Not Every Inquiry Is a Sales Call: Use AI to Sort Inquiries by 3 Questions
Ask three questions on your form and let AI sort inquiries, so the owner's time goes to those who need a meeting.
Key points
- Add 3 form questions: use, users, tools
- AI's first job: sort the inquiries
- Company use, team, or tools: owner meets
- AI preps a one-page brief for the owner
Contents
Ask three questions on the inquiry form
A&A perspective
Three questions give you what you need to separate people who only need information from people who need a sales conversation: what they want to use the product for, how many people will use it, and which software it must connect to. Sorting inquiries, as used here, means splitting incoming inquiries into people you serve with materials alone and people the owner meets in person.
A&A perspective
In a company where the owner is still the top salesperson, the owner both answers inquiries and decides whom to meet. The form brings in people who are just gathering information and companies ready to decide on adoption, and both arrive looking exactly the same. When the owner answers every one of them, replies to the companies ready to decide end up waiting.
From the sources
Clay, a company that makes a tool for gathering information about prospect companies with AI, publishes stories about its own customers. One of them features Lovable, a Swedish company that offers an AI service for building apps from requests written in everyday language.
From the sources
According to the story, enterprises, startups, and individual builders were flooding Lovable's inbound channels. The challenge was to guide individual users down a path they could follow on their own, and to connect enterprise buyers with the sales rep suited to their use case.
A&A perspective
Automate & Augment (A&A), the company writing this article, thinks the same split shows up on the inquiry form of a company with around 20 employees. The scale is different, but the dividing line is the same. It runs between people who can move ahead on their own and companies that want to talk before they decide.
A&A perspective
You can see that line by asking the person three things. Purpose: do they want to try it on their own, or use it for their company's work? Number of users: one person, or several? Integrations: do they need to connect it to other software they already use?
A&A perspective
In A&A's view, these three questions fit a company whose way of selling changes with the number of users and the software the product connects to, and if nearly every inquiry comes from a company ready to decide on adoption, sorting by the three questions adds little.
Hypothetical example
Take a hypothetical case. A 20-person company that sells attendance-tracking software adds the three questions to its form.
Hypothetical example
Purpose is a choice among "just want to try it," "want to use it at our company," and "comparing options." The number of users is a number field. Integrations is free text, such as "we want to connect it to our payroll software."
The first job to give AI is sorting inquiries
A&A perspective
The one job to hand AI first is reading the answers to the three questions and sorting each inquiry into one that gets information and one that gets a sales conversation.
From the sources
At Lovable, as soon as someone submits the enterprise form, Clay researches the company: its industry, the sender's role, whether a relationship already exists, and what the company's current priorities are likely to be. The story says the system uses that context to match the prospect with the rep best positioned to help.
From the sources
The system was built by an employee whose job is to build sales systems with data and AI, and the story describes his role as making 150 people operate like 1,500.
From the sources
Before the system, it says, Lovable lacked an efficient way to qualify, research, and route thousands of inbound leads in real time.
A&A perspective
If you only sort by multiple-choice answers, your form settings can do that. A&A wants AI for the two steps beyond it. One is reading the free-text answers about integrations. The other is looking up the prospect's company website. Today the owner does both before replying.
A&A perspective
For the first month after handing this over, the owner checks the AI's sorting every day. Count mistakes in two directions: inquiries the owner met when materials would have been enough, and inquiries that got only materials when the owner should have met them.
Hypothetical example
Measure whether it paid off by the time the owner used to spend on inquiries. For example, suppose 25 of 40 inquiries a month could be handled with materials, and each took 30 minutes. If the sorting is right, 12.5 hours a month come back to the owner. These numbers are a hypothetical example.
A&A perspective
When you compare, subtract the time spent on the daily checks. Turn the remaining hours into money at the owner's hourly rate, and set that next to what you pay today for an outsourced sales agency or for hiring.
Company use, several users, or integrations: the owner meets them
A&A perspective
The owner's sales meetings go to anyone who matches at least one of three conditions: company use, several users, or integrations needed. Anyone who matches none of them gets materials and a price list.
