Direct Messages as a Sales Channel

Where enquiries now arrive

A meaningful share of first contact for a small business now comes as a message on a platform rather than as a telephone call or a form.

That is a preference rather than an accident: messaging is lower commitment than calling and faster than filling in a form.

Which means an inbox nobody planned for is receiving genuine enquiries, alongside spam and comments from people who are not customers.

Businesses that treat it as social media rather than as an enquiry channel lose work without ever seeing it happen.

The expectation you did not set

The specific problem, and it is created by the platform rather than by you.

Messaging is an immediate medium and people bring immediate expectations to it, in a way they do not with email.

Several platforms also display a response time or a badge indicating how quickly a business replies, which is shown to the person before they write.

So somebody messaging at nine in the evening may have been told you usually reply within an hour, and will judge you against that.

You did not choose that number and it is visible whether you like it or not, which makes managing the expectation the first task rather than an afterthought.

Set the expectation yourself

• An automatic first reply stating when you answer.
• Real hours, not aspirational ones.
• An alternative for anything urgent.
• A named person who checks it.
• A fixed time each day for checking.

The first costs a few minutes to configure and does most of the work, since somebody who has been told they will hear tomorrow morning waits comfortably.

Move it early

The judgement that separates a message that converts from one that fades.

Messaging is good for a first question and poor for anything with detail, a quote, or a date to agree.

So answer the question in the message, then offer to move: send me an address and I will put the details in writing, or a number and I will call you.

Do it early, on the second or third exchange, before the conversation has accumulated details that then live only in an app nobody searches.

That also gets the enquiry into your ordinary system, where it can be quoted, followed up, and recorded, rather than sitting in a place your quoting process does not reach.

Where somebody prefers to stay in the message, that is fine, and the details should still be copied out.

A worked example

A business found their enquiry numbers had been falling for a year while the phone rang about as often.

Their platform inbox had roughly forty unread messages, some over six months old, because nobody had been asked to check it and it was not where anybody expected enquiries.

Perhaps a dozen were genuine work enquiries that had never been answered.

They set an automatic reply stating the hours somebody would respond, gave one person responsibility for checking twice a day, and replied to everything recent with an apology.

Three of those turned into jobs, months late.

Their observation was that they had been advertising a channel they were not staffing, which was worse than not having it.

Record them like any other enquiry

The operational half, and it is what makes the channel measurable.

A message enquiry should end up in the same place as a form submission: the same list, with the date, the name, and what they wanted.

Otherwise your record of where enquiries come from is missing an entire channel, and any decision about where to spend effort is made on incomplete data.

It also means an enquiry does not depend on one person remembering, which is the ordinary failure with any inbox.

Copying two lines into a spreadsheet takes seconds and is the difference between a channel you can judge and one you merely have.

Filter the noise honestly

Because a large share of what arrives is not an enquiry.

Automated messages selling marketing services, people asking for free work, and comments that belong in public all arrive in the same inbox.

Deal with those quickly rather than letting them make the inbox feel not worth checking, which is how the real enquiries get buried.

A short standard reply for the common non-enquiries saves time and keeps the inbox usable.

The volume of noise is also the reason a named person and a fixed time works better than checking when you happen to think of it.

Say where you prefer to be contacted

A small step that shapes where enquiries arrive.

If you would rather have a call or an email, say so, in the profile and in the automatic reply.

Most people will use the route you indicate, and the ones who message anyway had a reason to prefer it.

Do not remove messaging entirely unless you genuinely will not staff it, since turning it off sends people to a competitor rather than to your phone.

Where you do turn it off, say where to go instead rather than leaving the option simply absent.

The counter-case

Messaging is not right for every business.

Anything requiring a detailed brief, a site visit, or a written quote is poorly served by a channel built for short exchanges, and a business that does only that work may reasonably direct people elsewhere.

The immediacy also suits some trades badly: a business where the owner is on a roof all day cannot answer within an hour and should not pretend to.

And there is a real cost in attention, since a messaging inbox interrupts in a way email does not.

Staff it properly or point people elsewhere, and avoid the middle position where the channel is open and unattended.

Setting it up

1. Check the inbox now for unread messages.
2. Set an automatic reply stating real hours.
3. Name who checks it and when.
4. Answer the question, then offer to move.
5. Copy every enquiry into your usual record.
6. Say where you prefer to be contacted.
7. Close it properly if you will not staff it.

Step one is worth doing before anything else, since a business discovering this subject usually has unanswered enquiries sitting there already.

Messaging through a listing is covered in messaging through your listing.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.