Most people who are disappointed with AI results gave the AI a vague request. That’s not a knock — writing a good brief is a skill, and it’s not obvious until someone shows you the difference.
Vague vs. Specific
Here’s a vague brief: “Write an email to follow up with a prospect.”
Here’s a specific brief: “Write a follow-up email to a prospect who attended a discovery call last Tuesday. They run a 12-person HVAC company in San Diego. They said they were interested but needed to talk to their business partner first. The tone should be warm and low-pressure. Keep it under 150 words. End with a soft call to action to schedule a 20-minute follow-up call.”
Same task. Completely different outputs. The specific brief gets you something you can send. The vague brief gets you something you need to rewrite from scratch.
The Brief Formula
A good brief has four parts:
- Context: Who is this for? What’s the situation?
- Task: What exactly do you want the AI to produce?
- Constraints: Length, tone, format, things to avoid?
- Goal: What should the output accomplish?
You don’t need all four for every task, but the more you include, the less you’ll need to revise.
Start With Examples
If you have a past version you liked — an email, a proposal, a client summary — paste it in. Tell the AI: “Here’s one I’ve written before that worked well. Write something similar for this situation.” Examples are worth a hundred instructions.
This is the kind of practical setup work we do when deploying AI for a business. Reach out if you want to see it in action.
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