From Mock-ups to Millions: How to Win AI Clients with Day-One Demos

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS:

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS:

• 90% Conversion Strategy: Build branded demos before pitching to close deals instantly

• SMB Gold Rush: Why smaller clients pay faster than enterprise companies

• Tech Stack Breakdown: make.com, VAPI, Tally, and the complete toolkit revealed

• AI Voice Assistant: Build your own receptionist for just 15¢/minute

• https://www.whataidea.com/ 

Future Forecast: Visual AI and AR/VR will transform how we sell and interact

INTRODUCTION:

In today's standout episode of AI Biz Hour, we met Noah Santoni, a former executive at Euromonitor International, the biggest market research company in the world, transformed himself into a thriving AI agency owner. At Euromonitor, he managed over £6 million in business with an average deal size of £300k, working with major clients including Pepsi and Mondelez. 

His journey into AI began four years ago when he spotted early potential in BERT models while working at the intersection of market research and emerging technology trends. Recognizing AI's future impact, he committed to self-teaching Python daily after returning from his corporate job in London. 'In the daytime it was Bruce Wayne and the nighttime I was Batman,' Noah explained, describing how he maintained his corporate career while building his AI expertise and entirely rebuilding his professional network. About a year ago, he made the decisive move to leave his 'dream job' to pursue his AI agency full-time, focusing on delivering practical solutions for customers rather than theoretical possibilities.

What makes Noah's story remarkable isn't just his technical skills, but his revolutionary approach to winning clients through pre-meeting demos and his strategic focus on serving small and medium businesses. His insights provide a practical roadmap for sustainable AI business growth that anyone can implement immediately

MAIN INSIGHTS:

💡 The Magic of "Show, Don't Tell": How to Achieve 90% Conversion Rates

The Problem: Most AI consultants pitch capabilities through portfolios, case studies, and technical explanations that clients struggle to connect with their specific needs.

The Solution: Noah revealed his game-changing approach that transformed his business:

"I went from failing on my proposals and pitches to getting almost a 90% conversion rate when I went to this approach. I would qualify, deeply qualify a customer, understand what they want, and build a V0. Based on this spec, with the customer's branding and logos, I would then go into the meeting and screen share the product. Immediately you'd see their mouth drop, they'd be interested."

Rather than explaining what he could do, Noah shows potential clients what he's already done for them specifically. This shifts the conversation from "Could you help us?" to "How much does this cost?"

What This Means For Your Business: Before your next pitch meeting, invest a few hours building a simple branded demo showing exactly how your solution would work in their environment. Don't worry about backend functionality—focus on the visual experience that makes them feel their problem is already being solved.

"Most people want that experience. They want you to feel a bit more like you know what you're pitching to them, that their idea is so unique. It's important that they have somebody like an echo chamber to validate."

 The SMB Advantage: Why Chasing Enterprise Deals Is Killing Your Cash Flow

While enterprise logos might impress, Noah explains why focusing on small and medium businesses provides faster revenue and more sustainable growth:

"I went after CrowdStrike. I went after Google. I went after all these serious companies. And I signed a couple of them onto my platform... But what I learned through that journey was, when it comes to really making you money today, not in six months, not in five months, you're not in the game that they're in."

The Shovels vs. Dreams Framework: Noah distilled this insight into a powerful mental model:

"You're in the business of making money and selling shovels. You either sell the shovels or you're in the business of selling dreams. And if you're selling dreams, it's going to be very hard to do that without getting a lot of money from investors. Whereas if you're selling shovels, and you're servicing clients today of problems you can fix today, they'll keep coming back to you as your position of authority."

Strategic Insight: Target the companies that service enterprise clients rather than pursuing enterprise directly.

"Don't go after the big fish. Go after who services the big fish. Because then that individual is going to nine times out of 10 have a much higher sphere of influence than the big fish."

Noah shared the analogy of Barry Callebaut, the chocolate processing company that supplies Mars, Kit Kat, and other major brands—they make more money than the consumer-facing companies because they control the critical infrastructure.

Action Step: Identify 3-5 service providers that work with your desired enterprise clients and offer to solve their immediate operational challenges with AI.

🛠 The Complete AI Implementation Toolkit: Build Solutions That Sell

Noah demystified his preferred tools for building client solutions, providing specific recommendations for different aspects of AI implementation:

Automation Foundation:

• make.com: "I really prefer make.com as you can ship fast. There are many integrations. Their price point is fair."

  • Best For: Client demos where you need to show connections between systems

  • Pro Tip: "From giving the user journey, it really interests the user to see what is being built from an automation perspective."

• N8N: "They've really stepped up their game recently, particularly with being able to self-host."

  • Best For: Compliance-heavy industries like healthcare and finance

  • Use Case: "Where they'll probably need to deploy whatever you're showing them locally or on a server that has no internet connection for compliance."

• Tally.so: "Tally is free... I connect that by make.com to an automation."

  • Implementation Example: "I send the customer a form if they go to the next stage that gives me a better sense of what their tech stack is, do they have any API providers, and have they ever done external work with an external company regarding tech?"

Voice AI Implementation:

• VAPI: Noah built "Sophie," his AI voice receptionist that integrates with his calendar.

  • Integration Schema: "She's connected via tool calling to make.com flow, is connected to my calendar, but it's also connected to an LLM that can classify if that specific individual should match or shouldn't match to what I'm looking for."

  • ROI Calculation: "This solution costs only 15 cents a minute. How much would it cost me for a receptionist? That's easily maybe $20 an hour."

LLM Selection Guide:

• For Persona-Based Solutions: "The Claude guard rails are incredibly brutal when you're trying to do a build that requires a persona build... whereas ChatGPT is really good at it with their APIs."

