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A couple of other hacks I’ve used to identify ‘earlyvangelists’:

1) Scour your competition’s and / or potential partner’s press releases and customer success stories.

2) See who spoke at a recent trade show relevant to your market and reach out to relevant speakers

Both methods give you name, title, and company name of people that are likely target buyers for your product.

Even better, if they are being quoted in a press release or presenting at a trade show they’re also likely to be the type of person who likes to partner closely with vendors and provide tons of feedback.

This level of interaction is like gold for a startup trying to find product/market fit.

(More on this topic for those who are interested here: http://johngannonblog.com/2009/12/17/how-to-find-earlyvangelists-in-your-customer-development-process/)

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– get a coach. Tap your network to find somebody who is formerly from, has sold to, or has relationships in your BigCo target. Ask them to help define the right contact, it may not be obvious, most likely is not, from the org chart.

– warm intros are the best. Again, tap your network for this. But be wary that it is coming from quality. A warm intro from a poor connection can be the end of your outreach.

– be super clear on your ask – from the first intro forward. So you can get connected to the right person.

– If there is any way to orchestrate a face to face meeting – in the same town, same conference, etc. Even if it’s 10 minutes after a conference session. If you can get a face to face meeting at the onset, you will get better engagement as you work through the email chain to the right contact.

– Follow-up and follow-up some more until somebody tells you to stop. Having been in corporate venture for 6 years, there is huge email flow both internally and inbound externally. In some cases external requests are not managed as urgently as we would expect. So keep pushing the note to the top in an open, helpful way. Don’t message any attitude (that will be the end of it).

– make something happen. Once you have an engaged connection at BigCo, make a friend. It takes time, it takes energy, but that one connection can help you navigate to the other 10 you need to make something to happen.

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Fantastic feedback!! I will definitely edit the post to reflect.

– Completely agree and I missed it! Make it super easy to intro by preparing a note for them they can forward.

– Great point on the geo location card! This also makes me think about proposing specific times for the meeting. Need to add that.

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I have a couple of minor comments:

1 – i would *always* make it as easy as possible for someone i know to intro me to someone they know. You write: “If I am friends with the other person, I will be A LOT less formal.” I do that too. However, I would not simply say “can you intro me to X at Y”. The means my “friend” now has to put in some work to write an intro email. Instead, I would say “can you intro me to X at Y. As you know, my company is ABC and i’d like to talk to X about DEF. Feel free to fwd this note to make it easy.” Then my friend simply has to hit “forward” to X. Who could say no to that?

2 – “best times to send the intros”. I think there are two times, depending on if the target is at an established Big Co or a Startup. Weekends (Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoon/evenings) are definitely best for getting hold of startup execs for all the reasons you laid out. But – and i’m making sweeping generalizations here – many folks at Big Cos will not look at email from 4pm on Friday till 8am on Monday. So i like to send emails to *those* people early Monday morning. Then as they’re getting to inbox zero over their first coffee of the work week, they see my emails at the top, and i’m immediately top of mind.

3 – Leverage the geolocation card to get the meeting. I often use this when i’m cold emailing / reaching out directly. For example, i live in NYC and get to the Bay Area once every two months or so. So in an email i might often write “We’re in NYC, but i’m in the Bay Area next Wednesday. Can you meet then at 10am?” or something else specific. There’s something about being a visitor from “out of town” that gets people to say “yes” to taking a face-to-face meeting – which are the best ones to have if you are selling.

4 – Speaking of cold emailing / reaching out directly… I do that a lot, and I try not to do that via linked in. i always try to figure out the person’s proper email address and send straight to their inbox. I find that’s a better strike rate. It’s pretty easy. Most email formats are @company.com (startups), @company.com (Big Cos) or some similar variations. Even if i get two or three email bounces as i try to guess the address, it’s still worth it for the strike rate. Power users of this approach might also want to try https://rapportive.com/install – for gmail on chrome. you can start guessing an email address for some target… and often rapportive will complete it for you. Very nice!

Again – GREAT POST. We need more BD knowledge dropped in start up land.

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