--- title: "Audit: is my prospecting ready for an agent?" description: "Six questions to tell whether your prospecting process is ready to add an AI agent, or what it needs first. No email, and the result is copyable." url: https://studiochat.io/can-i-automate-my-prospecting locale: en translations: { es: https://studiochat.io/es/can-i-automate-my-prospecting.md, pt: https://studiochat.io/pt/can-i-automate-my-prospecting.md } site: https://studiochat.io --- Free tool # Is my prospecting process ready for an agent? Six questions to tell whether your process for getting new customers is ready to put an agent on top of it, or what it needs first. Two minutes, it asks for no email, and the result can be copied to send to the team. It audits prospecting, not the whole sales 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. Why the order matters ## Both mistakes cost, and they are not the same The answer is not always to wait. The cost runs both ways, and that is why this is not a ladder to climb. ### Automating too early An agent doesn't invent a process, it copies one. If prospecting today depends on somebody remembering the follow-up, the agent will do that follow-up and will also inherit the improvisation, now at a speed at which nobody is watching. The odd case that used to cost an awkward conversation now costs a lost prospect. ### Waiting too long The other mistake is shelving the project until the process is perfect. The bar is that it be explainable and repeatable, not optimal. While it is being put in order, a contact finder, a scraping tool and the usual CRM give the same person speed without needing anything to be settled. ### Who answers if it goes wrong Putting the process in order is also deciding who takes responsibility for the contact that doesn't fit. Without that, the question ends up landing on the agent's vendor, who knows the least about the business, and the project stalls in arguments about judgment calls instead of moving. The six questions came out of a specific meeting, with a company asking for an agent that would prospect on its own when the sales process didn't exist yet. It is told here: [They asked us for an agent that prospects on its own, and the sales process didn't exist yet](/blog/agente-prospeccion-sin-proceso). Questions ## About this prospecting audit ### What do I do if my score came out low? Run prospecting by hand and seriously for a few weeks, with one person and a spreadsheet, writing down every case that doesn't fit. Those weeks are not lost time: they are the survey an agent copies later. Below the score, question by question, it shows what is missing and what to do with each gap. ### Do you store what I answer, or are you going to write to me? No. The audit asks for no email and no contact details, and the answers are not sent anywhere: they stay in your browser so you can come back to the page without starting over. The copy button leaves the result in plain text to send to whoever you want. ### Is it useful if the sales team is one person? Yes, with one caveat on the second question: with a single salesperson there are no two versions to compare, so what to look at is whether the process is written down somewhere besides in their head. The other five are answered the same way. ## The playbook already exists. We multiply it. [Talk to us now](https://cal.com/studiochat) [Book a demo](https://cal.com/studiochat) [Or write to hey@studiochat.io](mailto:hey@studiochat.io)