For SaaS founders who are getting started with customer development, introductions are a great way to get in front of prospective customers. And VCs are one of the great sources of these intros, especially for early-stage companies. They spend their days meeting with companies big and small, so they’re in the perfect position to connect you with potential customers who feel the pain you’re trying to solve. (Also, from the VC perspective, it’s an easy way to do due diligence your company, so they benefit from facilitating these intros as well.) Even as your company scales and you develop a repeatable process for bringing new customers through your funnel, warm intros are still super valuable.
When those intro offers do come, you need to be ready to make the most of them, while simultaneously respecting the (sometimes subtle) etiquette of the intro. This post will guide you through the nuanced art of effectively leveraging these introductions.
Prep for each meeting
Great intros start before the intro offer is extended, so you should do some research to understand the strongest potential connections any given VC can make for you. I generally start with the “portfolio” section on their fund’s website or their CrunchBase page. Then I dig into each company to see if they fit my target customer profile (this is a very time-consuming task, but you also get a deep understanding of the types of companies that each firm funds).
During the meeting
If the person you’re meeting with offers to make an intro during the meeting, take a note of the name and company. If you’re unsure why that person or company would be interested, this is the perfect time to stop and ask: “That could be interesting. Is there a specific reason you think they’d be interested in what we’re doing?” Not only will this provide the necessary context for the intro follow-up email, but it will also clear up any miscommunication if it’s not the right type of intro for you.
“How can I help?”
Even if they don’t initially offer to connect you with anyone, most VCs will likely say something at the end of the meeting like, “Let me know how I can help.” This is your opportunity to leverage the prep work you did before the meeting and make the ask. Something like, “I looked at your portfolio companies beforehand and I think that the folks at Company A might be interested in learning about what we’re doing because of X & Y. Would you be willing to connect me with someone there?”
Sharing the reasons that you think Company A will be interested provides context that might trigger other possible intro offers.
The flow
Once an intro offer has been made, it helps to understand the optimal flow for how these intros should work.
- Step 0: An offer for an introduction is made.
- Step 1: You follow up with an email to the introducer requesting the introduction (more detail on the exact layout below).
- Step 2: The introducer will likely forward your email to the person that you’re requesting the intro to (without CC’ing you).
- Step 3: The recipient will read this forwarded email and respond to the introducer if they’re willing to take the intro or not. The strength of the relationship between the introducer and recipient matters greatly here but, generally, (good) VCs are strong connectors.
- Step 4: Assuming the answer is yes, you’ll be CC’ed on an email alongside the person you were seeking the introduction to.
- Step 4a: If you do not hear back about the intro, follow up about 7–10 days later. The introducer will likely reach back out and try to get a response from the person you’re looking to get the intro to. Persistence pays off, but I generally don’t ask more than twice for them to check in (on the second follow-up you can try tweaking the subject line to bump the message outside of the thread for an extra boost). If you don’t have any luck after two follow ups, you’re better off moving to a new source for that intro.
- Step 5: You (not the other person) will respond promptly (thanking introducer and moving him/her to BCC). As the person receiving the introduction, you should do the scheduling back-and-forth yourself (i.e., do not use an assistant, an AI or a calendar link to schedule the meeting). In other words, be humble and human.
- Step 6: If you want to meet in person, offer to come to their office (you’re taking their time; do not impose a commuting tax, as well). Always arrive between 5–10 minutes early to do check-in procedures. If it is a smaller company (e.g., less than 20 people), aim to be exactly on time, as they likely don’t have a reception area.
- Step 6a: If you want to meet remotely, understand the timezone they’re in (so you can make sure you’re suggesting reasonable times) and ask their preference for how they’d like to meet (e.g., phone, Hangout, Zoom or other conferencing tool). It can be useful to send 2 or 3 specific time options that work for you and will be reasonable for their timezone. (I often put a placeholder on my calendar with a question mark in the title, (e.g., .“Company A?”) for the times I suggest to ensure I don’t double book myself.)
- Step 7: Send a calendar invite with the details of the meeting as soon as timing is agreed. I generally send invites for 45-minute meetings (as 30 minutes is too short if it is going well, and 60 minutes feels a bit imposing). The title of the invite also matters, as it will be the name by which they recognize it on their calendar (I opt for “Name & Grant” or “Company A & Replicated”).
- Step 8: Do the necessary prep work for this meeting, likely by reading articles about their business, and by checking recent blog posts and announcements they’ve made.
The intro email template
Even before you ever get your first intro, you should have a solid template that you will use for intros. I’ve included an example that we used about 36 months ago to get our first customers (this email intro resulted in NPM becoming a great customer of ours).
Subject: NPM Enterprise (Replicated)
Hey Tom,
Thanks for offering to introduce us to the team at NPM. We’d love to show them what we’re building at Replicated and see if it might be a fit for NPM Enterprise. I’m including a quick description of what we do for context:
Replicated (www.replicated.com) extends an existing cloud based SaaS product into a version that is easily installed, licensed, managed & supported in their customers’ private environment (on-prem data center or private cloud). Unlike current substitutes (VMs), we do this without the SaaS vendor needing to maintain a secondary product/code base, or build licensing/updating/support features unnecessary for the public cloud version.
Thanks so much for your help.
Best,Grant MillerFounder, Replicatedgrant@replicated.com
Here are a few key suggestions for crafting your template intro:
- Understand that it will be forwarded (not copied and pasted), and create content that suits that mode of delivery.
- Don’t send an email intro that requests multiple intros at once; follow up with unique emails for each intro offered (to enable easy forwarding).
- Send it as soon as possible following the meeting. The more fresh the intro is in the mind of the introducer, the more likely they are to follow through on making the introduction.
- Just like with calendar invites, use a subject that will provide context to the receiving party. I always include our company name in parentheses at the end of the subject (e.g., NPM Enterprise (Replicated)).
- Do some quick research on the company before you send the intro request. Sometimes they’ve posted relevant or related content or comments to Twitter or on their blog. If they have, it can be helpful to reference those materials to show that you’re paying attention and doing the leg work.
Don’t screw it up
You only get one opportunity at a first impression, so make sure that your email isn’t going to tarnish that impression with typos and formatting errors. In order to get a different perspective, I actually change the window ratio of the compose box after I finish my first iteration of the email to change the line breaks (I find that line breaks often will mask typos or grammatical errors).
Also, I don’t send emails after 10 p.m., because I’ve recognized that I’m much more prone to typos after that time. So, I’ll write them and reread them in the morning before sending.
For really important emails, I have my cofounder proofread as an additional layer. Another favorite trick is to use the Mac feature to read highlighted text back to you, as hearing your text read aloud is super useful for spotting odd wording issues.
Formatting can also be a bit of a pain in the ass. Have you ever noticed emails that have slightly different font-face or color between different parts (generally the templated parts)? This seems to be caused by the email author copying and pasting this section from the quoted text section of another email (it often looks slightly purple in Gmail). If you use Gmail, it offers a feature (shown below) to remove text formatting and get rid of any funkiness.
Of course, the most surefire way to solve this problem is to copy and paste your email body into a text editor, like Atom, and then copy and paste it back into your compose window.
Make them shine
But the most important thing to remember is that every intro someone makes for you places some amount of their relationship capital into the new relationship they’ve just introduced. Don’t take this for granted. You have to deliver results, be easy to work with and listen to feedback — not just to close deals for your company, but also to make sure you don’t burn any bridges.
But that’s another post for another time.
If you’re interested in learning how to make your SaaS company more successful with enterprise customers, check out the huge guide we created at www.enterpriseready.io.