12 AI Chat Prompts for Sales Teams I'd Actually Copy-Paste (ChatGPT-Ready)

43% of sales pros use AI at work, according to HubSpot’s sales AI research, and 87% of AI users say incorporating AI into existing tools has increased their usage. So the tooling is no longer the bottleneck. The prompts are. Most reps I talk to open ChatGPT, type “write a cold email for my SaaS product,” paste the output into a sequence, and then wonder why nobody replies.

If you’re not using AI to automate and personalize your sales outreach, you’re already behind. But bad prompting is its own kind of behind, because it fills your sequences faster with copy that sounds like every other sequence in the inbox.

In this post, I’ll give you the 12 prompts I keep in a text file and actually copy-paste: campaign prompts, call prompts, subject line prompts, and LinkedIn prompts. Then I’ll show you how to run them against a full lead list instead of one prospect at a time, how to fire them off intent signals, and how to make them execute real actions instead of just generating text.

Key to useful prompts

When you’re working with a new tool, it’s natural to start simple and play around. I did. My first “write me a cold email” prompt produced something so generic I could have sent it to a dentist or a Series B CTO and it would have been equally useless to both.

Rich, specific prompts outperform vague ones. Here’s why: the model has no idea who you sell to, what your buyer complains about, or what your product actually does until you tell it. The more vivid and clear a picture you paint with your request, including context and expectations, the better your output will be. Give it a role. Give it a persona. Give it word counts and tone constraints. Give it the raw material (a bio, a post, a transcript) rather than asking it to imagine.

The prompts below are built that way. Swap everything in brackets for your own details, and don’t just copy-paste the brackets.

Prompts for building a sales campaign

#1 Personalize cold outreach

There are a few proven ways to warm up cold prospects: speaking to specific pain points, and using key tidbits about the prospect that show you’ve done your homework. This prompt helps use both.

Write a friendly, conversational introduction to [Tal Baker Philips, Sales Leader at lempire] that is no longer than 200 words. In the body, include 3 ways [Zapier] can help with [Simon]'s exact pain points, derived from the [prospect]'s LinkedIn bio [LinkedIn profile URL].

#2 Write a sequence of outreach emails in seconds

Giving AI context about your target audience or group of prospects can help create next-level outreach campaigns, not just single, one-off emails.

Imagine you’re a [BDR] who needs to write cold outreach emails targeting [Content Marketing Managers] in [HR SaaS companies] about your product, an [AI content editing service]. You want to offer a [custom demo] of your service to [Content Marketing Managers]. Write a [6-email outreach sequence] that explains how our solution works, the top 3 benefits of our solution for [Content Marketing pros], and offer a [custom demo] as the main CTA in all emails.

For example, using Chat by Copy.ai, you can draft the whole 6-email series from a prompt like the one above.

#3 Improve your CTAs (calls to action)

Sometimes you already have emails done and dusted but need help with that final CTA. Remember that the more information you feed AI, the more valuable the output.

Write 3 calls to action for the following outreach email. Ensure each CTA directs the recipient to take a specific action or next step. Use a friendly but assertive tone. Keep the writing concise and clear. Each CTA should be up to 5 words.

Outreach email: [Paste]

Prompts for making sales calls

#4 Beat the competition

AI thrives in moments when you just can’t figure out how to say what you need in a different way. (Double-check every fact it hands you, because the language in your prompt can nudge the output in strange directions.)

You are an experienced sales representative for [ClickUp]. You are looking to win over a project manager who previously used [Trello] for all their [project management] needs but hated that they couldn’t integrate with Google Drive, or customize their workspaces. Write a list of 5 talking points that would be helpful to convince the customer to move to [ClickUp].

#5 Battle common objections

By using both personal information and AI’s research capabilities, you’ll get talking points that soften prospects and close them at the same time. Public review sites are an underrated input here, since that’s where your prospect’s actual hesitations are already written down.

