Hire the consultant who can explain what they will build in your business in plain words, who proposes a small first step, who leaves you owning the accounts and documents, and who tells you what could go wrong. Fifteen questions follow, in four groups. Ask them of anyone, including QS Digital.
Group 1: Do they understand your business?
Questions about fit and process| Question | A solid answer includes | Worry if |
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| 1. What would you want to learn about my business before recommending anything? | Questions about your customers, offer, how work gets done and who does it. | They propose tools before asking about the business. |
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| 2. How will you decide where to start? | A ranking of candidate processes with reasons you can challenge. | The starting point is a product they sell. |
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| 3. What would a small first step look like? | A bounded pilot or paid hour with a clear finish. | Only a large package is offered. |
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| 4. When would you tell me not to use AI? | Specific examples: unclear rules, high-stakes judgement, too little volume. | "AI helps with everything." |
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Group 2: What will they actually do?
Questions about the work and deliverables| Question | A solid answer includes | Worry if |
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| 5. What will I have in hand at each stage? | Named deliverables: a written plan, a scope, a working system, documentation. | Deliverables are described as "transformation" or "strategy". |
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| 6. What do you need from me and my team? | Access, a named owner, review time, source material. | "Nothing, we handle it all." |
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| 7. Can I see how you work before I commit? | A walkthrough of a real or clearly labeled illustrative example. | Case studies with no way to check them. |
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| 8. How will we know it works? | Measures taken from your own records, baselined before the work starts. | Promised percentages that do not depend on your starting point. |
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Group 3: Who stays in control, and what if it goes wrong?
Questions about ownership, safeguards and data| Question | A solid answer includes | Worry if |
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| 9. Who owns the accounts, prompts and workflows? | Accounts opened in your name; prompts, workflows and documentation transferred to you. | Everything lives in the consultant's accounts. |
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| 10. What depends on a vendor I cannot control? | A clear list: models, platforms, avatar or voice models that live inside a platform. | Claims of no lock-in without detail. |
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| 11. Which decisions stay with a person? | Price, dates, commitments and exceptions, with a named approver. | The system decides and sends on its own. |
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| 12. What happens to my customers' data? | Rules agreed up front about which tool sees which data, and what is never entered. | No data policy, or a refusal to discuss it. |
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Group 4: Money, claims and the relationship
Questions about pricing, claims and what happens after launch| Question | A solid answer includes | Worry if |
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| 13. How is the work priced, and what are the ongoing costs? | A scope-based quote before you commit, plus a list of software and usage costs billed by their providers. | Vague pricing, or ongoing fees that appear later. |
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| 14. What can you not promise? | Honest limits: no guaranteed rankings, no guaranteed results, no error-free AI. | Guarantees about revenue, rankings or leads. |
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| 15. What happens after launch? | Training, documentation, a named owner on your side, and optional support scoped separately. | You cannot run it without them. |
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How QS Digital answers
We would rather you compare, so here is what we say. Engagements follow Diagnose, Map, Build, Install, and the written plan from the first phase is yours to use with or without us. Accounts are opened in your name and you control the prompts, workflows and documents we write; the AI models and hosted platforms are rented from their providers. People approve price, dates and exceptions. We scope projects and quote the number before you commit, and we publish one price, hourly consulting at $500 per hour. We do not promise rankings, results or error-free AI.
We are a small firm based in Vineland, NJ, working with businesses remotely. If your project needs a large team on site, that may not be us.
A simple way to run the evaluation
- Write your candidate first projects in a sentence each. If you cannot, the first-process guide will help.
- Send the same short brief to two or three providers and compare how they respond, not just what they quote.
- Ask for the fifteen answers in writing.
- Start with the smallest paid step that produces something you can inspect.
