On this page
- Hiring Answers Read Firms' Own Sites; Software Answers Read Software Companies'
- Software Answers Rarely Tell a Buyer to Hire Anyone
- The Guide a Buyer Reads Before Deciding to Do It Themselves
- Who Reads Your Lost Deals for the Question Behind Them
- Bring Us Your Last Five Lost Deals
- Frequently asked questions
The list of deals that did not close in your customer relationship management system, the CRM, shows the reasons that don't name a rival firm: "Decided to do it in-house." "Went with a tool." "No budget this year."
If you run an accounting practice, a managed IT provider, a recruitment agency or a demand-generation shop, some of those deals went to software the buyer chose to run themselves, and some of that choice now happens in a chat window, where the buyer types the job and asks what to use.
of answers to the software question suggested bringing in an outside firm to do or run the job.
Reading those lost-deal notes and the inbound emails for the questions buyers ask, and turning them into page changes, takes two marketers about 15% of their week, on our assumption: about $38,340 a year at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ mean pay for marketing specialists, with benefits.
Hiring Answers Read Firms' Own Sites; Software Answers Read Software Companies'
The same job can be asked two ways: hire a firm, or use software. These are pairs from our research, word for word:
| Hire a firm | Use software |
|---|---|
| Best bookkeeping firms | Best bookkeeping software |
| IT support firms for small regional businesses | IT support software for small regional businesses |
| Which recruiting firm can fill technical roles? | Which recruiting software can fill technical roles? |
| Demand generation firms for startups | Demand generation software for startups |
| Which HR service providers suit small employers? | Which HR software suits small employers? |
Hiring Answers Cite Firms' Sites, Software Answers Cite Vendors' Sites
% of answers
View the data
| Label | Hiring question | Software question |
|---|---|---|
| Firms' own sites | 85.34% | 10.48% |
| Software companies | 8.62% | 79.84% |
| Publishers and media | 19.83% | 16.94% |
| Listing sites such as Clutch and G2 | 14.66% | 14.52% |
| Reddit, Quora and forums | 11.21% | 6.45% |
On the hiring side, firms' own sites appeared in 85.34% of the answers that cited any source. On the software side, software companies' own sites appeared in 79.84% of the answers, and firms' sites in 10.48% (ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, early September 2026).
Software Answers Rarely Tell a Buyer to Hire Anyone
When they did, it was almost only because the question itself said the buyer had nobody to run the software. Every answer to "I need IT support software with 24/7 coverage for a regional clinic that has no internal technical staff" pointed to a managed IT provider.
Google AI Mode: "Software alone requires someone to answer the phone at 3:00 AM; an outsourced service provides the human 24/7 coverage alongside the platform."
The buyer asked for software, so the answer named software. Your firm can disappear from consideration before the buyer decides whether they can run the tool.
Vlad ShvetsPartner @ QveryThe hiring question tells you whether a buyer can find your firm. The software question tells you whether they think they need a firm at all. Give each service-line head both lists to check, because the software answer may never mention hiring anyone. Measure only the first and you only ever see the buyers who already decided to hire.
The Guide a Buyer Reads Before Deciding to Do It Themselves
It isn't a page about why to hire you. It answers the software question fairly, names the tools, says what each is good for, and says plainly where the software stops and a firm starts: the hours, the skills, the month-end close, the 24/7 phone.
Service firms already feel the other side of this. Here is how it reads from the firms' end:
What Reddit says
Owners of managed IT providers (MSPs) and agencies on buyers who ask an assistant first
We have recently let a client go that obviously ran an invoice and a quote through AI. Stating all kinds of nonsense. It stated that for pure operational needs basically 90% of our services weren't needed.
Regarding cost, AI says our pricing… it’s too high. We charge to build and maintain a program. It found some articles of MSP blogs says MSP should be 150$ without any context of features other then basic EDR/SIEM/RMM
This is what I am seeing. For anything that can happen in an AI platform, then the operations will go in-house.
The second comment describes an assistant judging a firm's price from other firms' blog posts, as if the firm sold only basic security and monitoring tools (the EDR, SIEM and RMM of the quote). Your guide needs to explain what the work includes.
The same question asked again cites different sites and names different firms, so both questions have to be asked every day, on both engines, with every answer and every cited page kept.
Who Reads Your Lost Deals for the Question Behind Them
The agents we build read last month's lost-deal notes and inbound emails in your own systems and write each buyer situation as a hiring question and its software twin, in the buyer's words, with the note it came from.
