The trap: a funnel built from promises

Over the past few years the market has been flooded with tools and services promising maximum results for minimal effort. Whether they run on Claude, ChatGPT, Mistral or any other AI platform, the claim is always the same. A system that works for you, so you can spend your time on something else.

Take that example of 312 automatically qualified leads and 9 closed deals in 4 weeks. At first glance it sounds impressive. Look closer and the questions start. How many of those 312 leads were actually qualified? How many of those 9 deals turned into a lasting customer instead of a one-off transaction driven by a temporary discount? And how much time does it take to assess all those hot leads by hand anyway, time you could have spent on real conversations?

Lead generation runs on trust, context and human interaction. A lead is worth something the moment it matches your customer’s needs, challenges and goals. That is exactly where these tools fall short. They analyse data and spot patterns. What a customer actually needs is beyond them. Plenty of these systems produce leads that drop out after the first call, because there was never a real connection or any understanding of the market underneath them.

Why this approach falls short

A few reasons these magic solutions disappoint.

The human factor is missing. Business development is about building relationships, understanding what sits underneath a customer’s question, and creating value that outlasts a single transaction. An AI tool can send a message. Trust takes a person. It can analyse data. Naming the specific problem a customer is wrestling with takes a person too. That gap is the difference between a lead and a customer.

The lead quality disappoints. AI tools depend on the data they were trained on and the algorithms they run. When that data is off, or the algorithms are tuned to a market that isn’t yours, the leads are off with them. What you get is a pile of irrelevant contacts that costs time and energy to filter and follow up.

There is usually an agenda. Many of these tools arrive as a free trial or a low entry price, and it turns out you need the paid extras to get any result at all. The opening offer is the funnel.

The risks

And then the obvious question. Why would a developer give away a tool he spent time and energy building? If it really is that powerful, why not harvest that investment himself?

There is a less obvious risk too. Often you only get access once you connect with the developer on LinkedIn. That builds him a large network, which raises his visibility and his reach. What most people miss is that they are also opening their own network to him. He can point his tool straight at your connections. You become part of his lead generation strategy while you think you are using a free tool.

What does work: human intelligence and craft

In my own work, real growth has always come out of collaboration, trust and a deep understanding of the customer. Guiding a supplier who shifted his focus from selling products to keeping customers close, helping organisations in cybersecurity find their commercial footing: results that last do not arrive in a box.

They ask for strategy, insight and a long-term view. No AI system replaces those.

Take a client I worked with. He wanted to grow his product sales and thought he needed a salesperson. A few conversations in, it became clear that his real goal was a firmer grip on his customers’ business and a closer relationship with them. He ended up using product sales as the route to becoming more relevant, by leaning harder on the services around implementing and configuring those solutions.

The result? One or two days a week shaping his business goals together, where he had been planning to put someone on product sales full-time. And in time he made me unnecessary, because he had picked up the skills and the insight to carry it himself.

That is business development doing its job. It works by creating situations where both sides grow, by building trust, and by adjusting as the market and the customer change.

The role of AI: a tool that supports the work

None of this means AI has no place in business development. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Mistral are a real help in working faster. Analysing large volumes of data to spot a pattern, or taking repetitive work like follow-up messages off your desk.

What matters is knowing where the line sits. AI gets you to an insight faster, and reading what that insight means for your customer is your job. It generates more leads, and deciding which ones deserve your afternoon is your job. It makes you more efficient, and the trust that carries a long partnership still gets built by you.

That distinction runs through everything I do in Business Development as a Service.

The lesson: be sceptical of a good story

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Real business development is built on relationships, on understanding what someone needs, and on creating value for the customer as well as for yourself. That takes more than a handful of prompts, an AI tool, or a free trial that ends in a subscription you have to buy.

And remember: when a tool costs you nothing but a LinkedIn connection, you are paying with access to your own network. You may be part of someone else’s business model without noticing.

Conclusion: invest in what works

If you want to grow, invest in strategy, relationships and craft. Use AI as a tool, and judge it as a tool.

Because in the end it comes down to how you turn leads into lasting partnerships. That takes human insight, craft and honest attention to the customer. I don’t listen to what you say, but I do hear what you mean.

Want to look at your own pipeline?

If you are weighing up an AI tool, or wondering why your pipeline keeps filling with contacts that go nowhere, get in touch. The first conversation is on me.