Email Intro’s Are the Past
This is the Future
How do you get in touch with the people you need to meet? Whether you need advice, funding, a partnership, or a new employee — it’s easy enough to find likely candidates. Getting reliable contact information is another thing entirely.
Today’s default is email introductions. If I want to contact you, I need to convince someone who has your email address to send an email to both of us as an introduction. You know the type: “I think you and Jesse would have a lot to talk about, so here you go — “
There has to be a better way. In this article I’ll explain why we still use email intros, and what is being built today that can help us change to a better system.
We’re All Hiding Contact Info
When I was growing up, everyone had their phone number in the telephone book. In an age before email and robocalls, it was safe. You could find anyone’s contact info just by looking in the phone book.
But not anymore. It’s too easy for robots to scrape every available web page, and send robo-calls, robo-texts and spam emails by the hundred. Nobody wants their phone number or email in ANY public directory, social media profile or website.
Instead, my contact info is stored in the phone contact list or Outlook contact list of a few hundred people. It’s out of date in a few hundred other places. I have no visibility into who has my contact info at this point, and no edit rights to keep it up to date. It’s a crazy data model.
To reach someone new, I need to find a person I am in connected with, that is also in connected with the person I want to meet. Not only does the target need to be a friend-of-a-friend, I have to know which friend of mine they are connected to.
Too Much Friction
Finding people this way is a lot of work. It adds time and friction to the process of meeting others.
To make an intro, my friend has to be sure it’s a win/win. If the conversation doesn’t go well, one or both relationships is at risk. This sets up a relatively high hurdle for making an intro.
Tools like LinkedIn only improve the friends-of-friends approach a bit. I have better visibility to see who my friends-of-friends are. There are some tools to ask for an introduction. Unfortunately, LinkedIn has sold my inbox to the highest bidder, and so I turned off InMail introductions because they were simply vendors and recruiters paying LinkedIn for the right to SPAM me.
Let’s imagine the 100,000 most relevant people in your field as a full stadium of people, at night. Using your existing contacts is like a candle in the dark, you can only see a few faces closest to you.
Using friends-of-friends is like replacing that candle with a small flashlight. You can see a few feet away, to the next circle of people. But you can’t see 99% of the people in the stadium, and they can’t see you.
We’re looking for a solution that’s like turning on the big overhead lights on game day.
Lowering the Hurdles to Friend Intros
First, let’s lower the hurdle to giving an introduction. What if I can introduce two people, without giving out their email address or phone number?
Let’s say John asks me to introduce him to Richard. I can use a digital intermediary to preserve everyone’s privacy and control. I can give John’s phone and email to the intermediary, and also Richard’s phone number and email.
The intermediary sends a unique URL to John, and a different unique URL to Richard. A URL might look like this: http://ContactLink.com/q4wfopdijadsfi
When John visits that URL, he can use the web page to type in an email and attach a file. The intermediary forwards the email to Richard’s regular email.
When Richard visits that URL and clicks “Call Now”, the intermediary calls both John and Richard on the phone and bridges the call together. Either John or Richard can cancel the URL at any time to stop the conversation.
They don’t see each other on CallerID — they only see the intermediary. They don’t get each other’s email addresses, just the intermediary’s.
It’s a safe way to introduce people. I can feel comfortable giving more introductions and connecting more people.
An Assistant is the Ultimate Connector
There’s a group of people who are both very reachable AND protected from SPAM and cold-callers. Who are they? All the people who have a live, human Assistant to manage their communications. They benefit from a much wider circle of opportunity. It’s like having an overhead spotlight on you, where the whole stadium can see your face.
Want a phone number and email for a top VC or a top lawyer? It’s right there on the website. That’s because their Assistant is the one answering the phone and email. The Assistant learns what kinds of contacts and meetings their boss wants to accept. Anyone can get in touch and make a request, and the Assistant decides who gets through.
It’s not scalable or affordable for everyone to hire an Assistant. But technology gives us some ways to replicate the Assistant functionality at a low cost.
Introductions Through a Digital Intermediary
Let’s add a layer to the digital intermediary discussed above. It gives me a Public URL to list on my website, my LinkedIn profile, and my Twitter profile. Now there are lots of ways for people to search for me, find me and get to that link. It might look something like this: http://ContactLink.com/jesse-hercules
When people arrive at that link, the intermediary does the same things a human Assistant would do. It determines the person’s identity by validating their phone and email. It asks why they want to get in touch. It looks in its memory to see if we know anything about this person (ie, a known spammer or a known good guy).
If they pass the interview, they get a private conversation URL where they can send me an email or get on my calendar. It might look like this: http://ContactLink.com/awreq34fh
I can manage that URL to ramp their access up or down. Perhaps it goes well, and I give them permission to call and text me. Or perhaps it goes badly and I block them. I can also rate the person, so over time they accumulate a reputation based on all the people they get introductions to.
When enough people have a digital intermediary, something magic happens. People with a good reputation can get in touch with anyone they need to. It’s like a stadium with all the big overhead lights on. Everybody can see everybody else.
And you’d never go back to a candle or a flashlight again.
