You are wasting your warm intros
Your note sucks because you don't sound sincere. Do these 6 things to make your note more persuasive before you hit send.
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Read time: 7 minutes
Cold emails are hard mode.
But warm emails? Now we’re in business.
This is why I think it’s especially tragic when people mess up warm emails.
You’ve somehow gotten a friend/colleague to agree to introduce you… And you end up sending a middling note that was never going to pique the interest of the final recipient. What a waste.
Your friend sending the note can only do so much. They are likely going to forward your note with something like,
“Interested? Let me know, happy to make an intro.”
And you should be grateful for this. Don’t expect them to write an essay advocating on your behalf. The fact that they are sending your note along at all is a win.
You have to pull your weight.
Your note has to actually be good.
Your note is what will get your final recipient to say no or yes.
The focus of this post is warm intros specifically for sales pitches.
There are many reasons you might ask for a warm intro, but IMO, when you’re asking a friend…to connect you to their friend…so you can sell to their friend, you need to put a strong foot forward.
Before we start: This is not meant to be “how to send warm intros 101.” One of the investors in Maven, Chris Fralic, wrote an excellent piece on this in 2013 that’s still as relevant today.
Chris talks about sending what he calls the Self Contained Forwardable Email (SCFE). This is an email your connection can easily forward to the final recipient. There are other gems in there. So if you need a primer on warm intros, read that first.
Today, I want to dissect a warm intro note from one of my former colleagues.
Here’s the note:
Now let’s dissect this note, so you can apply the underlying principles to improve your own warm intro pitches.
1. Try to sound more sincere.
My main problem with this note is it doesn’t really seem sincere.
I’m all for being concise, but there is such a thing as being too concise. The lever in a written pitch is words, so if you strip away most of the words, you strip away your ability to persuade.
In this case, it feels like the writer could go either way.
If you’re going to go through the trouble of asking for a warm intro (and using social capital for it), you might as well seem like you’re putting more effort into it.
Seeming more sincere goes a long way. There are many issues with LinkedIn DM thread bois who say “hey wanna hop on a call? I can 10x your leads in 3 days.”
Yes they lack personalization, and they probably can’t deliver on their promise.
But the thing that makes these messages particularly infuriating is the sense of entitlement.
They write two lines, and think they deserve 30 minutes of your time. They are strangers showing up unannounced, asking to be let into your living room.
It’s dangerous and not strategic to come across as entitled for one simple reason:
People are petty AF.
Do not underestimate how petty people can be. ESPECIALLY if you have no connection with them, and you need the phone call more than they do.
Yes, there’s advice of “don’t give away your power”, but I think many people misapply this. They think it means, “If I’m too respectful or eager, I’ll seem supplicant.”
Or worse: They have an accurate sense of the power dynamics, but due to poor execution…. they come across as entitled. This is unfortunate.
You don’t want to have to say, “But I had good intentions! I’m not actually entitled!”
You don’t get the chance to explain your intentions. Your words must be standalone.
Improve your writing, so your intentions can be felt by your recipient without you needing to add explanation.
2. Personalize more.
Let me start by saying you can write excellent copy that’s boilerplate. You do not need to spend an hour customizing every outbound note. Here’s an example of a sales note that was 90% boilerplate, but still sounded personal, because the salesperson deeply understood and appealed to what their recipient cared about.
With that said, if you have the luxury of getting a warm intro, I recommend taking the extra 2-3 minutes to add a bit of personalization.
In my former colleague’s note above, the only personalized part is the potential course topic on brand and performance marketing. It’s a good start, but it doesn’t seem as thoughtful as it could be.
I’m sure she had good reasons for suggesting this topic:
Did you like a post this person wrote on this topic?
Is this topic trending on the platform?
Why do you think students would be excited to learn this topic from this individual, specifically?
If you have answers to these questions, include it in the note. This shows you’re reaching out to this specific person for a reason.
Your recipient is likely wondering, “Why are you reaching out to me specifically?”
You often already have answers to these questions off the top of your head. So incorporating the answers takes an extra moment, but can make a huge difference.
3. Answer obvious questions.
An obvious question an instructor might have is: What’s in it for me?
That’s an underlying question everyone asks themselves all the time. But let’s get more specific:
“Is there demand from Maven students on this topic?”
