Work · Growth · Origination
10.2% Reply rate from brand-new prospects, roughly 7x the usual
A specialty finance origination team was working cold lists that barely answered. We built an AI rep that texts and calls every lead within seconds, and those same lists now reply at 10.2%, across thousands of leads.
Honestly, I expected another dialer. What actually changed is what my reps do all day. The system holds the first conversation, so by the time a merchant lands on a rep's calendar, my guy has read the file, knows the business, and opens with a term sheet conversation instead of twenty qualifying questions. We spend afternoons going deep on the five deals that matter instead of wide on two hundred numbers.
10.2%
Reply rate from brand-new prospects
4,400+
Leads auto-converted
18 hrs
Saved per rep, per week
01The challenge
Specialty finance origination runs on cold lists everyone else is dialing too. Reps ground through numbers that mostly ignored them, and the deals that did reply stalled in back-office paperwork.
02The system
Instant response
Every new lead gets a text and a call within seconds of hitting the list. SMS and voice fire together, so the first touch lands while interest is live. No dial queue, no morning backlog.
Qualification and intent
The AI rep holds the conversation and separates merchants seeking capital from dead numbers. Its questions were mapped from recordings of real qualifying calls, in the order good reps ask them.
Callback booking
Real leads land on a rep’s calendar as warm conversations, not cold dials. Each booking carries handoff notes: what the merchant asked for, their timing, and what they already sent in.
Documents and OCR
The system chases statements and applications, then OCR reads them into structured fields. No retyping, no paperwork stall. Deal files arrive complete before a rep ever opens them.
Runs in the existing CRM
The rep was wired into the CRM the team already used, with no migration and no new tool to learn. Every conversation lands on one board that runs from cold lead to funded deal.
Tuned by the floor
The system ran side by side with the sales floor during ramp. Reps graded its conversations daily, and qualifying thresholds were tuned against their judgment until both agreed.
03The impact
10.2%
Brand-new prospects on cold lists now reply at 10.2%, roughly 7x the industry benchmark. List spend that used to buy silence now buys pipeline.
4,400+
More than 4,400 leads were answered, qualified, and moved forward without a rep touching the first mile. That is volume no floor could dial by hand, absorbed while reps spend the day closing.
18 hrs
Each rep gets 18 hours a week back from qualification, document chase, and data entry. Multiply by your rep count and loaded rate to see the payroll now pointed at closing.
Inside the build Expand
How it went in
- Weeks 1 to 2 · ListeningWe sat with recordings of real qualifying calls and mapped what good reps actually ask, in what order, and where merchants drop. The conversation design came from the floor, not from a template.
- Weeks 3 to 6 · BuildThe rep went live internally: SMS and voice, wired into the existing CRM so nothing about the team's tooling changed. Document collection and extraction came in behind it.
- Weeks 7 to 8 · RampThe system ran side by side with the floor. Reps graded its conversations daily, and the qualifying thresholds were tuned against their judgment until the two agreed.
What runs today
What changed in the economics
List spend used to buy silence: low single-digit reply rates meant most of every purchased file was written off unread. At 10.2%, the same files produce a different business. The second shift is quieter but larger: reps stopped doing first-mile work entirely. Qualification, document chase, and data entry moved to the system, and 18 hours per rep per week moved back into conversations that close.
The handoff notes are what I would fight to keep. By the time I call someone, I know what they asked for, what they said about timing, and what they already sent in. I stopped opening calls by asking things the merchant had answered twice.
Next step
Have a list of leads that will not reply?
The system behind these numbers is now LetsSubmit, live today for MCA and ISO origination. Different funnel? We build the same system inside your stack, in your vocabulary.
Want to see it first? Visit letssubmit.ca
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