A useful AI workflow for your first customer test

Use AI to prepare, organize, and improve the work. Keep your decisions grounded in sources you can inspect and people you have actually spoken with.

Give the assistant a useful brief

Start with your relevant experience, the buyer you are considering, the problem, the hours you can spend, and what you can realistically deliver. Ask the assistant to identify gaps before recommending an offer. A narrow brief gives it something to work with. Keep confidential client material and personal customer data out of the conversation unless you have permission and an appropriate setup.

Generate hypotheses you can investigate

Ask for three possible offers, each with a specific buyer, a problem, deliverables, assumptions, and a low-cost test. Treat the output as suggestions. Ask what would make each offer a poor fit. You are looking for useful options and questions, not a model’s certainty that your business will succeed.

Build a research table with traceable sources

If your tool can browse, ask it to find current alternatives and link to the original product pages. Inspect the sources yourself, especially prices, dates, and claims. Record a source, observation, and implication in separate columns. If browsing is unavailable, use sources you have collected. Do not ask the assistant to pretend it has interviewed customers or measured market demand.

Draft an interview guide

Ask for questions about recent behavior: the last time the problem occurred, the workaround, cost, urgency, and decision-maker. Review the questions for leading language. “How useful would my tool be?” encourages politeness. “What happened the last time you handled this?” encourages a concrete story. Use the guide flexibly; follow unexpected details when they matter.

Create one offer and its sales materials

Use what you learned to draft an offer brief, a short proposal or landing page, and a respectful outreach message. Ask AI to flag vague claims, missing scope, unsupported numbers, and promises beyond your control. Edit the words into your own voice. Make it clear what you deliver, when, and what the customer needs to contribute.

Review evidence before choosing the next task

After conversations, remove identifying details where appropriate and organize the notes. Ask AI to separate direct quotes, observations, and interpretations. Have it identify contradictory evidence as well as patterns. Then make the decision yourself. The useful output is a specific next test, not an ever-growing list of ideas. Save the offer, evidence, and decision together so you can return without starting over.