EP142: Power Up Your Proposals: Master AI Prompts on This Week's Podcast!
What’s the secret to getting the most out of AI when crafting RFP proposals?
Is it about using AI to generate quick responses, or are there specific strategies to fine-tune the AI’s output for high-quality, customized proposals?
In this episode of The RFP Success Show, Lisa Rehurek dives into how to create effective AI prompts that will elevate your RFP responses. Lisa explains why the key to strong AI-generated content is in how you prompt it and shares tips on getting the best results by being specific, providing context, and asking for iterations.
She also breaks down the most common mistakes people make when working with AI, including being too vague or overloading the system with too much information. Tune in to learn how to craft prompts that transform your standard replies into winning proposals and ensure your content still feels personalized, not just automated.
Key Takeaways
Why AI prompts are crucial to RFP success
Better prompts lead to more accurate and relevant AI-generated content, helping you save time while producing high-quality responses.How to structure your AI prompts effectively
Specificity, providing context, and using examples are essential for tailoring AI outputs to your proposal needs.The importance of refining AI-generated content
Never copy and paste—always customize AI outputs to align with your client’s needs and your brand’s voice.Using AI for creativity and iteration
Ask AI for multiple versions of a response, which can spark new ideas and refine your strategy for winning proposals.Common pitfalls when using AI for proposals
Avoid vague prompts and overwhelming the AI with too much detail. Balance is key to getting the most out of the tool
Resources
The Role of Contracts in Successful Prime + Sub Partnerships on RFP Success EP036
How to Develop Your RFP Pricing Strategy on RFP Success EP081
Book a Call with the RFP Success Company
The RFP Success Book by Lisa Rehurek
RFP Success Show EP142 Transcription
Intro:
This is the RFP Success Show, the go-to podcast for RFP responding companies and professionals that are ready to ramp up their RFP win rates. Get ready for tools and resources, lessons learned by industry experts, and hot strategies to help your proposal stand out. Here's your host, bestselling author, speaker, and CEO of the RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek.
Lisa Rehurek:
Hello everybody and welcome back to the RFP Success Show. I'm Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of the RFP Success Company and your host for this and all upcoming episodes.
Today we're going to dive a little deeper into AI as a follow-up from the last episode. So we get asked the question a lot, "How do I get the most out of AI? How do we get the best proposal content? How can we make it easier to get that content?" The secret really is in the prompts that you use with artificial intelligence.
You've probably heard that a million times by now, if not just from me, but from everybody out there. The prompts are where the gold is because garbage in, garbage out. But don't worry, we're here to turn your inputs into gold. That's what we're talking about today.
Today we're going to dive deep into the art of crafting those really amazing AI prompts that are going to transform your standard replies into winning proposals.
As always, grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and let's get started.
First, I want to talk about why prompts are so crucial. Think of AI as a highly skilled assistant. Say you've hired an executive assistant, you need to train them, you need to give them instructions. The better your instructions, the better the output. If you provide vague, poorly structured prompts or bad communication to your live assistants, you're not going to get the output that you expect, want, or need.
The same thing goes with AI. If you're providing vague, unstructured prompts, not very specific, you're likely going to receive generic responses that don't make you stand out and that are not helping you. The great thing about AI is the better the prompt, the more specific you get, and the better you get at making those prompts, the better your output and the less editing and customization you need to do.
Let me make sure that I say this loud and clear: Do not ever just copy and paste that content out of AI into your proposal, wipe your hands, and move on. No, no, no, no, no! You've got to still customize that content and the evaluators can tell.
You still have to get your fingers in the pot. You still have to do some work there. But that AI tool is there to really help you eliminate a lot of the time you would waste having to write from scratch. You still have to put some skin in the game, so please make sure that you do that.
That's why those prompts are so crucial. The better the information in, the better the information out. I will tell you, just from personal experience, the more you do it, the more you work with it, the more creative you get, and the more you use the tips that I’m getting ready to give you, the better your output is going to be.
The better that bot learns your personality, style, and voice. We just get better at prompts. We get better. I love it. I go in and start playing around, getting super creative with the prompts, and then it’s like a little game to me. What else can I ask it? How can I get more specific? What if I change this question around? What if I ask it a really wild question and see what I get from there?
