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99 out of a hundred people need the service. That's a three to $5,000 upsell all day.
Chris Koerner explains how to sell $1,000 AI audits ('assessments') to small businesses, using a voice agent named Annie to interview owners and Claude to generate reports, with a live demo call.
Key Takeaways
- Small businesses are a large market for AI audits priced around $1,000, with high margins.
- Using a voice agent for assessments removes scheduling bottlenecks and scales better than in-person or Zoom consulting.
- Free initial audits can build testimonials and referrals, and upsells should target revenue or savings.
- Low-friction client data capture (phone calls over screen recordings) matters more than the most thorough data.
What the video covers
- Chris Koerner argues anyone can sell AI services by studying AI for about a week and being a step ahead of the average client.
- Selling AI audits to small business owners for about $1,000 has near-pure profit margin, since the work is mostly prompting Claude and using a voice agent.
- The idea came from a friend who said he would pay $1,000 to have someone follow him around his office and identify where AI could help.
- Following people around was not scalable, so the model moved to 45-minute Zoom calls, then to Loom screen recordings, which proved too much friction for clients.
- The current iteration is a 24/7 phone-based voice agent named Annie who conducts 20-30 minute assessments with business owners.
- After the call, an AI agent analyzes the transcript, researches off-the-shelf AI tools for the owner's pain points, and produces a report.
- The assessment is followed by a follow-up call and upsells, such as implementation services or booking appointments for businesses like wedding venues.
- The question bank is a master set that the voice agent adapts by industry, starting general and becoming more specialized.
- Chris claims 99 of 100 business owners he spoke with needed the service, and that free audits can produce testimonials and referrals.
- Chris recommends not overreaching early on and focusing upsells on revenue or cost savings.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
And a lot of people hear that and are like, "Oh, well, I'm not an expert."
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You don't need to be an AI expert to do this.
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You just need to be one step ahead of your average client, which is literally you studying this stuff for like 7 days, and then you can easily go out and sell it.
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I did exactly that.
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So, these are seven ways that anybody can sell AI services, followers or no followers.
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So, the first, and this one is such a no-brainer, but nobody is going to do it.
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All right, guys.
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Today we're going to zoom in.
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I talk a lot about AI consulting, this and implementing AI in small businesses, that yada yada yada, but let's just talk about doing AI audits for small businesses.
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That's it.
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And getting paid $1,000 to do it.
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And all you're doing is prompting Claude and using a voice agent to interview a business owner about his business.
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That's it.
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That's all we're talking about today: selling AI audits to small business owners for $1,000 with basically no cost.
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It's almost pure profit margin.
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I found a guy on Twitter who does exactly that.
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He's very good at it.
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He tells us how to get customers.
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He has a seven-step process for finding customers that we'll get to at the end.
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And it's very real, very tactical.
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You're going to love it.
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I was at lunch one day with a friend of mine who was like, "Corey," he's like, "I would literally pay you $1,000 just to follow me around for a day in my office and just tell me where I can be using AI."
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And that was like a huge light bulb moment for me, because I was like, hm, that's interesting, because he's probably not the only one who thinks that.
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So there's probably a business here, but obviously it's not scalable in the sense that I can't just be driving around to different offices all day and doing that.
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So what's another way we could do that?
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And that led me to coming up with this AI audit product, which again, I'm sure we'll get into the weeds of what that actually entails and how people can implement it.
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But instead of following people around, we literally just do a Zoom call for 45 minutes, take the transcript, essentially feed it into Claude, research a few different AI tools that people can implement to solve some of their pain points, and then deliver it in a report, and then do a follow-up call, and then upsell them on a number of different services.
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So, in a nutshell, it's that simple.
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I love how this business started on that one conversation, because you're like, if one person would pay a thousand bucks for this, there's got to be more for your friend.
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Did you literally follow him around, or did you not even start with that?
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Did you quickly learn that's not even necessary?
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Yeah.
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So, I didn't even start with that, but I swear it was such a light bulb moment.
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I remember it so vividly, him saying that, and at first I kind of brushed it off, and then I'm driving home.
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I just could not shake that thought.
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And I'm like, "All right, if this guy who's super successful is offering to pay me so I can tell them how to learn AI, there's got to be people all across the spectrum of business owners who need this exact same thing."
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In talking to probably 50 to 100 different business owners, that has absolutely been the case.
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Like 99 out of a 100 need the service.
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All right, you're speaking my love language here.
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What about in lieu of a 45-minute Zoom call?
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Would it be more or less effective, slash efficient, for them to just have a normal workday and just record the whole thing, like screen record the whole thing?
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So, a couple of ways I want to go with that.
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And I think what I'm going to tell you next, you're going to love it.
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But that's actually what we did first, right?
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Because this audit, we actually call it an assessment, because it's just a little less aggressive.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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People hate getting audited, but they don't mind doing an assessment.
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So that was actually the first iteration of the assessment, when we were piloting this and doing some of these for free to get feedback, which I recommend anybody do.
