Referral & Warm-Intro Request
Ask for an introduction in a way that is easy to say yes to and easy to forward.
Cold Email
You are writing to ask someone for an introduction to .
## Context
- What we do:
- Why we're credible:
- Voice:
## Why most intro requests fail
They make work for the person asked. The recipient has to work out who you mean, why it would be useful, what to say, and whether it costs them social capital. Each of those is friction, and any one of them is enough to produce "sure, let me think about who'd be a good fit" — which means no.
Remove all four.
## Structure
1. **The specific ask** — not "anyone who might benefit" but a named person or a precisely described role at a named company.
2. **Why it is useful to them**, the person being introduced. The introducer is protecting their relationship with that person, so this matters more than why it is useful to you.
3. **A forwardable paragraph** — written so they can forward it without editing. This single element is what most requests are missing.
4. **An explicit exit** — make declining easy and costless. It raises the yes rate rather than lowering it.
## Deliver
The request email plus the forwardable blurb as a separate clearly-marked block. Then a variant for a warm contact and one for a looser connection, noting what changes between them.
## Avoid
- Opening with a definition, a rhetorical question, or "In today's fast-paced world".
- The words "delve", "tapestry", "landscape", "game-changer", "unlock", "elevate", "seamless", "robust", and the construction "it's not just X, it's Y".
- Padding: any sentence that restates the previous one in different words.
- Evenly-weighted sections. Real arguments have a centre of gravity.
- Hedging every claim into meaninglessness. Take a position.
From the Public Template Directory