It becomes a bit of a game. There's so much creativity you can have there. The more you work with it, the better it gets at giving you what you need.
Now let’s break down the components of effective AI prompts. These are the key elements that I believe you need to consider when using AI to write your proposals.
Number one, you've got to be specific. When you're crafting those prompts, specificity is key. Instead of asking, "What should I include in my proposal?"—that’s pretty darn generic—try something like, "What are five key points or strategies I should highlight in my proposal for a government contract focused on renewable energy?"
You’ll probably want to get even more specific, but by being specific with those five key points and talking about renewable energy, you’re guiding the AI to produce a more relevant and focused piece of content that aligns with what you need in order to customize it for your proposal. Specificity is very important.
The next important thing is providing context. Don’t assume that the AI bot knows you, even if you've been using it for a year or two and it does get to know you. You still want to provide as much context as possible.
What do I mean by context? Include any background information that you might have about the project, the client, or specific requirements. For example, instead of simply asking for a project summary, you might say, "Given that this project aims to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency, can you draft a summary that emphasizes our experience or authority in these areas?"
When you're responding to an RFP, you want to show authority, thought leadership, and AI can help you understand how to inject that into your response. Anytime you add additional context, it allows the AI bot to tailor its output to your unique situation, making it much more valuable.
When I’m doing this, I almost always—about 70 percent of the time—start with a prompt like, "Act as if you are an expert in RFP responses. You are someone who has worked in these industries, and you understand what it takes to win." I pile on a whole bunch of that context before I even ask the question because I really want it to understand the output that I want. The more specific and contextual you are, the better that output is. It prevents you from having to overhaul the content—you’ll just make some customized tweaks based on your knowledge of your client.
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The third component is using examples. When possible, provide examples of what you're looking for. If you want a particular tone or style, share a sample paragraph that captures that essence. For example, you could say, "Please draft a project summary that mimics the tone of this example, which is professional yet approachable." You're training the bot to understand your voice or brand voice.
If you're a solopreneur, it might be your voice, but if you're a business, you really need it to match your brand voice. You can give it examples like, "This paragraph perfectly encapsulates our brand voice. Please use that in all upcoming questions I ask you for the rest of the day."
These examples serve as a reference point for the bot, helping it understand your expectations better.
It’s so exciting! Recently, I’ve been using AI for some launch emails we’re doing. The first pass was okay—it got everything in there—but then I went back and said, "Okay, we need more personality." If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I’m always saying, "Please inject some personality into your proposal responses."
Be careful because AI might get carried away with that, but ask it to inject personality in your brand voice, so it feels conversational, not so technical, stuffy, or buttoned-up. That is brutal on the evaluators, by the way.
Number four is asking for iterations. Don’t hesitate to ask for multiple versions or iterations of a response. For example, when I asked AI to create 15 emails based on the information I gave, I needed more personality after the first pass. So I did another iteration. I think I did four or five iterations for some of those emails.
So you might prompt the AI with, "Can you provide three different approaches to outline our project timeline?" You can ask it right upfront for different iterations or, "Okay, you know one of the emails I was looking for some examples, and I gave it kind of some high-level information on examples from us." Then, I gave an example, and I just immediately said, "Please provide two more." So, you can ask for additional iterations. This not only gives you options when you go to kind of combine those together or customize it, but it also can spark new ideas that you hadn't considered, which happens to me all the time when I'm using AI. It's so fun. It's so fun.
Now we've really covered the elements of effective prompts. Just to recap: be specific, provide context, use examples, and ask for iterations.
We've covered those elements, so I want to discuss some practical examples. Imagine that you're responding to an RFP for a healthcare technology solution. Instead of saying, very generically, "Write about our technology," which hopefully none of you are doing (that's a pretty extreme example), you could use a prompt like, "Describe how our telehealth platform improves patient outcomes and reduces costs, focusing on specific case studies from the past year."
The prompt is specific, provides context, and asks for concrete examples, leading to a much stronger output. Another thing you might want to follow up with or include at the end of that is, "Ask me questions for any clarification you might need." Sometimes, it comes back and asks you questions.
