Flamingo Aviation operates in a high-stakes market: aviation services where every lead is high-value and every delay costs real revenue. When we began working with Flamingo Aviation, their lead management process had grown organically into a 14-step manual workflow that was leaking deals at every stage.
This case study breaks down how we identified the bottlenecks, what we built, and the measurable impact on their pipeline.
The Challenge
Aviation lead management is unlike most sales processes. The leads are fewer but far more valuable. A single lost deal can represent significant revenue. And the buyers are sophisticated — they expect fast, informed, personalised responses.
Flamingo Aviation's existing process looked like this:
- Lead arrives via website form, email, or phone
- Receptionist logs lead in spreadsheet
- Sales manager reviews and assigns to a team member
- Team member researches the lead's company and requirements
- Team member drafts a personalised email response
- Manager reviews the draft
- Email is sent
- Follow-up reminder set manually in calendar
- If no response after 3 days: manual follow-up drafted
- Second follow-up after 7 days
- Lead status updated in spreadsheet
- If interested: meeting scheduled via back-and-forth emails
- Pre-meeting briefing prepared manually
- Post-meeting notes logged
Average time from lead arrival to first personalised response: 27 hours. In a market where competitors respond in minutes, that's not a process — it's a funnel leak.
What We Built
Lead Scoring Agent
The first system was an AI agent that evaluates incoming leads in real-time. It pulls company data, analyses the inquiry context, scores the lead on deal size potential and conversion likelihood, and routes it to the appropriate team member — all within seconds of the lead arriving.
High-priority leads trigger an immediate alert. The sales team knows who to focus on before they've finished their morning coffee.
Automated Scheduling System
The scheduling system eliminated the back-and-forth email chains that were adding days to the conversion process. Qualified leads receive a direct booking link with available time slots. Calendar integration handles timezone management, conflict detection, and confirmation workflows automatically.
The time from "interested" to "meeting booked" dropped from an average of 4 days to under 2 hours.
Intelligent Follow-Up Engine
Instead of relying on sales reps to remember follow-ups, the AI engine manages the entire follow-up sequence. It generates personalised messages based on the lead's original inquiry, engagement history, and company context. Each follow-up is different — not a generic template.
The system knows when to follow up, how to follow up, and when to stop. It escalates to a human when the conversation requires nuance that AI shouldn't handle.
14 Steps → 3
After deployment, Flamingo Aviation's lead process became:
- Lead arrives → AI scores, enriches, and routes within seconds
- Personalised response → AI drafts and sends tailored outreach, human reviews only flagged cases
- Meeting booked → Automated scheduling with pre-meeting briefing generated automatically
Everything else — follow-ups, status tracking, reminders, lead research — is handled by AI agents operating autonomously with human oversight.
The Results
Conversion rate increased by 34%. This wasn't because the sales team got better at selling — it was because leads were being contacted before they went cold. Speed is the single biggest predictor of conversion in high-value sales.
First response time dropped from 27 hours to 4 minutes. That's the difference between a lead that's still evaluating options and one that's already talking to your competitor.
11 manual steps were eliminated. The sales team now focuses on what humans do best — building relationships and closing complex deals — instead of administrative overhead.
Zero missed follow-ups. Every lead gets the right follow-up at the right time. The system never forgets, never gets busy, never goes on vacation.
What We Learned
Three insights from this deployment that apply to any high-value sales process:
Key Insights
- Speed beats perfection. A good response in 4 minutes converts better than a perfect response in 27 hours. Optimise for time-to-first-contact above all else.
- Automation should amplify humans, not replace them. We didn't remove the sales team — we removed the busywork that was preventing them from selling. The best deals still close on human relationships.
- Data compounds. Every lead the system processes makes it smarter at scoring the next one. After 6 months, the lead scoring accuracy improved by 22% through production data alone — no model retraining required.
If your sales process has more than 5 manual steps between lead arrival and first response, you're losing deals to faster competitors. Our CFO's guide to automation costs breaks down exactly how much that's costing you.