Episode 486: The Ultimate Guide to Prompt Writing for Sales Professionals

Stan Robinson Jr. (00:00)
The one other thing that comes to mind is role-play. You can ask AI to assume any role you want. If you’re preparing for a discovery call, a sales conversation, or a negotiation, you can ask it to assume the role of a CFO who is super budget-conscious.

Bob Woods (00:21)
Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast, featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson Jr., and me, Bob Woods, as we bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching and using so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling.

Brynne, welcome to the show.

Brynne Tillman (00:44)
Hello and welcome to Making Sales Social. I’m excited about today’s topic. Stan, great to see you here today.

Stan Robinson Jr. (00:55)
Yes, you too. I’m looking forward to talking about AI for sales.

Brynne Tillman (01:00)
It’s an interesting topic. We’re going to start with the prompt-writing framework, but there are some salespeople who have completely embraced AI and are leveraging it well. Then there are some who are using AI for shortcuts and not necessarily using it well yet. Those are the people I think we’re going to help a lot today. Finally, there are those who aren’t using AI at all yet, probably because they’re afraid of losing their voice or coming across as AI.

We’re going to talk about how to overcome that. Let’s start with the CRISPY framework. Stan, you, Bob, and I worked meticulously to launch our book. I think you have a copy—I see one in the corner over there.

Stan Robinson Jr. (01:59)
That one may actually have the letters the right way.

Brynne Tillman (02:03)
Ah, yes—Prompt Writing Made Easy. It’s our CRISPY framework. It helps salespeople show up with their voice and intent without sounding like AI.

I’ll walk through what CRISPY is, then throw it to you, Stan, for ideas on where salespeople should apply this.

The CRISPY framework is an acronym. We love acronyms at Social Sales Link.

C – Context
Context is what you’re trying to achieve. What is the end product? What’s your ultimate goal? It might be a blog post, an eBook, an RFP response, or a proposal. The context is what you want at the end of the prompt. The more detailed you are, the closer the output will be to what you want.

R – Role
Who do you want the AI to be? If I’m writing content and want strong frameworks, I might say, “You are Donald Miller from StoryBrand, and I’ve hired you to help me write this.” Notice I say, “I’ve hired you to help me.” I don’t want it written in Donald’s voice, but I want Donald’s brilliance.

Sometimes I might say, “You are Brené Brown” for emotional connection, or “You are Mel Robbins” to help detach from the result. Other times it might be more general, such as “You are a sales leader who has successfully managed thousands of salespeople to hit their goals and reach President’s Club.”

The role gives AI a perspective to work from.

I – Inspiration
Inspiration is how you want the consumer of your content to feel after they consume it. Maybe you want them to feel inspired to take the next step or excited about solving a problem again.

Stan, do you have a different take on inspiration?

Stan Robinson Jr. (05:29)
Inspiration is the most flexible one. Depending on your goal, you may simply want someone to become more informed so they feel confident about moving to the next step or making a decision. That’s where creativity comes into play.

Brynne Tillman (05:49)
I like that. Inspiration can relate to what you want AI to do or how you want the end consumer to feel.

S – Scope
Scope has become a huge part of my prompt writing over the past year and a half. This is the structure of the piece.

For example:

• 1,200–1,500 words
• An SEO-optimized title under 60 characters
• Five sections, each with a paragraph and bullet points
• A takeaway in each section
• A final call to action

That’s the scope—the structure of the content. Would you add anything?

Stan Robinson Jr. (07:16)
I think of scope as structure or framework—how you want it presented.

Brynne Tillman (07:21)
I like that. Framework is a great way to think about scope.

P – Prohibitions
This is where many people miss an opportunity. Prohibitions are everything you do not want AI to say or do.

For example:

• Do not use words like “foster.”
• Do not use em dashes.
• Do not segment sentences.
• Do not use the “not this, but that” framework.

Those patterns scream AI. If I see an email that starts that way, I often skip it. Whenever I notice something that feels AI-generated, I add it to my list of prohibitions.

My list has become quite long. For example, I love the word “clarity,” but it’s not a word we use often. AI tries to insert it everywhere, so I tell it not to use it unless I ask.

Stan, are there any prohibitions you use?

Stan Robinson Jr. (09:19)
No specific ones beyond the ones you mentioned—like “foster” and em dashes.

Brynne Tillman (09:27)
Another one I use is: “Do not research unless I ask you to.” Sometimes I want research, but most of the time I want AI to stay in my voice.

Stan Robinson Jr. (09:50)
Most people don’t think to include prohibitions in their prompts. When we came up with the CRISPY framework, that was one of the most useful parts.

Brynne Tillman (10:07)
That was actually Bob’s idea, so I want to give him credit. He played a big role in shaping this framework. Even though he’s not here today, shout-out to Bob Woods.

The final piece is Y – You. This might be the most important part.

Here you can instruct AI to ask you questions, such as:
“Ask me all the questions you need to complete this task in my voice, one at a time.”

Or you can include specific questions. For example, if I’m writing a comment on a post, I don’t want AI to just write it. The first question might be:
“What stood out to you most about this post?”

That forces me to read the post and give my insight.

If we’re creating content from a transcript, the first question might be:
“Upload the transcript you’d like to use.”

The “You” section brings the output back to your voice.

Anything you’d add, Stan?

Stan Robinson Jr. (11:42)
That part is brilliant. We originally started with CRISP, then added the Y. You figured out that if AI interviews you first, it understands your voice better.

We’ll talk about that when we get into using transcripts to train it.

Brynne Tillman (12:16)
I love that. Let’s throw it to you. What are some ways salespeople should be using this type of prompting?

