--- title: "An agent that prospects alone, with no sales process" description: "Before automating prospecting with an agent, the sales process has to be built, written down and working by hand. Without that there is nothing to copy." url: https://studiochat.io/blog/agente-prospeccion-sin-proceso locale: en translations: { es: https://studiochat.io/es/blog/agente-prospeccion-sin-proceso.md, pt: https://studiochat.io/pt/blog/agente-prospeccion-sin-proceso.md } site: https://studiochat.io --- [ Back to blog](/blog) This week I sat down with the partners of a B2B company with a product that has been established for over a decade, looking to sell into a universe of thousands of companies. They asked me for what I get asked for often: an AI agent that prospects on its own, that finds companies, finds the right contact and starts the conversation. I asked them the same question I ask anyone before talking about technology. How do you do this today, step by step, without the agent? The answer was a list of loose actions, not a process. Search on LinkedIn, send an email, wait two days, make a phone call. Each salesperson does it a little differently, nobody has it written down, and nobody measures which step loses most of the prospects. ## [Why didn't I put an agent on top of it anyway?](#why-didnt-i-put-an-agent-on-top-of-it-anyway) Because an agent doesn't invent a process. It copies one. If prospecting today depends on a salesperson remembering to follow up two days later, the agent can do that follow-up, but first somebody has to write, in those words, that the follow-up goes at two days and not three, and what that message says if the prospect never replied. Automating something nobody has explained yet doesn't save time. It only moves the improvisation to a higher speed. ## [The test I proposed before talking about AI](#the-test-i-proposed-before-talking-about-ai) That they draw the process on a sheet of paper, end to end, and explain it to somebody who doesn't sell there. If two salespeople on the team draw it differently, there is no process: there are two habits, and automating one of the two without having decided is choosing blind. The next step, before any agent, is doing it by hand and seriously for a few weeks. Not to prospect less, but to discover with a person the odd cases that an agent in production discovers with a lost customer: the contact who isn't the right one, the email that bounces, the prospect who replies a month later. That test is right here, with the six questions I asked them and the same criteria for reading the answers. It asks for no email and the result can be copied to send to the team. Your prospecting today How you would describe it in one sentence Your sales cycle lastsless than a monthone to three monthsthree months to a yearmore than a year The six questions ## None of the six is technical Each answer is worth two points, one or zero. These are the conditions that separate prospecting you can automate from prospecting you first have to put in order by hand. 1. ### Can somebody decide, without escalating, what to do with a contact that doesn't fit the criteria? The prospect outside your ICP, the wrong contact inside the company, the email that bounces. Not whoever approves discounts: whoever settles this the same day. YesSort ofNo 2. ### If two salespeople describe how they prospect today, do they agree on the steps? Ask them separately, twenty minutes each. Answering that nobody has tried yet is a valid answer. YesSort ofNo 3. ### Is it written down what to do with the odd cases in prospecting? The one who doesn't reply in three weeks, the one who asks for pricing before qualifying, the one who forwards you to somebody else in the company. YesSort ofNo 4. ### Can the stage each contact is at be looked up in the CRM, without asking the salesperson? If the answer lives in a person's memory or in their personal inbox, the data isn't there. YesSort ofNo 5. ### Is there a measured number for how prospecting works today? Contacts per week, reply rate, which step loses most of them. Counted, not estimated from memory. YesSort ofNo 6. ### Can you tell whether the process works before the first sale closes? With long cycles, waiting for the close to measure takes months. You need to see the progress from step to step before that. YesSort ofNo Your result The result appears once the six questions are answered. 0 of 6 answered. The audit asks for no email and sends the answers nowhere. They stay in your browser so you can come back without starting over. How to read it ## The three score bands The total runs from 0 to 12 and falls into one of three bands. None of the three ends in buying something today. 10 to 12 points ### Ready for an agent Prospecting is in shape. The agent has a real manual to copy, not a list of loose actions. 6 to 9 points ### Close, and it is weeks away These are concrete gaps, with an owner and a date, sorted out by running the process by hand a little longer. 0 to 5 points ### Run it by hand first Automating this today would multiply the improvisation instead of correcting it. Putting it in order requires buying nothing. It also has [a page of its own](/can-i-automate-my-prospecting), in case you want to send just that. ## [What I did recommend to get started](#what-i-did-recommend-to-get-started) A universe of a few hundred large companies can be worked semi manually with copilot tools: a contact finder like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a scraping tool so nothing has to be typed in by hand, and the usual CRM so the thread doesn't get lost. That replaces nobody. It gives the same person the information that used to take an hour to gather. Only once that process is running that way, with numbers (how many contacts per week, what percentage replies, which step loses most of them), does it make sense to talk about an agent that runs it alone. At that point the agent isn't starting from zero: it has a manual to copy. ## [The question that stayed with me](#the-question-that-stayed-with-me) I asked him what kind of agent he wanted, deep down: one that replaces the salesperson or one that makes him faster. The answer was the second, almost without hesitating: an exoskeleton, not a replacement. Somebody who tells the salesperson who to call today and what to say, not somebody who calls in his place. That distinction changes the whole project. An exoskeleton is built on the salesperson's knowledge, not against it, and building it starts by getting that knowledge out of his head and into a document. It is the same work as always, from before there was an agent to help: understand the task first, then think about who or what executes it. ## [And if the sales cycle is long?](#and-if-the-sales-cycle-is-long) With sales cycles of several months, the temptation is to measure success only by the close, and that is where the project stalls before it starts: there is no way to know whether something worked until a year from now. The way out is to measure the process in shorter stretches, how many contacts advance from one step to the next, not only how many close at the end. That gives signal in weeks, and makes it possible to adjust the process before automating it. Frequently asked questions ### Can I ask for an AI agent for prospecting if my sales process is new? You can ask, but it is worth running it by hand for a few weeks first. A new process has odd cases nobody has run into yet, and finding them with an agent already in production costs more than finding them with a person. ### What do I do meanwhile if I want to move faster? Copilot tools, like a contact finder, scraping and the CRM, give the same person speed without needing the process to be perfect already. They are the step before the agent, not a substitute for putting the process in order. ### How do I know my sales process is ready for an agent? If two people on the team explain it differently, not yet. If nobody measures which step loses most prospects, not yet either. These are the same conditions that apply to any process before automating it: an owner, written judgment calls, the data in a system, and a starting number. Share [ X](https://x.com/intent/post?text=They%20asked%20us%20for%20an%20agent%20that%20prospects%20on%20its%20own%2C%20and%20the%20sales%20process%20didn't%20exist%20yet&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstudiochat.io%2Fblog%2Fagente-prospeccion-sin-proceso) [ LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstudiochat.io%2Fblog%2Fagente-prospeccion-sin-proceso) [ WhatsApp](https://wa.me/?text=They%20asked%20us%20for%20an%20agent%20that%20prospects%20on%20its%20own%2C%20and%20the%20sales%20process%20didn't%20exist%20yet%20https%3A%2F%2Fstudiochat.io%2Fblog%2Fagente-prospeccion-sin-proceso)Copy link Ignacio Puig Moreno Ignacio Puig Moreno · Co-founder · Business, StudioChat Want agents like these working for your team? [Talk to us now](https://cal.com/studiochat)