Spend a few minutes researching AI vendors and you'll meet the same claims: pipeline multiplied, ROI in the hundreds of percent, 'enterprises save millions.' Some are true somewhere. Most are unfalsifiable. Every firm selling into this market, advisors included, has an incentive to play the same game, which is exactly why we'd rather arm you against it.
Three tests separate evidence from theater. Specificity: a real case study names the workflow, the baseline, the time period, and the measurement method, and reports the change in the client's own units, such as staff-hours a week; a bare multiplier names none of them. Attribution: did the number come from the client's systems or the vendor's marketing team? Survivorship: one great outcome proves possibility, not probability, so ask what the median engagement achieves.
Why we lead with third-party benchmarks
You'll notice the numbers on this site are not ours. They're from Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, Deloitte, Stanford and industry studies, cited and labeled as market benchmarks. That's deliberate. Published research describes the size and shape of the problem honestly. Your results depend on your volumes, your operations and your follow-through, which is why our engagements start with a diagnostic that measures your baseline before we promise anything.
The diagnostic-first model is itself the test we'd suggest applying to anyone in this market: a vendor or advisor confident in their work will happily measure your current state first, because the baseline is what makes the after meaningful. Anyone who skips the baseline is planning to grade their own homework.
Sources
- Harvard Business Review, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” (2011): 7× higher odds of qualifying a lead when firms respond within one hour versus waiting longer
- McKinsey Global Institute, “A Future That Works” (2017): ~30% of activities in most occupations are automatable with currently demonstrated technology