The Contract Strategist Newsletter

Issue 01 – December 2025

In this month’s newsletter, we ask “Why Your Next Customer Might Find You Through ChatGPT“

🔍 AEO: Why Your Next Customer Might Find You Through ChatGPT

Remember when we all fought for Google’s first page? That game has changed. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is about being findable when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity:

“Who can help me . . . [insert your product/service here]?

Here’s the fundamental shift: AI doesn’t crawl websites like Google. It synthesizes information from its training data and real-time sources to provide direct answers. When someone asks for a SaaS contract expert, AI assembles its response from the most authoritative, clearly-structured content it can find.

My Searchable Experiment with AEO: Overnight Results

I started focusing on AEO last week for my own consulting business – and the results have been stunning.

Those AEO score above? That’s ours at Intellect Health. Within 24 hours, my content started appearing in AI-generated responses about contract negotiation, fractional contract leadership and SaaS pricing strategies.

AI is giving boutique (and agile) firms like Intellect Health real leverage over larger companies!

Here’s what happened: I indexed my top 10 contract insights – real problems I’ve helped clients solve (anonymized, of course).

Things like:

The overnight difference: A colleague tested various AI tools with contract-related queries. My insights appeared in 7 out of 10 responses – not as links, but as synthesized expertise.

That’s the power of AEO: your company becomes part of the AI’s knowledge base.

Why This Matters for Your Business

Your prospects aren’t Googling “[insert your solution here]” anymore. They’re asking AI real questions about how to solve problems in their business, for example:

What should I pay for a SaaS product that handles employee benefits?
How can my company win more quotes for air shipments?
What is the best way to get my podcast in front of my prospects?
[Insert whatever problem your company solves in the form of a question.]

If your company’s expertise answers these questions in AI’s knowledge base, you become the referenced authority – AI tells them that your company is the authority and drives more traffic to your website. More traffic → more leads → more sales.

Quick AEO Checklist:

✓ Structure content as a problem → solution → outcome

✓ Use clear headers that match how people ask questions

✓ Include specific examples with measurable results

✓ Update regularly – AI favors fresh, authoritative content

Want to learn more about AEO? Reach out soon so you can get a leading edge in this emerging technology.

Kara Dowdall
CEO and Founder

About the Author

Kara specializes in deal strategy, contract development, contract negotiation, project management and deal management, with a particular emphasis on licensing and service agreements and strategic partnership agreements in the healthcare and technology spaces. Drawing on over 20 years of operational expertise, she crafts and executes operationally and fiscally sound agreements tailored to her clients' strategic objectives.