How to Write Effective AI Prompts for B2B Sales

Whether you’re a sales leader, manager, or seller, we’ve all been hearing a lot about the potential of AI for sales. You may already be incorporating some AI-powered tools in your sales stack. Like any new technology, generative AI tools require a learning curve to be most effective. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini or Claude in particular can give very different quality outputs depending on the input they’re given. Our Ascender team recently hosted a webinar with Matt Payne of Sales Boost Consulting where he gave some valuable tips for getting the most out of AI tools.

Today, we’re sharing tips on using generative AI for sales tasks. If you’re a sales leader, make sure to also check out our playbook for improving sales team productivity with AI tools.

Here are three steps for writing good sales prompts for ChatGPT or similar AI tools:

Step 1: Determine the Role You Want AI to Play

AI chatbots can be helpful for conducting research before a sales call, summarizing meetings, conducting role-play exercises, or crafting great follow-up emails. It’s important to remember that current AI chatbots benefit from specificity. To get the best possible information, it’s important to define and communicate the role you want it to play.

Here are few examples of roles and how you could phrase the prompt to help the AI accomplish the desired task.

• Assistant: Find research on [Insert Topic]
• Idea Generator: Generate ideas for [Insert Topic]
• Editor: Make this text shorter and more clear [Insert Text]
• Teacher: Explain [Insert Topic] to me
• Critic: Present objections to my argument [Insert Argument]

Step 2: Request the Right Tone

Specifying your desired tone to the AI tool will ensure it returns something that matches the type of relationship you have with the person you’re trying to communicate with.

Here are some examples of possible tones AI could use in a sales context:

You can also combine tones, like Persuasive Professional.

In a prompt, this might look like:

“I recently had a productive sales call and have attached the transcript. Help me draft a follow-up email. I'd like the email to take a professional, goal-oriented tone and reflect key points we discussed during the call, ensuring it accurately captures the client's needs and concerns. Additionally, the email should outline the next steps we agreed upon. This will help in maintaining clarity and momentum in our sales process.”

Step 3: Tell the Tool How to Present the Information

To better leverage the data output of the AI tool, consider instructing it on the format it should use to present your results. This can help make the information more readily usable and can generate some different results. Here are some formats you can request from an AI chatbot tool:

Step 4: Provide Company-Specific Context

We’ve covered some helpful steps for writing useful AI prompts for sales teams, but arguably the most important elements of your prompt are context and intent. Before asking an AI tool for help, it’s important that you first know:

• The type of company that fits your ideal customer profile
• The roles that are usually involved in purchasing your solution, and their priorities
• The problems your solution typically solves for them and the value you provide
• Your competitive differentiation and market context

Understanding these aspects not only helps create more specific and productive AI prompts, it ensures that you’re focused on using AI for the right tasks. A rep who doesn’t understand this context might use AI to get general information on a company they’re researching, whereas a rep with a clear picture of their value proposition can dig deeper for specific information on the established use cases for their product

If you’re a sales leader, generating alignment on these ideas across your entire go-to-market team can help them use AI to enhance their discovery and research process, not replace it. As more tools become available to enhance the sales process, an emphasis on great selling fundamentals, great alignment, and a customer-focused process is the best way to ensure these tools don’t throw your process off track.

Use AI Tools to Enhance Sales Productivity

AI tools are still a developing technology; they come with a certain level of risk and uncertainty. As a sales leader, providing a framework for how these tools fit into your GTM motion can help you ensure they improve, rather than hinder, productivity on your sales team. That’s why we created our playbook for leaders: Implementing AI Tools for B2B Sales Teams. We share best practices, strategies and considerations for guiding success with these tools in your team.