Free to read · the prices come with your report

What they will try to sell you.

Before anybody quotes you a number, they have to sell you a thing. This is the menu. Six services an AI agency will put in front of a small business, what each one is in plain English, and what it is really for.

Good agencies sell this too

A good one sells most of what is on this list and does it well. Knowing what the thing actually is does not make it a bad buy. It makes you a buyer who can tell one offer from another, which is the buyer a good agency wants anyway.

The menu

Read the middle line of each card first. Almost every service on this list is doing a simpler job than its name suggests, and the simple job is usually a real job worth paying for.

Sold as "your 24/7 AI receptionist"

Somebody to answer the phone

What it is. An AI voice picks up when you are busy. It takes the caller's name and what they want, and sends it to you as a text or an email. The better ones book straight into your calendar and put the whole call in writing.

What it is really for. The calls that ring out. A call nobody answers usually becomes a job for whoever answers next. This is the service the whole industry leads with, because a missed call is the easiest loss for an owner to picture.

To set up A month

Sold as "speed to lead"

Being first to reply

What it is. The second someone fills in your website form or messages your Facebook page, an automatic text goes back, before you have even looked at your phone. If they go quiet it nudges them again on a set schedule.

What it is really for. Getting in front of the four other businesses they messaged at the same time. In most trades the one who replies first wins the job, whether or not they were the best of the five. It is cheap to build and it works, which is why it is on nearly every menu.

To set up A month

Sold as "reputation management"

Google reviews, on a schedule

What it is. When a job is finished, an automatic text sends your customer a link to your Google listing at the moment they are happiest, chases once if nothing comes back, and tells you the minute a bad one lands.

What it is really for. Your star rating, and how high you sit in the map results when somebody searches your trade near them. It is the only thing on this list a customer sees before they ever ring you.

Ask this one thing. What happens when a customer is unhappy? Anything that quietly keeps unhappy people away from the review link is against Google's own rules and can cost you the listing.

To set up A month

Sold as "a custom AI agent" or "your digital employee"

One job, built for you

What it is. A piece of software made to do a single task in your business. Reading the inbox and filing what comes in. Turning a job sheet into a quote. Chasing unpaid invoices. Keeping the job board honest. It is not a person and it is not general. It does the one thing, over and over, and it does not do the next thing unless somebody builds that too.

What it is really for. The hour a day you lose to the same task. This is the most expensive item on the menu and the hardest to compare, because no two builds are alike and there is no list price to hold it against.

To build A month

Sold as "ongoing optimisation" or "your AI growth partner"

The fee every month

What it is. A charge that lands every month for keeping the thing running. At one end of the market that is a real named person spending a few hours on your account, reading what the AI got wrong and correcting it. At the other end it is the software subscription underneath with a logo on it and nobody attached.

What it is really for. Both are honest businesses. They are not the same purchase and they are often described with the same words, so this is the line where the wording matters most. Get the name of the human, and how many hours a month they spend.

Low end High end

Sold as "onboarding", and priced in three sizes

The setup fee

What it is. A one off charge to get everything built, connected and switched on, almost always presented as three packages. Essential, Growth and Scale, or whatever they are called this year.

What it is really for. Paying for the build, and putting a big number beside a middle number so the middle one looks sensible. The three are usually one estimate cut three ways rather than three different amounts of work. Ask what the cheapest one does on its own. A good agency will let you start there.

Cheapest Middle

Those bars are empty on purpose. The prices are not hidden on this page, they are absent from it. No blur, no cover, no faint grey text you could select and paste. Look in the page source and there is no number there to find, because we took it out rather than painted over it.

Where the prices are

Reading 350 recorded sales talks to work out what these six things actually get charged took the longest of anything we have done. It is the half of this worth paying for, so it sits with the report rather than on a free page.

Start the survey, spend about fifteen minutes telling us about your week, and one of the papers that comes back is the pricing sheet with the bars off. What each of these is really charged at, the range around it, how to tell which end of that range you are being quoted from, and the questions that move you down it.

It is written against your business rather than in general, so a one van trade and a six chair clinic get different sheets. And it does not need you to be talking to an agency at all. Plenty of people read it to find out that they do not need one yet.

The figures in it are US dollars and they are labelled US dollars, because the recordings are American and Canadian and nobody in them quotes Australian money. We have not converted a single one. A converted number borrows the authority of the data while the conversion invented it, and you would have no way to tell which half was which.

About fifteen minutes, out loud or typed, whichever you prefer.
Your papers back within the half hour, the pricing sheet among them.
A$99, once, including GST. No call, no follow up, no pitch.

Start the survey A$99, once

Going into a meeting before then? The questions themselves are free and they are written out to be read off a phone: Questions to ask before you sign.

Where this comes from: 350 recorded sales talks and training sessions aimed at people who sell AI services to small businesses, read in August 2026. Sellers teaching other sellers, which is an excellent view of how you get sold to and a poor view of what anything is worth. Prices in this market move, so treat all of it as a guide to the market, not a set price list.