Yeah, I know I should upgrade, but I don't have the money right now.  Bear with me.

I've always had trouble getting poses to come out the way I want them to in P4.  The tools themselves don't always work reliably, and the dials are a bit too slow at times.  Are there any tips for being able to get my poses to come out better?

Only way I know is patience and tweaking with the dials . If you can find an existing pose that is close to what you want it saves time .

I bet you have a good reason not to use the free DAZ Studio insteed of Poser 4.

Speed: Are you talking about larger sceens? Which figure/character do you work with?
Is your computer a bit slow or has to little memory?

Quote: "The tools themselves don't always work reliably, and the dials are a bit too slow at times."

More RAM memory will probably help with the tools and dials, and make sure you close any unnecessary programs running ion the background.

Quote: "I've always had trouble getting poses to come out the way I want them to in P4."

Me too! I've always had trouble getting poses to come out the way I want them to in any version of Poser, but the above is a bit of a vague statement. How do you want them, and in what way are they not like what you want?

General advice: Steer clear of the Translate/Pull tool, use the dials, or the Rotate and Twist, only. Dials should always be used for fine adjustment. Use a long enough focal length so that the figure does not look distorted, I find 80mm to 200m good for a full figure.

My work flow is something like this. First thing I do is turn off IK. I work out from the hip. I start with approximate rotations of the hip, then work down the legs to the feet, then work up to the head and eyes, and finally do the arms and hands. When I have an approximation of the pose, I just tweak where it looks most necessary until I (hopefully) get what I want. The Memorize and Restore functions are your best friends whilst posing, also make use of the pose dots to store a pose every time you think you have made a major improvement. When raising the arms above the head, put half of the bend in the collar. Using reference photos can be a good idea, you can set one as a background, then use Outline Display Style, when you want to see through your figure to the photo.

Purchase poses from the store, or look for free ones and tinker with them. The best part of Poser is the posing.  When you get the pose just right, add it to the Pose folder.

And for sure use the memorize & restore - it will save your butt.

BillyGoat

Kinda shooting in the dark with such a broad question and not knowing your experience level, but, as lesbently suggested, usually you want to do your posing using the dials, with IK off.  But...  often times, for those fine adjustments,  you'll want to go back and forth with the IK on and off to make some final adjustments.

For example, you've got the hand just where you want it, but the collar is still  goofy.   Turn IK on and adjust the collar while keeping the hand stationary -  then turn it back off again.  Or, perhaps you've got everything just right, but the hand needs to drop a just a smidge.   Using IK, put the hand where you want it without having to start at the collar and adjusting everything all the way down to position the hand.

drat!  Not fast enough to edit the above post.

An afterthought..... is that you can use tricks somewhat similar  by implementing "Parenting" or "Point-At" on various body parts to keep some body parts stationary while moving others.