Gemini Gems for sales are the part of Gemini most reps never set up, and the part that pays back fastest. A Gem is a custom Gemini assistant holding your instructions and reference files, so you open it and start the job instead of re-explaining it. This walkthrough builds two Gems a B2B seller will reopen weekly, with the full instruction text to paste in, and covers the rename underway: Google is replacing Gems with skills.
What a Gem is, and what is replacing it
A Gem is a saved set of instructions plus optional files. Google's help page says you need to be signed in to Gemini Apps with a personal Google Account and be 13, or the applicable age in your country.
Google is now moving Gems to skills. Its transition page calls skills "reusable custom instructions that can help you automate tasks and save time in Gemini," and two differences matter to a rep. Access changes: "Use a skill by typing / (soon to be @) followed by the skill's name directly in any Gemini chat." A Gem is a room you enter; a skill you call from where you already are. And you can "combine multiple skills in a single chat to handle more complex tasks."
Published removal dates are November 2026 for personal Google accounts, March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts, and June 2027 for Workspace education accounts. Google states that "when we remove Gems, we'll automatically recreate your Gems as skills." Skills sit under Settings and then Skills in the sidebar, with a "Create manually" option. One stated limit: "You can create as many skills as you want, but only 100 can be active at a time." Read from Google's Gemini Apps Help pages on 1 October 2026. Build the Gems now either way: the instructions are the asset and they carry over.
Gem one: the pre-call account brief
Build this one first: account prep is the task you repeat most. On a computer, go to gemini.google.com, open the sidebar, click Gems, then New Gem. Enter a name and instructions, add files under Knowledge, and save. Name it "Pre-call account brief".
You are a B2B sales research assistant working for an account executive who sells [PRODUCT CATEGORY] to [BUYER TITLES] at [COMPANY SIZE / INDUSTRY]. When I give you a company name and a meeting type, produce a one-page brief with these sections and nothing else: 1. What this company does, in two sentences a buyer would recognise as accurate. 2. Three things that changed in the last 12 months (funding, leadership, product, regulation, acquisition), with the date and source link for each. 3. The likely owner of the problem I sell into, by job title, and why that role. 4. Four discovery questions I could only ask because of what is above. 5. Two reasons this account might not be a fit. Rules: - Separate what you found from what you inferred. Label every inferred line "INFERRED". - If you cannot source a claim, leave it out rather than hedging it. - Never estimate revenue, headcount or budget unless I give you the figure. - Under 400 words.
An unlabelled guess reads exactly like a fact once it is in your notes, and you will repeat it to the buyer. For the deeper version of this job, with a research plan you edit before it runs, see Gemini Deep Research for account research.
Gem two: turning call notes into a CRM entry
Every note-taker writes action items and almost nobody checks them. This Gem does the checking. Name it "Call notes to CRM".
You convert raw sales call notes into a CRM-ready summary for an account executive. I will paste notes or a transcript. Return exactly four blocks: CONFIRMED - what the buyer said out loud. Quote the words where you can. INFERRED - what follows from the call but was not said. Mark each with the line that led you there. MISSING - facts I needed at this deal stage and did not get, written as the questions I should have asked. NEXT STEP - who does what, by when, and whether the buyer agreed to it on the call. Rules: - Never move a line from INFERRED to CONFIRMED to make the summary tidier. - Do not write a next step the buyer did not accept. Write "no agreed next step" instead. - No adjectives about how the call went. - Under 250 words.
The MISSING block is what changes behaviour. A summary of what happened lets a thin call look complete; a summary naming the facts you failed to get tells you whether to book a second call. For one-off prompt versions across the full cycle, see Gemini prompts for sales teams.
Writing instructions a Gem will follow
Google's guidance on custom Gem instructions names four areas: persona ("Tell your Gem what role to play and how to respond"), task ("Tell the Gem what you want Gemini to do or create"), context ("Provide as much background as possible") and format ("Be specific when specifying desired structure"). It adds that "you don't need to use all four, but using a few will help."
Both Gems above use all four, and format is where sellers underinvest. Persona and task are easy to write and weakly enforced; format is what makes two runs comparable, which is what lets you notice the week your notes went vague. When a task deserves a reusable instruction set at all is covered in Stop Rewriting the Same Prompt.
What to put under Knowledge
Knowledge is the file section of a Gem. Good candidates: your qualification framework, your objection responses as you say them, a one-page product fact sheet, two anonymised call summaries showing the output shape you want. Poor candidates: customer personal data, pricing you cannot share, signed contracts.
Keep one Gem per job, not one per account. An account Gem goes stale the moment the deal moves, and forty of them run at a 100-active ceiling. For the other model, where the container is the account, see The Complete Guide to Claude Projects for Sales Reps. Grounding output in a defined source set is a pattern across Google's products now: Google Docs grounding Gemini drafts in a Notebook with inline citations applies the same idea to writing.
Common mistakes
Writing the instructions as a prompt. A prompt describes one job. Gem instructions describe every run of that job. If your text says "this quarter" or names one prospect, it will be wrong next week.
Skipping the output format. Without a named structure you get a different shape every time and cannot compare Monday's brief to Friday's.
Loading Knowledge with everything. Five relevant files beat forty: extra files give the model more ways to answer from the wrong document.
Trusting the Gem because you wrote it. A Gem verifies nothing; it applies your instructions faster. The CONFIRMED and INFERRED split exists because you are still the one reading the output.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid Google plan to build a Gem?
Google's help page for using Gems in Gemini Apps states that you need a personal Google Account, must be signed in to Gemini Apps, and must be 13 or the applicable age in your country. It does not name a paid tier as a requirement for creating a Gem. Workspace accounts follow a different schedule for the move to skills.
What happens to my Gems when Google replaces them with skills?
Google's transition page states: "When we remove Gems, we'll automatically recreate your Gems as skills." It lists removal as November 2026 for personal Google accounts, March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts, and June 2027 for Workspace education accounts.
How many Gems or skills can I keep?
For skills, Google states: "You can create as many skills as you want, but only 100 can be active at a time. If you reach the limit, you can disable one to enable a new one." Most sellers never reach that ceiling if they build one Gem per repeated job.
Where to start
Build the pre-call brief Gem, run it against the next three accounts on your calendar, and rewrite the instructions wherever the output missed. For a prompt matched to your role and deal stage to start from, build one free on Promptifi.