You’re a detail-oriented and customer-focused [sales rep] for [Lever, an applicant tracking system]. You’re about to get on a sales call with an [HR leader] whose BIO is pasted below. Use this information to create talking points for the call that overcome [4 common objectives] prospects have about [Lever], based on reviews found on G2.com.

BIO: [paste bio]

#6 Ask insightful questions

The key to getting important answers (mainly, “yes, we will sign up this month!”) is asking good questions, and AI is good at crafting those.

You’re a highly organized sales rep who’s been in the [technology] industry for 10 years. You studied customer psychology during your time at Harvard University. Using the customer data and product information shared below, create a 300-word sales script that asks insightful questions and highlights your product, [Sampler.io]. The goal of your questions should be to find out how to best sell your product.

DATA: [Paste data] PRODUCT: [Add your product’s description]

Feed real call data into your prompts

Role-play prompts are fine for practice. Your own calls are better. If you run your calls through in-app calling, you get AI transcription and a call summary for every conversation, which is the single best prompt input you own: real objections, in your prospect’s real words.

Below is the AI summary and transcript of a discovery call with the [VP of Sales at a 200-person logistics company]. List every objection they raised and quote the exact wording they used. For each one, write a response of max 2 sentences. Then tell me which objection I handled worst and why.

TRANSCRIPT: [paste]

Run that after five calls in a row and you’ll have an objection-handling doc that’s specific to your market rather than scraped from a generic playbook.

Prompts for writing cold email subject lines

Before the prompts, one blunt caveat. Subject line testing means nothing if the email lands in spam. A 60% open rate on the 30% of emails that reached a primary inbox is not a win. Get your Deliverability Hub sorted first, then optimize the words.

#7 Free offer

The best way to get something is to give something. That’s why this prompt may increase your open rate if you have something to offer. There’s a reason countdown timers are popular conversion techniques: people don’t want to miss out, especially on something free.

Imagine you’re a sales representative for [Mailchimp, an email marketing company,] that wants to win over a new customer in the [florist] category [by the end of the month]. You want to offer them [a free month to test out the premium account]. Write 5 subject lines that get the customer to open your email.

#8 Break the ice

Believe it or not, AI comes equipped with a small sense of humor. Sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed to break through the sales emails piling up in people’s inboxes. If it fits your brand voice, play with ideas that jar people out of the norm.

You are an account executive from a company that sells [bidets] called [TUSHY], and you’re trying to get the attention of the [CEO] of a [bathroom retailer] named Mike. Write 3 subject lines using the most catchy, effective copywriting techniques used by conversion copywriters that will make Mike laugh.

#9 Pain points

Sometimes you can prompt AI with extra information about prospects, like the quip below (which is also a customer pain point) about marketers not being great with numbers.

Write 5 options for a gripping subject line that introduces [Xero, an accounting software for small businesses], to a potential client, a [small marketing agency]. Make sure they’re human-sounding and valuable. Don’t sound pushy or salesy. Include a mention of [not being good with numbers, but with words].

Prompts for writing LinkedIn outreach messages

Almost nobody writes prompts for LinkedIn. Everyone writes prompts for email. That gap is your opening, because the same buyer who deletes your email will read a 70-word message about their own post. Pair these with LinkedIn prospecting steps inside your sequence so the message lands while the trigger is still fresh.

Two rules before you start. Keep it under 100 words, because LinkedIn truncates and nobody expands. And ask one question, not three.

#10 Talk about them

Who doesn’t love to talk about themselves and the topics that get them excited? This prompt gets you to the top of their inbox.

Write a short, upbeat message no longer than 100 words to [John Doe, Head of Growth Marketing at Beverage Co] about his most recent POST on LinkedIn. Make sure the first 7 words catch their attention. Use this post as a talking point to plug your [eCommerce business]. Sign off cheerfully and ask to schedule a call as the final CTA.

POST: [Paste the post from LinkedIn here.]

#11 New position

If you want to build rapport fast, use your prospect’s strategic career move. New in seat means new budget and new problems to be seen solving.

