Generating Conversation

We’ve all heard plenty of stories about the proverbial CEO banging her fist on the table and insisting, “We need an AI strategy!” As an AI startup, this is generally good for us — market demand for AI solutions is a tailwind that leads more potential customers to engage with us.

It also leads to poor incentives — for both buyers and sellers. For startups who are desperate to sell in order to scale their business, it can lead to wasted time and low-quality revenue that’s likely to churn. For customers who’re looking to fill a checkbox with an AI feature, it can lead to poor results, wasted money, and embarrassing customer interactions.

A noisy market is dangerous for a startup for many reasons, but one of the most insidious ones is that it can lead you to spend time with prospects who aren’t serious customers — folks who are just interested in an AI product for superficial reasons. Time is of the essence at a startup, so spending time with leads who aren’t serious about buying your product can be incredibly painful.

For technical founders (like us!), learning to let go of low-propensity leads is difficult in the best of circumstances (see Founding Sales to learn more). When those low-propensity leads are coming from brand name companies that you’re excited about working with, it’s all that much harder. Unfortunately, when every enterprise in the world needs to have an AI strategy, there are many low-propensity leads casting wide nets across many AI products. Anecdotally, we’ve spoken to folks whose goal is to understand how AI can improve every aspect of their business — and yet, they’re unable to articulate which areas are the highest priorities.

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