How to research a local business before you pitch a website
Before a one-person AI agency pitches a website, find three facts: what the business does, how customers find it, what they say. The rest becomes a question.
Before you pitch a website to a local business, you need to know enough to ask good questions. Not everything about them. Enough.
A useful rule for a one-person AI agency: bring three facts to the first call, each with where you found it and the date. Anything you can't confirm goes on a separate list, as a question for the owner.
How do I research a business before pitching?
Answer three questions, in this order:
- What does the business do, and for whom?
- How do customers find them today?
- What do their customers say?
Each answer should say where you found it. "Their site lists wedding flowers and weekly office deliveries (checked 23 September)" is a fact. "They probably want more weddings" is a guess, and guesses go on the question list.
What does the business do, and for whom?
Start with the business's own words: their website, their shop sign, their menu, their social media page. Write down what they sell, who they sell it to and anything they seem proud of.
Look for the gap between what they do and what their current site says they do. A florist whose site only shows bouquets, while their reviews talk about weekly office deliveries, has a real reason to talk to you. Write it down as something you noticed, not a judgement.
How do customers find them today?
For most local businesses, their listing on Google Maps matters as much as the website. Google's own help page for Business Profiles says local results depend mainly on how well a business matches the search, how close it is, and how well known it is, and that businesses with complete and correct details are more likely to show up.
So check what a customer would see: the type of business, the opening hours, the address, the phone number, the link to the website. Note anything that is missing or that doesn't match the website. Wrong hours on a map listing are a clear, fixable problem you can mention without overselling.
Be careful what you promise here. Nobody outside Google controls where a business shows up, and Google says there is no way to ask or pay for a higher place in local results. You can offer correct details and a clear website. You can't offer a position.
What do their customers say?
Read the latest reviews, not only the star rating. Look for words customers repeat: "friendly", "hard to book", "couldn't find the menu". Repeated words tell you what the website should make easy.
Copy two or three short phrases with the review date. They are useful on the call, and later in the brief, because they are the customers' words rather than yours.
What should I leave out?
Leave out anything you can't point to. Guesses at their takings, staff numbers from a stranger's post, ideas about the owner's plans: these feel like preparation, but they make the call about your theory instead of their business.
Put them on the question list instead:
- "How do most new customers find you now?"
- "Is there anything people ask you on the phone that the website could answer?"
- "What would you want the website to do that it doesn't today?"
How do I turn research into questions for the call?
Pair each fact with one open question. The fact shows you did the work; the question gives the owner room to correct you.
- Fact: the map listing says they close at 5 pm, the website says 6 pm. Question: "Which is right? I wasn't sure which to trust."
- Fact: three recent reviews mention booking by phone. Question: "Do you want more bookings online, or do you prefer the phone?"
Listen more than you talk. If a fact turns out to be wrong, fix your notes after the call and keep the date.
Where should the notes go?
In one place per business, with where you found each fact and the date beside it, and the owner's corrections added after the call. Those notes become the brief if the project goes ahead. If your AI agent does the research, MCP, the standard way to connect an agent to your notes, lets it read and update the same notes instead of a pasted copy.
Volant keeps these notes for you. Your agent researches a business and shows where each fact came from. You correct the facts before anything uses them. No made-up scores. If you'd rather start on paper, the three facts and a question list work in any notebook.