Great advice on limiting your email to 4 sentences… Less is more! And this is why I often remind entrepreneurs that their first message must be truly concise & and that it must articulate their value proposition, razor-sharp. In most cases, the best entrepreneurial pitch is only 50 words long...
We all know that when you invite someone to connect on Linkedin - your invitation is limited to only 300 characters (spaces included). Over the years, I invited thousands of people to connect – and on average, the length of my messages is around… 50 words.
So I say: disregard my advice, and the proverbial: “TL;DR” kicks in. Therefore, I often recommend allocating your precious 50 words allotment as follows:
1. Why Do I Care To Reach You? – Approx. 20 Words
o Example: “John, congrats on a spectacular raise! You’re solving huge ABC problems & I wrote about similar issues in my XYZ posts”
2. Why Should You Care To Hear Me? – Approx. 20 Words
o Example: “IMHO, your present marketing & sales focus makes you still lose 70% of untapped revenues I spoke about in XYZ”
3. Why Should You Respond To My Invitation? – Approx. 10 Words
o Example: “Any plans for expanding into Canada I could help with?”
So, think about the concise message you would like to send long and hard. And use the above guidelines… at will.
Great advice on limiting your email to 4 sentences… Less is more! And this is why I often remind entrepreneurs that their first message must be truly concise & and that it must articulate their value proposition, razor-sharp. In most cases, the best entrepreneurial pitch is only 50 words long...
We all know that when you invite someone to connect on Linkedin - your invitation is limited to only 300 characters (spaces included). Over the years, I invited thousands of people to connect – and on average, the length of my messages is around… 50 words.
So I say: disregard my advice, and the proverbial: “TL;DR” kicks in. Therefore, I often recommend allocating your precious 50 words allotment as follows:
1. Why Do I Care To Reach You? – Approx. 20 Words
o Example: “John, congrats on a spectacular raise! You’re solving huge ABC problems & I wrote about similar issues in my XYZ posts”
2. Why Should You Care To Hear Me? – Approx. 20 Words
o Example: “IMHO, your present marketing & sales focus makes you still lose 70% of untapped revenues I spoke about in XYZ”
3. Why Should You Respond To My Invitation? – Approx. 10 Words
o Example: “Any plans for expanding into Canada I could help with?”
So, think about the concise message you would like to send long and hard. And use the above guidelines… at will.
The other thing about your point #1 is it's a subtle signal that your message is only being sent to the one person receiving it.
If the recipient of a message feels like 100 other people are getting the exact same one and you're just fishing, it's easier to ignore you.