Why You Get Average Answers

"Help me get more customers."

Type that and you get page one of Google, which is ten polite, sensible tips that could have been written for anyone. Plenty of people close the tab at that point and decide AI isn't for them.

AI probably is for them, but one line in gets you the one answer that's safe for everyone, which is the average one.

The AI has read more about getting customers than anyone alive, but the AI has no idea who you are. For all it knows, you're a plumber in Solihull or the founder of a software company. You might run a cake business from your kitchen, or you might have already tried everything on that list.

With nothing else to go on, the AI picks an answer that's wrong for none of them, which makes the answer right for none of them. Give the AI information and that caution turns useful.

Brief the AI the way you'd brief someone you'd hired that morning. There's no magic phrase and no special method, only three sentences in this order, with a fourth when the job is bigger than a message.

1. Where you are. Who you are, what's going on and what you've already tried. "I run a mobile dog-grooming business in Solihull, mostly word of mouth, and I've got two quiet days a week I want to fill."
2. What you want done, and what it's for. The task, with its reason attached. "Draft a message I can send to the three local vets asking if they'd take my cards. That's where my best customers come from."
3. What good looks like. Length, tone, format and what to leave out. For example, "Short, friendly, not salesy, and don't mention discounts."
4. Ask me first. "Before you start, ask me the three questions that would most change your answer."

Here are the first three, together.

I run a mobile dog-grooming business in Solihull, mostly word of mouth, with two quiet days a week I want to fill. Draft a message I can send to the three local vets asking if they'd keep my cards on the counter. Referrals from vets are my best customers. Short, friendly, not salesy, no discounts.

Set the reply next to the ten tips, and you'll see the same tool with a different brief.

Why the fourth matters most

The fourth sentence is the single most useful habit I've got. (A prompt is what you type to the AI.) It's tempting to put everything in at the start, but you can't know what you've left out. The AI knows what it would need to know.

Let the AI ask, the way a good new starter would. You'll get questions like "Are the quiet days fixed, or could you move them?" "Have you asked the vets before?"

Answer them, and the result fits your situation instead of a reasonable guess at it. The thinking stays with you, too, because you can stop the conversation at any point and say "no, that's not it".

When the job is big enough, the fourth sentence grows into a whole method, so let the AI interview you.

What you can skip

"Act as a world-class marketing expert with 20 years' experience" feels like a cheat code. But when researchers tested 162 roles on 2,410 factual questions, the roles didn't make AI more accurate overall. A role can change the tone, and three sentences of your own do what the costume was pretending to do.

Skip prompt packs (bundles of ready-made prompts) and "secret codes". A hundred saved prompts are a hundred answers to someone else's situation, and one honest brief beats all of them.

Please and thank you are fine. They don't reliably change the answer, but they're free, and you'd say them to a person anyway.

The long essay can go too, because three good sentences beat three paragraphs that bury the point. If you find yourself writing a lot, stop and use the fourth sentence instead.

A good brief gets you a good draft. But the AI still makes things up and still flatters, and you're still the one who checks its work. If you can't write the three sentences at all, take note, because that usually means you don't yet know what you want.

No prompt fixes that, so go for a walk, and come back when you can say what the situation is.

AI has read more about winning customers than anyone alive. You know which customers, and what you'd never say to them.