From the sources
Stripe, which provides online payment and billing systems, also features Lovable in a story about its customers. It says that right after launching in November 2024, Lovable set up a free tier for individuals and paid tiers with graduated levels of monthly usage credits and specialized features.
From the sources
The story says Lovable has since expanded its offerings to plans with shared workspaces for collaboration, higher resource limits, central management of who has access, and other features.
A&A perspective
A&A thinks this way of splitting plans overlaps with the split in inquiries. Someone trying the product alone moves ahead on their own with the free plan and materials. A company that needs several users, control over who uses it, or a connection to other systems belongs on the side that talks before deciding.
Hypothetical example
In the hypothetical case, a company that answers "eight people, and we want to connect it to our payroll software" gets a phone call from the owner to check whether the product fits its work.
Hypothetical example
Someone who picked "just want to try it," entered one user, and left integrations blank gets materials and the price list. Both get a quick reply, but only one of them uses the owner's time.
A&A perspective
People whose answers are vague start with materials. If the number of users or an integration comes up in the back-and-forth, pass them to the owner at that point. A&A thinks keeping a way to hand them over midway protects the owner's time better than meeting everyone from the start.
For those going to the owner, AI preps a one-page brief
A&A perspective
For each prospect going to the owner, AI puts the answers to the three questions and research on the prospect's company into a one-page memo, and gives it to the owner before the meeting.
From the sources
Lovable's reps receive a pre-built brief for every meeting: who the company is, what tools they use, what problems they are likely solving, and which Lovable products are most relevant. Because the research is done upfront, the employee says, the conversation becomes much more productive.
A&A perspective
Lovable picks the best-matched rep. In a 20-person company, A&A thinks the choice comes down to two options: send it to the owner, or don't. Deciding not to send it is also a result of the sorting.
A&A perspective
Four items are enough for the memo: the answers to the three questions, what the prospect's company does, what the prospect says in the inquiry they have already tried or got stuck on, and which of your products might fit.
Hypothetical example
For the eight-person company above, the page would show how they track attendance today and the name of the payroll software they want to connect.
A&A perspective
AI research can be wrong. The owner reads the memo before the meeting and corrects anything that is off.
A&A perspective
The two stories cited in this article are customer stories published by Clay and Stripe, not outside verification. Lovable is a company of about 150 people. So do not treat the numbers in these stories as targets; borrow only the order of the steps.
Summary
A&A perspective
On the inquiry form, ask three questions: purpose, number of users, and the integrations needed. The first job to hand AI is using those answers to sort inquiries into information or a sales conversation.
A&A perspective
Send only people who match company use, several users, or integrations needed to the owner's sales meetings. For those going to the owner, AI preps a one-page brief with their answers and research.
A&A perspective
Rather than buying appointments from an outsourced sales agency, own a system inside your company that produces them. A&A sees sorting inquiries as the first task in that system.
On the inquiry form, ask about purpose, number of users, and integrations needed; the first job to hand AI is sorting inquiries into information or a sales conversation by those answers. Only people who match company use, several users, or integrations go to the owner's sales meetings, and for them AI preps a one-page brief with their answers and research.
FAQ
Is AI worth it if we only get a few inquiries a month?
With only a few a month, start by adding the three questions to your form; that is enough. Add AI once reading free-text answers and researching prospects starts to squeeze the owner's time.
Can AI also write the replies to people who only need materials?
A&A thinks that is easy to hand over when the answer is already written in your own materials. Where to draw that line is covered in a separate article, "Hand inbound questions to AI only when the answer is already written."
Won't three questions reduce the number of inquiries?
They might. So for the first month, make all three questions optional and start anyone without answers with materials. If the number of users or an integration comes up in the back-and-forth, pass them to the owner then.
Sources & editorial note
Primary pages read for this article. Publication dates below belong to the sources; access dates record our research.
- How Lovable uses Clay to scale one of the fastest-growing startups in history
Clay · Publication date not stated
Accessed 2026-10-22 - Riding the AI boom: How Lovable grew into a vibe-coding juggernaut with Stripe
Stripe · Publication date not stated
Accessed 2026-10-22