Agent-led growth: get chosen before the first call
Someone on the buyer's side already typed who to hire into an AI assistant: ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. That assistant read a few sites, made a shortlist, and walked a person into the first call already leaning. If your price and what you actually do are missing, it used a competitor who published them. Monday: put a real price band, what you will not do, and one way to start on a public page. We charge $7,500 for a two-week audit and $25,000 to $60,000 for one bounded pilot so a person, or the assistant your buyer already uses, can decide fit without a discovery call.
Your buyer already has a shortlist. You were not in the room when it was made.
A person typed a hiring question into an AI assistant: ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. That assistant read three sites and walked that person into the first call already leaning. If your price and what you actually do are missing, it quoted a competitor.
That is the job now. Get on that shortlist. Make the next step obvious.
Neal Behrend at Insight Partners wrote this up on 13 March 2026. He called it agent-led growth: change the business so the assistant your buyer already uses can choose you, not only use software to send more outbound. We do that work.
Put the sales-call answers on the site
Most teams still write the site as if a human will skim and book. Plenty of humans still do. A growing share of first passes now happen in an assistant the seller never sees.
What we see in the work: if that assistant cannot pull a price band, a scope, and a next step from your public pages, it will take those facts from a competitor who published them. Getting named in the answer is ordinary search plus generative engine optimization (GEO): being clear enough for an assistant to cite. After you are named, the assistant still has to decide you are safe to recommend.
Your seller then either confirms a preference or spends the hour undoing one.
Can your buyer find you, tell if you fit, and start?
Three checks. Use the words you already have.
Can your buyer find you? An assistant that knows the problem has to be able to surface you. That is search work that includes AI answers and ordinary organic work. Invisible firms do not get chosen. Being findable is table stakes, not the whole job.
Can your buyer tell if you fit? The questions that used to wait for a first sales call now have to live on the public site. What you do, what you refuse, what it costs, how long it takes, and who should not buy. Fuzzy pages make the assistant less sure. Sure is what gets you on the shortlist.
Can your buyer start? There has to be a next step that does not require inventing a process. For us that is a bookable 30-minute audit, published offer pages, and a small set of agent-callable jobs: jobs your systems will run when an assistant asks, without moving money. For a retailer it may later include a checkout. For a service firm, start almost never means “the assistant can invoice your client.”
| If the assistant needs this | Publish it here | What happens if you hide it |
|---|---|---|
| What you actually sell | A service page with a scope, not a slogan | It quotes a competitor who priced the same job |
| What it costs | A band with what is included | It assumes you are either cheap or hiding |
| What you will not do | One plain refusal | It invents a scope you will regret |
| How to start | One booking path | It recommends the vendor with a calendar |
We already run that table on our own site. The AI Opportunity Audit is $7,500 for two weeks. An AI pilot build is $25,000 to $60,000 for one bounded workflow with a written success metric and a kill threshold. Those numbers exist so an assistant, or a CFO, can decide fit without a discovery theater.
What to hire, and what wastes a quarter
Hire this work when a real assistant is already in your buyer’s process: professional services, software, and any category where the first shortlist is now assembled in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. The engagement should leave you with public pages that an assistant can use, a permission list for anything you let it start, and a way to count conversations, not crawler hits.
Software that sends outbound can be useful. It does not make you the default when your buyer asks an assistant who to hire. Price that as operations.
Restating a checkout spec does not make you choosable. The article an assistant should find is the decision. We cover that split in whether an assistant can buy from you yet.
A listing in Claude’s connectors directory or ChatGPT’s app directory (the catalogs those products use to install a tool) can be real distribution for a product company that has something to install. It is not the growth plan for a service firm.
We publish llms.txt, a file that lists our pages for software that reads the site. Google’s AI optimization guide is clear that Search does not use that file as a ranking or citation lever. Useful as an index, useless as the plan.
If you are already in a vendor conversation, the 24 questions we ask before we sign still apply. A written success metric and a kill threshold matter more than the phrase on the slide.
Who this is for
This work fits a company that already has demand worth protecting: retainers from $6,000 a month, or a product with a real sales cycle, and a site that can tell the truth about price and scope. It does not fit a business that wants an assistant to close cash without a human in the loop. We will not build payment, refund, or bulk-export jobs that a stranger’s assistant can start. That is the same line we published on what may be agent-callable.
The early proof Insight cites is in developer tools, where assistants already have authority and pick defaults from documentation. Most service categories are earlier. Defaults still compound. The vendor who becomes “the one the assistant already knows” is expensive to displace.
If you want a first pass on whether your public pages would survive an assistant’s shortlist, book the audit. If the gap is a missing workflow rather than a missing page, start from AI automation for service businesses and what an agent actually costs.
Talk to us