Are You A Prompt Engineer?
By the end of the second decade of this century, it was widely estimated that half the jobs then being done had not existed at the turn of the Millennium.
[I touched on this in a broader Sales sense back in 2015 for my 2,000th post.]
This huge wave of change in no small part down to the tech explosion surrounding the dotcom bubble through social media to the Internet-of-Things, among the myriad contributory factors.
These past couple o' years since, another such lever is now feverishly pulling; AI. Already leading to yet another new job title for us to get our heads 'round; prompt engineer.
I came across this breed via a Joburg B-School professor. How's this for his article's sign-off;
"It obviously pays to get in on the ground floor of a new species of employment. AI is about to spawn a tribe of them."
This particular role appears as lucrative as it is new. Up to and beyond a quarter of a million dollars plus perks for those in early.
Such a job spec [at a company providing the sector's metaphorical shovels and picks called Anthropic] realises actual experience may be thin on the ground. In which case, simply forward evidence;
"showing that you’ve managed to get complex behaviors [sic] from a series of well crafted prompts".
Consider this combined with these trio of the Professor above's assessment of the nascent occupation.
- The right prompt is critical to getting the AI to produce novel output that conforms to the expectation or even the optimistic hopes of the prompter
- As are the subsequent prompts, which further guide the AI to reshape or extend its inventions to more closely mould its output to the user’s intentions
- The act of prompting actually deepens the knowledge of (some) generative AI systems, turning the user into a teacher at the same time that they are learning
Now let's slightly shift the context. Re-written for solution selling.
- The right prompt is critical to getting the prospect to produce novel output that conforms to the expectation or even the optimistic hopes of the prompter
- As are the subsequent prompts, which further guide the prospect to reshape or extend its inventions [as in, forming their needs] to more closely mould its output to the seller's intentions
- The act of prompting actually deepens the knowledge of prospects, turning the seller into a teacher [as in, trusted adviser] at the same time that they are learning
Having blogged on whether the rise of the sentient bots is good or bad for our enterprise selling fortunes earlier this year, here seems an area we can claim as our own. For now, at any rate.
Think of being a prompt engineer to ask the questions that yield the 'best' answers on a bid.
What are the questions you'd ideally want the optimal potential customer to be asking?
What's their starting point?
From which perceived 'pain' would it emanate?
How would the conversation flow that then leads them to a place where your solution is attractive to the extent that they can actively pursue its delivery?
Even plan out how such a conversation might unfurl.
Prompt engineers seem to grasp that the better the question, the better the answer. Are you one?