You’re already doing the work of three people.
One minute you’re closing a deal, the next you’re trying to turn messy call notes into a follow-up email that doesn’t sound too pushy, then you’re staring at a dashboard wondering how to explain what actually changed this week without spending 30 minutes writing it up for your team or small businesses you work with.
Figuring out AI is not high on your priority list, especially for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and teams at startups.
But here’s what nobody tells you: AI isn’t something you need to study. It’s just a faster way to handle the stuff that eats your time — writing, organizing, summarizing, and other repetitive tasks — so you can focus on the decisions that actually need you. These tools are powered by artificial intelligence, AI-powered systems, and large language models.
This post breaks down what AI prompts are, shows you three tasks you can use AI for right now, and shares a few simple habits that make it work for small and mid-sized businesses.
And if you’d rather skip the trial-and-error phase, we built the SMB AI Toolkit with ready-made prompts you can copy and paste today.
What we actually mean by “AI prompts”
A prompt is just the instructions you give an AI tool, like ChatGPT, Gemini, or other generative AI platforms. That’s it.
It’s not technical. It’s not code. It’s just telling the tool what you need in clear language.
Think of it like delegating to a really capable assistant. If you say “write an email,” you’ll get something pretty generic.
But if you say “write a three-paragraph follow-up to a prospect who liked our demo but went quiet — keep it casual, and give them one clear next step,” you’ll get something you can actually work with.
Prompts that actually generate usable results include a few key things:
- Who you are and what role you’re playing. Sales manager? Founder writing to your team? RevOps lead putting together an update? That context shapes the tone and structure.
- What you’re giving it to work with. Your notes from a sales call. A brain dump of how your process works. A spreadsheet snapshot. Whatever you’ve got, paste it in.
- What you want to turn that information into. A follow-up email. A bulleted summary. A one-page checklist. The more specific you are, the less cleanup you’ll do later.
You’re not asking AI to make decisions for you. You’re asking it to take the raw stuff you already have and shape it into something polished and complete.
Three everyday tasks you can turn into prompts
You don’t need to change how you work. Just pick something you’re already doing every week and see if AI can cut the time in half.
1. Sales follow-ups that don’t take up your entire afternoon
The call went well. You wrote down some notes. Now you owe a follow-up email, but you’re staring at a blank draft trying to figure out how to sound professional without writing a novel or coming across too pushy.
This is where many people waste time they don’t have.
Here’s the shortcut
Paste your notes into an AI tool like ChatGPT and ask it for a short recap with next steps. You’ll get a solid first draft in about 10 seconds. Then you personalize it and optimize it for your target audience and ideal customers. Add the one detail that makes it feel real, tweak the tone so it sounds like you, and done.
Recommended: The SMB AI toolkit has full follow-up and closing prompts built by real sales teams, so you’re not starting from scratch every time.
2. Turning “how we do this” into a process doc people can actually follow
Right now, your onboarding process exists in your head and maybe a Slack thread from six months ago. Your invoicing workflow is “you know, just do what we always do.” Customer handoffs are a forwarded email chain with no clear instructions.
It works fine until someone new joins the team, or you’re out sick, or you realize you’ve explained the same process to four different people this month.
The fix: brain dump the steps, it doesn’t matter if it’s messy, and ask the AI to turn it into a simple checklist or a one-page Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). You’ll get structure you can edit instead of a blank Google Doc you keep putting off.
3. Turn dashboards into simple updates your team can act on
Your CRM has all the numbers. Your spreadsheet has the data. What you don’t have is a clear summary you can share with your team without spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to say “pipeline’s up but close rates are slipping” in a way that doesn’t sound like panic.
Paste a snapshot of your data and ask AI for three to five bullets on what changed, what’s trending, and what’s worth watching. You get a starting point that’s way easier to clean up than writing it from scratch while toggling between tabs.
Recommended: RevOps teams do this every week. The SMB AI toolkit has the full prompt template if you want something reusable.
Simple habits that make prompts work better
You don’t need to become an AI expert. You just need a few habits that turn “this is kind of helpful” into “this just saved me an hour.”
- Start with one thing. Pick one workflow. One prompt. One task you do every week that takes longer than it should. Don’t try to automate your entire job on Tuesday. Test one thing, see if it works, then try the next.
- Give it context before you ask for output. This helps the AI tailor results to your target audience, demographics, and specific pain points. “I’m a sales manager writing a follow-up email to a prospect after a demo” gets you way better results than “write a follow-up email.” The more context you give up front, the less you’ll fix later.
- Be specific about what format you need. “Give me three bullets,” “keep it under 200 words,” “turn this into a numbered checklist.” The tighter your instructions, the closer AI gets to something you can use without heavy editing.
- Always edit the output. AI gets you 80% of the way there. You still need to add the details, adjust the tone, and make sure nothing’s wrong. Treat it like a first draft, not a final product.
- Don’t paste sensitive data into free tools. Customer names, pricing details, contract terms — if it’s confidential, use a secure AI tool or replace the real info with placeholders first.
The SMB AI Toolkit goes deeper on best practices and prompt structure, but if you just follow these five habits, you’ll get most of the value without overthinking it.
You don’t have to figure this out alone
Look, you could spend the next few weeks testing prompts and figuring out what works. Or you could use prompts that actual sales and ops leaders at growing businesses have already tested and refined.
We built the SMB AI Toolkit for exactly that reason. It’s got ready-to-use templates for follow-ups, process documentation, KPI summaries, contract work, and more — stuff you can copy, paste, and start using today.
No setup. No learning curve. Just prompts that work.