What if you could close $10,000 in Voice AI deals in just one week without spending your days sending cold emails or making hundreds of cold calls?
For Nathan Watkins, that became a reality when he stopped relying on traditional prospecting methods and started leveraging something much more powerful: relationships, referrals, and real-world AI demonstrations.
After nearly a year of exploring Voice AI solutions, testing multiple platforms, and experimenting with different approaches to finding clients, Nathan discovered a prospecting strategy that helped him close two $5,000 Voice AI deals in just seven days.
And the best part? His process didn’t require a massive advertising budget, an elaborate sales funnel, or a complicated cold outreach campaign.
It started with one relationship.
Here’s how Nathan turned that connection into a repeatable prospecting strategy with the help of Thinkrr and the GSD community.
Before getting involved in Voice AI, Nathan worked in telecom brokerage and expense reduction.
He had experience working with businesses, understanding their communication systems, and helping them identify opportunities to improve operations.
When AI started becoming more accessible, Nathan recognized its potential and wanted to get involved.
But finding the right platform wasn’t easy.
He tested and paid for approximately seven or eight different Voice AI providers before eventually choosing Thinkrr.
While each platform had its strengths and weaknesses, Thinkrr stood out to him for its ease of use, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and community support.
For Nathan, having access to a team that could answer questions and help solve technical challenges was just as important as the technology itself.
After spending time learning the platform and building AI assistants for different businesses, he eventually decided to shift his professional focus toward making Voice AI his primary business.
But there was still one challenge he needed to solve.
Finding clients consistently.
Like many entrepreneurs entering the AI services industry, Nathan initially experimented with different ways to generate business.
During one GSD community challenge, he was encouraged to make 75 calls in a week.
He completed just 16, and approximately half of those were follow-up calls.
Instead of forcing himself into an outreach strategy that wasn’t working for him, Nathan started thinking about the relationships he already had.
He realized that his existing network included business owners, telecom agents, salespeople, and other professionals who regularly interacted with potential clients.
Those relationships represented opportunities that traditional cold outreach couldn’t easily replicate.
His advice to other agency owners was simple: write down everyone you know who owns a business, works with businesses, or could introduce you to someone who does.
Then start conversations.
Nathan also began working with B2B salespeople as referral partners, offering a 20% commission for the business they helped generate.
This approach eventually led to the opportunity that changed everything.
Nathan’s breakthrough didn’t come from reaching out directly to a stranger.
It came through a chain of referrals.
He connected with one agent, who introduced him to another agent, who connected him with another person, eventually leading him to a business owner named John Johannes.
John operated a high-end construction business with an extensive network of subcontractors.
During their conversations, Nathan discovered that John worked with approximately 90 subcontractors.
That immediately caught his attention.
Instead of viewing John as just another potential Voice AI customer, Nathan recognized that he was connected to dozens of other businesses that might benefit from the same technology.
Nathan began working with John and introduced an offer designed to benefit both sides.
If John referred three paying clients, Nathan would waive his recurring monthly service fee, leaving John responsible only for usage-based charges.
The arrangement gave John an incentive to introduce Nathan to other businesses while helping Nathan expand his network through an existing client relationship.
It was a simple referral strategy, but it created an entirely new way to find prospects.
One of Nathan’s most effective sales techniques was showing prospects exactly what Voice AI could do rather than simply explaining it.
Instead of relying on a presentation filled with technical features, he built a universal AI assistant that could introduce itself, ask about a prospect’s business, and demonstrate how it might handle real customer interactions.
Whenever possible, Nathan would bring the AI assistant into a live call and let prospects experience it firsthand.
In one demonstration, he compared a prospect’s existing answering service with his own Voice AI solution.
The traditional answering service struggled to answer detailed questions and couldn’t book appointments.
Nathan then demonstrated his AI assistant, customizing it during the conversation to respond to the prospect’s business needs.
The difference was immediately noticeable.
The prospect was impressed by the AI’s ability to handle questions and demonstrate practical capabilities.
For Nathan, that experience reinforced a major lesson.
It’s easier to sell a solution when prospects can experience its value for themselves.
Instead of trying to convince someone that AI could improve their business, Nathan could show them how it worked in a realistic situation.
And that became an essential part of his prospecting process.
Nathan’s relationship with John created another opportunity he hadn’t initially expected.
Because Nathan was monitoring the Voice AI calls to maintain service quality, he could see how callers were interacting with the system.
One caller, Bob, had a particularly positive experience.
Rather than immediately launching into a sales pitch, Nathan followed up to thank him for his feedback and asked whether a similar AI assistant might be useful for his own business.
Bob was interested.
That conversation led to a discussion about how Voice AI could support his operations.
Another caller was Mark, who was connected to Platypus Sprinkler, a company involved in wildfire protection systems.
Nathan recognized that this business presented a valuable opportunity because its products required detailed explanations and technical knowledge.
Instead of sending a generic sales message, he decided to create a personalized demonstration.
To demonstrate how Voice AI could work for the wildfire protection industry, Nathan created an AI assistant for a company called Cal State Fire Defense.
He built a demonstration around the company’s products, allowing the assistant to answer questions about exterior wildfire sprinkler systems, installation options, temperature sensors, and other technical details.
The AI could explain how the systems worked, discuss different installation scenarios, and guide callers through questions about protecting their homes.
Nathan recorded the demonstration using Loom.
But he didn’t stop there.
