If You Read LLM as LBM

Prompt engineering has gone quiet, hey.

Understandable, given the ludicrous salaries once offered to self-proclaimed AI bot whisperers. Yet the skill is now strangely overlooked, even though bot output has improved dramatically and the quality of the question still drives the quality of the answer.

Anyone who lives by RIRO will see the parallel with solution selling immediately.

What you ask a prospect (or LLM) shapes how useful the response is. Fortunes have been made packaging sales questions in this very way. SPIN being the classic example. The same discipline applies when you prompt. Think on three steers that currently get the best out of direct prompts;

Check Understanding

“Did I make sense there?”

Invite Clarification

“Anything you want to ask me before you start?”

Explain Workings

“How did you get to that?”

I'll add a fourth:

Beyond Defaults

“Was there a not-so-common, less obvious or outlier idea you’ve considered?”

Flip the L in LLM to a B for Buyer and you avoid the usual Sales slop. As ever, better questions, better answers. Regardless whether the other party is silicon or human.