How to ask for an introduction

Why most requests go nowhere

The request that fails looks reasonable. It says what you do, describes the kind of person you would like to meet, and asks the connector to keep you in mind.

The problem is that it hands the connector a translation job. They have to convert your job title into a list of names from a network of several hundred people, then decide which of those names is worth spending relationship credit on, then work out what to say. That is fifteen minutes of thinking, and it arrives in an inbox alongside forty other things. It does not get done. It rarely gets refused either. It just sits there.

A request that works removes that job. It arrives with the name already chosen, the reason already articulated, and the words already written.

Name the trigger, not the title

The most useful idea here comes from Derek Coburn in Networking Is Not Working, and it is about what you tell people to look for.

Coburn is a financial advisor. He noticed that asking clients to let him know if anyone needed a financial advisor produced almost nothing, because it required someone to hear an explicit statement of need that people rarely make out loud. So he worked out two better things to hand his network.

The first he calls trigger phrases: the actual sentences someone says when they have the problem you solve. Not the diagnosis, the complaint. Someone saying they have been managing their own money and cannot keep up with it is a trigger phrase.

The second he calls triggering events: things that happen in a person's life that create the need before they have named it. Having a child is his example. It has nothing to do with financial advice on its face, and it reliably makes people care about their financial plan.

Both work because they are observable. A contact cannot scan their network for people who need what you do, because that is an internal state they cannot see. They can absolutely notice a sentence someone said at dinner, or a life event they already know about. You are giving them a pattern to match instead of a category to search.

Translate this into your own request. If you advise seed-stage founders on hiring, do not ask to meet founders who need hiring help. Say you are the person to call when a founder mentions their first sales hire did not work out, because that is a sentence founders actually say and your contacts actually hear.

Write the paragraph they will forward

Assume your request gets forwarded exactly as written, because the good outcome is that it does.

That means writing two things. A short note to the connector explaining what you are asking and why you came to them. And underneath it, a self-contained paragraph about you that reads well to a stranger who has no idea who you are.

The forwardable paragraph covers three things and runs about four lines. Who you are, in terms that matter to the recipient rather than your full history. What you are hoping to talk about, stated as a specific question rather than a general interest. And why this might be worth the other person's time, which is the sentence most people skip and the one that decides it.

Keep it as text in the body of the email. An attachment or a link is another click, and every click is a place where this stops.

The reason this works is that you have converted a fifteen-minute task into a ten-second one. Forwarding something good is easy. Composing something from scratch about a person you last spoke to in March is not.

Make declining genuinely easy

Say directly that no is fine, and construct the request so that a decline costs nothing.

This is not manners. A request that is hard to refuse does not produce more yeses, it produces more silence, and silence is the worst outcome for everyone. You do not know whether to follow up. The connector feels the small weight of an unanswered message every time they see your name. The relationship absorbs the cost.

An explicit line, something like no pressure and please skip this if the timing is off, releases that. In practice people say yes more often when refusing is available, and the ones who decline usually explain why, which is information you would not otherwise have.

The same instinct is why the double opt-in became the standard on the connector's side. Superconnector traces the term to Adam Grant, and the logic runs both directions. Nobody should be handed a conversation they did not agree to, including the person you are asking to make the introduction.

Ask the right person

The best connector for a given introduction is often not the most senior person you know. It is the person with the strongest claim to know you both.

An introduction carries the sender's credibility. Someone who worked with you closely for two years can write a sentence about you that a well-known person who met you twice cannot, and that sentence is what makes the recipient reply. Trading up in seniority usually trades down in specificity, and specificity is what is doing the work.

If you are choosing between two people, ask which one could describe a thing you did without being reminded of it.

If you are the one being asked

Most people are on both sides of this. If you make introductions regularly, the failure mode reverses. The requests are fine and the tracking is not. Asks sit unanswered, one side agrees and the other never hears, and something you promised in April is still nothing in July.

That is a workflow problem rather than a writing problem, and it is the subject of the guide on making a warm introduction.

NetworkOS is built for that side of the exchange. It finds who in your network fits a request, drafts the double opt-in from what your email history already knows about both people, sends from your own Gmail, and watches for the replies so nothing stalls silently. It is worth being clear that this does nothing for you as the person asking; it is a tool for the connector, and it is Gmail-only.

The short version

Do the connector's work before you ask. Pick one named person rather than a category. Tell your network the trigger to watch for, meaning the sentence people say or the event that happens when they need you, because a category cannot be observed and a trigger can. Write a short paragraph about yourself that can be forwarded without editing. Say plainly that no is fine, and mean it. Ask the person who knows you best rather than the person who sounds most impressive.