This week we launched Get Intro From - a tool that identifies the teammate who has met with your contact the most. Starting a conversation with a warm intro makes the odds of converting a conversation to an opportunity that much higher. When that person is a teammate who has context on your prospect used your product at their previous job, those details can help you
We chatted with leading sales members (and our own team who has been dog-fooding the feature pre-release) how to best use Get Intro From to set new meetings:
This is a play where I would immediately get executive involvement if the contact was a champion that brought on software at the old company. Here’s how we’d run the play
Step 1: First, reach out to the CSM or AM and get as much context as you can on the account.
The best companies will have this documented in salesforce so you might not need to bug the CSM, but if not, have the conversation. If there's time, listen to gong calls, and deeply understand why that original champion bought in the first place.
Step 2: Create the message you think is most likely to land with the former champion.
In outreach, you can choose to send from an executives email domain. Choose your VP or C level and make sure they are in the loop on how you are approaching engaging former champions. Getting a personalized note from an exec will result in 40% + higher response rates and the exec doesn't have to do any work other than respond.
Step 3: Once the executive gets a response from the prospect, the AE gets looped in to set up the meeting.
From there, the AE should multithread (can provide messaging or sequences if needed) to other members of the buying committee and get them looped in on the call Example template:
"Hi Todd - Jesse here from Databricks. We have a meeting setup next week with Stephen, your Head of Data Eng, to walk through how Databricks helps other SaaS companies unify data storage, warehousing, and BI all in one place.
Stephen brought Databricks on at his last company and saw a lot of great results.
Given your role, I thought you'd be an important addition to the call. Mind if I add you?"
This sets you up for multiple stakeholders, urgency, and executive involvement from the beginning.
Before getting an introduction, work with your colleague to find out how well they know this EB/Champion to get the information you need for a personalized approach, and the right outreach.
Ask for context on the account itself:
First step is to develop a deeper understanding about your contact. Here's a quick list of questions to get to the context you need to personalize the message.
- How much do we know about the customer’s (previous) use case?
- How involved was the EB/Champion (IE were they actually the EB/Champion)
- Were they true advocates of cutting edge features or the basics?
- How strong of an advocate can they become for us in a net-new account?
- What kind of objections should we expect they get and can they defend us strongly this early on in their new role?
- Who was the AE on the account? Do they still have a relationship with this person? Should I get intro through them after CSM shares info?
- Which internal executives supported the deal?
Formulate a hypothesis on how and why you would be relevant to their new role:
Next you want to make sure your message is relevant and timely. Quickly understand their new company and how you might fit into the mix.
- What does their new employer do? How can we add value?
- What capabilities allow us to deliver that level of value?
- How do we make a concrete actionable ask for a conversation now based on what we know and how much of an advocate they were for us in the past?
Prioritize Your Outreach:
Last make sure you are leveraging the best introduction path possible.
If the contact is an exec:
Work with the former Executive Sponsor to send a personalized note using the context gathered. It should be brief and written like an executive. If the executive gets a meeting, an executive briefing doc should be prepared for them so they have context and can share notes from the call with you afterward.
If the contact is a target persona:
Ask the person with the strongest relationship to reach out with a congrats note. The ask should be to find time to catch up and learn how and why they took the role. Create a prep doc prepared but with more tactical questions helping us structure a path into a deal. The main ask is to determine if it’s okay to broker an introduction.
If yes - send a personalized note from Account Executive name dropping the CSM and all the info you gathered to show you are a serious business partner for them.
Ghostwrite: Make it easy to broker the intro
When you want to ask for an intro, you want to make it as easy on your teammate as possible. I generally ghost write an email with a few key ingredients:
- Introduction
- How you know the person/shared context
- Why are being introduced
Here's an example note I ghostwrite for people making referrals to my business:
Subject: Persons Name <> Tom Intro
Hey X - {Insert any personaliation}.
Wanted to introduce you to my friend Tom Alaimo. Tom and I have met through some mutual friends. He spent a number of years as a successful rep at Gong before leaving at the beginning of the year to start his own business. He works with sales reps and teams to help them build more consistent pipeline.
His whole motto is around building long-term relationships with good people and I thought you two would get along well.
Will let you take it from here.
Can’t get the intro? Name dropping can add warmth
Sometimes you get the intro - people are busy even if they wan to connect you with someone. When you can’t can’t get that intro, but you have a good connection, you can always name drop.
Here’s how:
Subject: Person's Name I Am Name Dropping (Eg: John Smith)
Hey X - I was chatting with John Smith last week and he mentioned you might be a good person to connect with around your team's pipeline goals for Q4.
A lot of other sales leaders I speak with say this is the slowest pipeline building year they've had in the last decade and are struggling to find the time to coach their reps.
I help sales teams build predictable pipeline through the framework I created during my decade in SaaS and few years at Gong.
Any interest in a chat?
Cheers,
Tom
The most important running this play is clear communication both internally and to your customers. You want to make sure you have:
- A clear ask internally
- A good message for your customer
- Clear ownership on follow up
Here’s how we structure the emails:
Internal Ask
Hey -
We noticed that PERSON recently moved from CUSTOMER to ACCOUNT. Given you have the strongest relationship with them, can you reach out to them so that we can start a conversation about Airplane for ACCOUNT?
I've shared a message below that you can use to send with me cc'ed.
Email Intro Template
Hi FIRST NAME -
We noticed you left {{past account name text}} (where our teams worked together) and wanted to give a belated congrats on your move to {{company}}.
As a reminder, Airplane is a developer platform for building internal tools and workload automation. We thought you’d have a good sense of {{company}}'s internal tooling and if there’s a similar opportunity to level up your efforts.
We'd love to learn about your team's internal tooling process and explore replicating our success with {{past account name text}} with your team at {{company}}. Would you be open to chatting with Dustin (cc'ed) from our team?
Best,
NAME
This is a super valuable play at our stage. Our entire team has a decent amount of context, so they can really help provide insights into the account for personalization. My messaging looks something like this:
Hi Todd -- I saw that you worked closely with Hasin Boksh (here is he LinkedIn) back when he was at Navan. He is now the head of sales dev at Aircall. Ghostwriting you a quick message to send over to him. Appreciate it.
----
Hasin,
We noticed you left Navan (where our teams worked together) and wanted to give a belated congrats for your move to Aircall!
Based on your experience with us, we thought you’d have a good sense of how Aircall is approaching pipeline generation, and if there’s a similar opportunity to level-up your efforts.
Do you think it makes sense to open a dialogue at some point?
