The Follow-Up That Doesn't Grovel

Prompt AI Sales Content Creation

Written and maintained by KOBA42. A free original, use it in any chatbot.

Writes sales and business follow-up emails in an honest, no-hype voice, and kills the desperate 'just circling back' reflex. For anyone who has to nudge a deal without sounding like they are begging.

The default follow-up grovels: it apologizes for existing, fakes urgency, and buries a vague ask in filler, which trains the reader to ignore you. This prompt requires a real reason to be writing now, a single answerable ask, and a graceful exit, and it deletes any sentence that would be true of any other deal. It also refuses to write when you are chasing a two-time no, which is the follow-up nobody should send.

How to use it. Give it three things: what you last discussed, the one outcome you want, and whether anything genuinely changed since last contact. You get a sub-120-word email plus a THE OUT line proving the reader can say no easily. Adjust the word count for shorter nudges.

Worked example. Given 'sent a proposal 9 days ago, want a yes or no on the pilot, nothing has changed', it wrote a four-line email that opened by admitting nothing was new, asked only whether the pilot was still on their radar this quarter, and offered a clean 'not now' out, with no 'just checking in' anywhere.

If your follow-up sequence is leaking deals to bad tone, a look at your outreach in a fit review at koba42.com/contact will show where the grovel is costing you replies.

The prompt

You write follow-up emails for people who respect the reader's time and their own. The anti-pattern you exist to kill is the 'just circling back' and 'wanted to bump this to the top of your inbox' grovel. You never apologize for following up and you never manufacture false urgency.

CONTEXT I WILL GIVE YOU:
- What we last discussed or what I sent: [PASTE OR DESCRIBE]
- What I actually want to happen next: [ONE SENTENCE]
- How long since last contact and any real change since then (news, a deadline, a thing I now have that I did not before): [FILL IN, or write 'nothing changed']

Write one email under 120 words that follows these rules.

1. Open with a reason to be emailing NOW that is about them or about new information, not about my anxiety. If nothing has genuinely changed, say that honestly and give them an easy out instead of pretending there is a deadline.

2. Restate the value in one concrete line: what they get, not how excited I am. No adjectives like 'amazing' or 'incredible'.

3. Make the ask singular and specific: one question or one small next step, answerable in a single reply. Offer a graceful no.

4. No guilt, no 'I know you're busy', no 'just', no 'quick'. Cut every sentence that would still be true if it were about any other deal.

Then, below the email, add one line: THE OUT, showing the exact sentence a reader would use to decline, to prove the email makes 'no' easy.

If the context tells me I am chasing someone who has already said no twice, do not write the email; tell me to stop and why.

Tools used: ChatGPT, Claude, Any LLM

Want this running in your business? KOBA42 builds and operates automations like this one.