Leveraging AI Prompts to Solve Expensive Business Problems
Published on 24.12.2025
5 Prompts That Solve Expensive Business Problems
TLDR: The real value of AI in business isn't in hyped-up get-rich-quick schemes, but in quietly and efficiently solving expensive, time-consuming problems. By combining deep domain expertise with targeted AI prompts, professionals can automate grunt work, gain a massive efficiency advantage, and focus on high-value tasks.
Summary: The author cuts through the noise of the "AI Guru" industrial complex to deliver a dose of reality: the true competitive threat isn't the person selling a dream, but the quiet professional who is using AI to automate their work. An "efficiency gap" is emerging where experienced professionals are being outpaced by those who leverage AI to eliminate administrative debt. The article argues that the key is to combine irreplaceable human context and domain expertise with the raw power of AI. Instead of trying to dump an entire knowledge base into a single prompt, the author advocates for more nuanced strategies like Few-Shot Prompting combined with style guide constraints. As a prime example, the article tackles the notoriously time-consuming and expensive problem of responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Rather than manually copy-pasting answers, the proposed solution is to build an "Automated Bid Management" system. This involves creating a prompt strategy that uses a few high-quality examples of previous answers to guide the AI in filling out the majority of an RFP instantly, and in the correct brand voice. For architects and team leads, this is a powerful mental model. It shifts the focus from AI as a magical black box to AI as a force multiplier for existing expertise. The value isn't just in the prompt itself, but in designing a system and a workflow that allows AI to handle the repetitive tasks, freeing up experienced (and expensive) team members to focus on the strategic elements that actually win deals.
Key takeaways:
- The real business advantage of AI comes from solving expensive, time-consuming problems, not from get-rich-quick schemes.
- An "efficiency gap" is widening between those who manually perform administrative tasks and those who automate them with AI.
- Combining deep domain expertise with targeted AI prompts is the key to unlocking massive efficiency gains.
- For complex tasks like RFPs, use Few-Shot Prompting with style constraints rather than attempting to put all information in the context window.
- The goal is to build automated systems that handle the grunt work, allowing professionals to focus on high-value, strategic tasks.