i3 - November/December 2017 - 63

Business
By Jake Sigal
A DV I C E FO R E N T R E P R E N E U RS

Interested in an Intro?
There's a Process for That

 I 

ntroductions. Business development. Sales and
marketing. These are the tools we carry and level up
as entrepreneurs. Successful growth requires help
from the right people at the right companies. That includes
vendors, other entrepreneurs, investors and clients.

At this point in the call, I was directed
to his blog with specific instructions.
It was his way to "codify" the process of
business introductions to ensure benefit
for both parties. As weird and binary as
his process is, he claims that he has done
A-B testing on it (both for timing and
language) and that it has the highest
response rate. Whether or not this can
be applied to you, the takeaway is that
having a specific process for managing
business introductions is a good idea.

Cecilie Arcurs/Getty Images

Business Networking

Connections are established, maintained
and grown. With them, we can flourish.
Alone, it's going to be tough or impossible
to advance. But there's a new form of
spam making these introductions harder,
and they're not from a Nigerian prince,
I'm talking about email introductions.
They're from someone you know, and
there's something you can do about it.
It's often hard to say no when a contact
asks you to facilitate an intro. It can put
you in a weird situation, say, if they want
an introduction to someone above your pay
grade, or someone you've only met once.
Two things happened to me recently
that sparked this article. First, I was
double-blind introduced to someone
in my industry after a new product
announcement at our company. The call
started off with her saying, "I'm not sure
what we're talking about, but we were
thrown together on the call." This was
C TA . t e c h / i 3

LinkedIn turns 15 this year and has
fundamentally changed how we hustle
our way through the industry. It hasn't
been all positive, however. Email
inboxes are flooded with messages.
Even for the "Inbox Zero" crowd, it's
tough to manage these expectations
coming in from all directions.
My personal takeaway is that I am
no longer blindly putting two people
together without asking
my connection first if they
followed by a poor elevator
are interested to save them
pitch on my part.
I've
the hassle. There are excepThat really threw me off
tions to this, but when in
my game for the call. I realcompletely
ized the core problem was
redefined my doubt, I'm sparing my contacts and relationships
that the email introduction
process for
intro. I'm also making
didn't establish the business
making and aa bad
change in my commitment
purpose of the call. It didn't
receiving
level to making intros. For
help that the introductions
for both of us came from our introductions. example, instead of saying,
"Would you like an intro
own recent individual conto ABC," I'm saying, "I have
nections and not through
a good contact at ABC, and if you are
people that we both knew for years.
interested in an intro, send me something
I hope, but doubt, I'll hear from my
I can forward to pre-check if they are
new connection anytime soon.
interested in an intro."
I then had a call with a new acquainLast month, I would have argued
tance I met at a CTA event who asked
that this is just semantics. However,
me to connect with someone in his orgaI've completely redefined my process
nization. As a "pro-introduction guy,"
for making and receiving introductions.
I immediately said I would send a forAnd it's so easy to get in touch with me
wardable email to make it as easy as
through LinkedIn, Twitter or email.
possible for him to make the intro.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

63
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i3 - November/December 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of i3 - November/December 2017
