If your AI tells you it can’t do something, absolutely question it. These days, it can pretty much do everything, as long as you have connected it to the right tools and you stay in control of what gets deleted, sent or published.

I covered this in a Legends Lab member Q&A. The short version is in the video below. If you want the full member sessions, with the walk-throughs, the questions and the prompts pulled out for you, join me in the Legends Lab.

In that session, people were asking the questions I hear all the time. Workflows have got into a tangle. A contact list needs importing, but nobody wants a surprise email going out. Unverified addresses are sitting in the CRM. Spam texts keep arriving. And someone is worried that if they let an AI loose in the account, it will delete the wrong thing.

Here is how I would get your AI to audit the mess, safely.

What AI should I use?

Start with Ask AI, the inbuilt assistant inside Tekmatix. If you do not already have an external AI and do not want another subscription, this is the first place to try, because it can work directly in your account.

The prompts below should also work in Claude, ChatGPT, GrokBot or any other AI you use, as long as you have connected your Tekmatix account and given it the right permissions. If one of them has an off day, try another. I treat them a bit like little people. Some days they are wonderful. Some days they hallucinate. If your AI says no, ask it again: “Are you sure? I think you can.”

*Tekmatix AI usage applies as a billable consumable. You can find out more about pricing on our public page: tekmatix.com/pricing.

If your AI says it can’t, question it

This is the bit I want you to remember.

You can now connect almost any AI to the software you already use, whether that is Claude, ChatGPT or Grok Bot. You can give it connectors, and you can let it take over your screen and click through the work for you, with your permission.

That does not mean you should believe the first answer it gives you. Ask AI can still get things wrong. If it tells you it can’t review your workflows, can’t check your triggers, or can’t clean a list, question it. Then, if it still cannot do the job, try the same request in one of your other AIs.

If you need the setup for connectors, browser control and skills, I have already walked through that here: how to get Ask AI to connect your tools and do the work. This post is about what to ask it to do once it is connected, especially when your workflows and contact list are a mess.

Start with an audit, not a delete-fest

When workflows have been built over years, by you, by a VA, or by a contractor who has now left, the temptation is to start deleting. Don’t.

Get your AI to audit the account first. Ask it to look at what is actually live, what triggers it, and what should be updated, unpublished or left alone.

The rule I give my AI is very simple:

• It is never allowed to delete contacts.
• It is never allowed to delete pages.
• It is never allowed to delete workflows.
• It may unpublish a workflow or a page, if I approve that.
• It may take someone off the mailing list and put them on do not disturb, if I approve that.
• It may not delete them.

If something is unpublished by mistake, you can turn it back on. If it is deleted, you may not get it back. That is why the first job is a report, not a clean-up spree.

If you run more than one account, do this one account at a time. Your Ask AI works inside the account you are in.

The same idea is how I audited my websites. I got my AI to list every published page in a Google Sheet, with a recommendation to keep it live, update it, unpublish it or redirect it, and I approved anything serious before it happened. That is the prompt that lifted my traffic by 115%. You can run the same kind of audit on your CRM, workflows, funnels and forms.

Prompt to copy into Ask AI, GrokBot, Claude or ChatGPT

Taking everything you know about me and access to all of the data and systems you already have, log into my Tekmatix account and confirm which business and sub-account you can access. Do not ask me to paste contacts, workflows or account data into this chat. Use the account itself.

Create a Google Sheet and run a full audit of this account. Look at my contacts, published workflows, funnels, forms and anything else that may need a review. For each item, record what it is, whether it is active or published, what triggers it if it is a workflow, and whether you recommend leaving it, updating it, unpublishing it or redirecting it, with a short reason.

You are never allowed to delete contacts, pages or workflows. You may recommend unpublishing a workflow or a page, or moving a contact to do not disturb and removing a mailing list tag, but you must wait for my explicit approval before you change anything. Do not send emails, do not publish, and do not delete.

Check which workflows will fire before you import a list

This is the practical test I want you to run before any import.

I said to Ask AI, in plain English: I want to upload a contact list. How many of my contacts are going to be contacted by me uploading that list?

It went through the workflows, found the triggers, and told me which ones were triggered by a new contact being added. Those are the ones you might want to turn off, draft or update before you import anyone.

If you skip this step, a “new contact added” workflow can start emailing people the moment the import lands. That is how a tidy-up turns into a mess.

