{"course":{"slug":"ai-for-small-business","title":"AI for a Small Business","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"listings-quotes-proposals","title":"Listings, Menus, Quotes and Proposals","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/listings-quotes-proposals","position":39,"of":88,"minutes":8,"answer":"The model writes the sentences; every number, date and promise has to come from you.","keyIdea":"The model writes the sentences; every number, date and promise has to come from you."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Nobody wants a description of a chair\n\nAsk for \"a product description for a wooden chair\" and you get warm, weightless prose about craftsmanship and timeless design. It could be any chair. It sells nothing.\n\nThe input is the problem. Give it the things only you know:\n\n```\nOak dining chair. Solid oak, not veneer. 46cm seat height.\nMade in our workshop in Coimbatore, 3 days each.\nStacks — most solid chairs don't.\nFor small flats. ₹7,400.\nWho should NOT buy: anyone over about 95kg — the back joint\nis glued, not bolted, and we've had two go.\n\nWrite 80 words for our website. Plain, no marketing language.\nUse the stacking and the weight limit. No adjectives you\ncan't back up.\n```\n\nThat last honest line is what makes the copy readable. The generated smell in product text is mostly the absence of anything specific enough to be checked.\n\n## Every number stays yours\n\nA model will produce a delivery time, a warranty period, a lead time or a discount as easily as it produces an adjective. It has no idea that your supplier is three weeks out.\n\nSo add one pass. After the draft, read it for numbers and promises only: ignore the prose entirely. Every figure, date, percentage and guarantee must trace back to something you wrote in the input. Anything that appeared from nowhere gets deleted, not corrected.\n\nThis pass takes 30 seconds. It is the difference between a tool that saves you an hour and a tool that gives away a warranty you do not offer.\n\n## Doing sixty at once\n\nA menu, a catalogue, a stock list. The move is not to ask for sixty descriptions.\n\nWrite five yourself. Properly, in your voice, with real detail. Then paste those five in and ask for the rest in that pattern, feeding the raw facts for each item.\n\nExamples beat instructions. Five real ones teach it your rhythm, your sentence length, your habit of leading with the material, none of which you could have described in adjectives. This is the single highest-leverage technique in the course and it works for emails, captions and quotes too.\n\nOne marketplace note. Amazon, Etsy, Jumia and Mercado Libre do not ban AI-written listings, but listings that all sound alike compete badly, and shoppers skim past filler. Your specifics are the defence.\n\n## Quotes and proposals: use it for the boring half\n\nThe temptation is to have it write the whole quote. Resist, for a specific reason: the two parts that matter are the price and the promises, and those are exactly the parts it cannot know.\n\nWhat it is good at:\n\n- Turning your rough notes into a scope section a client can read.\n- The standard paragraphs (how you work, what you need from them, payment terms) pulled from your own previous quotes.\n- Structure and completeness, so you stop forgetting the access requirements.\n\nWhat is often worth more than the prose: asking it what to exclude.\n\n```\nHere's the scope. Based on jobs like this, list 10 things\nI should explicitly exclude or state as an assumption,\nso there's no argument in week six.\n```\n\nYou will recognise eight of them from arguments you have already had, and one you had not thought of. A twelve-line exclusions list is the cheapest insurance in a service business.\n\nSet the price yourself. Every time. It does not know your labour cost, your local market, how badly you need the work this month, or that this client pays late.\n\n## Two rules to keep\n\n**Never send a quote you have not read line by line.** A proposal is an offer. In many places, once accepted, it binds you.\n\n**Keep your own templates.** Working from your last good proposal beats starting from nothing, every time, and it keeps your terms consistent across a year of quotes."},"check":{"question":"A carpentry workshop is quoting a kitchen fit-out from rough site notes. Which use of AI is sound?","options":[{"text":"It drafts the scope, the assumptions and the exclusions; the owner sets every price and every date","correct":true},{"text":"It estimates the price from comparable jobs, and the owner adjusts up or down","correct":false,"tempting":"It will produce a confident figure, but it has no access to your timber costs, your labour rate or what your town pays."},{"text":"The owner supplies the price and lets it write everything else, including the installation timeline","correct":false,"tempting":"A timeline reads like prose, but a delivery date is a promise, and an invented one becomes your problem in week six."},{"text":"It writes the full quote and the owner reads it once to check the tone sounds like the workshop","correct":false,"tempting":"A tone read catches awkward sentences, which is precisely the pass that lets a wrong number through untouched."}]},"prev":{"slug":"measuring-service-not-speed","title":"Did the customer actually get better service?","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/measuring-service-not-speed"},"next":{"slug":"marketing-that-sounds-like-you","title":"Posts That Do Not Sound Generated","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/marketing-that-sounds-like-you"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Listings, Menus, Quotes and Proposals', in AI for a Small Business. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-small-business/listings-quotes-proposals (Accessed: 31 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Listings, Menus, Quotes and Proposals","courseTitle":"AI for a Small Business","module":{"index":5,"slug":"selling-and-being-found","title":"Selling: listings, images, marketing and price"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"The model writes the sentences; every number, date and promise has to come from you.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"nobody-wants-a-description-of-a-chair","runs":[{"text":"Nobody wants a description of a chair"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Ask for “a product description for a wooden chair” and you get warm, weightless prose about craftsmanship and timeless design. It could be any chair. It sells nothing."