What this is, and what it isn’t

A lot of the cold email I get now reads like a model wrote it. You can usually tell by the second line. It opens with “I hope this finds you well” or a compliment about a LinkedIn post, then offers to streamline something. I delete those. So do the buyers I sell to.

I use AI every working day, so this isn’t a newsletter telling you to stop. The reading it does for me saves real time. The writing it does for me mostly gets thrown away. Most of the advice I see treats those as the same job, and they aren’t.

That gap is what this newsletter is about.

What each issue covers

Each issue takes one step. The early ones cover the basics: how to write a prompt that gets a usable answer, how to give a model context about who you sell to, and how to check what it tells you. Later issues build on those into larger projects you can run every week.

Every issue gives you the prompt I use and the draft it produced, then the version I’d actually send, with the reason for each change.

Some issues are rewrites, where I take an AI draft and edit it line by line. Some are field notes, for when a tool changes in a way that matters to people who sell for a living.

What it won’t cover

Lists of 50 tools. Productivity hacks. Predictions about which jobs AI will replace. Anything I haven’t tried on real prospects.

I work in B2B tech sales, selling software services, so my examples come from that world. Names and details are changed. If you sell something else, the prompts still work. You’ll need your own facts.

A prompt to start with

Every issue includes a prompt you can copy. This is the editing pass I run on AI drafts before I start on them myself. Paste it into your chat, then paste your draft underneath.

Edit the draft below. Follow these rules:

1. Cut any sentence that would still make sense in an email to a different company.
2. Remove these words: delve, crucial, robust, seamless, leverage, streamline, enhance, unlock, empower, pivotal, vital.
3. Remove every dash. Use a full stop or a comma instead.
4. Rewrite any "Not only X, but also Y" as two plain sentences.
5. Keep it under 75 words.
6. Do not add facts. Where a sentence needs a fact you don't have, write [NEED FACT].
7. Return the edited draft only. No commentary.

Draft:

Rule 6 does most of the work. Every [NEED FACT] it leaves behind is a gap in your research, and that’s where the email gets specific. The prompt won’t fill those gaps for you. Finding the fact is the actual job.

If you have a prompt you’d like me to take apart, reply to this email or send it to me on LinkedIn.