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Are You Ready to Introduce AI To Your Business? Take This Test to Find Out

Kim Taylor
September 29, 2025
4 mins

Discover if your business is ready for AI automation with our simple self-audit. Learn how a blended AI and human model can help you scale, increase efficiency, and boost revenue.

Webinar Series Recap - Article Five

Whether you’ve come here because you want to learn if AI is a good fit for your business or whether you’ve been following our webinar series, welcome! For those readers who are new to SalesApe, this article is the fifth in our series recapping our hugely successful webinar How To Use AI To Make Sure You Never Miss An Inbound Lead Again. You can watch the whole video here and hear from SalesApe’s Head of Sales, Dom Chiarenza and Salesforge CEO, Frank Sondors talking through some eye opening facts about why businesses are losing sales and why AI is the solution. 

You can go back and watch the whole video here or you can read back through our previous articles: 

  1. Introducing Our AI in Sales Webinar - How To Use AI To Make Sure You Never Miss An Inbound Lead Again
  2. Why Speed to Lead Isn't Just a "Nice-to-Have"—It's Everything
  3. How Fast Is Fast Enough? Pinpointing Your Ideal Response Time
  4. The Hidden Bottlenecks Costing You Conversions

Do You Need AI?

If you’ve read our previous articles, you’ll understand just how important AI is and the types of benefits it can bring. But you might be wondering if your business really needs it now. Obviously we’re a bit biased, we think AI is great! But if you want to know if it’s really right for you, here’s the impartial answer…

We've put together a simple test to help you figure out if you're ready to automate.

Answer these questions with a simple "yes" or "no":

  1. Does it take you more than five minutes to reply to an inbound lead?

  1. Do your salespeople give up after a few follow-ups, chasing the "next shiny object"?

  1. Are you just letting every lead come in without a proper scoring gate, wasting your team's time on unqualified prospects?

  1. Do you have manual routing and handoffs that slow your process down?

  1. Are you running a report in your CRM and seeing leads that were never even touched?

  1. Is your team unavailable to answer calls or chats outside of a typical 9-5 work day?

If you answered yes to any of these, you're not alone. In our webinar, Dom and Frank have seen these problems in businesses of all sizes, and they're more common than you'd think. The good news is, there are solutions.

What Your Score Means

If you scored 0-2, you’re in a good spot. You probably don’t need a full-blown AI solution just yet. Your focus should be on tightening up your existing processes. Can you get your reply time from five minutes to three? Can you optimize your human-powered system with some basic automation tools? Frank admitted he's in this bucket, but he knows as his business grows, he’ll have to address these issues.

If you scored 3 or more, it’s a clear signal that your current approach isn’t scalable and is actively costing you revenue. It’s time to stop trying to perfect a broken system and start thinking about a blended model.

The Blended Model Is The Smarter Way to Work

A blended model combines the best of both worlds: the speed, consistency, and scalability of an AI agent with the emotional intelligence of a human team. We’re not talking about replacing your sales reps. We’re talking about freeing them up to focus on what they do best - building relationships and closing deals.

Frank and Dom both agree: the goal of this technology is to reduce the pressure to hire more headcount. Today, businesses are expected to be leaner, meaner, and more profitable. AI agents can help you achieve that efficiency. We're seeing more and more companies use these systems to accelerate their business without needing to raise additional capital.

The way we think about work is changing. As a founder or a sales leader, you should always think "agent first, human second." If you have a problem, first see if there's an AI solution that can solve it off the shelf. If not, then you can go down the human path. By doing this, you'll not only avoid expensive and time-consuming hiring but also help your team hit their targets more easily and prevent costly layoffs down the road.

For our next article, we’re going to be looking at a SalesApe case study to provide some real life perspective on how AI is making our clients money.