Another example could be when addressing potential challenges. Instead of asking, "What challenges might we face?" (which, by the way, is a great question), you don’t always have to use AI just for the question they're asking. But, again, how do I inject more authority here? What are some authority examples that I could use?
What comes to mind for me is that, a lot of times, some of these highly technical proposals will ask for a work plan, and it's pretty generic. The work plan stuff is pretty generic, but there's so much you can do in that part of your proposal to stand out and really make you look better than your competitors. Everybody kind of puts that generic spin to it, but you can ask something like, "What are some of the challenges generally faced in traditional work plan layouts or work plan processes?" Then, you can weave that in, saying, "Here are some of the challenges we've seen some of our competitors face or that we experienced in our early days, and here’s how we mitigate them."
Instead of just saying, "What challenges might we face?" you could consider a prompt like, "Identify three potential challenges we may encounter in implementing this project and suggest strategies to mitigate them." That approach not only anticipates the issues but also demonstrates proactive thinking to the evaluators, which they love, love, love. That will build trust in a big way.
As we discuss these different examples, it's important to remember that AI is a tool to assist you, not replace your expertise. I've already said it two or three times, but I want to hammer this home: your insights, creativity, and understanding of the client's needs are irreplaceable. You want to use AI to enhance your work, but always review, refine, and customize that output to ensure it aligns with the client's needs and objectives.
I'd be remiss if we didn’t talk about some of the common pitfalls to avoid when crafting your prompts.
Number one: being too vague. As mentioned earlier, vague prompts yield vague responses. You want to strive for clarity and detail. If you give it vague, you're going to get fluff coming out, and fluff is no good. Nobody wants fluff.
The second common pitfall is overloading it with information. While context is important, too much information can overwhelm the AI. You want to aim for a balance—providing essential context without overwhelming the system. That means breaking it up. You don’t have to get it all in one fell swoop. You can ask the bot different things to build up to what you need. Focus on the key elements that matter most in your proposal.
Number three is ignoring feedback. After receiving AI-generated content, do not skip the review process. Always evaluate it critically. Ask yourself if it meets your objectives, aligns with your brand voice, aligns with what the client needs, and how your solution would be helping them. If it doesn’t, refine your prompt and try again. Try, try again. Feedback is a crucial part of the learning process—for both you and the bot. The more you interact with the bot, the better you'll become at refining prompts, and the better the bot will become at understanding you and delivering the output you're looking for.
Now, let’s wrap up with some actionable tips to get you started on crafting amazing AI prompts for your next RFP response. Depending on where you are:
Number one is: just start simple. Some of you might have a lot of experience with this already, but if you're just getting started or need to reset, start simple. Begin with straightforward prompts, and as you become more comfortable, gradually incorporate more complexity, detail, and specificity. You'll learn it pretty quickly if you play around with it.
Number two is: experiment. Don’t be afraid to try different phrasing, structures, and prompts. We all have our own way of approaching things, and sometimes I have to look at it and say, "Okay, Lisa, how can you completely ask this question in a different way?" My team and I will each put something out there and get completely different responses back. That just shows how different people or different phrasing can lead to different outcomes. If you're afraid of AI, this is a great way to play with it. Just play, experiment, and explore different angles so you get comfortable with it.
We’ve talked about using the iterative process to refine your prompts. Analyze the responses you receive, adjust your inputs, and keep improving.
If you're part of a team, involve others in the prompt crafting process. If you've got a proposal team, you should be having these conversations together and coming up with prompts that work for the team. What you don’t want is individual voices coming out instead of the brand voice. Different perspectives can lead to more robust and diverse responses, but also be careful not to water down your brand voice.
As we conclude today’s episode, remember that the way you communicate with AI can significantly impact your proposal's success. By mastering the art of crafting prompts, you can transform standard replies into compelling and winning proposals—exactly what we want for you.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of the RFP Success Show. If you found today’s discussion valuable, please share it with your colleagues and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more professionals looking to enhance their RFP strategies.
Until next time, keep refining your approach and leveraging AI to supercharge your submissions. Cheers to your success!
Outro:
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