Typical success rates in getting intros using this approach vary from approximately 1 in 2 to 1 in 5, vs 1 in 100 or 1 in 330 for cold calling. Hence, I think it’s a good approach.
This is a direct approach. There is no transfer of trust (“social capital”) from an intermediary as there is in the approach I described in my last post.
What makes this technique work far better than cold calling is the trust that exists because you have a common bond with the person you are approaching. This common bond can be a shared educational background, professional association, military, place you live (kids at same school perhaps) etc.
The strength of feeling that exists in this common background will determine your success rate along with how well you approach the other person.
Many of the communities you can leverage provide their members with a directory, for example an alumni directory for a school, a member directory for a professional organization or a directory of families for a town’s school.
In most professional situations you can cross-check this information by looking the person up on Linkedin. This helps you check their current information and get more details on their background.
Even though you share a common bond, you still need to give the person you approach a reason to speak to you. They are very likely stressed out in their job and giving up their time to speak to you is still a big ask.
You need to have your value proposition together and if you can add a trigger event to your approach then your success rates will increase even more.
Explain why you think you may be able to help their company and mention that your research showed something changed that makes it seem like now is a reasonable time to connect.
See below for an example of an email approach with and without a trigger event included.
Here’s a real email I have used that uses a value proposition but no trigger event.
I’m wondering if we could speak briefly (10 mins) about online marketing at Big Company? I’d like your guidance on the best person to speak to there.
My firm (Startup Co) enables marketers to generate leads and awareness using social media–and to do this on a large scale. The effect is similar to Google but utilizes social media rather than search.
I’d love to return any help, so please let me know if there’s any way I can help you. (Maybe we can keep in-touch and I can help down the road).
I used our common connection (Wharton) in the subject line. It’s important in an email subject line as I need the recipient to open and read the email or nothing else in the email will matter.
“Take the call” is a motto the recipient may have heard as the Wharton alumni club has been using that for years. If you have such a sound bite, use it to make the request resonate quickly.
I use “WG 93” in my signature as this is a bit of a “code” from Wharton to show your graduation year. It helps confirm that I am indeed someone with a common connection to the recipient.
Here’s the same email with a trigger event added. This gives the email an even higher chance of working but does take some research before sending.
I noticed that Big Company’s CEO mentioned on a quarterly conference call that reaching consumers on social media is an important initiative for 2019, so I thought this might be a good time to reach out on this topic.