You Are My Expert In ...
AI Bot whisperers gone quiet, hey.
When helping salespeople with a touch of guidance around ChatGPT and its ilk, I've noticed one starting point which, once overlooked, then becomes a staple of their subsequent queries.
It's how you start your question.
In fact, you begin with a statement.
As in the title of this blog.
Less a life-changer, more a tweak to uncover what you want, hitherto shielded from view, and quicker too.
A small element of the until perhaps recently vaunted prompt engineer toolkit wizardry.
Yet one which may well help rebalance the problems of dealing with what have been dismissively labelled as the "stochastic parrot" with mythical "zero-shot learning" in its "high-stakes game of word Tetris".
I just noted a screenshot conversation (on saving advice it looked like) with the following two samples;
"You are my personal money mentor" &
"You are my financial advisor"
I recall a while back kicking a salesperson's thought process off with beginning instruction;
"You are Professor of ..."
Telling your chatbot of choice to be an expert in something does apparently confer 'better' response. Teeing up a flow more likely to get to what will truly aid.
In our realm, the position feels overwhelmingly one from our selling point of view. Yet adapting this tactic, you can move yourself across the table. Try to see things from your prospect's angle. Always a winner.
Inform your AI helper that they are in your prospect's shoes. With experience you'll know how they tend to think and act as a group of people typically buying from you. Yet you could allow your empathy to reach new levels of comfort. For but one example, deliberately labouring the point;
"You are an expert in procurement. You have done a PhD on purchasing models. You have many years experience of co-ordinating finance, operations and commercial functions to select investment decisions. How would you go about assessing - giving your reasoning and citing frameworks - the following proposal from a potential vendor..."