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We asked people, "Hey, can we add you to our Loom account as a user?"
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And then all we asked you to do is, when you sit down to do a deep work session, hit record, work for 60, 90, 120 minutes, and then that'll pipe it right back to us.
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And then we can take that screen recording and essentially do the assessment based off that.
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And what we found is that was just asking too much of people.
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They hadn't used Loom before.
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It's too foreign.
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Yeah.
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It's too foreign, and it's not part of their daily routine as it is.
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So it's one more Zoom, but this is like, all right, what?
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Huh?
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Yeah, we found it was way too much friction.
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What if I spend 30 minutes on Reddit?
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Do I need to pause it?
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Are you going to judge me?
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There's all kinds of variables in there.
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So I can see why that wouldn't work.
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Okay.
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And just not to jump too far ahead, but as you can probably imagine, the bottleneck in the initial iteration was, well, I can't be following people around all day at the office.
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The bottleneck in this iteration is, well, there's only so many Zoom calls I can do in a given day.
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Now, the current iteration is a voice agent with a phone number that the business owner can call and have a 20 to 30 minute conversation with this voice agent, which is shockingly good.
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We've tested it thoroughly.
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You'll talk to this voice agent and you're like, "Wow, I literally feel like I'm talking to a human."
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The voice agent, her name is Annie, she's the one doing the assessments now.
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She's asking the questions, and when they hang up with her, it pipes right back to our other AI agent, who then analyzes the transcript and builds the report.
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So you don't even do the Zoom calls anymore.
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Not anymore.
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Right.
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That's our most recent iteration, as of the last couple of weeks.
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So you basically say, call this number at your convenience, 24/7, doesn't matter, and just answer the questions?
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Correct.
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Yeah.
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So that's the way we have it set up now: they just call a number.
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Yeah.
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They can talk to it at 2 in the morning if they want.
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And yeah.
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Are those questions standardized, or does the AI adjust on the fly based on the answers?
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Yeah.
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So when we originally did the first assessment, we just had a very general question bank.
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What we've noticed is that everybody we do these for is a little different.
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We've done probably eight or nine different industries now, so we've taken that and combined it into a master bank, so the voice agent can pick the questions that make sense for that industry.
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Starting general and then moving more specialized throughout the process is how I did it when I was doing them.
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Hey, YouTube's fine, but what about when you're driving around?
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What about when you're mowing the lawn?
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You need my audio podcast, The Kerner Office.
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Just look up TKO Pod in Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Can we try it?
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Yeah, we can call it right now.
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All right, let's see.
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Let's call it right now.
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Hi there, I'm Annie from Return My Time.
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Thanks for hopping on.
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This is a quick chat to learn about your business and what your day-to-day looks like, so I can spot the best places AI can give you time back.
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You ready to get started?
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Yeah, Annie, let's get started.
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Awesome.
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What's your name?
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My name is Chris.
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Nice to meet you, Chris.
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So, tell me, what do you do in your business?
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I am an e-commerce entrepreneur.
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I sell things on Amazon.
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How long have you been selling on Amazon?
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Uh, almost nine years.
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Nine years.
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Wow.
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You've seen all the Amazon waves.
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Do you run this solo, or do you have a team helping you?
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I have two warehouse employees and I have four virtual assistants.
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Oh, nice.
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That's
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door-nocking a business to try to talk about AI in 2026. Do you realize how easy of a conversation that is versus door-nocking a business and trying to sell them like insurance or, you know, even home services because of how everybody is thinking about AI right now. Like you're not even showing
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up trying to sell something. you're just trying to show up and have a conversation about how they are or aren't using AI in their business. And as always, we lead with value. And if it turns into a sales conversation, so be it, right? But that's a really easy way to get your foot in the door,
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especially if you're new and especially if you're only charging, you know, 200 bucks for an assessment or 500 bucks for an assessment if you're starting out. Would you agree? Yeah.
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Yeah. 100%. What about the free audits? Can you speak to that? Yeah. So, and like I said earlier, this is kind of how we started off in in trying to prove this concept and get some testimonials. So, I'm a part of this just like local CEO peer group here with there's like 11 or 12 guys,
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all different industries. Most of them are older, right? They're not very in tune with AI, but they're all successful business people. And I reached out to all of them and I said, "Hey guys, I'd love to do a free audit for two or three of you guys. Are you open to that?" And of course,
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they were like, "Well, yeah, obviously. why wouldn't we be? So, we did exactly that. We did the audit. We delivered it to them. They saw the value. They gave us a testimonial and that was that. So, from there, the free audit doesn't need to be the end of the line. You could then,
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you know, tactfully upsell those people because you know them. It's somebody in your network, a a warm contact most likely. Who's to say you don't do a free audit and then turn around and do a, you know, $1,500 Zapier automation build, right, to to start with them? You know what I mean?
