Reason to Write

When To Use

Every opening you think of turns into "let me tell you what I do". You have a person, some sourced facts and maybe a recent event. This answers one question: which reason to write would be useful to this person right now?

When Not To Use

If you have no sourced facts about the person or their organisation, do the research first; a reason built on nothing is a pitch. If you have already chosen your reason and want the substance, go to Talking Points.

Inputs

• The person's name and role, with your Person Research Brief, Company Research Brief and Trigger Event Scan, or the sourced facts you have.
• Your Warm Path Check result for this person: any real history, or none.
• What you could offer with nothing asked in return: something to read, an introduction, a topic. If you have none of this, I start from the role, one sourced fact and what you could offer, and mark the output as a first draft.

Approach

Reasons to write that serve the reader, one per message, described generically. There are four for someone you do not know: share something useful, congratulate, offer an introduction, suggest a conversation. A fifth, catch up, exists only where your warm path check found real history; with a stranger it is false. The judgement is in being honest about which reasons are an ask in costume. The failure it prevents: "Congrats on the new role! By the way, we help teams like yours."

Workflow

1. Ask at most three questions: whether you have any real history with this person, what you could offer with no ask, and anything you are holding back from saying.
2. Lay out the reasons against what you gave me. Share: something they might find useful, no ask attached. Congratulate: one recent public event, brief. Introduce: an offer to connect them with someone useful, offered and not imposed. Suggest a conversation: a topic you both work on, easy to decline. Catch up: only with real shared history.
3. Run three checks on each: is it true, is it useful to them and not only to you, and does it rest on a dated source or on your own history? A reason that fails one is removed, even when it sounds good.
4. Run the pitch-in-disguise test on what is left: would this message still make sense if you had nothing to sell? If not, it is set aside with the line that gives it away.
5. Give one line of advantage and one line of risk for each reason that holds.
6. Leave one slot marked "[you choose]". One reason per message. If none holds, the result is "no reason yet", and the account goes back to the watchlist.

Output Format

# Reason to Write
Person: [name], [role] | History with them: [your words, or "none"] | Prepared: [date]
## The reasons
| Reason | True and useful to them? | Rests on (fact number or your history) | Advantage | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share | [yes / no, and why] | [F# / P# / your history] | [one line] | [one line] |
| Congratulate | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Introduce | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Suggest a conversation | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Catch up (only with real history) | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
## Pitch in disguise
| Reason or angle | The line that gives it away |
|---|---|
| [angle] | [line] |
## Decision
[Your name] chooses one reason for this message: [you choose], or "no reason yet", by [date].

Done When

• Every reason that holds rests on a numbered fact or on named history of your own.
• Catch up is ruled out wherever there is no real history.
• Every pitch in disguise is set aside with the line that gives it away.
• One reason is left for you to choose; none is chosen for you.

Quality Bar

• A reason is about their benefit; "so I can mention my offer" is never a benefit.
• No invented familiarity and no generic compliment about someone's career.
• Nothing private is ever a reason: no health, family or job loss.
• Introduce means an offer you can keep, to someone who has agreed.
• The reason serves the other person and rests on a sourced fact; you choose it and you write the message.

Next

Run reach-useful-material-match (Useful Material Match) to see whether anything of yours is worth sharing with this person.

About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).