^ If you can show there’s demand for this topic, an instructor is much more likely to be interested.
“You mentioned you're curating a collection of growth courses. Who else is in this collection?”
^ This helps an instructor get a tacit sense of whether this is for “people like us.”
This is the place to name-drop to establish credibility. If you don’t have anyone in this collection yet, you can always say, “Our recent collections included instructors like [name people similar to or more successful than your target].”
This is a subtle way to show you are “picking” the instructor.
A note about tactics that play with power dynamics:
The poorly-executed way to “pick” the customer is to be too on-the-nose and act like you’re doing them a favor. This cheap “negging” trick might work on some people, but in my experience, it doesn’t work for most intelligent people.
They know you are trying to shift the power dynamics and make yourself the prize, and it’s off-putting.
The more skilled and subtle approach is to mention people who are at the same level or more successful. This does two things:
It says to your recipient: “We think you are as successful as X person,” with X person being someone they respect, admire, and believe is more successful. This is a flattering comparison.
It signals “people more successful than you have chosen to work with us.” This is a more subtle, effective way to signal that you have options. This shows you are the “prize” without being as explicit or crass.
4. Address their preconceived assumptions.
Your recipient might have preconceived notions or misunderstandings about your product/category. How can you share a relevant piece of information that helps them think differently? How can you teach them something new?
For example, your recipient might think it’s a lot of work to create a course, so they won’t have bandwidth to build it.
In this case, you can either position your point as:
(a) This is a lot of work, but the revenue upside is higher than you think and you create an asset you can reuse for years to come.
or
(b) This is less work than you think—if you create a certain type of course, which is what I recommend. Here are links to courses like this.
Notice how the two statements above have opposite positioning.
This is a lesson in thinking flexibly, while still being rooted in facts. The arguments are opposite, but they are both true.
Based on what you think your audience will resonate with, you can choose which angle to go with, then offer data points, numbers, examples, etc.
5. Ask questions where the answer is likely to be yes.
“Is a course on your radar for 2025?”
The answer is probably no. This is a bad question because now they’re thinking, “Oh this isn’t relevant to me right now.”
You’ve killed any sense of urgency you might have had.
On the other hand, you could ask a better question with subtly different positioning:
“Have you ever thought about teaching a course?”
Given your target audience, the answer is probably yes.
If your goal in asking a question is to get the prospect more interested, make sure it’s a question they’ll answer the way you want them to.
6. Optional: Have the note come from your cofounder/CEO startup.
If your company is small, however you want to define that, you may want your note to come from your cofounder/CEO.
You don’t HAVE to do this, but it will make you seem more sincere and less like your CEO is too good or too busy to interact with this person.
Before you say this is too much work, yes, it is a bit more work, but not as much as you think. For example, in previous companies, my team would draft notes for me and I/my assistant would send them from my email. It was quite fast.
It shows goodwill because you’re putting in effort first. When you put in effort first, you invite the other person to potentially do the same.
There’s no guarantee, but it increases the chances of getting a positive reply—or at least not rubbing the person the wrong way before they’ve even considered your request.
I don’t want to hear, “But Wes, people shouldn’t care if my deputy reaches out on my behalf!” This is similar to people saying “People shouldn’t feel offended that I’m asking them to pick from my Calendly.”
This is because I don’t live in the World of Should. I live in the World of Is, where I acknowledge how humans actually act, not how I personally would like them to act in an ideal world.
To recap, here are 6 ways to make your warm intro note stronger:
Try to sound more sincere.
Personalize more.
Answer obvious questions.
Address their preconceived assumptions.
Ask questions where the answer is likely to be yes.
Optional: Have the note come from your cofounder/CEO startup.
Which one of these jumps out at you? Which do you think you already do well, and which do you want to add to your toolkit?
Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET.
Wes
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Thoughtfulness (personalization) isn’t optional, it’s the entry fee for attention in a world where time is limited and everyone’s already stretched thin.
I keep stumbling on the phrase 'try to seem more sincere.' I get what you’re saying in terms of effectiveness, but I’m curious about the line between seeming sincere and just being sincere. If the goal is to seem more sincere, doesn’t that still carry the scent of entitlement? What’s the difference between learning to communicate actual sincerity and just learning to mimic what sincerity sounds like?