Write a short, 50-100 word message to [Graham, the content marketing manager] at [Benevity], congratulating them on their new position. Based on their profile summary, ask how your [Content Marketing Agency] can help in the new company, and list the top 3 ways [Content Marketing Agencies] can help in-house [content marketing managers] look great to their boss.

PROSPECT: [Paste linkedin URL.]

#12 Congratulate your prospect about a company win

A recent update is the perfect “in” to start a conversation with a warming prospect. You can showcase the features that map to that update, then turn those features into benefits for the person reading.

You’re an account executive at [Hubspot, a popular CRM] who is trying to win over the [Head of HR] at a big [talent agency]. Write an enthusiastic yet professional message congratulating the Head of HR on their [recent acquisition of a small group of companies], and offer the top 5 ways a CRM can help talent agencies, especially now that they’re growing their employee headcount.

Company update: [Paste here]

Prompts for acting on intent signals

Every prompt above assumes you already picked the account. That’s the weak link. A perfect message sent to someone with no reason to care is still a bad email.

So flip the order. Let the trigger choose the prospect, then let the prompt write the message off that trigger. Intent signals agents watch for hiring sprees, funding rounds, tech-stack changes and other buying moments, then push those accounts into your campaign. Your prompt’s job is to connect the signal to one problem you solve.

You’re an SDR at [lemlist, a multichannel outreach platform]. The account below triggered this signal: [posted 4 new SDR job openings in the last 14 days]. Write a LinkedIn message of max 70 words that references the signal in the first line, connects it to [ramping new reps to quota faster], and ends with one question about their current onboarding. No pitch. No exclamation marks.

ACCOUNT: [paste company name, headcount, industry, signal source]

Swap the bracketed signal for “raised a Series A”, “started hiring in a new country” or “just added Salesforce to their stack” and you have a prompt library organized by trigger instead of by channel. That’s the version I actually use.

Run these prompts as actions, not just text

Here’s the limit of everything above: ChatGPT gives you words. You still have to paste them somewhere, build the list, set the steps, and hit send. For one prospect that’s fine. For 400 it’s a second job.

lemlist MCP closes that loop by connecting your lemlist workspace to AI clients like Claude and ChatGPT, so the prompt becomes an instruction instead of a draft request. You ask for the sequence and the campaign gets created. You ask which leads replied and you get your actual pipeline, not a plausible-sounding guess.

If you’d rather stay in the product, lemAgent does the same thing from a chat box: describe the campaign you want and it builds the sequence, the steps and the copy for you.

AI applied to a broken process doesn’t fix it. It accelerates it. So decide what the prompt should trigger before you write a better prompt.

Scale one prompt across your whole lead list

These 12 prompts give you a serious leg-up on getting AI to produce exactly what you need, so you can build an automated base for your outreach and then do what you do best: close deals.

The last piece is scale. lemlist’s AI Variables feature lets you run a single prompt across every lead in your list, so you get next-level personalization without opening ChatGPT for each contact individually. The output lands neatly in a column of your leads list, ready to drop into a campaign.

You can generate icebreakers from your leads’ company information or hometown. You can generate CTAs based on their job title:

Create a compelling CTA that appeals to this person’s likely priorities and decision-making authority based on their {{position}}

AI Variables are limited only by your imagination. If you can picture it, they can probably produce it.

This kind of outreach rewards the creative types whose personalization ideas used to die on the scalability question. And if you’re not the creative type, there are plenty of prompt templates ready to set up personalization that used to be impossible.

Your AI sales edge

Copy the 12 prompts. Tighten them with your own ICP details, your own transcripts, your own triggers. Then connect them to something that actually sends, because a prompt library in a Google Doc has never booked a meeting.

lemlist is rated 4.6/5 on G2 from 2,000+ reviews, and sales leaders are betting on this: HubSpot reports that 69% of sales leaders say adopting AI is a competitive advantage and market differentiator, ranking it above efficiency gains.

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