• For Production Deployments: "Google Gemini is really leveling up recently, particularly the context window. Even for us at What AI, our business, we use Google Gemini."

• On Open Source Models: "The issue you're going to get is the cost of inference... 'Look, you really want to spend over $5,000 to $10,000 a month on something that would probably only cost you $100 a month using Microsoft or AWS?'"

Agent Orchestration Platforms:

• Personal Development: "For a build you just want for yourself, look at setting it up on Telegram."

• Visualization for Clients: "Setting up via Discord API keys... you can see agents in real time working together."

• Enterprise Grade: Slack for professional settings and integrations.

🎯 The AI Marketing Whisperer Approach: Speak Business, Not Tech

AI John Allen dubbed Noah "The AI Marketing Whisperer" for his ability to transform technical solutions into compelling client experiences:

"I was tendering for a legal firm, and it was me against the leading development firm up north. I mean, they're an AWS partner. I should be not even involved at that level of tender if I'm just a small agency. And I won that pitch because that other agency just sent them a PDF of all the stuff they're going to build them."

The Translation Secret: "The customer has absolutely no idea the difference between what an EC2 endpoint is and what a digital ocean droplet is. It's almost like there's no point. You're speaking the wrong language."

The Business Impact: Focusing on magic-like experiences rather than technical details fundamentally changes how clients perceive your value:

"It's about delivering that message in a way that almost feels like magic when you meet them. And they get that you get what they're talking about."

Client Communication Checklist:

• ✅ Remove all technical jargon from presentations

• ✅ Focus on what problem is being solved, not how

• ✅ Create "wow" moments through visual demonstrations

• ✅ Match the client's language about their business

• ✅ Show understanding before offering solutions

CASE STUDY: The Five-Minute Website That Generated Enterprise Meetings

Noah shared a powerful real-world example of how simple demonstrations create exponential business opportunities:

The Situation: After meeting with a prospective customer who agreed to work with his startup, Noah had a chance interaction with the company's Chief Revenue Officer who mentioned starting a drone technology business.

The Approach: "I sat down with him at the pub. There wasn't much internet connection. I opened my laptop and said, 'okay, watch this.' Within five, 10 minutes, he had a website ready to go with the v0. This blew his mind."

The Ripple Effect: "He then took this website with him today, walked over to meetings with other companies and talked about how great of a website I made for him in less than five minutes while he was drinking a pint of beer."

The Analogy: "When someone pays a locksmith because they got locked out of their house, they'll pay 300, 400 pounds, right? But the locksmith will come and get the job done in five minutes."

The Result: "Immediately he called me today and said, 'are you free next Thursday? I need you to meet one of the leading insurance providers who is actually a subseller for all the leading telecommunications companies in the UK.'"

Key Lesson: Small demonstrations of competence, delivered at the right moment, can open doors that months of traditional networking cannot.

ACTIONABLE ADVICE: 10 Implementation Tips You Can Use Today

1. Qualify deeply - "The house has to really be on fire. You have to be the last person they want to talk to." Only work with clients who genuinely need your solution now.

2. Focus on simplicity - "Don't go after something incredibly complex and deep tech. Go after something that is simple, effective, and will give you a brand presence."

3. Ask qualifying questions - "Have they ever done external work with an external company regarding tech?" This reveals how much education they'll need about working with vendors.

4. Be visual - "Way less death by slides and way more showing them some of the stuff we built." Demonstrations convert better than explanations.

5. Start with automations - "To gain their trust on such an emerging technology, you need to start on something like an automation that can add value immediately." Don't force AI where simpler solutions work.

6. Don't obsess over protecting IP - "When you try and shield away the idea of what we're building, all you're doing is just causing what you're trying to grow to slow down."

7. Avoid over-prompting - "The more detail you get to and the more nuances you get from a prompting perspective, it kind of becomes a point where you're not even getting decent results."

8. Maintain agent focus - "Give really focused prompts. Tell the LLM, 'look, when someone asks you something and it's taking you a bit longer, respond by saying, hang on a moment, I'm just checking for you.'"

9. Use network expansion strategy - "Ask your network who they know and who they can refer. The rule of—if you know someone, asking for three other people that you could be introduced to."

10. Show value first, negotiate second - "I did the same classic thing. I sat down with him at the pub. I opened my laptop and said, 'okay, watch this.'" Demonstration creates desire that leads to deals.

RESOURCE DIRECTORY:

• make.com - Automation platform with drag-and-drop interface and visual workflows

• VAPI.ai - Voice AI platform for creating convincing phone assistants

• Tally.so - Free form builder for client qualification and data collection

• N8N.io - Self-hostable automation platform for compliance-sensitive industries

• Google Gemini - LLM with large context window for sophisticated applications

• Anthropic Claude - LLM with strict guardrails (note limitations for persona builds)

• OpenAI/ChatGPT - Recommended for persona-based solutions

• Telegram, Discord, Slack - Platforms for testing AI agent orchestration

• PipeCut - Open source tool for voice sentiment and nuanced adjustments

COMING UP NEXT WEEK:

Join us Monday at 12pm ET for "AI Sales Automation: Closing More Deals Without Hiring More Reps" featuring Sarah Johnson, former VP of Sales at Salesforce. We'll explore how leading companies are using agent swarms to qualify leads and manage complex sales cycles.

CONNECT WITH AI BIZ HOUR:

• Website: aibizhour.com

• Andy: @andywergedal

• John: @AiJohnAllen

• Newsletter: Sign up for the AI Biz Hour Newsletter

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