You can also ask a simpler first question: what workflows do I have live right now, and are they triggering properly?

Prompt to copy into Ask AI, GrokBot, Claude or ChatGPT

Taking everything you know about me and access to all of the data and systems you already have, log into my Tekmatix account and review all of my published workflows. Do not ask me to paste a list of workflows into this chat.

Tell me which workflows are live right now, what triggers each one, and which of them would fire if I imported or added a new contact. Flag any that would send an email, SMS or other message automatically. Recommend which ones I should turn off, set to draft or update before an import, and why.

Do not change, unpublish, delete or send anything until I approve the exact list.

When you do import, two more habits will save you a lot of trouble.

First, use the import setting that verifies email addresses as they come in. Tekmatix can also verify an address when you first email a new contact, and I would turn that on by default. It costs very little for a large list, and it protects your sending domain. A high bounce rate from dead or unverified addresses is one of the fastest ways to get a domain in trouble.

Second, tag people properly as they come in. If they should receive your mass mailings, give them a mailing list tag. That is how you decide who is on the mass emails, separate from who is simply a contact in your system. If a list came from a particular place, add a source tag as well, so you know where they came from. You can do that in the import itself, or you can get Ask AI to help you tag and segment them. Do not let a new import jump into a workflow you have not checked.

Keep unverified emails. Take them off the mailing list.

People often ask why I don’t just delete unverified or messy-looking email addresses.

You can delete them, and on some platforms people do, because they are billed on contact numbers. On Tekmatix, you are not billed that way, so there is no reason to be ferocious about deleting. Even then, this is mostly a personal preference.

I keep them because a contact record is not the same thing as a mailing list. Someone can be in your system, with their activity history, without being someone you email. I have had plenty of people unsubscribe from my mailing list and later become a paid customer. Taking them off the mailing list does not mean they have stopped being a prospective customer.

So this is what I ask Ask AI to do. Anyone with an unverified email, and anyone who has bounced, comes off the mailing list and goes onto do not disturb, so they are never included in mass campaigns. They stay in the account. I do not want paying customers, or people I still need a record of, wiped because their address looks untidy.

The same thinking applies to spam texts and nameless phone-only contacts. I would not delete them. I would get my AI to move them onto a spam smart list, put them on do not disturb, and leave the record there. That phone number might later belong to, or be used by, a real person. I never want to delete a real person. I also do not want to keep paying to reply to spam.

Prompt to copy into Ask AI, GrokBot, Claude or ChatGPT

Taking everything you know about me and access to all of the data and systems you already have, log into my Tekmatix account and review my contacts. Do not ask me to paste a contact list into this chat.

Find contacts with unverified email addresses, bounced or invalid addresses, and contacts that appear to be spam or phone-only records with no name. Propose two groups: (1) unverified or bounced contacts who should be removed from the mailing list and put on do not disturb, and (2) likely spam or nameless phone contacts who should be added to a spam smart list and put on do not disturb.

Do not include paying customers or anyone I still need to be able to contact. Show me the counts, the rules you used, and a sample of each group. Do not delete anyone. Do not send anything. Wait for my approval before you change tags, mailing list membership or do-not-disturb settings.

Do not buy lists

I need to say this clearly, and it is not legal advice. The law is different in every country.

Think twice before you purchase a list, or before you start mass-emailing or texting people who have not consented to hear from you. The least bad outcome is that you damage or lose your sending domain. In some places, sending emails or SMS without consent can get you into much more serious trouble.

Email the people who have consented to be on your list. Do not pick up a phone book, or a bought list, and start blasting it. If you are moving across contacts you already have a relationship with, get advice that fits your country, verify the addresses on the way in, and keep the mailing list separate from the rest of the CRM.

Your next step

You do not need to fix everything today. Pick one job.

Question your AI if it says it can’t. Connect it to your tools. Ask it which workflows are live, and which ones would fire if you added a new contact. Then, and only then, decide what to unpublish, what to update, and who should be on your mailing list. Keep the records. Do not let it delete.

If you want help putting this into practice, and you want the full member Q&A sessions where we work through questions like this live, join me in the Legends Lab.

I do this on Tekmatix.

Sarah x

This article is general education, not legal, technical or financial advice. Check what fits your business and the laws where you operate.

Sarah Cordiner is a business and AI educator with more than 20 years in business, and has taught more than 280,000 students in 181 countries.