How to write better AI prompts for prospecting

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How to write better AI prompts for prospecting

If your AI outputs sound generic — your inputs probably are too.

The best AI users aren’t tech wizards — they’re master communicators. And they’ve learned to speak robot.

Like people, AI has its own way of understanding the world. And the only way to unlock its full potential is to meet it on its terms.

Prompting — the skill of feeding AI clear, strategic instructions — is what separates 10x outputs from mediocre ones. When you know how best to frame your inputs, you take control over the results, whether you’re targeting the right leads or crafting the perfect outreach.

In this article, Apollo.io walks you through how to structure prompts in a way that generative AI can interpret and process, using insights from conversations with prompting experts on how to get exactly what you want, every time.

Keep reading for a pressure-tested outbound prompt framework you can use to structure every prompt, plus templates for specific sales use cases.

Inside the brain of artificial intelligence

AI is only as useful as you make it.

Samuel Thomas Elliot from the Apollo Labs team says most people don’t explain what they want clearly enough.

“AI isn’t an expert — it’s just all-knowing,” he says. “And it’s almost too intelligent for its own good. If you don’t clearly explain what you’re looking for, it’s not going to know what you want.”

How do you communicate with a mind that’s all data, no instinct? And, perhaps an even better question, how do you iterate on it? Converse with it?

With some help from Elliot — and a few tests — here are a few conclusions.

Tip #1: Create context “clips” for a richer output

Every scrap of detail you layer into your prompt will result in a better, richer output.

The specific context you give it will depend on what you’re asking from it; but there are a few snippets you’ll find yourself reaching for time and time again as you write detailed sales prompts.

Such as these:

Apollo.io

Write them out and store them somewhere accessible.

Apollo tested it out using the persona of a rep from Writer and fed the AI tool information around hypothetical pain points and value propositions. The resulting email output is shown below.

Apollo.io

Apollo.io

Tip #2: Ask AI to self-reflect

The quality of your input directly determines the quality of your output. And, as has been established, to get the strongest possible results, you need to understand the way it reads language.

And what better way than to … just ask it?

Elliot does this with a simple line:

“Before you begin, return with five questions you have.”

A simple command that gets AI to poke holes in itself; to self-identify the gaps in its knowledge, the gaps in the prompt, and communicate back to him what it needed.

He was creating a real conversation.

“I guarantee you that you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how well AI is understanding and thinking about very key aspects that you left out of your prompt. It’s going to make sure you get a much better output,” he says.

When using this tactic, you’ll see such benefits as:

• Better outputs, faster. More precise results with less trial and error.
• Less time spent rewriting prompts. Getting it right the first time saves effort.
• Learning AI’s “language.” Understanding how it thinks, and it’s making you a stronger prompt writer.

Tip #3: AI prompting is a marathon — not a sprint

Like any other skill, prompting is something that develops and strengthens over time.

Elliot offers some perspective for any newbie. “It’s completely normal for only half of your prompts to provide the exact output you are looking for at first,” he says.

So, don’t give up. When you get to the point where you’re using libraries of proven prompts to save hours daily, your future self will thank you for staying the course.

An outbound sales-specific prompt structure

If you’re writing prompts to generate outbound emails, structure matters.

The quality of your output doesn’t just depend on what you say; it depends on how you say it and in what order.

Here’s a recommended structure for outbound sales prompts.

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Consider this as one of many strategies for getting a good output.

The team from Smartling 10’xd their SDRs productivity and pipeline with a much simpler Power-up prompt that uncovers if a website offers translation services:

“Look at the {{account.website_url}} of this {{account.name}} and determine if you can toggle between multiple languages. If it can be, then figure out if the website has any gaps in its translation. If so, return to what those reasons are.”

Prompting is often just a matter of knowing where to start and iterating from there.

In a recent template contest launched by Apollo, hundreds of folks submitted their most effective prompts in the hopes it might give other sales orgs a headstart, too.

A few standout contributors included:

• Dhara Patel, who wrote a prompt to automatically research for her construction company’s most important buying signal.
• Rene Cobar’s AI prompt pulls competitor insights directly into outbound messages
• And Carol Olona put together a prompt that digs up a prospect’s product, pricing, and market fit in just a few focused paragraphs

Boost your sales with AI-powered outbound

The better you are at framing your message, the better AI can work for you. And just like any good conversation, the more you refine, the better the results. When you’re ready, you can apply your new and improved prompts directly to your lead lists.

This story was produced by Apollo.io and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.