Prompt engineering has gone from esoteric to essential for PMs.
5 skills you need to know to up your game:
1. Writing documents
2. Building tables
3. Understanding users
4. Analyzing competitors
5. Responding to email
Our tool of choice today is going to be Bing AI.
Unlike chatGPT, it's free.
But - it's different:
· You can't submit really long prompts. There's a character limit
· You can't continue the conversation after 10 back & forths
Bing prompt engineering is a skill of concision.
1. Writing documents
Generative AI can be your first draft's best friend.
It will put down all the basics for PRDs, vision docs, strategy docs, team charters, and memos.
It can save PM's time writing virtually everything important.
However, there's an art to getting its help.
Telling Bing to write a type of document - eg, "Strategy Doc" - will push it to a generic template.
Instead, YOU specify the key sections & details.
Here's my template:
"Write a document to add X feature to Y product for Z reasons. Include the following sections: A, B, C."
Tips:
· Use creative mode
· Ask it to 'Continue' if it stops
· Give it feedback to re-write sections
· In followups, ask for more data and supporting evidence
2. Building tables
Bing can build you a table with information really quickly.
It helps you "think" in 2x2s and multi-variable equations.
It's a great method for communication.
The problem with Bing and tables is many will fail if you ask for difficult information.
It will just say, 'Sorry.'
So one of my tricks is to focus on searchable info.
Try it yourself:
"Build me a table comparing X on A, B, and C."
Tips:
· Make X what it searches for
· Choose comparison variables it can easily find
· Ask for information it can search for and is available
· You just can't get too crazy asking it to calculate or think
3. Understanding users
Bing can help you quickly read through user research, especially if yours is a product people talk about online.
It's a good first pass on users before deeper research.
The trouble is getting it to give you quality versus surface-level.
Asking it to give you user quotes is one way to get to testimonials.
Here's my template. Try it yourself:
"Describe with user quotes the top reasons X"
Tips:
· Use follow-up prompts to ask for more quotes
· Consider building a table to get dimensionality
· Don't expect it to things that aren't easily searchable
4. Analyzing competitors
As a PM, it's hard to have time for every competitor move.
For certain one's, you want very specific information.
Bing chat is faster than Google search.
Like tables, the hard part is keeping Bing confident.
Otherwise, it returns 'Sorry, I couldn't find that.'
So specify things like pictures and user quotes.
Here's my template:
"Include pictures and user quotes to cover the top elements of X Company's Y move in Z time"
Tips:
· Use balanced mode
· The pictures currently land in the citations
· Use follow ups to dig into details you need
5. Responding to email
This last one is probably the most controversial.
But - Bing is great at delivering something to start with.
Let's say you have to draft say NO to a SaaS tool you talked with for a long time.
It's an email you want to nail but isn't rocket science.
The issue with Bing is when it starts getting too eloquent or making up facts you have to.
You need to constrain its thinking by providing it the facts you want incorporated.
Try it yourself:
"Draft an email response to X that Y because of Z."
Tips:
· Use precise mode
· Still put on a personal touch
· Specify as many details as you want
· Tell it where not to make things up
What did I miss?
I'm always looking to get better at prompt engineering.
Those who have 95 vs 90 / 100 skill will have a huge advantage.
If you liked this, you'll love my product growth newsletter.
I do the hard work - in this case, 10s of hours in Bing - so you can benefit: aakashgupta.substack.com/
To wrap up, Bing AI can help you as a PM reclaim time & focus.
It's a competitive advantage for PMs.
You can minimize time on low impact work to focus on high impact stuff like discovery & making good decisions.
Let it help you.