Is it an issue that automation feels insignificant compared to lead gen through paid ads, or does it not matter as long as we make sales?
It's really interesting that you're noticing this without intending to. Customers have pain points, and when you press those pain points, they reward you disproportionately compared to other topics. In your case, the pain point is lead generation. Paid ads are just a mechanism; the real value is in lead gen. Every time you discuss lead gen, people respond and want more, so you keep pressing that pain point. Automation is not the product; it's a means to an end. It's not something you should sell outright. Think of automation as a way to make something work better. For instance, if a company has a lead gen pipeline that isn't performing well, adding automation can improve it significantly. Or if a fulfillment process works manually but you want to scale, automation can reduce headcount and increase output without hiring more people. So focusing on lead gen isn't bad; it's where the value lies. Regarding your sales calls, if you're getting low conversion rates (like 7-8%), that's not unusual for a first AI automation customer or any new customer. The issue is likely that you're not following a standardized process. Once you adopt a consistent sales skeleton—building rapport, transitioning, framing the call, learning why they're talking to you, understanding their problem, gathering background, proposing a solution, and following up—you can refine it over time. The key is repetition: following the same process repeatedly makes you good at it. Your big issue is probably the lack of a standardized process, not the automation itself.
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.
The core determinant of whether someone buys from you is the return on investment (ROI) you generate, how confident they are in your delivery, and how easy you make it to accept the transformation. This can be expressed as a formula: Value = (ROI * Social Proof) / Friction.
Positioning automation as eliminating manual admin to free up time to eventually make money is indirect and circuitous. Instead of taking indirect steps, focus directly on generating revenue right away. This increases the clear ROI and makes social proof easier to establish. Revenue generation (marketing and sales) is standardized and needed across virtually all industries, whereas backend admin automation is often client-specific and difficult to replicate or scale. When you solve marketing and sales problems, your offer becomes much easier to sell.
Never say never. I've been in agencies for about 10 years — I got out of school and started a marketing agency, sent hundreds of proposals, talked to thousands of people, and basically seen the same business model pitched a thousand different ways. When you see something that many times, you start picking up on the trends. My recommendation: don't try to think like an automation developer, think like a business person in general. Every business is basically a pipeline: there's a customer, you pay some money to get that customer, your business adds value to what the customer wants (a project, knowledge, a product, whatever), and at the end you get a higher-quality thing you can charge more for. So there's a multiple on the value of the raw good versus the finished thing. That gives you three or four places to optimize right off the bat: lead gen and sales, fulfillment, and retention. Think of every business through that lens and the automation opportunities become obvious.
All agencies share the same fundamental shape: lead generation at the top (via ads, cold emails, cold calls, etc.), which funnels into a sales event (typically a discovery or closing call). From there you onboard the client, fulfill the promised service, and manage the client—checking in on progress—before delivering the project, possibly with a revision cycle that leads to another transformation event where you resell them. I’ve documented this shape in the three automation agency sales flows and a roadmap to $25k/month automation that you can download for free. The real key to success isn’t becoming a top AI or automation specialist; it’s becoming a good business person who understands the container (the agency model) and what you put inside it. This mindset can be learned in a couple of weeks, and you don’t need to be expert at the specific service you’re offering.