In the latest episode of the Unscripted SAAS Podcast, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Bryan Shankman, co-founder and CEO of Lead Truffle (formerly Tool Desk). Our conversation explored how AI is transforming lead capture and qualification for home service businesses, along with Bryan’s entrepreneurial journey and lessons learned along the way.
From Jobber Plugin to AI-Powered Lead Qualification
Bryan started his journey with a plugin for Jobber, a popular home services CRM. The original product, Tool Desk, provided email and SMS marketing automation capabilities that Jobber was missing at the time.
What began with a custom ringless voicemail system for a pest control company in Seattle quickly evolved into a full-fledged Klaviyo-like marketing platform for Jobber users. As Bryan explained, “Klaviyo is to Shopify what Tool Desk is to Jobber, essentially a fully fledged email and SMS marketing automation system.”
However, the team faced challenges when Jobber eventually shipped similar functionality. This platform risk motivated Bryan and his co-founder Aaron to develop a standalone product that wouldn’t be dependent on any particular CRM.
Enter Lead Truffle: The 24/7 AI Sales Rep
The newer product, now rebranded as Lead Truffle, takes a fundamentally different approach to lead capture and qualification. As Bryan succinctly puts it, Lead Truffle is a “24/7 sales rep that captures leads on your website and then qualifies them over SMS using AI.”
Instead of relying on traditional contact forms that create friction and often go unfilled, Lead Truffle uses a conversational interface to:
- Capture basic information through a chat-like form
- Transition the conversation to SMS where engagement rates are higher
- Use AI trained on the business’s website to ask relevant qualification questions
- Collect and organize lead information for the business owner
The Value Proposition
What makes Lead Truffle particularly valuable for busy service businesses is the “set it and forget it” nature of the tool. Bryan emphasized this point: “They just want the value equation to be there… spend an hour setting the system up and then know 24/7, 365, there’s an active presence on their website, making the most of the Google LSA budget, making the most of the local SEO efforts and capturing and qualifying leads, particularly when they’re busy out doing other things.”
For time-strapped business owners who can’t sit behind a computer all day, this automated approach to lead qualification can be a game-changer.
The Tech Behind the Magic
For the tech-curious, Bryan shared insights into their stack:
- They use OpenAI for their AI capabilities (though mentioned looking at DeepSeek as an alternative)
- Twilio powers their SMS functionality
- Each AI agent is trained on the content from the business’s website
- The system uses a dual-prompt approach: a system prompt that constrains the AI’s behavior and a user prompt with specific business details
This combination allows Lead Truffle to create personalized conversations while avoiding the pitfalls of AI hallucinations or misinformation.
Entrepreneurial Insights
Beyond the product details, Bryan shared valuable insights for aspiring SaaS entrepreneurs:
- On platform risk: “If you’re not using jobber, you can’t use our product. So we’re artificially handcuffing ourselves and we’ll always be at risk.”
- On bootstrapping vs. VC funding: “The fact that we are bootstrapped and every dollar counts and every dollar is ours, I think it puts us in a position where we’re even more thoughtful and more considerate around what we do and how we spend money.”
- On technical co-founders: “I would not even think about starting a SaaS company unless you know how to code, you’re willing to learn how to code, or you have a great partner that can code.”
The Future of Lead Capture
After my conversation with Bryan, I was inspired to dig deeper into the problems with traditional contact forms and the potential of AI-based alternatives. This research resulted in two articles that expand on the concepts we discussed:
- Let’s Face It, Website Forms Suck: Here’s an Alternative for Your Next Local SEO Service-Based Client – This article on SEO Arcade explores how AI-powered lead qualification tools can replace traditional contact forms and dramatically improve conversion rates for service businesses.
- Why Traditional Contact Forms Are Killing Your Conversion Rate (And What To Do About It) – On my personal site, I dive into the research showing just how ineffective traditional forms are and provide a data-backed case for moving to conversational lead qualification.
Final Thoughts
As SEO professionals and digital marketers, we often focus on driving traffic to websites without equal attention to what happens after visitors arrive. Tools like Lead Truffle represent an exciting opportunity to close that gap, ensuring that the traffic we work so hard to generate actually converts into qualified leads.
Whether you’re working with home service businesses or other service-based clients, considering alternatives to traditional contact forms could be a simple but powerful way to improve your clients’ ROI from digital marketing.
You can listen to the full interview with Bryan Shankman on your favorite podcast platform or watch it on YouTube.