How to ask for a warm introduction someone will make

Ask for a warm introduction by sending the connector two things: a short note saying who you want to meet and why, and underneath it a finished email, under a hundred words, that they can forward to that person as it stands. Choose the connector by how well they know the target, and give them an easy way to say no.

Why introductions stall

Most people you ask for an introduction want to help. A company that builds software for warm introductions puts the diagnosis plainly in its own guide: finding the right connector is the easy half, and what stops most connectors is the time it takes to write the message.

Picture the request from their side. A note that reads could you introduce me to someone at Northwind? hands them a writing job. They have to work out what you do, why Northwind would care, how to describe you without embarrassing themselves, and how to put all of it in their own voice. That is real work for a favour, so it goes on the list of things to do later, and later rarely comes.

The same note with a finished email underneath it is the same favour with the work already done. They read it, change a word if they want to, and press send.

The two parts of the ask

The note to the connector is for them alone. It says who you want to meet, why now, and that the draft below is theirs to change or ignore. It can be plain about what you want, because the connector already knows you.

The forwardable email is written in the connector's voice and addressed to the person you want to meet. It is the message the connector would write if they had the time, which is exactly why you write it for them. The same guide gives four rules for it, and each one holds up:

• Under a hundred words. The target reads it from someone they know and decides in a few seconds whether to reply.
• Name the shared context. How the connector knows you, and why they thought of the target. That line is what makes the introduction warm. Without it the email is a cold one with a friend's name on top.
• Be specific about the ask. Twenty minutes about one named thing. Would love to connect leaves the target to work out what you want, and most will not try.
• Give the connector an easy out. Say in your note that a no costs nothing and that you will not chase. A request that is comfortable to refuse is comfortable to accept, and it spares the connector a choice between an awkward refusal and silence.

What it looks like written down

The whole ask, both parts, with the placeholders you fill in:

To the connector

{Name}, I'd like to meet {target} at {company}. They've just {a specific, checkable thing they did}, and that's the problem we work on. You know them from {shared context}, so I thought I'd ask you first.

I've drafted something below so you don't have to write it. Change anything, or tell me now isn't a good time. Either is fine, and I won't chase.

For {Name} to forward

{Target}, {sender} runs {company}, which {one line on what it does, in the target's terms}. We know each other from {shared context}. Given {the thing they did}, I thought the two of you should talk. Would you be open to twenty minutes in the next couple of weeks? If it's not for you, no reply needed.

The forward runs to about sixty words. Three things in it are doing the work:

• The checkable thing. It tells the connector why the target will welcome the email, and it tells the target you looked. It follows the rule from personalisation that works in a cold email: a sentence the reader could confirm or correct.
• The shared context, in the connector's words. It is the only line a cold email cannot contain.
• The exit for the target. No reply needed protects the connector too. If the target is not interested, nobody owes anybody a follow-up.

Ask the strongest tie, whatever their title

The instinct is to route the request through the most impressive person you know who knows the target: the investor, the old boss, the board member. The same guide says the opposite, and it is right: choose the strongest connector, not the most senior one. A grand name with a thin tie produces a lukewarm forward, when it produces one at all.

Strength is easier to judge than it sounds. The rules one relationship-scoring product publishes for its own scores work just as well on your contacts:

• Two-way history is the signal. Someone you have written back and forth with, recently or often, is a strong tie.
• One-way traffic counts for nothing. If someone has emailed you a hundred times and you never replied, you do not know them. This rule is what keeps newsletters, vendors and cold sequences off your list of connectors.
• A thread with fifty people on it proves nothing. Being copied on the same big email chain says nothing about whether either of you would take a call from the other.
• A bare connection is weak by default. Being connected on LinkedIn does not mean you know someone. A message history, or email in both directions, is what moves them up.
• Correct by hand for the friend you never email. The person you see every month and never write to is invisible to every signal above. You know they are strong, so count them.

Run that over the people who know your target, and ask the one at the top.

When the ask should come from someone else

Sometimes the connector knows your cofounder or your investor far better than they know you. Then the request should come from that person, even if you wrote it. One warm-introduction product builds an approval step for exactly this case: a salesperson drafts the request, the CEO sends it to the board member who knows the target, and the board member sees a request from someone they know well instead of from a stranger on the sales team. The same holds in a company of three. Whoever on your side has the strongest tie to the connector sends the note.

When you have no path at all

Sometimes nobody you know knows the target. Then the ask changes shape: you ask your network for a kind of person rather than a named one, and you keep the request as small as it can be. A version written for a founder trying to meet agency owners:

{Name}, I'm spending four weeks talking to agency owners about whether the thing I've built is useful to them, before I build anything else. Not selling. I want to be told it's useless while that's still cheap.

Does anyone in your world run a B2B agency that does lead generation, partnerships or business development for its clients? A forwarded sentence is all I need; I'll do the rest.

Send these on day one of any outreach push, before the first cold email. Introductions are the slowest conversations to arrive, because each one waits on somebody else's inbox before it reaches yours.

All of this assumes a network worth asking, which is the case for building one instead of an audience. Where introductions sit among the other channels, and when they are the right one, is where your buyers are.

Five things

1. Write the forwardable email yourself, in the connector's voice, under a hundred words.
2. Put the shared context and one specific ask in it. Those two lines are the introduction.
3. Give the connector an easy out, in writing, and keep your word about not chasing.
4. Pick the connector by two-way history, never by title.
5. Send introduction requests first. They take the longest to come back.