What to Say in Your First Outreach Message - The Sales Hunter Podcast

The Sales Hunter Podcast

Episode: "What to Say in Your First Outreach Message"

Host: Mark Hunter

Date: May 4, 2026

Episode Overview

In this engaging and actionable episode, Mark Hunter dives into the crucial details of what to say in your first outreach message to prospects. With response rates at an all-time low and buyers bombarded by messages, Mark provides a blueprint for crafting concise, relevant, and compelling outreach—in both email and voicemail—that stands out and opens doors. This episode is packed with proven strategies and real-world examples for sales professionals who want to increase engagement and move prospects through their funnel with integrity and confidence.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Power of Simplicity in Outreach

Keep Everything Short and Focused
- "If I can't read it with less than one swipe on my smartphone, it's too long. Take that to the bank." (03:15)
  - Most emails are read on phones; limit outreach to 2-3 sentences.
  - The subject line and the first 5-6 words are make-or-break.
Lead With Their Problem, Not With Yourself
- Don’t start with your name or a company pitch.
- The first line should mirror the subject and make the issue relevant to the recipient.
  - Example subject: “Labor law changes impacting hiring.”
  - Example opener: "Recent changes in labor laws are impacting dramatically how you hire and retain people." (07:45)

2. Outreach Structure: Step-by-Step

Open with a Relevant Problem
- Identify a real and immediate pain point, specific to their industry.
- “Lead with a problem they recognize—a problem that’s relevant to them.” (05:01)
Provide a Confirming Statement
- Briefly mention you solve this problem for similar companies.
  - “We provide solutions to help you do that, and I’ve done that with other companies similar to yours.” (08:32)
  - Establishes social proof and credibility.
Introduce Yourself Only After Hooking Their Attention
- Save your name/company until after value is established.
- Avoid “Hi, my name is…” in the first sentence—gets you “deleted immediately and blocked and forever sent to a spam folder.” (06:02)

3. Low-Friction Call to Action

End with an easy, low-pressure ask:
- “Reach out, I’d love to share with you solutions. My phone number is…” (13:45)
Avoid links and attachments—they’re red flags.
- Only include a calendly link if you’re already a known entity.

4. Multi-Touch and Medium Approach

Use both email and phone:
- Send the email, then immediately call and leave a brief (12–14 seconds) voicemail echoing the core message.
  - “The idea for the voicemail is—it’s only really about 12 to 14 seconds long. That’s it.” (15:07)
- Feel free to reference the email in your voicemail if natural to your style.
You’ll likely need 7–8 touches before you get a response.
- “Whoa, what did he just say? Yeah, seven to eight emails before you even begin to get traction.” (14:30)
- Each outreach must sound fresh—“Each message is your first outreach message when you’re trying to reach a prospect that hasn’t responded to you.” (15:40)
- Never use “Just bumping this to the top of your inbox” or “Just checking in.” These come across as lazy and desperate.

5. Adjusting Cadence to the Prospect

Outreach frequency should match the product, the recipient’s seniority, and buying cycle:
- Consumables/regular purchases: daily or every other day.
- Mid-level executives: every 5-9 business days.
- CEOs/capital expenditures: as infrequently as once a month.
  - “It’s going to vary based on the frequency with which they buy, the level of person you’re selling to and the industry...” (20:21)
Persistence is justified for large or strategic accounts:
- For major opportunities, stay persistent for 1–2 years if warranted.
  - “I’m going to stay in the game with you for a year or two. You bet I will.” (22:25)

