The most persuasive way to pitch AEO to a prospect is to show their own results. Run a fixed test of about 25 neutral prompts on the prospect and their competitors across the AI engines, then show where rivals are named and the prospect is not. The evidence does the selling; your job is to frame it honestly and propose a next step.
This guide walks through designing the test, presenting it and following up, and shows how Verte Pitches automates the work.
Why does a test work better than a presentation?
A slide about "the rise of AI search" is easy to agree with and easy to forget. A screenshot of an AI engine recommending a competitor for the exact question the prospect's customers ask is hard to ignore. A test makes the problem specific, personal and measurable, and it shows you can measure it. For background to share first, see What is AEO?.
How do you design a fair 25-prompt test?
A test is only persuasive if it is fair. Fix the design before you run it.
- Pick the prospect and 3–5 competitors. Use the competitors the prospect would name, not ones that make the result look dramatic.
- Choose 2–4 subcategories. Cover the topics buyers ask about, such as pricing, a product line or a use case.
- Write neutral prompts. Use full questions in buyer language, mostly without the prospect's name. Mix discovery, comparison and brand-check questions. See How to choose the prompts to track.
- Aim for about 25 prompts. It is enough to show a pattern without becoming a research project.
- Run it on every engine. Check ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, and keep results separate.
- Repeat the checks. Answers vary from run to run, so run each prompt more than once. A January 2026 study from SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai, not peer reviewed, found that repeated runs of the same prompt rarely returned identical brand lists (SparkToro).
What should you show when you pitch AEO?
Keep the pitch short and visual:
- The headline number. The share of checks that name the prospect, with the count, such as "named in 36 of 200 checks" (an example), beside the same figure for the top competitor. See AI visibility metrics.
- The biggest gap. One subcategory where rivals are named and the prospect is not, with a real example answer.
- The sources. Which pages the engines cite for rivals. See AI citation gaps.
- Crawler access. Any obvious blocks, such as a crawler disallowed in robots.txt. See Can AI crawlers read your site?
- A proposed first 30 days. Baseline, monitoring, first fixes.
How should you frame the results honestly?
- Say what the test is. It is a snapshot from a fixed set of prompts, not a full picture of the market.
- Do not promise rankings. Explain that engines make their own choices and answers vary, so the service is measurement and recommendations.
- Separate visibility from position. Visibility across many checks is the steadier measure. See AI visibility metrics.
- Invite scrutiny. Offer to share the prompts and the method. A prospect who can inspect the test trusts it more.
What happens after the pitch?
If the prospect says yes, convert the pitch into a real engagement without starting from scratch: keep the prompts, set the baseline, and begin daily monitoring. The full service is outlined in AEO for agencies, and the first report is covered in What to put in a client AI visibility report.
How does Verte Pitches work?
Pitches is Verte's built-in version of this test:
- Enter the prospect's name and website. That is all it needs.
- Approve the research. Verte researches the prospect, then shows a summary, up to five competitors and two to four subcategories for your approval.
- Run the pitch. Verte writes 25 prompts and runs them on the engines in your plan.
- Share the result. You get a dashboard in the app, a short PDF and a flat share page for the prospect with your branding and no navigation.
- Convert to client. If they sign, the pitch becomes a tracked client with its prompts in place.
See white-label reports for how your branding applies, and the For agencies page for the whole workflow.
Start as an agency. See current plans.