If you're paying someone for an "AI strategy session" and you walk in cold, you're going to walk out with generic advice. Not because the consultant is bad. Because the consultant has nothing real to react to. The hour gets spent reconstructing what your business actually does. By the time you're past the basics, the call's over and the recommendations are some flavour of "you could probably automate your support inbox" — which you already suspected. The way to make these calls useful is to bring artefacts. Not in a polished, deck-shaped way. In a quick-and-dirty, "here's the actual mess" way. Below are the seven prep prompts I tell buyers to run before any AI strategy or audit call (mine or anyone else's) so the hour spent on the call goes into specifics, not background. Each prompt assumes you have access to ChatGPT, Claude, or any decent model. The output is for you, not for the consultant — they shouldn't get a polished deck, they should get raw material.…