3 Mandatory Steps to Selling A.I. Automation (The $100k Secret)

Over the last year, I have talked to over 1,000 different agency owners that are trying to sell AI automation services. And here is what I've learned, and here are the biggest pitfalls of why you're not going to have success if you go out there and you try to sell AI automation services as of today in 2026. And the biggest thing that you have to think about are the actual principles of what selling AI automation is. At the end of the day, when you are talking to a business owner, whether they are an online owner or they are a local service business, they are wanting to solve their problems. And that is the biggest thing that individuals going out there when you're trying to sell these different agency services really forget, is that at the end of the day, people are going to pay for their problems being solved. And when you go out there and you say, hey, I can automate your entire business with AI and do all of this cool stuff. They really don't care. And you also have to think about who you're talking to. So to really start to put this all together, I have 3 things in this video today that I want you to be conscious of when you're going out there to sell these AI automation services, no matter who you're going after. And we're gonna break down the actual ICP or the avatar that you're selling to, how you actually uncover what they want, and then actually packaging that pricing into something that you can go out there, sell, and make money from that people are actually going to say yes to. So let's jump into number 1, which is your ICP. And ICP stands for ideal customer profile. And the biggest thing that we want to think of when we're talking about an ideal customer profile is going to be how sophisticated this individual is. In the business landscape, there are a wide variety of business owners. And if I'm speaking to you right now, You are definitely on the very sophisticated end because you understand the different AI models and what it can do. Things like Lovable, things like VAPI, things like SynthFlow, where you can string all of these different cool AI technologies together and implement these different services and solutions into businesses. But when you're talking to somebody like a local business owner, they really don't understand all of this stuff and they're still stuck using ChatGPT. And they're just having basic conversations, asking questions to ChatGPT still. They're not going out there and installing things like ClawBot, you know, to automate, you know, just a day-to-day for them. So we have to think about when we're selling to them, how we're actually positioning our offer. Now, if you're going after somebody like an online business owner, that is going to be completely different. So I'm going to break down those 2 different categories for you. If you have a local service business owner, I'm going to call that individual unsophisticated. Where they, you know, might have heard of cool different AI things, but they're not at the point yet where they're actually using advanced tools. And the way that we sell to an unsophisticated individual is that we don't want to get it too complicated. We want to actually solve a specific problem that they have, and we don't want to get into the tech, into the details. They don't need to know that you're using N8N or Lovable or any of these crazy AI solutions. All they need to know is that, hey, you're spending a lot of time on this specific thing, I can solve that for you. I'm gonna use an example of a tax accountant. This time of year, they have all of these clients that are sending in a bunch of paperwork. If you set up an AI agent that scanned all the paperwork that every single client put in, and then you pulled out that data that the tax preparer needed to actually file the return, that is a legitimate AI solution that somebody's gonna pay for. Because they already know they spend a lot of time doing that. And if you can show them, hey, I can completely automate this for you, that's something they're gonna pay for. But if you just go out there and you prospect a tax accountant or a CPA, which is a certified public accountant, and you say, hey, you know, would you be interested in AI services? I can save you 50 to 100 hours a week. They're not even gonna know that everything in their business could be automated with AI, but they're gonna be so scared of actually implementing that. But if you start to come to them with specific solutions that you can solve for them, that is 100% going to get you closer to a yes. Now here's the thing, if you are now selling to somebody that is more sophisticated, the script is going to flip because you have something completely different that you now have to bring to those individuals. And the biggest thing people forget when they're talking to somebody more sophisticated is the chances of you getting price shopped is much higher. Take an online business owner. If I was trying to sell AI automation services to a marketing agency owner, that individual is already in the market. They already know what exists, and all they're looking for is somebody that can come make what they already know in their head, uh, and to put that on paper and actually execute on it. So the chances of you actually getting price shopped were because they can go to places like Upwork and Fiverr and get these freelancers to just do it for them on an hourly basis. So when you're selling to these individuals, again, you need to bring something with a very specific solution to the table. But if I'm selling AI automation services to a marketing agency owner, I'm gonna come at it from a different angle. I'm gonna say, hey, we are a full-stack AI automation service. We can do X, Y, and Z for you. And I'm gonna break down that, hey, you're gonna get this full-blown team. We're gonna bill out on an hourly basis. Maybe you have a retainer that you take every single month. And you're gonna come in, you're gonna do an audit, and you're gonna completely automate their full agency for them. Let's just say that was your hook. It's gonna be a different type of service because you're not gonna have the out-of-the-box solution. Potentially, you might have a few, right? But you're not gonna have that specific solution yet because that person is gonna have different projects and different stuff that they're gonna want you to implement for them because they're more sophisticated. They already know what's in the