For AI consultancies & AI services firms
The Ultimate Credibility Assist
We book qualified AI readiness conversations with the CEOs, operators, and IT leaders who actually sign implementation engagements — warmed up with your point of view before the call, by humans, in the one category where machine-written outreach kills the deal.
The demand is historic — AI consulting is a ~$9 billion market growing past $19 billion by 2030 (The Business Research Company, 2026), and companies expect to roughly double AI spending in 2026, from ~0.8% to ~1.7% of revenue (BCG AI Radar, ~2,400 executives). But the barrier to entry collapsed with it: everyone became an “AI consultant” in eighteen months, every pitch reads the same, and the buyers are more skeptical, not less — because most of them have already been burned once.
MIT’s GenAI Divide report put the number on it: despite $30–40 billion in enterprise spending, 95% of generative-AI pilots delivered no measurable P&L return. That statistic is your market’s mood — and, read correctly, your best argument: the same research found that buying from specialized external partners succeeds about 67% of the time, while internal builds succeed a third as often. The category works. The buyer just doesn’t know which of the hundred lookalike firms in their feed is the real one.
Meanwhile the big SIs and anointed platform partners absorb the enterprise demand, and the mid-market — your market — is decided by distribution: whoever is credibly known to the company before the board mandate lands, or before the failed pilot needs a rescuer. Referrals and content don’t scale to that. You win on craft and lose on reach. Reach is the part we fix.
Not “leads.” Not webinar signups. A confirmed conversation with a decision-maker at a right-sized company that’s visibly leaning into AI — qualified to your use cases, engagement size, and data readiness — booked on your calendar, ready for your principal or solutions lead.
The person who signs an AI engagement is one of a few: the CEO or owner who read the board memo, the COO or operations lead drowning in the process AI should fix, the IT or data leader who knows the internal build is stalling, or the CFO asking what the pilot actually returned. We find them, warm them with your point of view, and qualify the meeting to your terms — use case, stack, budget, timing.
That qualification is the whole point: your senior people spend their scarce hours on companies that can become five- and six-figure engagements and roll into retainers — not on tire-kickers who wanted a free AI education.
Programs run $5,250/mo (one dedicated Playmaker) to $14,750/mo (three), on six-month terms, data, technology, and management included. Set that against your own math: implementation engagements run five to six figures, the good ones roll into monitoring and expansion retainers, and every delivered project compounds your reference list. One won client usually pays for the whole program.
In-house appointment setter
~$154K
per person, per year, all-in
Salary, benefits, tools, data, management, and a 3 to 6 month ramp before they're productive. A rep who can't fill the pipeline still costs every penny.
AI-generated outreach at scale
Cheap
and it costs you the category
Machine-written pitches about machines, sent to buyers who are drowning in them. For an AI consultancy, slop isn't just ignored — it's disqualifying.
Alleyoop programs
$5,250–$14,750
per month, six-month terms
One flat fee, the team, the data, the technology. Qualified AI readiness conversations on your calendar, live in under 30 days. See the programs →
One connected system, not a phone bank — and the division of labor is the one you’d design yourself: AI for targeting, timing, and signals; humans for every conversation. The same discipline you sell, applied to selling you.
We build the target list: right-sized companies showing AI intent, leadership hires, job posts, tech announcements, board-driven initiatives, prioritized by fit to your use cases and engagement size.
Air cover built from your actual point of view warms those exact accounts, so your name reads as the operator in a feed full of noise.
Our technology flags companies actively researching AI implementation, automation, or the vendor category, often at the exact moment an internal build stalls.
An AI decision runs through several people: the CEO with the mandate, the operator with the process, the IT lead with the stack, the CFO with the ROI question. We map all of them, not one name on a list.
When a buyer is genuinely interested, a dedicated Playmaker, a real person, has the conversation and books the readiness meeting on your calendar.
A program is live in under 30 days, with first conversations landing in weeks 3 to 4. There’s no bid season in AI services: accounts open when a board mandate lands, a competitor ships something visible, a key hire arrives — or a pilot quietly fails and somebody has to answer for it. The winning move is being already known when that moment hits.
The failed-pilot window deserves its own line: with most first attempts delivering nothing measurable, your market contains a standing pool of companies whose AI story so far is a sunk cost — embarrassed, budget spent, mandate intact. They don’t respond to “transform your business with AI.” They respond to the firm that was already credibly present when the postmortem happened. We work that presence continuously, so the rescue call lands with you.
And it compounds. The accounts you warmed this year, the buyers you mapped, the pilots you watched stall — they become the pipeline that fills next year without starting cold.
Three things make AI services unusually suited to a real outbound program: the trust gap is the whole sale, the failed-pilot pool keeps refilling, and the economics of one engagement dwarf the program cost. The only hard part is being credibly known to enough right companies. That’s the one thing we do.
Your competitors’ outreach is machine-written, and your buyers can tell. A named onshore human, calling a warmed account with your actual point of view, is a live demonstration of the discipline you sell: AI where it belongs, people where it counts.
A market where 95% of first attempts return nothing (MIT, GenAI Divide) is a market full of second attempts waiting for a credible operator. External specialists succeed at roughly twice the rate of the blended field — you just have to be the one they already know.
Implementation rolls into retainers, monitoring, and expansion — and every delivered project is a referenceable story in a category starving for proof. One meeting can be a six-figure relationship and the case study that wins the next three.
Referrals cap out at your network, and content drowns in a feed where every AI consultant is publishing the same posts. Beyond both, new engagements come from being known to right-sized companies before their trigger moment - a board mandate, a competitor shipping, or a failed pilot that needs rescuing. A systematic appointment setting program builds that presence: signals find the companies leaning into AI, air cover builds your credibility first, and a real person books the conversation.
The demand is real - companies expect to roughly double AI spending in 2026 (BCG AI Radar) - but it pools at the top: the big SIs and anointed platform partners absorb the enterprise, while thousands of lookalike consultancies fight over the mid-market. Hot category doesn't mean hot pipeline for the median firm: inbound skews to tire-kickers, and buyers burned by failed pilots (95% deliver no measurable P&L return, per MIT's GenAI Divide report) are more skeptical, not less. In a gold rush, the crowd starves - distribution decides who eats.
AI-generated cold outreach does - your prospects are drowning in machine-written pitches about machines, and an AI consultancy sending slop torches its own positioning. The opposite motion is the credibility play: accounts warmed with your actual point of view, then a named onshore human having a real conversation. Done that way, the outreach is a demonstration of taste - AI for targeting and timing, people for the conversation - which is exactly the discipline you sell.
Expect $5,000-$15,000 per month for a serious program. Alleyoop runs $5,250/mo for one dedicated Playmaker to $14,750/mo for three, on six-month terms with data and technology included. Against implementation engagements that run five to six figures and roll into retainers, one won client typically covers months of program cost.
Every quarter, companies in your market hit the moment: the board mandate, the stalled internal build, the postmortem on a pilot that returned nothing. If no one’s made sure they know you before it, that engagement goes to whoever did.
The assist is ours. The win is yours.