Helping a friend gather data and reach prospects with gentle intros

I had coffee with a friend the other day, and he shared a business idea. I thought it was an awesome idea–I certainly saw the need in the marketplace and believed he had the skillset and resources to execute on the idea.

He’s still in the exploratory phase, so I offered to send gentle intros to people in my network who I thought would benefit from his idea. (The target market is anyone with a custom web application that makes money, or anyone who builds custom web applications and is looking for a way to provide ongoing support–if that is you, contact me if you would like to learn more.)  I asked him to write a small spiel that he’d feel comfortable with me sharing.  If you are thinking of doing this, make your friend write a spiel for you.  If they can’t write a spiel, chances are they won’t be good at follow up and your intros will be wasted.

Then, I went through my LinkedIn network and put contacts into categories:

1. this person (or the company for which they work) might want to partner with my friend
2. this person (or the company for which they work) is a possible client for my friend’s offering
3. this person might know people who are in categories 1 or 2.
4. this person (or the company for which they work) is not a good fit for what my friend is working on
5. who is this person?

And then I sent soft pitch emails to almost everyone in categories 1, 2 and 3.  The content varied based on which category someone was in, but for category 1, the email was something like:

I have a friend who owns a hosting company who is looking to talk to consulting companies about a possible new product he is thinking about offering.  Here is his spiel:

 

[…spiel from friend …]

 

I wasn’t sure if this kind of software maintenance was something that your company wanted to keep inhouse, or if you would be interested in discussing this with him.  I wanted to check before I did intros.    Is this something you think is worth learning more about?

This way, my friends and contacts on LinkedIn don’t get spammed from someone they don’t know.  Instead, they get an informative email from me, asking if they want to learn more.  If they do (and about 10% did), I do mutual introductions, and then the ball is in their court.  (Side note: here’s a great intro email etiquette guide.)

Why did I do this?  Well, there were a couple of reasons.

First and foremost, because I thought it would be a win win for both sides.  My friend gets more data about his offering and how the market will react to it.  My contacts/friends on LinkedIn learn about a new product from a trusted source.

Second, I was able to do some social network housecleaning.  I was able to ‘unlink’ with all people in category #5–it’s always nice to clean up your social graph.

Third, I reached out to people and had some interesting conversations.  Some folks I hadn’t talked to in years.  It’s good to reach out to people, and always better to do so with something of use to them, rather than a plea for work.

This was a fair bit of effort (a couple of hours).  I can’t imagine doing this monthly, but once a quarter seems reasonable, especially if I’m reaching out to a different segment of my network each time.  And I don’t have to do the whole process every time–spiel, linkedin, soft pitch, intro.  I actually like scanning news sites and simply sending interesting articles to old contacts: “Thought you might be interested in this <link> because of XXX and YYY”.  Those are super simple to send, and again, provide value and raise your profile.

Next time you talk to a friend who has a great idea, who can execute on it, and who will follow up with anybody you introduce them to, consider reviewing your social graph for prospects.  Gentle intros can benefit all three of you.