Stan Robinson Jr. (12:26)
One way is to help with thinking and messaging. One downside of AI is that it lets you hit the easy button too often. I try to start with my own thoughts and then ask AI to push back on me.

I also push back on AI. If it gives me something, I might ask how to improve it or approach it from another angle.

AI should help your thinking, not do the thinking for you.

Brynne Tillman (13:21)
I love that. The pushback idea is powerful. This should be a conversation—a two-way conversation.

I actually named my ChatGPT “Bubba.” My Gemini has a different name. I treat Bubba like an intern I hired to help me.

Even if it gives me something that’s 80% right, I’ll say:
“I like this part. I hate this part. Let’s change this.”

The best part is you can’t hurt its feelings. I don’t have to filter myself. I’m a Jersey girl—I don’t have much of a filter.

Stan Robinson Jr. (14:27)
And it’s infinitely patient. You can go back and forth as long as you want.

Brynne Tillman (14:36)
Stan, that’s what I say about you as a coach. You’re infinitely patient. I’ve never met a coach who is so patient and supportive with people in their learning journey.

Stan Robinson Jr. (14:54)
Thank you. I try to remember what it feels like to learn something for the first time.

Brynne Tillman (15:00)
That’s what makes you such a phenomenal coach. So let’s come back—what’s another way salespeople should be using AI?

Stan Robinson Jr. (15:21)
We talked a little bit about thinking and messaging. Research is a huge one in many different areas.

Those who have Sales Navigator should try Account IQ and Lead IQ because Sales Navigator now has AI embedded in the platform. It does research for you and surfaces data you would never find on your own—or it would take so long that it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

If you’re not using Sales Navigator, these tools can still do phenomenal research on markets, industries, companies, and even individuals.

As a side note, I used to tell people to Google themselves and see what came back. Now I suggest running a search on yourself using AI in your favorite chat model and seeing what comes back.

Brynne Tillman (16:23)
Oh my gosh, I haven’t done that.

Stan Robinson Jr. (16:27)
I hadn’t either. It came up in conversation with someone, and I realized I needed to try it.

Brynne Tillman (16:34)
I’m thinking you should log out of your account or do it in an incognito window.

Stan Robinson Jr. (16:41)
Yes, figuring out the equivalent of an incognito window for an LLM would help.

Brynne Tillman (16:51)
Maybe sign up for a free account with a personal email just to test it. With Google searches, results vary because there’s a lot of local search and personalization. Everyone’s Google results are different based on their location.

That’s why I like to use incognito mode when I want to see how something actually appears. But I love that idea. I don’t know why we haven’t been talking about it. You should start bringing that up more often—it’s amazing.

Stan Robinson Jr. (17:26)
Or have someone else run the search for you. I first got the idea because someone searched for me using Microsoft Copilot and asked how it looked.

Brynne Tillman (17:35)
That’s great because it’s an outside perspective. I love that.

Maybe we could even add that to one of our AI parties—have everyone run those searches before we start anything else. Try it in Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and probably dozens of other tools like NotebookLM.

That would be interesting to see what each one says.

Are there any other ways salespeople should be using AI?

Stan Robinson Jr. (18:10)
Another one that comes to mind is role-play. You can ask AI to assume any role you want.

If you’re preparing for a discovery call, sales conversation, or negotiation, you can ask it to assume the role of a CFO who is extremely budget-conscious, a chief marketing officer concerned about brand, or a strong negotiator evaluating you against your top competitors.

Then you can have a conversation with it. You can do it through text or by using advanced voice mode to simulate a real role-play conversation and prepare for your sales call.

Brynne Tillman (18:59)
That’s great. I love that.

You could also add the LinkedIn profile of the person you’re going to speak with, the company’s website, or transcripts from previous conversations. You might even do it in NotebookLM and feed it everything you can to make the role-play as accurate as possible.

I love that idea. I don’t currently do that either.

Right now I’m using Brynne.ai for some of this. It includes other experts on the Fuel platform, but I love the idea of using it to prepare for conversations.

Another use case is pre-call planning. I’ve found that incredibly valuable.

For example, we use Simple.ai as our note taker. Others might use Fathom or Zoom’s built-in tools. I take transcripts from our AI note taker and store them together.

Every client now has a record that includes all conversations, proposals, decks, and training transcripts, each with a date stamp. That way, I can ask AI questions like:

• What are the next steps?
• What did I promise to bring to the next meeting?
• What did the client commit to?

Sometimes I realize I have a call in ten minutes and need to remember where we left off. I can quickly ask the AI and get a summary.

I used to do this in ChatGPT, and now I’m moving it into NotebookLM. It helps with pre-call preparation whether it’s your first conversation with someone or your thirtieth.

Pre-call planning is huge.

Stan Robinson Jr. (21:40)
That highlights the importance of context, which you started with earlier.

If you want AI to speak or write in your voice, give it context. Record yourself talking about a topic and upload the transcript so it understands how you communicate.

When you’re preparing for calls, give it as much information as possible about the people you’ll be interacting with.

Brynne Tillman (22:19)
I love that. Our time always goes so fast.

Any final thoughts on the ultimate guide to prompt writing?

Stan Robinson Jr. (22:30)
Just do it. Practice and experiment so you can see the kind of output you get. The more you use it, the more comfortable you’ll become and the better you’ll get at it.

Eventually, these tools will start working for you instead of just being tools you try occasionally.

Brynne Tillman (22:50)
That’s awesome. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.

Stan, I always have so much fun talking with you.

For those listening to the podcast, we actually go live every Monday at 12:30 Eastern. One of our listeners pointed out that we never mention that on the podcast, so here it is.

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Bye, everyone.

Bob Woods (24:19)
Thanks for watching. Join us again for more special guests with marketing, sales training, and social selling strategies that will set you apart.

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