Prompting for business owners: a plain English guide

Treat it like a new hire, not a search box

Most disappointing results from AI tools come from prompts written like search queries. "Write a sales email" gives the tool almost nothing to work with, so it fills the gaps with the most generic answer available.

A better mental model is a capable assistant on their first day. They are quick and well read, but they know nothing about your business, your clients or how you like things done.

Everything they need has to be in the brief.

The five parts of a good brief

A useful prompt usually covers five things. You will not always need all of them, but checking against the list catches most gaps.

1. Role and context. What is the business, and what is the tool helping with? "You are helping a consultant who sells a $6,000 three month programme to independent accountants."
2. The task. One clear job. "Write a follow up email to a prospect who attended a sales call but has not replied in five days."
3. The audience. Who will read it, and what do they care about? "The reader is busy, wary of sales pitches and more worried about time than money."
4. The constraints. Length, tone and what to avoid. "Under 120 words. Plain and friendly, no exclamation marks, no pressure tactics."
5. The format. How you want the answer laid out. "Give me three versions, each with a different subject line."

Put together, that is a paragraph rather than a sentence. It takes a minute longer to write and saves several rounds of fixing.

Show it examples

The quickest way to get output that sounds like you is to show the tool what you sound like. Paste in two or three emails or posts you have written and liked, and ask it to match their tone and length.

The same works for structure. If you want a proposal in a particular layout, paste in an old one with the client details removed, because one example does more than a page of description.

A word on privacy: be careful what you paste. Check the data settings of the tool you use, and leave out client names, financial details and anything covered by a confidentiality agreement unless you are sure how it is stored.

Ask it to ask you

When you are not sure what the tool needs, let it tell you. End the prompt with: "Before you start, ask me any questions you need answered to do this well."

This turns a one shot request into a short conversation. It is particularly useful for bigger jobs such as a webinar outline, a sales page or a new onboarding process, where the gaps in your brief are not obvious until someone asks.

Edit the draft, do not restart

The first answer is a draft. Instead of rewriting the prompt from scratch, tell the tool what to change, the same way you would give notes to a person.

• "Shorter. Cut it to half the length."
• "The second paragraph sounds like a brochure. Rewrite it the way you would say it to a friend."
• "Remove anything that makes a promise about results."
• "Good. Now write the same email for a prospect who said price was the problem."

A prompt is not a magic phrase. It is a brief, and briefs get better with notes.

Keep working in the same chat while you refine one piece, so the tool keeps the context. Start a fresh chat for a new task, so old instructions do not leak into it.

Save what works, and check what it says

Once a prompt gives you something good, save it. A shared document of tested prompts, one per recurring job, is one of the most useful things a small team can build.

A starting list for a service business might include:

• Turning a sales call transcript into a summary with next steps.
• Writing a follow up email after a call.
• Drafting three social posts from a client interview.
• Turning rough voice notes into a written procedure.
• Summarising a long email thread into decisions and open questions.

Mark the blanks clearly in each saved prompt, such as [CLIENT NAME] or [OFFER PRICE], so anyone on the team can reuse it.

Finally, remember that AI tools sound confident even when they are wrong. They can invent figures, misquote sources and present guesses as facts, so anything published, sent to a client or used for a decision needs a human check.

They are strongest at first drafts, summaries, rewrites and generating options. They are weakest at facts you have not given them and judgement about your particular clients, so use them for the first and keep the second for yourself.