipeline—usually an agency—and after the system is set up, they get roughly 30 leads per month that want to book calls. This is a game-changer and easy to justify as an investment for companies whose bottleneck is lead generation, like most businesses under $50k–$100k per month in revenue. Think of it this way: I'm solving their most dire problem—no leads entering the business. I charge them $3,000–$4,000 a month, which is fine because without me they wouldn't even have a business making more than $3k–$4k a month. In my experience, the best automations to sell for small to mid-sized businesses are those that help the top of the funnel. If they already have an outbound system but aren't getting many leads, I'd recommend a speed-to-lead system. Anything close to the top of the funnel—whether outbound or inbound—helps a lot, and that's what I'd recommend.
Lead‑generation and client‑onboarding systems make up roughly 70% of my revenue, so I focus on those bottlenecks first. The flow is: generate leads, close the sale, onboard the client, fulfill the work, then retain the client with follow‑up. AI agents are getting better, but the real money comes from solving concrete bottlenecks, not fancy chatbots. My process is simple: look at an average business’s pipeline, identify the biggest bottleneck, and ask how you can do that step faster or better. I often reference the Theory of Constraints (see "The Goal" by Eli Goldratt) to frame this. Most bottlenecks are at the top of the funnel—lead generation—so start there. For each bottleneck, map what’s currently being done and brainstorm ways to automate or accelerate it. Specific tools help, but the core is understanding the pipeline and continuously removing constraints.
Yeah, it's probably your ability to verbalize that—your skill at explaining AI's value is what's lacking. These systems save time and money, but you can't just tell that to somebody; you need to first understand their specific problem, paraphrase it in your own words to show you get it, then expand on how that problem costs them time and money. After that, you present your system as a solution, estimating ROI based on past clients, maybe mentioning a big‑name client you built it for, and ask if it matches what they were looking for. Then you give a brief demo, showing what you can tweak. In doing so, you show how AI saves them time or money, rather than just stating it. Everybody knows AI helps, but you demonstrate it for their specific case. Automation means reducing labor cost; you show how to achieve that for their problem. You also mentioned your most profitable system is your cold outreach system. To break it down: there's a manual way and an automatic way. Manual: go to Apollo.com, create a search URL (e.g., for creative agencies), copy it, go to appi.com, type Apollo, pick the popular scraper ($120 per thousand leads), paste the URL, pay per thousand leads—you get output with names, emails, etc., export as CSV, feed into AI (using Make.com or Nad), generate personalized icebreakers via a message model, format as JSON, then upload to Instantly.ai or Smartlead. You handle copywriting yourself. The automatic way: set up a Google Drive watch folder with webhooks; when a lead sheet is uploaded, it triggers the same process automatically—scraping leads via Appify, adding them to Instantly in an automatic campaign, managing everything behind the scenes. This lets you incorporate multiple lead sources (conferences, Apollo, Zoom Info, LinkedIn, VA‑assembled leads). You also added lead nurturing: an autoresponder that replies instantly to instant‑email responses (e.g., between 6 pm and 7 am), giving the perception of attentiveness and buying time, which boosts response rates.
value communicationsales processcold outreachlead nurturing