market. They almost should have an idea of what they can automate and they're gonna be super open to doing it. But when you're presenting your pricing and presenting your services, you're selling you, you're selling your team, your capability, your expertise, and you're showing off your projects. Think about it as I'm an agency that we've done all of this stuff. This is the process that we're gonna sell to you because you're selling yourself and you're selling your expertise versus selling that specific solution, which you're actually gonna be doing for that more unsophisticated individual because they don't care. That you're N8N certified and that you've built out all of these crazy things in Lovable. All they care about is that you're gonna implement a very specific solution for them. So now that we understand that the type of person that we're selling to really matters and how we actually sell to that individual, now let's go ahead and let's talk about what it actually looks like to reach out to these individuals because that is very important. And I did touch on this a little bit before, but I want to go a little bit deeper. Deeper down the rabbit hole with you. So if I'm somebody that I'm reaching out to a more unsophisticated individual, and I touched on this a little bit before, I'm gonna be reaching out the old-fashioned way, cold email, LinkedIn ads, whatever I need to do to get my message in front of those individuals is absolutely going to work. But we really need to think about, okay, now what is my messaging going to be? And like I said, with the CPA or tax accountant example, I'm going to communicate that, hey, you're spending 5, 10, 15 hours every single day, you know, throughout all these team members to go in and scan all of these documents in. What if I could save your team 8 hours, 10 hours, 15 hours every single day from having to manually scan in these documents and go through them when I can install a system that's automatically going to pull all of this information in for you? And the best part is It's securely ran on your own server so you don't have any data leaks, X, Y, and Z. And that's the messaging that you're, you know, explaining to these individuals. You're not getting into how it works. You're not getting into the tech. You're not even, you know, in some situations saying that it's AI. You're just saying that, hey, I have this solution. You clearly have this problem and I can solve that for you. Another example is going to be, you know, some kind of reservation bot for restaurants or some kind of receptionist for restaurants. Installing an AI agent that can place reservations, answer the phone, answer basic questions is gonna be a really great AI automation or just AI agent service that you could sell to a restaurant. But at the end of the day, they're scared of the tech. They don't understand it. So you need to solve the pain, which is, hey, I can come in, I'm gonna install this. It's gonna save you a lot of time, which at the end of the day, everything derives back to money cuz time is money. I'm going to save you all this money by installing the system for you. We'll completely take it over. That is how you reach out. That's how you sell to these individuals. Now, like I said, with that more sophisticated market, you need to sell to those individuals that I am the best, I'm an expert, I'm certified, whereas that more unsophisticated person doesn't really care. So I'm going to communicate to them that, hey, you know, I saw you're in— let's just say the agency owner example. Hey, I saw you're an agency owner. You know, we're certified in N8N and Lovable, and we've built out these really cool dashboards that are helping agency owners, you know, have some kind of proprietary technology and own their software for their business that's helping their clients do X, Y, and Z. Whatever that message looks like, that's going to go out and intrigue an agency owner because they're more sophisticated. They're already thinking about this stuff. All you're doing is you're saying, hey, I'm the best person for the job and I can get it done for you. So that is how you're reaching out to those individuals. Again, you want to keep it simple for the unsophisticated people and you want to kind of keep it, you know, a little bit more higher level for those sophisticated people. Because if you go in just saying very basic stuff, they're not going to look at you as smarter than them. And that is a big thing when you're selling to sophisticated people. You want to actually— they— you want them to feel like, hey, this person, this agency, whatever it might be, they are the expert, they are smarter than me. Whereas again, that unsophisticated person really doesn't care too much about that. If they're knowledgeable about the industry, of course, yes, they are going to want to know that you are an expert. But at the end of the day, that unsophisticated person only cares that you're solving that problem for them, where the sophisticated person is going to actually want to hire an expert in that field. Now, let's talk about putting this offer together. Now, If you haven't looked at my Offer Code and Purple Ocean Offers Masterclass, we get into what an offer stack is. And an offer stack is very simply how I deliver my offer when I'm pitching a prospect. So if I'm on the phone with a prospect, hey, we do X, Y, and Z, let me run through how that actually looks for you. Now let's run through what an offer stack, a 4-part offer stack, an unsophisticated person versus a sophisticated individual. So when you're putting that offer stack in front of that unsophisticated individual, The biggest thing that we want to be selling when we're selling that offer stack is that it's the actual physical steps of the product versus, and you're gonna see here in a second, when we talk about the sophisticated individual, we're selling the process, we're not selling the product. So for selling the product for that unsophisticated individual, let's just say we're selling that AI automation service for those CPAs. My offer stack, you know, part 1 is going to be, you know, something along the lines of, you know, document intake. So you're going to have a, you know, custom document intake where clients can go out there, it sends out an invite, and they can go out, and you're going to build them a lovable dashboard where they can upload all of their documents. And then part 2 might be something, you know, where it's like, you know, our AI