Seven questions to ask an AI consultant before you sign
Ben McDermott · September 2, 2026 · 3 min read
Every marketing agency in the Twin Cities added "AI" to its services page last year. So did every freelance developer. Here's how to tell, in one call, whether the person across the table will leave you with working tools or a deck.
1. Who will actually be on the screen share?
The person selling you is often not the person doing the work. Ask directly. If the answer is "our team," ask for a name and how long they've been building with these tools. At 1771 the answer is Ben or Dan, every session, because there isn't anyone else.
2. Where does the result live, and what do I keep if I stop?
This is the question that matters most and gets asked least. Many agencies build on their own platform. The automation works, but it's theirs. Change it, and you're back in their queue; stop paying, and it's gone. The right answer is that it runs in your accounts, in tools you already pay for, and you keep everything.
3. What will be working after the first session?
"We'll start with discovery" is fine for a 400-person company. For an owner-led business, six weeks of discovery is six weeks of paying for nothing. A good consultant can look at your inbox for twenty minutes and build something useful in the same hour. Ask what that something will be.
4. What's the price, before the call?
If the price isn't on the website, ask why. "Every engagement is different" is sometimes true and often a way to price you by what you look like you can pay. Ours is $995 for the audit, $1,995 and up for a project, and $1,995 a month for the retainer, and it's the same for everyone.
5. What happens when it breaks at 9 p.m.?
Automations break. The tool updates, the form changes, a login expires. Ask what the response time is and whether you can turn it off yourself. If you can't switch off your own automation without a support ticket, you don't own it.
6. What will you refuse to automate?
This one tells you whether they've done this before. Anyone who has will have a list: moving money, regulated communications, decisions that need a human to own them, a voice agent in front of customers on day one. Our partner Dan Roseman spent twelve years building compliance programs at Coinbase, Circle, Square, and Robinhood, and that list is why we keep a person pressing send on anything that matters.
7. Show me something you built that's still running.
Not a demo. Something in a real client's business, running today, and what it replaced. If they can't, they're new at this, which isn't disqualifying, but you should be paying a new-at-this price. We'll show you a weekly SEO digest, an after-hours responder, and a call-to-proposal pipeline, and tell you which client each came from where we're allowed to.
Answers that should end the call
- "We'll need to do a full assessment before we can say what we'd build."
- "It runs on our platform, so you don't have to worry about it."
- "Pricing depends on the engagement." (After you've described the engagement.)
- "We can automate anything."
- "Our AI receptionist handles that." (Before they've asked what "that" is.)
About the author
Ben McDermott · Founder, 1771 Co
Ben started 1771 in Minneapolis in 2013 and has spent the years since making software do what businesses actually need: 50+ Salesforce projects for organizations like Cargill, Optum, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Adobe, NetApp, and Snap-on, alongside dozens of small Minnesota companies.
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