6. Strategic Timing and Scalability

Reach out to key prospects at times they’re more likely to be available (e.g., Friday afternoons for phone calls).
- “I love timing one of my emails and phone calls to a Friday afternoon, because many times…people are most likely to answer the telephone.” (25:17)
Messages can often be templated and scaled within your ICP (ideal customer profile).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |:---:|---|---| | 03:15 | “If I can't read it with less than one swipe on my smartphone, it's too long. Take that to the bank.” | Mark Hunter | | 05:01 | “Lead with a problem they recognize—a problem that’s relevant to them.” | Mark Hunter | | 06:02 | “You put something like that in the first sentence and you deserve to be deleted immediately and blocked and forever sent to a spam folder.” | Mark Hunter | | 08:32 | “We provide solutions to help you do that, and I’ve done that with other companies similar to yours.” | Mark Hunter | | 13:45 | “Reach out, I’d love to share with you solutions. My phone number is…” | Mark Hunter | | 14:30 | “Yeah, seven to eight emails before you even begin to get traction.” | Mark Hunter | | 15:07 | “It’s only really about 12 to 14 seconds long. That’s it.” (re: voicemail) | Mark Hunter | | 15:40 | “Each message is your first outreach message when you’re trying to reach a prospect that hasn’t responded to you.” | Mark Hunter | | 20:21 | “It’s going to vary based on… the frequency with which they buy, the level of person you’re selling to and the industry...” | Mark Hunter | | 22:25 | “I’m going to stay in the game with you for a year or two. You bet I will.” | Mark Hunter | | 25:17 | “I love timing one of my emails and phone calls to a Friday afternoon, because many times…people are most likely to answer the telephone.” | Mark Hunter |

Summary Table: The Ideal Outreach Message Structure

| Element | What to Do | Example | |---|---|---| | 1. Subject Line | Direct, problem-focused, industry-relevant | “Labor law changes impacting hiring” | | 2. First Sentence | Build on subject, state problem clearly | “Recent changes in labor laws are impacting dramatically how you hire and retain people.” | | 3. Confirming Statement | Social proof/credibility (“we help others like you”) | “We provide solutions to help you do that, and I’ve done that with companies similar to yours.” | | 4. Brief Introduction | Name and company (AFTER above steps) | “My name is Mark Hunter with XYZ” (keep brief) | | 5. Low-Friction Call to Action | Simple, easy next step | “Reach out, I’d love to share with you solutions. My phone number is…” |

Action Steps for Listeners

Keep initial messages under one swipe—2-3 sentences max.
Always lead with a customer-centric, relevant problem.
Offer social proof before mentioning yourself.
Finish with a simple, low-barrier next step—no links/attachments unless well-known to the prospect.
Combine email and short voicemail for greater impact.
Remain persistent—7–8 touches may be needed before traction.
Tailor your cadence/frequency to fit the account size and buying cycle.
Never send “just checking in” or “bumping to top” style emails.

For further learning, Mark encourages listeners to check out his book “Integrity First Selling” and subscribe for more tactical sales insights.

Great selling!

Transcript

A (0:01)

