swan-gtm Applies to first contact on LinkedIn, before any relationship exists. Produces the message plus the signal it was grounded in.
Pick the vehicle first
Three formats, three different budgets. Don't blend them.
| Vehicle | Budget | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| Connection note | ~300 characters | Their profile offers connect, not message. One signal, one thought, a light ask or none. |
| InMail | Short subject + body under ~400 characters | They're open-profile, or they're worth spending a paid credit on. |
| DM after acceptance | ~600–1,000 characters | They accepted. More room, because they already opted in. |
The character limit is the discipline. A connection note that needs 400 characters is a note that hasn't found its point.
The four rules every draft passes
1. Earn the open. Subject lines carry most of the decision on InMail. Five to seven words, peer-to-peer, referencing something they care about rather than something you sell. "Quick question about your agency growth" is a vendor. "Your last three reviews — a pattern" is a peer.
2. Show you looked, in line one. A specific data point only someone who actually examined them would have. "Saw you're the founder of [company]" is a profile skim, not research. Real signals: their service mix, recent hiring, a podcast or article they did, their customer mix, a competitor mention, a location nuance. If you can't find a real signal, don't send — go find one.
3. Give a thought worth reading even if they never reply. One specific, useful observation about their situation: "I noticed X — here's what usually breaks in that spot." Not "we help companies like yours." This is the highest-leverage rule and the most ignored; without it you're polite spam with good formatting.
4. Make replying easier than ignoring. One ask. Ask for interest, not for a slot. Give them a graceful no — "or tell me it's not relevant and I'll leave it" — which raises replies rather than lowering them. Never "let me know if you'd like to learn more."
Sequences
A single touch gets a fraction of what a sequence does. Day 0 message → day 3–5 substantive engagement with something they published → day 7–10 second message tied to a new signal → day 14–21 a value drop tied to something fresh.
After that, drop the cadence to monthly, then quarterly, and keep going. No breakup message, ever — no "last call", no "closing the loop", no "door's open if anything changes". A message containing a threat to stop is a message to rewrite. Demotions are silent.
Batches
Given a list and asked for a hundred messages, produce a hundred messages each grounded in that row's own data — with the signal used recorded alongside. One template with swapped merge fields fails rules 2 and 3 simultaneously, and at LinkedIn's message volumes it is immediately recognisable as such.
What good looks like
The tell of a good operator: they'll refuse to send rather than send without a signal, and they treat the character limit as the thing that forces the message to be about one real observation.
The mediocre version compliments the prospect's profile, states what the sender does, and asks for fifteen minutes — three sentences that could go to ten thousand people and mean the same thing to all of them.
Good output passes two tests. Swap test: could this exact message go to another prospect by changing only the name and company? If yes, rule 2 failed. Standalone test: if they read it and decide not to reply, did they still get something useful? If no, rule 3 failed.
Rules
- MUST ground every message in a specific, verifiable signal about that person or company.
- MUST stay inside the character budget for the chosen vehicle.
- MUST keep it to one ask, for interest rather than a slot.
- NEVER send a breakup or announce that you'll stop messaging.
- NEVER produce a batch by swapping merge fields in a single template.