Each week they sort every site the answers cite by kind, and where no answer says when the software needs a firm beside it, they draft the outline of the guide that is missing.
The calculator prices that work for a services firm with two marketers turning sales emails, inquiry forms and lost-deal notes into page changes, about 15% of the week each. At about $127,800 a year each, marketing specialists’ mean pay with benefits, that is about $38,340 a year.
With the agents taking about 50% of it, at about $300 a month to run (model use, hosting and upkeep), it costs about $22,770, saving about $15,570 a year and 312 hours; $10,000 of build pays back in about 7.7 months. The share of the week, the share the agents take and the running cost are our assumptions, to replace with your own.
Buyer Question Page ROI Calculator
What Turning Buyers' Questions Into Page Changes Costs You, And What An Agent Saves
Saved Per Year
$15,570
312 hours handed back, after $3,600 a year to run it
- Hours Handed Back
- 312 hours a year
- Agent Running Cost (Estimate)
- $300 a month
- Payback Per $10,000 Of Build
- 7.7 months
On these numbers, the agent saves $15,570 a year after its own running cost, and every $10,000 of the build is earned back in 7.7 months.
It counts only the hours: a deal lost to "went with a tool" is revenue it leaves out.
What the agents may read and do is set in a written agreement, your data is processed where that agreement says, and every action the agents take is logged.
Bring Us Your Last Five Lost Deals
Bring a service line's lost-deal notes and a month of inbound emails. First the agents run last month's lost deals beside what your team read; they run within two weeks once access is in place.
Frequently asked questions
How do I measure my services firm's visibility in AI answers?
Pair each service line's hiring question with its software question, then ask both on ChatGPT and Google AI Mode daily. Keep the answers and the pages they cite, recording whether your site was cited, your firm was named, and any firm was suggested on the software side.
Should a services firm track software questions if it doesn't sell software?
Yes. The software answers read software companies' sites and rarely suggest bringing in a firm at all, so those buyers are deciding whether to hire anyone, a decision the hiring question never shows you.
Does being cited in an AI answer mean the assistant recommended my firm?
A citation means the answer names your page as a source; it may name your firm without recommending it, or not name it at all. Record whether the firm was cited, named, or recommended separately.
Are directory listings like Clutch worth it for AI visibility?
Check first. Listing sites such as Clutch were a minority of what the hiring answers read, far behind firms' own sites, and on the software question the listing pages cited, on Capterra, G2 and similar sites, listed software, not service firms. Check what your own questions cite before you pay for a listing.
How often should we check what AI answers say about our firm?
Collect answers daily, read them weekly, and make decisions monthly. Answers to the same question change from one asking to the next, so judge changes across weeks rather than between two screenshots.
Who should own AI visibility in a services firm?
Give each service-line head ownership of that line's two question lists, with marketing running the collection. They know what the software cannot do for a buyer, which is what the guide on the software side needs to explain.
Can AI agents do this work for us?
They can draft the twin questions from lost-deal notes, sort the cited sites, flag the gaps and outline the missing guides. A person approves the questions and checks the sort: an unchecked sort can file an agency or a managed IT provider as a software company and make the hiring answers look like a different market.
Where should our buyer questions come from?
Use lost-deal notes, inbound inquiry emails, and discovery-call questions from your own records. Preserve the buyer's situation when pairing a question about hiring a firm with one about using software.
Which service line should we start with?
The one with the most deals marked "decided to do it in-house" or "went with a tool" in the last quarter. Those buyers weighed software against hiring you, so their notes hold the questions your pages are missing.
What should a service firm write for buyers considering software?
Write a guide that fairly explains the tools and what a buyer needs to operate them. Have the service-line head explain where the software stops and where a firm would still be needed.
Why does someone need to check the agents' source labels?
Agents can mistake an agency or a managed IT provider for a software company. Review the disputed labels before using the report to decide which pages to write; one wrong kind of site can change which page looks missing.
How should we measure the time the agents save?
Time a manual round of drafting paired questions and sorting sources before the agents start. Compare it with the setup and review time afterwards, and count the corrected labels beside the hours saved, so a quicker report does not hide mistakes.
What does Qvery do beyond measuring AI visibility?
We read the answers with you and work on the pages and facts those answers use. For the repeated work, we build custom AI agents connected to your existing systems, train the people who approve what they draft, and count the hours saved and the errors avoided each week.