What do you say in your first outreach message? You got a prospect, you want to reach out to them? What do you say in it because you're tired of having no response? That's today's topic and the show begins right now. You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here's your host, foreign. Okay, what do you say in your first outreach message? Now, first of all, I'm going to break this down for you and show you exactly what to do and how to do it and how to combine it with multiple mediums. When I say multiple mediums, I'm going to show you how to do it with email and I'm going to show you how to do it with the telephone because you've got to come at them using two approaches. Now, people will sit there and say, mark, are you telling us to cold outreach? No, I'm not saying to cold outreach because these prospects are already in your funnel. In your funnel. What do you mean? Well, they're in your icp. They fit the profile of who you know you can help. So therefore you're reaching out to them is absolutely spot on. Let's break this down and let me show you exactly what it is that you need to be doing. You see, what it comes down to is you have to understand something very simple. You got to keep it simple. That's right. You have to keep it simple. Too many salespeople, what they do is they wind up over complicating the first message. No wonder it lands like a thud. Now, let's not kid ourselves. Response rates are lower than ever. And this is for both email. This is for voicemail, this is for text message. This is for anything and everything. Because why? Because customers are being bombarded. What I say is this. My first rule is if I can't read it with less than one swipe on my smartphone, it's too long. Take that to the bank. Because again, the majority of emails are responded to or looked at on your smartphone. And what does this mean? This means, without a doubt, that if it's three, four swipes, they're not going to read it. So keep it short and keep it focused. What does this mean? It means it's no more than two to three sentences. The most critical piece of the email you send out is the subject line and the first five or six words. Why? Because that's the part that they're going to see on their smartphone. And that's Going to determine as to whether or not they're going to look at the rest of it. You have got to lead with a problem, a problem they recognize a problem that's relevant to them. In the subject line, it might be escalating fuel costs, it might be changes in labor, it might be whatever, but it's something that's relative to their industry. To them, this is absolutely key. Because right here they're dialed in on their problems. They're not dialed in on you. Forget it. They didn't wake up in the morning and say, I hope another salesperson reaches out to me. So the subject line, absolutely key. The first sentence is not where you go, hi, my name is Mark Hunter. I work with. No, I tell you what, you put something out like that in the first sentence and you deserve to be deleted immediately and blocked and forever sent to a spam folder. Why? Because you're coming across as a salesperson. I know, I know. In your English class in school, they said, oh, the proper way to write a letter is to introduce yourself in the first. Wrong. This is not, this is not, you know, fifth grade English. Hello, I'm selling. I'll introduce myself, but not in the first sentence. That first sentence is a summary and build out of what the subject line is. Because again, I can't. Do not do bait and switch. That's not integrity selling. That's not integrity selling. I'm going to take this subject line and we'll say it's. It's changes in labor laws. And my, my first sentence might be, hey, recent changes in labor laws are impacting dramatically how you hire and retain people. That's what you're saying to. Now, if I'm sending it to an HR person, if I'm sending it to a staffing company, if I'm saying that's probably relevant to them, that's important. See, it's absolutely key. Yes. Then what I do is this. In that second sentence, I'm going to say, we provide solutions to help you do that. And I've done that with other companies similar to yours. Now, I like that. For a very simple reason, a confirming statement. It's not my first rodeo. It's not my first rodeo. Then I'm going to introduce myself in the next sentence. That's what I'm going to. That's what I'm going to introduce myself. You see, what I've done is up there in that first sentence. I have kept it short, I've kept it focused, and I've led with a problem. They recognize now, can I make it an absolute question? Yes. How are you handling hiring of people with the, with the labor law changes that have just occurred? You can lead with that too. That's perfectly good. And again, the subject line is going to be labor law changes impacting hiring. Now, I'm not looking for a complete sentence because remember the first, they're only going to see the first 30 or 40 characters. But this first sentence has to. Now you say, mark, that's not what I sell. I don't. There you go. Hello. You see, the problem has to somehow line up to what it is that you sell. We'll say that you sell cyber security software, cybersecurity solutions. So you might leave off with new ransomware hacks impacting and boom, the industry that you're calling into, you're reaching out to. First sentence might be, hey, we've seen a dramatic increase in ransomware issues with companies in the industry. We provide solutions to help through, help deal with that and have proven that. Or you might say, we've proven our success by helping our clients prevent that, something of that manner. In other words, you craft that and you make it with your personality. Then you introduce yourself. Now, when you introduce yourself, it's not about saying, oh, I'm with so and so company and we've been around for 18,000 years. Get over it. No, because here's why. It's not that they're going to respond to your email. Whoa, what did he just say? Yeah, they're not going to respond to your email. No, no. You send them one email, they're not going to look at it. No, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to end the email with a low friction ask. The low friction ask might be, hey, reach out, I'd love to share with you solutions and I love using that. Like reach out, I'd love to share with you solutions. My phone number is boom. I don't put links, I don't put attachments into a brand new prospecting email. Why? Because again, that raises the flag of being potentially, it's spam, it's junk mail, they're not going to read it. And are they going to open a PDF? No, they're not going to. And you can even put a calendarly link in there. And sure, you can do that if you're a known entity in the space, but if you're not a known entity, don't put it in there because again, it could get you blocked. You got to be very careful. Now, the reason I'm saying