Using AI the right way for agency biz dev
In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the practical uses and pitfalls of AI in agency lead generation and business development. They criticize the common misuse of AI for impersonal, high-volume outreach, which often results in off-putting and ineffective communication. Instead, they advocate for leveraging AI as a tool to enhance efficiency in tasks such as creating brand personas, drafting messages, and organizing proposals, while emphasizing the importance of maintaining a human touch in business development. The episode also highlights various AI tools and strategies to support agency growth without compromising personal relationships and quality. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “Business development in the agency world is not about volume. It’s about quality.” Gini Dietrich: “AI can help with your brand personas. It can help with your ideal client profile. It can help you figure out how and what pain you solve for your clients.” Chip Griffin: “AI assists, AI does not replace, and AI is not something that’s going to get you magic overnight 10x success, which is unhealthy anyway.” Gini Dietrich: “You still have to add the human element. You still have to create the relationship. You still have to find ways to sort of get in amongst all the noise, versus just adding to the noise.” Resources How to Create an AI Marketing Persona: 8 Prompts For Deep Insights (Blog post by Andy Crestodina) Related Using LinkedIn effectively to grow your agency Is AI writing an agency’s friend or foe? Introduction to generative AI for agencies View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I think we can agree, we are not artificially intelligent. Gini Dietrich: No, no, we’re not. Chip Griffin: I mean, some would argue we’re not even intelligent. Gini Dietrich: That’s where I was going, but filter, filter, filter. Took me a few seconds to filter. Chip Griffin: You know, it is what it is. Gini Dietrich: That’s not true. We’re intelligent most of the time. Chip Griffin: And artificial some of the time. But. You know, I think it is fair to say that, that AI is, is a topic that is discussed just a little bit. Gini Dietrich: Just a tad. Just a tad. People are, yes, yes. Chip Griffin: And we’ve talked about it on the show before. Gini Dietrich: We have. Chip Griffin: But we’re going to come at it from a slightly different angle today, which is the use of AI for agency lead generation and business development, because there are a lot of people out there peddling all sorts of things that you can do with AI to help grow your agency. Yes. A lot of it is horse hooey at best. Gini Dietrich: Horse hooey is a great term. Yes. Chip Griffin: However, there are ways that you can leverage AI Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Chip Griffin: To help you on the lead gen side, just as you can use AI for client service and other things. So let’s start with some of the bad uses of AI, and then we’ll talk about what we think are good uses of AI for agency business development. Gini Dietrich: Wow. How many emails do you receive in a week that says, Dear Chip, I’m really excited about what you’re doing at the Small Agency Growth Alliance. I think we can generate 12 to 15 meetings for you per week and help you close 50 percent of those. I mean, I probably get a handful, if not more, of those emails every day. Every single day. Yes. And they all say the same thing, which means they’re all generated by AI. And all the AI did was go in to see what the business name is and maybe it pulls from something you recently wrote or recorded and it says really like how what you’re talking about or, you know, mine always say really like what you’ve done with the PESO model. Well, thanks. Chip Griffin: Right. Gini Dietrich: Right. And then it offers to Chip Griffin: At l