Hey there,

The first AI agent I ever built was a speed-to-lead agent. It was also the first one I ever sold.

The client owned a wedding venue rental business. His average deal size was $11,000. He had one salesperson whose entire job was hosting in-person venue tours. And she was crushing it, closing 40% of them.

But she was so busy running tours all day that the leads coming in during the morning weren't getting a response until that night. Sometimes the next day. Sometimes Monday (if they hit on a Friday afternoon).

Luckily, this is a fixable problem with a little help from AI.

The funny part is what I built him was way more complicated than it needed to be. I now know how to build these much more efficiently, but it got the job done and that's what matters.

This agent didn't send the usual "thanks for your inquiry, we'll get back to you soon" nonsense. It read the actual message, did light research on the person or company who reached out, and fired back a personalized response in under 60 seconds. The whole goal: book the in-person tour.

If the agent booked just two extra tours per month, and his salesperson closed 40% of them (which was her actual close rate), that's an extra $11,000 in monthly revenue. From an agent that took a few hours to build.

Here's where I screwed up.

I charged $1,500 as a one-time fee. I didn't build in any retainers or maintenance fees. I left a TON of money on the table, but it was the best learning experience I've had since pivoting to AI.

Pricing should reflect the outcome, not the effort. If you're reading this thinking "I'm making my customers so much more than what I'm charging them", then hopefully this is a sign to raise your prices.

But that's a different email. The point of this one is this:

Speed to lead is the easiest unlock you have right now.

The entire premise is simply responding faster than your competition in a personalized manner.

If you run a service business, you've seen this movie:

• Lead comes in Friday at 4pm.
• You respond Monday at 9am.
• Lead's gone. Already booked your competitor. Or decided they didn't need it after all.

The data says:

• Leads contacted within 5 minutes are 21x more likely to convert than those contacted after 30 minutes.
• 78% of customers buy from the company that responds first.
• The average B2B response time is 42 hours. Forty. Two. Hours.

Translation: most of your competitors are asleep at the wheel. The bar is so ridiculously low.

You could be the worst salesperson in the world, but if you respond first, with a personalized message that doesn't read like spam, you will close more deals. Guaranteed.

Here's how to build it this week (under 2 hours in Make.com or Zapier)

Tools you need:

• Make.com or Zapier (the automation backbone)
• Your CRM (HubSpot, GoHighLevel, whatever you're already on)
• An AI step (Claude or GPT, both have native connectors now)
• Your communication channel (Gmail, SMS via Twilio, Slack, whatever your leads come through)

The steps, in order:

1. Trigger: Connect your lead source (Facebook Lead Ads, Typeform, website form, etc.) as the workflow trigger.
2. Filter: Add a condition step so only new, uncontacted leads continue through. You don't want this firing on existing customers.
3. AI step: Add a Claude or GPT action. The prompt includes the lead's name, source, and what they inquired about, then instructs the AI to write a personalized first-touch message.
4. Send the message: Connect Gmail, Twilio, or your CRM's email tool to fire instantly.
5. Update CRM: Final step: log the contact and tag them as "contacted" so you don't double-message.

What goes in the AI prompt:

• Your company name, your offer, your tone of voice
• 2–3 example responses you'd normally send manually (critical - this is how the AI learns your voice)
• Instruction to keep it short, personal, and end with one clear next step (book a call, reply with availability, click the link)

That's the whole system.

Lead comes in → AI writes a personalized message → sends in under 60 seconds → CRM updated automatically.

You go from 42-hour responses to 60-second responses overnight.

If your average deal size is $5K and this lands you one extra closed deal per month, that's $60K/year from a 2 hour build.

That's why I BEG every operator I know to build this first and foremost. It's the one agent that ties directly to revenue.

Build it this week. Reply and tell me how it goes. I read every response.

- Corey

A few notes/tweets/cool things sourced from the AI community this month.

1)

Matt Myers shared this win inside our Build With AI community. AI is your competitive advantage in every industry (especially if you sell on Amazon)

2)

Riley Brown @rileybrown Learn 95% of Codex in 28 minutes These are the 7 knowledge work capabilities... inside Codex, the super-app 00:00 Intro 02:19 Capability 1 - Full File Access 07:41 Capability 2 - Persistent Memory 10:46 Capability 3 - Plugins 13:52 Capability 4 - Skills 19:22 Capability 5 - 12:32 AM • Apr 29, 2026 401 Retweets 3964 Likes Read 94 replies

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Codex is a tool worth learning.

3)

Claude @claudeai We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity. This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API. 4:19 PM • May 6, 2026 2863 Retweets 32485 Likes Read 1702 replies

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Claude users everywhere are celebrating.

Thanks for reading this first edition of the weekly Corey's Notes newsletter. I'd appreciate it if you sent it to a friend that might find it interesting.

Be sure to check out the Build With AI podcast on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. If you're a non-technical entrepreneur who wants to learn how to integrate AI into your business, you'll love it.

Be back next week.

-Corey