How to Get Warm Intros from Your Champions

You just closed a deal...now what? Run the warm intro play.

Play Overview

Sales Play Owner: AE, Sales Manager

Play Cadence: Monthly or quarterly depending on deal cycles

Who is it for? True Champions, highly active power users, people who organically tell others about your product/solution

When to run it? 30-60 days after initial value with your product, when someone hits a usage threshold, or when you learn of someone organically speaking positively about their experience

Why it works: Referrals have 86% higher win rates and 59% faster conversion

Keys to success

“Give” first – check in on onboarding, make a connection, help them succeed in their role
Do the work for the customer/Champion
Make it as easy as possible for them to say yes (remove friction)

First things first - make sure your champion is getting value

It's easy to let a deal slip from your mind once a signature is on the line, but you just spend 3, 6, 9 months maybe even a year with your buying team. Turn that into a true relationship by staying in touch after the deal.

Schedule some time on your calendar to send a nice note:

Checking in on implementation
Celebrating the first win
Sharing any resources that make you think of your champion

Once your champion is winning, you're winning - ask for the intro

Asking for intros can feel awkward, but it's worth it. Here's what you do:

Step 1: Research

Don't leave it up to chance. Figure out who you want an introduction to. This is pretty easy to do in linkedin

Log into Sales Navigator
Go to Lead Search
“Connection of” the person you are asking for a referral
Narrow down your ICP based on account lists, seniority level, and roles within your target accounts - we recommend function vs. title)
Generate a list of of ~5 people people. Your champion might not actually know everyone they are connected to

Step 2: Enrich your list

In the CSV include: Name, Email, Title, and Company

Step 3: Ghost write the body of the email for yoru champion

In order to make it as easy as possible, ghost write an email that they can just forward on to their connections, adding a few lines of context. Depending on your champion's role they may not be sending this kind of email everyday.

Step 4: Ship it

Here's an email we found works:

Subject: post kickoff question and dinner

Body:

Hey {{Champion}},

Just listened to the kick off call with {{AM Name}}. Looks like the team is seeing {{early wins, adoption}}. I'm excited to see the progression over the next few months.

As we talked about in your evaluation, we really believe {{summarize the problem your company solves}}.

Curious, would you be open to making some intros in your network? I'd make this super easy by:

Looking for potential connections and sending you an email to intro
You can look through the list and tell me who you feel comfortable with
I will ghost write an email you can forward along and cc or bcc me on

If anything moves to a true evaluation I'd love to {{personalized thank you based on your convo}}. No pressure at all, but I know you really believe in what we offer.

Thanks,

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