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Like many workers in the tech sector, I was fascinated with ChatGPT when it first came out. As a business professional who spent the last five years of my career devoted to helping Account Executives (AEs) win more deals through sales enablement initiatives, I decided to push the limits of ChatGPT and other LLM tools to test how much they might benefit sales professionals with sales domain use cases.
I quickly realized that sales professionals who are skilled at using LLMs and LLM-based chatbots can gain serious advantages over their peers.
Before I go further, let me state that I do not want AI to replace sales professionals. Sales professionals do a lot to educate buyers and help them make the right decision. High-integrity Sales professionals take time to understand the buyer's pain points and desired outcomes, scope the solution appropriately to address the buyers’ needs, help buyers build business cases to justify a purchase and more. These types of human work are highly valuable and should not be replaced with AI.
However, AI has an advantage over humans in information processing speed. It can quickly complete tasks such as conducting research, synthesizing information, extracting insights from vast amounts of data, and creating first drafts of documents and messaging based on existing context and knowledge. AI can do a lot to help sellers boost productivity if you learn the tricks to get it to work for you.
Through experimentation, I've learned that you need to give highly specific instructions to AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama, etc.) to get them to perform well. You need to tell the AI exactly what you want it to do, how to approach the task, what templates and examples to follow, what format to output the answer in, and what information it should use to complete the task versus what to ignore.
At this point, I've spent over one hundred hours developing and testing prompts for sales use cases on all the leading LLMs in the market. I've built a library of highly effective prompts to help sellers complete many tasks.
In this guide, I've decided to publish a set of tested and proven ChatGPT prompts that will help sellers eliminate tedious work, create more compelling messages and content for their buyers, summarize information for sellers' teammates, and help sellers learn what they need to know in a fraction of the time it used to take.
I will show you prompts to:
I will also give you many highly effective templates sellers have used to communicate effectively with prospective buyers.
A business case document is one of the most powerful documents you'll create and use during a deal's lifecycle. It helps you sell your solution when you are not in the room. It will help you create a champion and enable your champion to effectively sell on your behalf.
A good business case document is concise (one page). It can be reviewed quickly by your champion so they can say, "These pieces are spot-on, but let me add some more details and make a few corrections."
As a seller, you should create the initial document. You will need more details to complete it, but that's precisely why you'd share it with the champion. Your champion on the deal can add details to it based on information only they know, share the business case doc. with their colleagues, and use it to build consensus among the buying committee. It empowers your champion to advocate on your behalf when you're not in the room.
Sellers who use a business case document have significantly improved their velocity and won higher ARR deals.
A solid business case document can follow this template below.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A bold, compelling title goes here.
Developed by: [ Champion Name ], [ Key Deal Players ]
Headline: [ Buying team or business unit ] should [ recommended action ] by [ timeline ].
This will result in [ outcome ] while avoiding [ cost of the problem ] created by [ problem ].
The Problem Statement.
Include who's impacted, the cost, how it impacts a company-wide goal, and why the problem's getting worse. Example formats include:
Recommended Approach.
Outline your solution design, how it's been tested and proven, plus the factors that must be true for the solution to work. Include a short note on how to successfully resource the shift.
The point is to first gain agreement on the approach, agnostic of vendors, while transitioning by sharing "[ your company ] was found to meet and exceed all requirements."
A Payoff That Matters.
Here, outline a vivid picture of the before vs. after state for daily users while showing the time to impact on executive-level metrics:
Key Metric Current Measure Target by [ Date ]
Required Investment.
Who needs to invest what, and by when? List time and people resources required, with relevant scenarios.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
With AI, you create a first draft of a business case document based on your desired template and have the AI populate the details based on what your prospect has said on the calls you've had.
Simply upload your call transcripts to your preferred LLM chatbot, then use this prompt:
Your task is to fill out the details of this business case template following this format. Fill in the details / blank parts with information from the call transcripts. The champion's name is the primary point of contact/decision-maker from the buyer organization. The key deal players are those from the seller's organization who have participated in the calls. <Insert the template above> Once you finish the document, do not provide any commentary.
Once you upload the relevant call transcripts and type in this prompt, AI will fill in the details for you.
After drafting a business case document, you should see the gaps or areas where you lack understanding of the buyer's situation. Perhaps you need a deeper understanding of the problem or more knowledge of executive KPIs that your solution can influence.
You can also use AI to help you generate questions to pose to your champion to better understand the situation at their organization.
