Hey there, savvy sales champs! Ever thought about having a secret weapon that boosts your sales game? Enter ChatGPT, your new best buddy in the sales world. It’s like having a Jedi master of conversation on your side, helping you charm clients, answer tricky questions, and close deals faster than you can say “commission.” Whether you’re a seasoned sales pro or just dipping your toes, this AI wizard is about to revolutionize how you hustle. Buckle up and get ready to unlock the magic of ChatGPT for your sales hustle!

Now, did that sound like me, Troy Harrison, the Sales Navigator?  Hell, no, it didn’t!  And if you use AI applications (whether ChatGPT or others) without any editing, it won’t sound like YOU either.  I purposely asked ChatGPT to write an intro for this article knowing that it would come up with something that was so transparently NOT me as to (hopefully) get your attention.  What we’re going to be talking about today is how to easily spot AI in blog posts, articles, and other written documentation – which, hopefully, will show you how to use AI correctly.

At current count, there are over 5,000 Generative AI applications competing for a growing AI user base.  “Generative AI” is the proper term for applications that accept a prompt from you and then generate some sort of written document as an output.  AI can write blog posts, articles, books, and even movie scripts (which is a big reason that the screen writers have been on strike – seems self-defeating to me, but I digress), and it’s easy to get started.  It can do this well or it can do it badly.  I hope we can agree that the opening paragraph of this article was “doing it badly,” but I bet you’ve seen a ton of posts on social media that looked pretty much like that.  AI is in its infancy, but at the moment, it has a number of verbal “tics” that are dead giveaways.  Let’s look at three of those now.

1. Over-the-top language: Don’t get me wrong, I like enthusiasm. I once had a client describe me as a “human exclamation point!”  But too much AI output can sound like the person is on the biggest sugar high ever. My opening paragraph is an example.  “Hey there, savvy sales warriors” is a phrase unlikely to ever be typed by human fingers.  When you see a post that is virtually screaming at you, it’s probably AI.Your Hack:  I asked ChatGPT to use “casual language” in my prompt for the intro, and that was the result.  If you don’t specify your wording, you’ll get an abundance of business buzzwords and language that sounds like a term paper for an MBA program.  If neither one of those extremes mirrors how you speak and write – and they probably don’t – you need to be specific in the language you want for an output.  “Don’t use buzzwords” is one of my favorite prompts, and sometimes I’ll paste in a couple of paragraphs of my own work as a writing sample and tell ChatGPT to mirror my verbal cadence.  Until you get really good at your initial prompts, don’t accept the first result you get.
2. Giveaway words and phrases: There are certain phrases that are dead giveaways.  “Say goodbye to X and say hello to Y” is a frequent one.  Or, “I hope this email finds you well.”  (That one sticks in my craw a bit, because I used to open a lot of emails with, “I hope you are doing well.”  AI took that one away from me.)  Words like “unleash,” “revolutionize,” and “unlock” are also common tics that give away a written product as AI-generated.Your Hack:  Sometimes, it’s enough to just accept a result with some buzzwords in it, and then rephrase it yourself into more direct and plain lingo.  Watch LinkedIn and Facebook ads, and you’ll see a ton of AI generated ads.  Read them and analyze them, and you’ll see other common verbal tics.  Then avoid them.
3. Intros and closes: ChatGPT uses very familiar patterns of introductions and closes to its output.  Again – you probably already know what they are.  Avoid these, especially the intro.  The first paragraph or even sentence tells the reader if they want to continue, and if your first paragraph sounds AI, many readers will bail out.  Hmmmm….I’m hoping that most of you knew what I was doing and made it past that crappy first paragraph!Your Hack:  Always write your own opening and closing to a written document.  ChatGPT is actually pretty good at writing the body of an article with bullet points and analysis, but is weaker at getting into the article.  Your solution is to use your own ideas and thoughts to open your posts, blogs, etc., and then allow ChatGPT to do some of the heavy lifting in the middle.  Remember – make sure that the language flows and sounds like you.  If you come off as inauthentic, people won’t read you, and they won’t buy from you.

The bottom line is this:  Anytime you want to use a Generative AI tool to make your communications more efficient – and you should – don’t look at it as the complete solution.  As my friend Chase Aucoin likes to say, “ChatGPT is the best intern you ever had.  It’s smart, it has 20 PhD’s, and it has no street smarts whatsoever.”  The first paragraph of this article was an example of the lack of street smarts of ChatGPT.  It’s also the only piece of this article written with ChatGPT – but when I asked ChatGPT to write an article explaining how to easily spot AI in written documents, something happened that has not happened to me before.

I got a blank response. Zilch.  Zip. Nada.  Seriously – I learned that ChatGPT cannot explain to you what the dead giveaways of ChatGPT are and how to easily spot AI! After I stopped laughing, I wrote this article.

Generative AI is a great tool and will make you more efficient – but it won’t replace you.  So don’t ask it to, and you’ll be fine.