He also created a second walkthrough showing what happened behind the scenes after a call.
The system could provide call summaries, caller information, transcripts, recordings, and appointment-related information.
By showing both the customer experience and the business-facing functionality, Nathan helped prospects understand how the technology could fit into their operations.
When he presented the demonstration to the people behind Platypus Sprinkler, their reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
They were interested enough to request an exclusive arrangement that would prevent Nathan from offering the same solution to competing businesses in their industry.
Nathan agreed to a non-compete arrangement with the company.
The result was one of the two $5,000 Voice AI deals he secured during that week.
By combining strategic introductions, personalized demonstrations, and a referral-based offer, Nathan secured two Voice AI projects valued at $5,000 each.
That represented $10,000 in contracted setup fees in approximately seven days.
The agreements also included recurring service arrangements, creating the potential for ongoing monthly revenue beyond the initial builds.
Nathan explained that the $5,000 project payments were structured in two installments: half upfront and the remaining half upon completion.
At the time of the interview, one of the clients had already paid its initial installment, while the projects were still progressing through implementation and testing.
For Nathan, the bigger opportunity wasn’t simply the value of those two deals.
It was the possibility of turning each successful client relationship into additional introductions.
And that’s where his strategy became particularly interesting.
Nathan’s prospecting model centered on a straightforward offer.
When an existing client referred three new paying customers, Nathan would waive that client’s recurring monthly service fee.
The referring client would still be responsible for applicable usage charges.
For the client, the incentive was clear.
For Nathan, it created a reason for satisfied customers to introduce him to other business owners.
The strategy worked particularly well with highly connected clients, such as contractors, consultants, and other businesses that regularly interact with business owners.
Rather than starting every sales conversation from scratch, Nathan could build on the trust already established through those relationships.
During the interview, Cody Getchell described this approach as a combination of three important sales principles:
Together, these elements helped Nathan create a prospecting approach that felt more natural than traditional cold outreach.
Nathan also shared a financial model illustrating how his referral strategy could potentially grow over time.
His idea was simple.
Start with one client who introduces three more.
Those three clients could each introduce additional customers, creating more opportunities and more referral sources.
At an illustrative recurring fee of $500 per month per paying client, Nathan demonstrated how the numbers could compound.
Nine paying clients, for example, would represent $4,500 in monthly recurring revenue before expenses, discounts, and usage-related costs.
He also explored larger scenarios involving dozens of clients and a growing network of referral partners.
These were projections rather than results he had already achieved, but they demonstrated the long-term potential he saw in the model.
Cody and Rahul referred to this approach as the “Octopus Effect”, describing how one strong relationship could create multiple new branches of opportunity.
For Nathan, the goal was to build a business where satisfied clients and strategic partners consistently helped generate new conversations.
Instead of spending all his time chasing cold leads, he wanted to speak with people who already understood the value of his service through someone they trusted.
Although Nathan’s prospecting strategy was built around his own relationships and sales approach, he also credited Thinkrr and the GSD community with helping him develop his Voice AI business.
After testing several competing platforms, he appreciated Thinkrr’s straightforward interface and the ability to build and customize assistants quickly.
The platform’s knowledge capabilities were especially useful for projects that required detailed information, such as technical manuals, scheduling rules, and product specifications.
Nathan had already applied Voice AI to several different use cases, including a telecom business, an accounting-related workflow, and the wildfire sprinkler demonstrations.
But beyond the software itself, he valued having access to people who could help when he encountered challenges.
The community, training, and ongoing support helped him continue experimenting until he found an approach that worked for him.
And after nearly a year of learning and testing, he was beginning to see how those pieces could come together into a repeatable business model.
For agency owners and entrepreneurs trying to sell Voice AI services, Nathan’s advice was refreshingly practical.
Start with the people you already know.
Make a list of business owners, sales professionals, and potential referral partners in your network.
Find opportunities to demonstrate your technology in real business situations.
And focus on building relationships that can lead to additional introductions.
Most importantly, don’t assume that every prospect needs another cold email or sales pitch.
Sometimes, a live demonstration and a trusted introduction can communicate more value than an entire presentation.
Nathan’s journey shows that selling Voice AI isn’t necessarily about making the most calls or having the biggest marketing budget.
It’s about identifying the right opportunities, demonstrating the value of your solution, and creating relationships that help your business grow.
After closing two $5,000 Voice AI deals in one week, Nathan is focused on expanding the referral strategy that helped make those sales possible.
He plans to continue developing his relationships with contractors, industry specialists, and other business owners who can introduce him to new opportunities.
He’s also exploring how to streamline lead follow-up and eventually outsource parts of the business as his client base grows.
His long-term vision is to create a sustainable Voice AI business built on recurring revenue, strong client relationships, and a growing network of strategic partners.
And with the help of Thinkrr and the GSD community, he’s continuing to refine the process.
Nathan’s story proves an important point: sometimes, your next big opportunity isn’t hiding in another cold outreach campaign.
It might already be sitting inside your existing network.
If you’re an agency owner looking to close more deals, expand your services, or build a more predictable client acquisition process, Nathan’s story shows what’s possible when you combine the right technology with the right strategy and support.
You don’t need to figure everything out on your own.
With GSD’s coaching, proven strategies, and a community of agency owners who are actively growing their businesses, you can learn how to attract more clients, confidently sell Voice AI solutions, and take your agency to the next level.
Ready to see how GSD can help you grow your agency?
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