AI Instructions · brief your AI SDR in plain English
Steer your AI SDR in plain English
Write a short brief for each campaign the way you'd brief a new rep, and your AI follows it on every email, every follow-up. Set the tone, the offer, who to target, and the rules it must never break, no prompt engineering, no rigid templates. Change a line and the whole campaign adapts on the next send.
- Brief it in plain English, no prompt tricks or template syntax
- Set tone, offer, targeting, and guardrails per campaign
- The AI applies your instructions to every email and follow-up
- Update anytime and the campaign adapts on the next send
$1 for 3 days · Cancel anytime · No prompt engineering required
The Control Gap
Most AI cold email gives you a black box and hopes you like the output
You know your buyer, your offer, and the exact lines that work, but most AI tools won't let you say so in your own words. You're stuck wrestling prompt fields, rebuilding templates, or just hoping the model guesses right. AI Instructions hands the steering wheel back to you, in plain English, so the AI writes what you'd write and never the thing you told it to avoid.
Rigid Templates Can't Bend to Your Pitch
Template builders force your message into someone else's structure. The moment your offer is unusual or your angle is specific, you're fighting merge tags and fixed blocks instead of just saying what you want. The output reads like a template because it is one, and prospects can tell. Worse, every new audience means rebuilding the whole thing from scratch.
Prompt Hacking Isn't Your Job
Raw LLM tools quietly make you a part-time prompt engineer, tuning system messages and re-running the same generation until it finally sounds right. One vague instruction and it overpromises, drops your offer, or mentions price when you told it not to. You shouldn't need a prompt cheat sheet, a temperature setting, or three retries just to send one good email.
You Brief It Like a Human Rep, It Just Listens
With AI Instructions you write a plain-English brief once per campaign: the tone, the offer, who you're targeting, and the do's and don'ts. The AI applies it to every first email and every follow-up, on every prospect, exactly the way a good rep would after a five-minute briefing. There's nothing to engineer and nothing to rebuild. The thing that was always missing wasn't smarter copy, it was control you can actually use.
From Brief to Live Campaign
Plain-English control, applied in one brief
There's no prompt syntax to learn and no template to rebuild. Open the AI Instructions tab, write what you want in your own words, and the AI carries it through every email it sends, then refine it whenever you like.
Tell it what you want, in plain English
Open the AI Instructions tab in the campaign builder and write a short brief the way you'd brief a new rep. "Be casual, lead with the ROI stat, never mention price in email one, always reference their funding round." No prompt engineering, no template fields to map, no syntax to memorize, just your words. Make it one line or a full paragraph, the AI reads it the way a teammate would.
Your words, not prompt syntax Write it like a Slack message, the AI understands intent.
Set tone, offer, and angle Casual or formal, what to lead with, what to emphasize.
Add the rules it must obey Spell out your do's and don'ts in one short brief.
It follows your brief on every send
Your instructions become the standing rules for the whole campaign. The AI writes each first email and follow-up to match the tone you set, lead with what you chose, push the right offer, and stay inside the guardrails, on every prospect, automatically. It still personalizes each message from research and your knowledge base, but always within the brief you wrote, so email five sounds like the same rep who sent email one.
Applied campaign-wide Every email and follow-up inherits the same brief.
Consistent across the sequence Email one and email five sound like the same rep.
Guardrails enforced every time Your never-do rules hold on every single send.
Change a line, the campaign adapts
Want a softer tone, a new offer, or a fresh do-not rule? Edit your instructions and the change flows into the next emails the AI sends, no rebuild, no re-prompting, no starting the campaign over. Tune the wording as you learn what's landing with your buyers, and the AI keeps every other rule exactly where you left it.
Edit in seconds Update the brief, save, and you're done, no rebuild.
Adapts on the next send New instructions apply going forward across the campaign.
Tune as you learn Sharpen tone and offer once you see what replies.
Proof, Not Promises
Founders and SDRs who put the AI on their own rails
Teams use FirstSales to run outreach that sounds exactly like them, because they brief the AI in plain English instead of fighting templates and prompts.
If you are looking to fix your sales pipeline, you should definitely try. @iuditg is the OG in cold emailing, and the product they have built- is futuristic and screams a deep understanding of email marketing. + My open rate has increased drastically, + The UI and UX are easy to understand, even for a beginner like me.
WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL
Plain-English control over your whole campaign.
A good rep listens to your brief and runs with it. AI Instructions does the same: you set the tone, the offer, the target, and the rules in plain English, and the AI obeys them on every email it writes.
Set the voice and the offer, no prompt engineering
Describe how you want the email to sound and what it should lead with, in your own words. Casual and warm or sharp and direct, ROI stat up top or a quick personal hook, short and punchy or a touch more detail, the AI writes to match, without you touching a single template field or prompt setting. You set the intent; it handles the wording for every prospect.
Tone in your words "Be casual" or "keep it formal", the AI adjusts.
Lead with what matters Tell it your hook or stat and it opens with that.
Frame the offer your way Position the pitch exactly how you'd pitch it yourself.
Set the rules the AI must never break
Add the do's and don'ts that protect your brand and your deal. "Never mention price in email one," "don't overpromise or use hype words," "always reference their company by name," "never claim we integrate with tools we don't." The AI treats these as hard rules, not suggestions, and applies them to every message in the campaign, so a careless line never slips out under your name.
Hard do-not rules Off-limits topics and claims stay off-limits, every send.
Must-do requirements Always-include lines and references the AI won't skip.
Stays on-brand Your voice and limits hold across the whole sequence.
Different instructions for every campaign, live
Each campaign gets its own brief, so your enterprise play and your startup play can sound nothing alike and chase completely different buyers at the same time. Edit the instructions whenever you want and the change flows into the next emails the AI sends, no rebuild and no re-prompting required, while your other campaigns keep running untouched.
One brief per campaign Tailor tone and offer to each audience independently.
Update without rebuilding Change a line and the AI adapts going forward.
Targeting in plain English Tell it who you're after and it angles every email to fit.
Plain-English instructions vs the old way
Fighting templates and prompts vs briefing your AI in plain English
Same goal, cold emails that sound like you and follow your rules, reached two very different ways. Here's what changes when you simply tell the AI what you want instead of wrestling the tooling into shape.
- Rebuild a template for every angle
- New offer or audience means new merge tags and fixed blocks to wrangle.
- Learn prompt syntax to get it right
- You end up part-time prompt engineer, tuning and re-running until it sounds okay.
- Hope the AI guesses your intent
- Vague instructions mean it overpromises, drops the offer, or goes off-tone.
- No reliable guardrails
- "Don't mention price" is a hope, not a rule the tool actually enforces.
- One setting for every campaign
- Enterprise and startup outreach get squeezed into the same rigid mold.
- Edits mean starting over
- Changing the angle means rebuilding the template or re-prompting from scratch.
- Write one brief in plain English
- Tone, offer, target, and rules in your own words, no template surgery.
- Zero prompt engineering
- Brief it like a new rep and the AI understands what you mean.
- It follows your intent exactly
- Lead with your stat, push your offer, in the voice you asked for.
- Guardrails it actually obeys
- Your never-do and always-do rules hold on every email and follow-up.
- A brief per campaign
- Each campaign sounds tuned to its audience, all running at once.
- Change a line, it adapts live
- Edit the instructions and the next sends pick it up, no rebuild.
Plain-English control vs the alternatives
FirstSales instructions vs templates & raw LLM prompting
There are two usual ways to steer cold email AI: rigid template tools that box you in, or raw LLM prompting that turns you into an engineer. Here's how plain-English AI Instructions compares to both.
| How you steer the AI | FirstSales | Other tools |
|---|---|---|
| Brief it in plain English | Included | Prompt syntax |
| No prompt engineering needed | Included | Required |
| Set tone and offer in your words | Included | Template fields |
| Guardrails the AI must obey | Included | Best effort |
| Applied to every follow-up | Included | Per-email |
| Different brief per campaign | Included | One setting |
| Update live, no rebuild | Included | Re-prompt |
| Entry price | $29/mo | $94-358/mo |
Steer your AI SDR for $1
Brief your AI in plain English, set the tone, the offer, and the rules, and watch it run your campaign exactly the way you would. No prompt engineering, no rigid templates.
Start your $1 trial$1 for 3 days · Cancel anytime · No prompt engineering required
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