Prompt to use:
Based on the business case document, identify gaps/areas where the seller may need a fuller understanding of the buyer's situation (e.g., the buyer's organization's processes, needs, concerns, Key Performance Indicators, and mindset). These are areas that a seller should seek to learn more about. Suggest questions (up to 10) a seller can ask the buyer about the topics covered in the business case document. These questions should differ from those with existing answers from the call transcripts.
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Mutual Action Plans (MAP), also called Mutual Success Plans, are collaborative documents used by sellers and prospects to outline the steps, responsibilities, and timeline required to close a deal successfully. They serve as a roadmap for both parties, ensuring alignment and clarity throughout the deal's lifecycle.
Simply go to ChatGPT, upload the relevant call transcript files, and type in the following prompt:
"You are an expert project manager, and your task is to create a mutual action plan for this deal based on the call transcripts I've uploaded. A mutual action plan is just a mini-project plan. The mutual action plan tasks should all be logical tasks to be done so that the prospective buyer can purchase my product and commence implementation. The tasks should be logical for each sales stage. The last task should always be the commencement of the agreed-upon implementation plan. The mutual action plan should follow a table format with three columns. The left column: Deadline. Middle column: The appropriate owner for the task (salesperson vs. buyer); please insert their names). The right column describes the task the owner needs to complete. To fill in the deadline for each task, start by finding out the date for when the prospect wants to commence implementation by looking to see if this date was mentioned in the call transcripts. Then, develop a logical plan to date the previous tasks to this week for the initial task. "
After your initial discovery call with a prospect, you can write an email using your buyer's words to play back the key points from a call, ensure they feel heard, and convey reasons for why they should move forward with another call. This type of email should include:
To get AI to generate such an email for you, upload the call transcript from the discovery call to your preferred LLM chatbot and use this prompt:
"Help me write a compelling email I send to my buyer to play back the key points from our call to ensure that they feel heard and showcase their logic for why they should move forward with another call. In your email, be sure to include the following: [1] A clear problem statement. [2] How the buyer wants to approach the problem. [3] What needs to be true of a solution for it to be a fit. [4] Next steps, referencing a colleague who's impacted. Keep the email to under 200 words. Do not use sectional headers like "Problem Statement" or "Solution Approach".
The typical post-demo email has a stack of links, padded with generic pleasantries. "Link-stacking" puts the work back on the buyer to process information, and it's overly focused on your product, not on what's in it for the buyer.
Switch it up by using your buyer's words to fill in this framework like a game of Mad Libs:
You can create this email with the following AI prompt:
Write an email as the post-demo email following this demo call (see transcript). Use this framework to format the email: [1] Contrast current vs. future process. [2] Recap the logical approach they're sold on. [3] Create dramatic tension. If we do this… good. If not… bad. [4] Share how your product delivers good outcomes. [5] Add a CTA based on how the email needs to "travel." Do not use section header phrases like "Logical Approach" or "Dramatic Tension" in the output.
You can also repurpose this prompt to generate other types of emails; simply swap out the template you want the AI to use and insert the relevant call transcripts.
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At many companies, marketing and sales enablement teams create lengthy/dense materials like training decks, sales playbooks, research reports, and product documentation that they think sellers should use. Unfortunately, these materials often require more time to read than sellers have.
What sellers want isn't the entire content asset; they want the specific snippets they can use for the task at hand. For instance, if you're about to walk into a meeting with a prospect, you want to find a few stats and pieces of research your company has done that can be shared with a prospect. Or, if you need to write an email to a potential buyer to encourage them to meet with you, your goal is to quickly determine the best messaging angle and demonstrate that you speak the same language as the buyer.
LLM chatbots are the perfect tools for extracting valuable insights from long-form content such as buyer persona documents, product launch training materials, whitepapers, case studies, etc., turning those insights into actionable tips to help you accomplish specific tasks.
Here are some valuable things you can do.
Prompt 1: Make a one-pager on how to talk to a <target buyer persona> and demonstrate that I understand their priorities, challenges, and how my company's products support them. Reference the uploaded file(s) to build the one-pager.
Prompt 2: Make a one-pager telling me what I need to know to build trust with a <buyer persona> and how to best educate them on the value of working with us.
Useful source materials for AI to reference could include case studies you have access to, buyer persona documents/decks created by your marketing team and call transcripts of calls where this specific buyer persona discussed their situation.
Prompt 1: Make a short guide on how to demo my company's product to <buyer persona>; show me which features/screens in the product to show if covered in the uploaded content. Reference the call transcripts attached to understand what this buyer cares about.
Prompt 2: Based on this file, tell me how I should talk to a <buyer persona> about (a problem you solve) and what to demo.
