The First Place To Use AI In Your Business
Freedom Firm Insider #005
It’s not what you think…
I just came from a conference of 250+ entrepreneurs.
AI was a big topic of conversation.
And most were just scratching the surface.
Many didn’t see how they could leverage it beyond the basics… “write me an email or a LinkedIn post.”
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Public Service Announcement: Applications for our October “Lead Blitz” Case Study Group close on Monday.
If having 5-15 (or more) qualified leads on your calendar every month would help your business read this.
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Look, the basics of AI can be good and helpful, but that’s not the real opportunity.
Today, let’s build a framework for thinking about where to use AI in your business (and where not to).
Before we get into the framework, it’s important for you to understand my frame of reference.
I don’t see AI as a job killer, I see it as a capability multiplier.
That’s an important distinction.
It informs why we’re using AI.
Can you use it as a job killer?
Sure.
But I think that’s playing small.
The real opportunity is to take the good people you have and multiply their impact. And you don’t get there by merely using it to draft some emails for you.
We call it HUMAN^AI (Human to the power of AI).
The Jobs To Be Done Framework for Winning with AI
Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor famously coined the term “Jobs To Be Done” to describe the idea that people “hire” products and services to do a specific “job” for them.
If you’re designing a product or service, you want to understand the “job” your product or service is being hired for.
In our case, we want to understand the jobs we need done, so that we can decide which jobs AI can be “hired” for.
Let’s use our 5-part Freedom Firm Framework to break this down by the key functions of the business…
1. Traffic (Leads Every Day)
2. Conversion (Non-Stop Sales)
3. Team (Team-Driven Growth)
4. Delivery (Founder-Free Fulfillment)
5. Brand (1-of-1 Positioning)
AI can be applied to all five areas (and over the coming weeks we’ll explore all of them).
But today, we need to choose someplace to start.
In business, everything is downstream of traffic. No traffic, no business.
So let’s start there.
When we think about traffic there are a few key components, no matter what method of traffic you use.
– Identifying and understanding potential clients
– Creating a compelling message for those prospects
– Delivering the message
– Turning the traffic into sales opportunities
– Measuring, testing, and improving the traffic system
Will you get AI to run the entire system for you?
No.
AI isn’t even ready to run any of those parts by itself.
So we need to break each down into specific jobs to be done.
Let’s look at identifying and understanding potential clients.
This is a research task.
Here are the jobs to be done:
1. Build a detailed Ideal Client Profile.
2. Research the market to gain insight into the problems, opportunities, and language of the market.
3. Using that research, write compelling messages to put in front of prospects.
That’s three jobs to be done and we could get more granular.
How would I use AI in this situation?
Here’s the easy stuff…
1. Create a detailed Ideal Client Profile. If you know the right questions to ask, AI can create a very good and detailed ICP description. We have a tool that does this for every one of our clients. (And, in my experience, few businesses have this written anywhere.)
2. Take that ICP description and do deep market research looking for “voice of customer” insights. (That’s a fancy way of finding out what prospects are talking about–worries, challenges, opportunities, fears, etc.)
This kind of research used to require talking to clients and prospects and it was time consuming. Today, AI can pull this data from the web, organize it for you, and do it in minutes instead of weeks or months.
3. With our ICP and market research in hand, now we can do something that was almost impossible for small businesses just 2 years ago…
We can build a lead list (there’s an endless list of companies that will sell you a list) and now, have AI research every lead on the list (hundreds or thousands).
It’ll look at the individual, the company, the industry they’re in, and in minutes it can disqualify the people who don’t fit your criteria.
(Sales is primarily a disqualification exercise.)
If you did this at all in the past, you did it manually–and it took days or weeks.
Now, you have a focused list of potential clients.
And, with all of that individual research, you can also do something that was slow and expensive before…
Send every prospect a tailored, custom message that will be relevant to them.
I’m only through Job To Be Done #3 and there are probably 8-12 in this process.
We’ve shaved weeks of human time off this effort. We’ve increased the effectiveness of our lead generation.
We’ve made it much more relevant.
Now, here’s the real win…
Few small firms were doing this with humans because it was too expensive, too time consuming, they didn’t have the right team members, and it was mind-numbing work.
With AI, it’s now possible to do this affordably.
Firms that were doing it see huge boosts in traffic effectiveness.
And firms that weren’t doing it now have an easy and affordable way to multiply their traffic.
We could keep going, but I think you get the idea.
This is how to think about deploying AI in your business.
Now, if you’re thinking, how do I implement that kind of traffic system? I have something for you…
We’ve got a few spots remaining in our October “Lead Blitz” Case Study Group, where we actually build all of this for you.
If having 5-15 (or more) qualified appointments on your calendar is important to you going into the end of the year, then check out the details here.
Steve “jobs to be done” Gordon
P.S. What are your biggest questions about leveraging AI? Hit reply and send them to me. I’ll tackle them in the coming weeks.
P.P.S. We’re closing applications for the October “Lead Blitz” Case Study Group on Monday, so don’t sit on this. More info here.