system analyzes every single document and extracts the most important information out of those documents and, you know, lists them out in that individual's profile. And then Step 3 or part 3, you might talk about how that then, you know, go out there, that then integrates into their team. It alerts them that, hey, you know, this client has been fully onboarded and you can go in, the team member can now go in, they can take that info and then implement it into whatever tax docs that they have. And then maybe, you know, part 4 is it's also going to, based off the information that they submit, AI is going to analyze everything and it's going to prompt out, you know, 5 to 10 recommendations when you're doing their tax return, whatever it might be. So you're selling features, you're selling the product to that unsophisticated individual. Now let's talk about that sophisticated person, that agency owner that I'm now coming and saying, hey, I'm going to build you out a lovable dashboard, I'm going to automate your full agency, I'm going to do all this crazy stuff. I'm going to sell the process, I'm going to sell that we're experts, I'm not going to sell the product. So to this individual, I'm going to say, hey, the first thing we're going to come in and do is part 1, we're going to do a full systems audit. And we're gonna map out on paper. Let's just say part 1 is the audit. We're gonna come in, we're gonna see exactly what's going on. Next, part 2, we're gonna map out and diagram out exactly what we want to come in and what we want to automate for you and for your business. So again, that is going to be something we're gonna put on paper. And then part 3 is our team is going to execute. You know, we have a project manager, they're gonna delegate out to all of our AI specialists, and we're gonna have a prototype ready for you to check. And then part 4 maybe is something along the lines of, You know, getting the MVP ready to launch. We're gonna quality check everything. We're gonna implement whatever you need, X, Y, and Z. So you're selling the process. You're selling that, hey, we are an expert. We are this team of individuals that can execute on exactly what you want. How do we price both of these out? So when you're selling a product like AI automation for that tax accountant, I'm most likely going to sell it as a setup plus some kind of monthly fee on the backend. as more of like a positioned high-ticket SaaS with a support fee on the backend. That's how I'm gonna sell that service. The reason for that, it makes sense. You're setting up a system, there's a lot of upfront cost on the backend. Hey, we're just gonna support you if you need any help. You know, ideally it doesn't break. If I'm selling to that sophisticated person, I am not gonna sell the setup. I'm gonna sell something that logically makes sense to them because to them, they can go out there on Upwork, on Fiverr, and hire somebody hourly. So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna say, hey, you know, we bill on $50 an hour. You know, you're gonna get all of this crazy stuff within that $50 an hour price point. We bill on a $2,000 a month retainer. That's gonna get you 40 hours for the month, whatever that, you know, ends up being. And that's gonna be how you sell to those individuals because it logically makes sense where they're already in that mindset of, I'm gonna hire somebody hourly. Then the conversation when they say, hey, I could go hire somebody, you know, cheaper to do this, it's like, hey, Yeah, you could, but would you rather not pay that extra $10 an hour more to get the project done right in the first place versus paying somebody less? You have to manage them X, Y, and Z. It logically makes sense to that person. Now, when we talk about the unsophisticated market, they don't know what's in the market, so you can get away with something that's a little bit higher end and more of a monthly fee. But I'm not gonna sell a retainer to that individual, and the reason for that is I can collect more cash upfront, and logically to them, Why would they pay you $2,000 a month for some kind of a system when to them that's half an employee? So they would rather pay more upfront and then pay the support fee on the back end versus you just saying, hey, pay me $4,000 a month where it's like, hey, they could just go get an employee to do it and they don't have to risk paying you all this money that maybe, you know, it ends up not working. And so that is how you sell AI automation services in today's market, you have to think about who you're selling to. You have the unsophisticated individuals and you have sophisticated individuals. And that is one of the most important things that people forget when they're reaching out to— when they're packaging offers, when they're prospecting, when they're running ads, when they're putting any kind of marketing together. They forget about the principles, they forget about the basics, and you overcomplicate it. You watch all of these YouTube videos on cold email and you think that somebody else's script that they're using can apply directly to you, and it can't. You have to be an expert in your field. So go out there, apply all of these tactics into your business. And I do have something for you. We have Setterlun University. It's only $17 a month, and you can go out there and you can learn what it actually looks like to implement everything that I just broke down. So how to put that offer together— we have AI agents that'll build out your offer, put your scripting together for your outreach and showing you how to actually build a business based off of those principles in addition to everything else that we have inside of there. I've taken at this point 9 different businesses to 7 and 8 figures, and I've put everything that I know and I've learned and battle-tested over the years into that community. So again, it's $17 a month, and if you do want to work more one-on-one with us, we will have that application down below because we've had a lot of people ask actually asking for them. It's like, hey Jake, that's great, I like course material, it's cool and all, but I actually want to work with your team. And that is something that we will absolutely do for you. So if either of those interest you, of course go down below. Otherwise, please go out there, please think about who you're selling to, implement these 3 things, and I am telling you, you are going to be closer to making your first money online. Thank you.