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The input is the problem. Give it the things only you know:"}]},{"t":"code","lang":"","label":"Text","text":"Oak dining chair. Solid oak, not veneer. 46cm seat height.\nMade in our workshop in Coimbatore, 3 days each.\nStacks — most solid chairs don't.\nFor small flats. ₹7,400.\nWho should NOT buy: anyone over about 95kg — the back joint\nis glued, not bolted, and we've had two go.\n\nWrite 80 words for our website. Plain, no marketing language.\nUse the stacking and the weight limit. No adjectives you\ncan't back up."},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"That last honest line is what makes the copy readable. The generated smell in product text is mostly the absence of anything specific enough to be checked."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"every-number-stays-yours","runs":[{"text":"Every number stays yours"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A model will produce a delivery time, a warranty period, a lead time or a discount as easily as it produces an adjective. It has no idea that your supplier is three weeks out."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"So add one pass. After the draft, read it for numbers and promises only: ignore the prose entirely. Every figure, date, percentage and guarantee must trace back to something you wrote in the input. Anything that appeared from nowhere gets deleted, not corrected."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"This pass takes 30 seconds. It is the difference between a tool that saves you an hour and a tool that gives away a warranty you do not offer."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"doing-sixty-at-once","runs":[{"text":"Doing sixty at once"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A menu, a catalogue, a stock list. The move is not to ask for sixty descriptions."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Write five yourself. Properly, in your voice, with real detail. Then paste those five in and ask for the rest in that pattern, feeding the raw facts for each item."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Examples beat instructions. Five real ones teach it your rhythm, your sentence length, your habit of leading with the material, none of which you could have described in adjectives. This is the single highest-leverage technique in the course and it works for emails, captions and quotes too."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"One marketplace note. Amazon, Etsy, Jumia and Mercado Libre do not ban AI-written listings, but listings that all sound alike compete badly, and shoppers skim past filler. Your specifics are the defence."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"quotes-and-proposals-use-it-for-the-boring-half","runs":[{"text":"Quotes and proposals: use it for the boring half"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The temptation is to have it write the whole quote. Resist, for a specific reason: the two parts that matter are the price and the promises, and those are exactly the parts it cannot know."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"What it is good at:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Turning your rough notes into a scope section a client can read."}],[{"text":"The standard paragraphs (how you work, what you need from them, payment terms) pulled from your own previous quotes."}],[{"text":"Structure and completeness, so you stop forgetting the access requirements."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"What is often worth more than the prose: asking it what to exclude."}]},{"t":"code","lang":"","label":"Text","text":"Here's the scope. Based on jobs like this, list 10 things\nI should explicitly exclude or state as an assumption,\nso there's no argument in week six."},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"You will recognise eight of them from arguments you have already had, and one you had not thought of. A twelve-line exclusions list is the cheapest insurance in a service business."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Set the price yourself. Every time. It does not know your labour cost, your local market, how badly you need the work this month, or that this client pays late."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"two-rules-to-keep","runs":[{"text":"Two rules to keep"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Never send a quote you have not read line by line.","b":true},{"text":" A proposal is an offer. In many places, once accepted, it binds you."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Keep your own templates.","b":true},{"text":" Working from your last good proposal beats starting from nothing, every time, and it keeps your terms consistent across a year of quotes."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A carpentry workshop is quoting a kitchen fit-out from rough site notes. Which use of AI is sound?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"It drafts the scope, the assumptions and the exclusions; the owner sets every price and every date"}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"It estimates the price from comparable jobs, and the owner adjusts up or down"}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"It will produce a confident figure, but it has no access to your timber costs, your labour rate or what your town pays."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The owner supplies the price and lets it write everything else, including the installation timeline"}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"A timeline reads like prose, but a delivery date is a promise, and an invented one becomes your problem in week six."}]},{"text":[{"text":"It writes the full quote and the owner reads it once to check the tone sounds like the workshop"}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"A tone read catches awkward sentences, which is precisely the pass that lets a wrong number through untouched."}]}],"order":[2,1,3,0],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"measuring-service-not-speed","title":"Did the customer actually get better service?","minutes":8},"next":{"slug":"marketing-that-sounds-like-you","title":"Posts That Do Not Sound Generated","minutes":7}}}