this is because you're going to have to probably send out seven to eight emails. Whoa, what did he just say? Yeah, seven to eight mail emails before you even begin to get traction. And here's the strategy behind us, and this is where it's absolute key. And this all comes back to what to say in your first outreach message, because each message is your first outreach message when you're trying to reach a prospect that hasn't responded to you. So it does not mean that you sit there. And message number two is, I want to bounce this to the top of your email list or, or I'm not sure if you saw this or just checking in. No, no, no, no, no. That is messages of desperation. Those are messages of laziness. Each message you sent needs to be a fresh, a fresh, short and focused problem that they recognize. This is key. I'll get to the strategy here in a second. I'm going to send the email and then if I have their phone number, I'm immediately going to call them. Now, I know it's going to go to voicemail, right? Fine, fine. And I'm going to, I'm going to let it go to voicemail and I'm going to leave the message. Hey, how are you handling this? I'm basically going to repeat back to them, so to speak, what I shared in the email. Now I'll do a separate podcast where we break down word for word, specifically what goes into the voicemail. But the idea for the voicemail is it's only really about 12 to 14 seconds long. That's it. So it's a very kind of brief summary of what I put into the email. People say, can you say that you sent them an email? Sure, if you want to. That's your style. Go ahead. Surveys have seen, studies have seen. It's, it's, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not that's effective or ineffective. So go ahead and try it. But here's what you're going to do. You're going to send this email, this first outreach message. You are looking for them to respond. They're not going to respond. I get it. So then a few days later, and again, this is going to vary by industry and the level of person you're calling into and what you're selling. Let me give you an example. If what you're selling is a consumable, it's an expensable item that the customer's buying and they buy it regularly, we'll say that they. You are selling Trucking services and these are to companies that ship every day. You could basically email call them almost every day, probably every other day you may be selling it. Somebody who hires short term labor almost every day they've got to buy, they, they've got to find short term labors to fill open positions. You can be reaching out to those people every couple days. Now if on the other hand you, you are calling, reaching out to a mid level executive, it's probably going to be closer to every five to nine business days. If on the other hand you're selling a capital expenditure and you're reaching out to CEOs it's going to be once a month. You see, it's going to vary based on the frequency with which they buy, the level of person you're selling to and the industry that you are selling into. Okay, so back to this whole thing. So I'm going to take this person and I'm going to send them this, this what to say in your first outreach message. Something short, focused, lead with a problem. Because what this does is it helps them understand that I know their world. This is what's absolutely, this is why the confirming sentence is so key. We work with companies like yours to solve that issue. We've been able to achieve X. This is what I call a confirming statement. And then I just end reach out. Be happy to explain to you more, share with you ideas. Yeah so I'm going to send that email, voicemail and then I'm going to send them another one different, different message. Then I'm going to send them another one and another one and another one. Now people will sit there and say mark, how many of these can I send out? First of all, I'm going to send out as long as it takes for you to respond to me with an exception if what I'm selling is a low level item, you know, and I got to create 20, 30 sales every every week, I'm going to reach out to you five, six, seven times and probably call it a day. If on the other hand, what I'm selling is something that I don't need, you know, I only do through two sales a month, three sales a month and I'm reaching out to you and you are a huge, huge opportunity that if I land you as a customer, this could be 20, 30% of my business. I'm going to stay in the game with you for a year or two. You bet I will. You see. So the level, the length of time is going to be commensurate to the size of the opportunity. The same thing goes, you may be reaching out to a smaller company, but boy, they've got some proprietary technology and you know they're going to grow exponentially, they're going to grow fast. Great, I'm going to stay in the game with them. It may be a medium sized opportunity, but they're led by a CEO and some other people that are just highly respected in the industry. And you know that if you land them as an account, that's going to be a cachet, that's going to be a halo effect, that's going to help you land others, you see. So again, the length of time and I'll go and I'll do another podcast diving into that. But what we're talking about here is, is what to say in your first message. And this is so key. Do not get into the lazy way where you repeat the same message. Because again, what's happening is many times your customers are seeing this, your customers are seeing the messages. They're just choosing not to respond. See, now if they're reading them, it may see that there's a level of interest, but it's not intent. But what's going to happen is you reach out to them enough and you're going to wind up falling on one of their intent times and they do it. What I love doing is I love timing one of my emails and phone calls to a Friday afternoon, because many times what happens is on a Friday afternoon is when people are most likely to answer the telephone. Whoa. There's something different, there's something radical. And again, I'll break that down for you in an upcoming podcast dealing with just the telephone. But today I want you to do this. I want you to create a series of messages. And again, if you're dealing in your icp, chances are the messages that you send out to one, you can probably send out to another, another, another. And that's absolutely fantastic. Hey, my name is Mark Hunter, the sales Hunter. I love bringing you these podcasts. The Sales Hunter podcast. Pick up my book Integrity first selling, would you please pick it up, share it with others. If you have a company, reach out to me. I'm coming in and I'm doing book club reviews and I'm keynote speaking. I'm talking to sales teams the world over on this, would you? And of course, make sure you subscribe to the Sales center podcast so you get every episode. I'm Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Great Selling.