You will be able to write a first message that carries on the conversation and leaves selling out of it.
Wei Ling works with clinics. Siew Mei, a practice manager, accepted her connection request on Thursday. Wei Ling didn't message straight away. She waited and kept commenting on Siew Mei's posts, and on Monday she sat down to write the first direct message.
She began with "thanks for connecting, I wanted to share a bit about what we do" and deleted it. She tried again several times, and every version turned into a pitch.
The first direct message is a trap. You want a meeting, so everything you write bends towards a pitch. A message that works is about the recipient and continues the conversation you were already having. It should feel like the next line of a conversation the two of you started in public.
So mention that public conversation, then add something useful to it. Useful here means a resource or a question. A resource can be an article that goes further into the topic you discussed, a checklist your company publishes, or a short explanation you wrote. A small real example from your own work also counts. A question can be one that follows naturally from what they said in public.
Wei Ling's final message did this. It referred to their public chat about front desk staffing. It described a clinic she had worked with that cut rescheduling calls by letting patients move their own appointments, and said most patients were fine with it once the option was in the reminder text. It ended by asking how Siew Mei's patients reschedule now, and whether it is mostly by phone. There was no product name, no demo link and no request for a call. A good first message has none of those three things.
Arjun sent a first message to Marcus, a new father who had asked about emergency funds in the comments under a post on new-parent budgets. Arjun referred to that question and pointed out that couples often miss how the right amount changes when one parent takes extended leave. He then asked whether Marcus and his wife were both back at work or one of them was still on leave.
Most people read direct messages on their phone, often while doing other things. A message that needs scrolling feels like work, and work gets put off, which often means it never happens. Keep the first message short. As a rough guide, if it is longer than one phone screen, cut it. Two or three short paragraphs is the most it should be. Read it once on your own phone before you send it.
Cut anything about yourself: your title, your company's history, your product's features. The recipient can see all of these on your profile, which is the reason you rewrote it in module 1.
The question at the end does a lot of work, and the wrong question undoes the rest of the message. Avoid questions about needs, such as "Do you need a booking system?" or "Are you looking at insurance at the moment?" These ask the person to admit to a buying need in a DM to someone they barely know, and almost nobody does.
Ask a situation question instead, one about how they handle something now or what it is like for them. "How do you handle this now?", "What's that like in your clinic?" and "Is one of you still on leave?" are all situation questions. They are easy to answer, they show interest in the person, and the answers tell you whether there is a problem you could help with. This is the same kind of open question as in lesson 3.2 of Sales foundations, "Open questions that get people talking", used in a message instead of a meeting.
If their answer describes a problem you help with, you have earned the right to suggest a meeting. Lesson 4.3, "Suggesting the meeting without the hard sell", covers how to do that. If it doesn't, you have still had a pleasant exchange with someone in your market, and that has value of its own.
Many first messages get no reply. The person may be busy, the timing may have been bad, or they may not want a private conversation right now. None of these means you did anything wrong.
If there is no reply, leave it. Send one follow-up at most, and only if you have something new to add, such as:
a relevant article an answer to a question they asked in public a change in their world you noticed
"Just following up on my last message" adds nothing and reads as pressure.
Wei Ling sent a follow-up to a different practice manager two weeks after an earlier message, when that manager posted about a front desk staff shortage that month. Her follow-up acknowledged the post, said it sounded hard, and noted that the rescheduling idea she had mentioned might take a few calls off the front desk staff's plate. That was her last message unless the manager replied.
After the follow-up, send nothing more unless they reply. Keep engaging with them in public, since a later comment may restart the conversation naturally.
Go back to the three people you sent connection requests to in lesson 4.1, When to move from comment to direct message. For each one, note the thread you shared in public, and think of one useful thing you could add.
In the activity below, you'll draft a first message for each of them that continues the public conversation and ends with a question about their situation.
Write first messages to three new connections. Carry on from your public conversation and end each one with a question about their situation.
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