If your sales leaders ask you to fill out many Salesforce fields for each deal, you can use AI to extract and summarize key fields based on what's already covered in your calls with your buyer. This way, you don't need to type in those fields manually.
For instance, one thing you can do is extract and populate MEDDPPICC fields based on the calls you've had with a buyer.
Prompt:
"Help me take useful notes based on the discussion (call transcripts). Specifically, fill in any of the following items about the prospect's buying process only if you can get the information from the transcript. Here's what I'm looking for:
Metrics: current state with metrics.
Metrics: Expected business outcomes.
Economic buyer - who has the authority to make a purchase. Decision criteria (This specifies the decision criteria that the prospect has identified and prioritized. This includes features of a solution but could also include price, support, relationship with the provider, etc.)
Decision process (This describes how the prospect will arrive at a decision, including specific people, events, and timeframes the prospect will use to evaluate several products and select a solution).
Paper process (this refers to the series of steps that follow the Decision process all the way to signature).
The Pain represents the challenge the prospect is dealing with or the initiative they want to succeed.
The champion is the person within the prospect's organization who can help you win the deal because they are motivated/have a personally invested interest in project success, and have the power and influence to persuade others to see value in your solution.
The competition (the competitors the prospect is evaluating)."
If you've conducted one or two discovery calls with a prospective buyer and are ready to bring your solution consultant (SC) into the mix to prepare a custom demo, you can easily create demo guidance notes for your SC.
You can use AI to summarize the discovery call(s), extract all the mentions of product functionality, the needs and challenges expressed by the prospect, and develop a strategic approach to your demo.
Prompt:
"Read through the latest call transcript, look for and pull out mentions of product functionality and user needs and challenges mentioned by call participants from <the prospect organization>. Observe the questions the prospect(s) asked about product functionality and group them by feature area. Your task is to put together a one-pager that provides my Solution Consultant teammate guidance on how to put together a useful and tailored product demonstration for the prospect(s). Identify what the solution consultant should prioritize in demoing based on what the prospect said they care about. Also, generate one or two discovery questions for each feature area that will be demoed to help our team better understand how the prospect would benefit or be impacted by the feature."
You can use AI to extract useful information to prepare yourself and your team for the next call with prospects. With this prompt, you can create a valuable executive summary to bring one of your executives onto the call, knowing exactly what's going on and what role they need to play.
Prompt:
"Help me recap the key points of our calls so far. Specifically, look at the calls and try to extract the following info: What business outcomes is the buyer trying to achieve? What challenge is the buyer trying to solve? What alternative software solutions is the buyer considering/evaluating? What factors is the buyer evaluating this solution against? What factors will influence whether or not the buyer purchases? What steps need to be taken to help the buyer make a decision? What concerns does the customer have about moving forward with us? What risks do you foresee in the deal? What is the sentiment on incumbent competitors and renewal dates? What does the buying process look like? What does each person involved care about? What timeline is the prospect working towards? Put the output in a digestible format so that an executive from my organization invited to join the next call to support the deal can quickly get up to speed on what's happened and know where specifically they can provide support and reinforcement."
You can use AI to analyze a series of call transcripts from a single deal to get a second opinion on the sentiment of the deal and whether there are risks and issues you need to get in front of. Specifically, you can have AI review the tones and language used by prospects (if very positive or skeptical/negative) throughout the calls and how they reacted to your demos, proposal presentation, and pricing/packaging. You can have AI gauge whether the prospect expressed constructive concerns that show that they are seriously considering the solution versus general or vague objections that indicate a lack of confidence in the solution.
Prompt:
"I've uploaded transcripts of calls with <buyer names>. Your task is to analyze the language and tone used by the prospective buyers throughout this deal cycle to assess how the deal is going and whether there are any risk areas I need to know. For each risk area, explain why this may be a risk area and what I could do to address it."
While you can use all these prompts in ChatGPT or another LLM chatbot to create content, you can save several hours per week using Intersight instead.
With Intersight, you can easily create all types of compelling content with AI tools and effective templates. Once a new document (e.g., a business case) has been drafted, you can use AI to edit and perfect it.
Intersight also offers a unique way to share documents with the added benefit of tracking all engagements. Each document in Intersight is assigned a unique URL that you can share with others. When the document is viewed, you'll receive detailed information about the viewer and the time of viewing. You'll get new insights into whether a prospective buyer is seriously evaluating your solution or kicking tires.
We're currently working to build out this part of Intersight. The solution is expected to become available in the coming weeks. You can sign up below to get early access to the software.