Speaker A
Yeah. I love it. What about office hours? Yeah. So, that's another one that again anybody could do and you don't need to be an expert. You just need to be one step ahead of the average person, which isn't that hard these days. So, you could go to a co-working space or I mean kind of like
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I did with the AI meetup, like go to any of the realtor offices in your town. You know how many realtor offices if you went to them and said, "Hey, can I just host a free uh weekly or monthly AI office hours in your office where I literally just show up and sit there and work
Speaker A
on my computer and if people have AI questions, I just answer their questions." Like, they're all going to say yes to that. And you know, you're you're either going to get audit clients out of that. The brokers in charge at the office might want to talk to you about doing workshops. I mean,
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the very worst thing that would happen if you did that is you get a lot of really good contacts who know a lot of other people in the area, right? Like virtually no downside, especially if if you're just getting into this game, right? Are there any other like tips or tricks or lessons
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you had to learn the hard way that you could pass advice on to people to help them avoid that?
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That's a great question. So, I would say really specializing in one upsell to start. And that's something we are still trying to get better at is like, you know, when you get into this business and you're doing the assessments, you start to see a hundred different things that you
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could potentially upsell for a client. But what I find is when you're a jack of all trades, you get spread really thin. So again, if you're starting off, get really good at the assessment and then let's just say your your main go-to upsell is like a custom GPT, right? So that's kind of what you're
Speaker A
looking to upsell every time. That doesn't mean that you say no to other upsell opportunities, but that's kind of your bread and butter and that's what you do really good at and that's what you productize. So that would be my advice is just don't don't try to get spread too thin and
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don't bite off more that you than you can chew. uh especially in the early days. I would even take it a step further and say like find the upsell that's most closely tied to either revenue or savings for
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them. Yes. Go there. Revenue specifically, right? The one that's less nebulous, but like this one will make you x more dollars per month or save you x more dollars per month. And a really good one there and this is actually the very first AI engagement that paid engagement I ever did is a
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speedtole AI agent. Right? So what you find is that a lot of a lot of service businesses particularly they they're not picking up the phone fast enough. Right? Leads are coming in. They're getting emails from leads at 1000 p.m. or 2 a.m. or at a time when they can't answer the phone
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or the email. And if they don't answer within 10 minutes or sometimes even less, that lead's going somewhere else. So the very first AI solution I built for somebody was a within make.com, which you can do the same in Zapier, an AI agent that when somebody submits a form on their website,
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it responds but in a personalized manner, not just like, hey, we received your form, you know, we'll get back to you. It looks the person up. It tailor a response to them and then it can have a conversation back and forth with them to get a call scheduled with an actual salesperson and in
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this case get a tour scheduled for a wedding venue because it was that same wedding venue business that I mentioned because their saleserson all day she's doing tours in person. So they have leads coming in on the website and she's been doing tours all day. So she can't get back to them
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until 6 7 8 hours later. So when we implemented this speed tole agent that's trained on all their FAQs and everything about their property, they started booking more tours immediately and it was it directly tied to revenue because their average deal size is 11 grand and they know that
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if they get somebody on a tour they have a 40% close rate. So, it's so easy to quantify, oh, if this speed tole agent gets me, you know, one, if not two more tours a month, it's going to make
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me an extra 11 grand is really what it comes down to. When you take the transcript of the call or of the the Zoom call or the voice agent call, what is the prompt you give to Claude to get that output,
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the audit output? What I will say for the audience is that they don't need to get crazy with the prompt. They can literally say to Claude, "Hey, I've attached the transcript of a conversation I had with a local business owner." Your job is to go out on the internet and find any AI tools
Speaker A
or just any software tools that they can implement that are offtheshelf that can fix the pain points that you've identified from the transcript. Like it can be that simple. And there are some websites, I think Futuredia is one of them. also is one called there's an AI for that I think.com
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that are literally just directories of thousands of AI tools. So you could just tell Claude, "Hey, go search futurepedia and find some tools that solve the pain points that this client has based on this transcript." You see what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I never heard of Futuredia. Well, Corey,
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is there anything that we should have covered that we didn't cover? Anything we missed? This has been excellent. I think we touched on all of it. No, I mean the the one thing I'll leave everybody with is again, you don't need to be an AI expert to do this. You just need to be one step ahead of your
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average client, which is which is literally you studying the stuff for like seven days and then you can easily go out and sell it. So that'd be my best tip. Just get after it. Okay. Well, thank you, Corey. Is there uh where can everyone find you? Yeah, so they the best place is on my
Speaker A
podcast called Build with AI, which is on YouTube and on any podcast platform. I do live AI builds and tutorials twice a week and that's going to be the best place. Okay. Thank you, Cory. Thank you, man. Listen, I need more people like this to interview on my podcast. So, if you know
Speaker A
of someone with a sidehustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly M o lycofounders.com. That's one word, coofounders.com. Molly co-founders.com. Tell her your story and we'll give you a hundred bucks if we end up interviewing them. Please share with
Speaker A
a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and we'll see you next time on the Kerner
Topics:AI consultingAI auditsmall businessvoice agentside hustleClaudeAI servicesupsellbusiness automationentrepreneurship
