ISSUE 004 · AI SALES AGENTS
Find → Buy → Lead → Grow
AI for autonomous, near touchless orders in a fragmented industry
Today’s issue will help you capture leads and make sales
TL;DR
Today’s issue is a case study in how to use AI for growth by building conversational sales agents. I built one for the florist industry, and I’m giving away my entire architecture so you can create your own agents too.
PROBLEM. Floristry is a tough industry. Perishable inventory. Highly seasonal demand. Low customer retention. Technology is often lacking, even among the large players. Yet demand has strong reoccurring characteristics.
SOLUTION. Let’s put AI to use for florists by building a tool that turns one-off orders into repeat customers with near zero touches. A win-win solution that simultaneously gives customers and florists more value.
VALUE. Florists get higher sales, more stable demand, and less manual effort. You can copy this to capture and qualify more leads, improve customer service, or make sales.
AI agents are everywhere…let me show you a real one.
🤦♂️ Problem
Admit it…you’ve forgotten flowers at least once.
Flowers are discretionary spend most of the year.
And then suddenly they’re essential spending.
As a consumer, ordering flowers can be a total pain.
And florists have their own problems too.
It’s a highly fragmented industry that relies on perishable and seasonal inventory. Demand is also seasonal with low customer retention due to high availability of substitutions.
Florists are on average fairly small businesses. According to Bizbuysell, the average flower shop listed for sale trades at only 2x earnings (average earnings are low too, about $100k).
Bottom line → consumers need flowers but suck at ordering them; florists really need consumers to order more flowers.
Let’s build a win-win solution using AI.
🤖 Solution
Let’s solve the demand side first by using AI to make ordering flowers a breeze.
I’ll (a) make it impossible to forget flowers (b) make ordering so easy there’s no excuse (c) make adding more recipients & occasions obvious
Solving these problems naturally benefits the florists because we increase order frequency and volume while reducing churn.
I also won’t introduce any new technology for florists, so there’s no learning curve whatsoever.
The software must be so good it’s almost invisible.
In fact, let’s not build an app at all.
Instead, an iMessage agent is the way to go.
It meets consumers where they are, feels natural, and functions flawlessly.
SMS vs iMessage
Here’s the bottom line, blue bubbles have a 3-10x response rate vs green SMS.
When was the last time you responded to a green SMS that ended in “Text STOP to opt out”?
Never, that’s when. iMessage fixes that.
But more importantly, iMessage is P2P (peer to peer) not A2P (application to person) like Twilio.
If you’ve never tried getting A2P 10DLC registration before, buckle up. An industry body reviews your opt-in pages, terms, privacy policies, EIN, and more. It routinely takes 3-4 weeks but in my experience was so annoying I gave up.
The catch: iMessage is more expensive and has much lower sending volume. Not usually an issue unless you’re blasting thousands.
To build this, I originally tried using n8n (but failed).
It worked but was slower and more annoying
I switched to claude code and had the entire agent finished in no time. 🤓
Claude was particularly brilliant for testing. I let claude send real iMessages on my account to autonomously test my agent.
Claude testing my agent
Because I didn’t want florists to adopt new tech, I partnered with a reputable florist wire service (i.e. middleman) that has an established national network of flower shops.
This agent handles customer orders around the clock with fewer mistakes than a human. It’s a cheap, high ROI option for sales growth.
To grow it, I’m using a combination of paid ads, referrals (I built a custom referral program), and affiliates.
Flowers in my DMs
Here’s how it works to autonomously build near zero-touch orders.
How it works
It’s real, try it → www.perenny.co 🌸
🔥 Value
AI agents like this are all about faster growth with less effort.
Typically the focus is on lead qualification and booked calls for your B2B offer. They are extra helpful if paired with lead gen ads.
But as I’ve shown they work in consumer too.
For a florist, the value of adopting such AI capabilities could be significant. More sales, more stability, and hopefully an exit multiple higher than 2x.
For me personally, given the low fixed costs, I’m targeting a 20-50x return on my investment for having built this. Tiny but mighty experiment.
🛠 Implement
OK, I know you don’t want a flower bot.
So instead I’m giving away the architecture you can reuse for your own agent.
It’s a bit more advanced, but I believe in you.
I packaged everything into a Claude Code skill that sets it up for you.
You’ll need accounts with Blooio, Cloudflare, Supabase, Anthropic, and possibly Stripe.
I even included a custom referral program for viral growth.
Read the text files that are included, they’ll explain everything.
Free AI iMessage agent starter kit (architecture & documentation)
Here’s how to get started:
Download the SKILL file from my github
Read the two text files inside (overview & developer docs)
Drop it into a claude code session and say “run this”
Follow instructions to connect your accounts
Fine tune for your use case as needed
Cheers,
David
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