Over the past few weeks, I’ve become unusually popular.

Not with actual people, unfortunately. With AI sales agents.

I’ve been receiving more and more emails and messages from automated agents trying to generate leads for their owners. And some of them are, to put it politely, not quite ready to be allowed out unsupervised.

Messages arrive at peculiar times. 2:47 am on a Monday, for example.

They’re often written with the breathless enthusiasm of a primary school child who has consumed an inadvisable quantity of fizzy juice and has just been given access to LinkedIn.

Normally, I’d delete them, but recently curiosity got the better of me.

So I started replying.

Talking to the machines

This is where things become interesting.

Reply to one of these agents, and you quickly begin to spot the pattern.

First, it compliments you.

Then it paraphrases what you’ve just said.

Then it demonstrates that it completely understands your point.

Then it asks an unusually well-constructed follow-up question.

Reply again, and the process repeats.

Compliment. Paraphrase. Understanding. Question.

It’s a bit like playing tennis with a very enthusiastic photocopier, and once you recognise the pattern, the illusion disappears remarkably quickly.

The problem isn’t AI

I have absolutely no problem with businesses using AI or automation.

Used properly, these tools can make businesses more efficient, improve marketing processes, support sales teams and help organisations identify opportunities they might otherwise miss.

The problem isn’t the technology.

The problem is deploying it badly.

Because when you allow an AI agent to contact potential customers, you’re not simply experimenting with some interesting new software.

You’re permitting it to represent your business.

It represents your brand.

Your professionalism.

Your judgement.

Your understanding of the customer.

And, ultimately, your reputation.

Your first impression might now be automated

Businesses spend considerable amounts of time and money developing their brands.

They invest in websites, positioning, messaging, content, sales materials and customer experience.

Then they hand the first interaction with a potential customer to an inadequately configured AI agent that sends them a generic message at 2:47 in the morning.

There is something wonderfully absurd about this, but commercially, it isn’t particularly funny.

If your first contact with a potential customer feels lazy, intrusive, impersonal or obviously automated, you’ve already told that person something about your business.

And probably not what you intended.

The irony is that many of these systems are designed to help businesses grow.

Yet badly implemented automation can do precisely the opposite.

It can damage trust before a genuine conversation has even begun.

A human is still on the other end

This is perhaps the most important thing to remember about AI-powered lead generation.

A human being is on the other end.

That person has a job to do. They have priorities. They have pressures on their time. And they probably already receive enough unsolicited sales messages.

They deserve a degree of respect.

Automation doesn’t remove that responsibility.

AI doesn’t excuse bad manners.

And efficiency isn’t particularly valuable if you’re becoming more efficient at annoying potential customers.

Before automating outreach, businesses therefore need to think beyond the technology.

• Who are we contacting?
• Why would they care?
• Are we offering something genuinely relevant?
• Does the message sound like us?
• What happens when someone replies?
• What happens when the conversation moves beyond the script?

And perhaps most importantly:  Would we be comfortable sending this message ourselves?

If the answer is no, having a machine send 5,000 of them probably isn’t an improvement.

Get to know the technology before you put your reputation on the line

AI agents will become an increasingly normal part of marketing and sales.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But businesses need to understand the tools they’re deploying, not just switch them on and hope for leads.

Test them.

Challenge them.

Reply to them.

Give them unexpected answers.

See what happens when the conversation doesn’t follow the nice neat path demonstrated in the sales presentation.

Because your potential customers will.

Some of us are already doing it for entertainment.

AI can help businesses communicate at scale.

But scale doesn’t replace judgement, empathy or respect.

Your customers are still human.

Your brand is still built through interactions.

And if an AI agent is speaking on your behalf, you’d better make sure it’s saying something worth hearing.