Correspondence Hygiene

There is no substitute for building a strong personal network. None. Strong personal networks allow you to:

• Solve a problem quickly by contacting someone who knows the fix.
• Introduce you to the right contact because they have a connection.
• Make increased sales by meeting more potential customers
• Show your value by making connections between members of your network and helping them out, even when you’re just an intermediary

The number of possible connections in your network goes up with the square of the number of members. Meeting more people allows you to make more connections within your network.

When you send an email and your contact does not respond, follow up. They likely did not mean to not follow up with you. They likely forgot, or got busy with something else. Most people are not as good at handling their inbox as you are.

A rule of thumb is to wait one week to a month to respond for new business outreach. It depends on the urgency and saliency of the request:

• Just saying hey and doing a wide reach out to catch up: one month
• Following up after a phone call with a memo/proposal: one week
• Sending an email to a vendor about that project you’re working on: one-two days

It is okay to say something along the lines of:

Hi, just following up here. Realize you probably got busy, but wanted to put this back at the top of your inbox. Hope all is well and hope to chat soon!

When you get a request from a contact, always do your best to see if you can help, even if it won’t help you to do so. People remember when people are helpful; they also remember when people let them down.

If you help people, they will help you. Helping your contacts is an opportunity.

Your contacts are people first, everything else a distant second. Even if you don’t know them well, their human needs are a first priority to you well beyond everything else. People can smell sharks a mile away; they know if you are just being transactional. If you’re just being transactional, it signals that you’re not going to be pleasant to work with. Good people want to work with good people.

There is no specific action here; it encompasses everything else.

If you are networking with enough volume, it is going to be impossible to recall when you sent that email to whom. You shouldn’t bother trying. Instead, you should use the wide array of tools to manage your email outbox and reminders. Use your tools to set reminders to re-send you the email if the person has not responded yet, or to follow up in any case. Do this on every email you send that you want to make sure is followed-up on.

• Superhuman (recommended)
• Gmail inbox

Your goal is not to sell services. Your goal is to understand and solve your client’s problems. By understanding and solving their problems, you will sell services.

Your goal is to have your contact say:

Wow, you stated that more clearly than we have articulated it internally, I’m going to use this as the basis for a memo I’m going to send to our team.

When your client is talking about what they do, and what they’re working on, your goal is to understand. This means mainly listening, but asking probing questions to really understand the shape and scope of what they do and what they are confronted with at the moment. This means saying things like:

I just want to make sure I understand you perfectly: you’re saying that within the marketing org, there’s an insights team that mainly does qualitative research, and of the quant they do it’s fairly standard and they have relationships with vendors for that already, and an analytics org that handles all CRM and transactional data, but there is very little operational overlap between the two teams?

That means copying back your own understanding. It does not mean repeating verbatim what they said. It means developing your own mental model of what they are confronted with, and presenting them with your way of thinking about it, to see where it’s accurate and where it needs adjustment.

When there is a lot to cover, and/or people you don’t know on the call, circulate the agenda in advance.

Especially for phone calls and meetings, never, ever go into it not knowing how you would like it to play out.

What about get-to-know-you meetings?

In the worst case, there really is no plan other than you and another person are going to get to know each other. Here is an example script:

Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me; really great to be introduced; etc etc. I was hoping to do the following: I’d love to hear more about you, your company (if that’s not obvious), what you do with them and what your main challenges are at the moment. I’d also love to do the same and tell you about me, Gradient, and what we do for our clients. I’m happy to jump in first unless you think it’d be best for you to start. Either way.

If you find yourself on a call or in a meeting and no one knows what to do, it’s because you didn’t plan enough in advance. If you’ve reached the end of the agenda and have the necessary action items, then feel free to close the meeting:

It looks like we got through what we needed to a bit early. I’ve got what I need to discuss with the team and follow up with you on points A, B, and C. Thanks again for the time.

Be on time. Follow up quickly. Follow up with relevant material. Take notes. Do your research ahead of time. Be punctual, attentive, and focused.

Know who you’re talking to, and what their business does. Do not ever show up for a meeting blind.

When your meeting results in action items (and it always should — see below), take the next step and follow up with an email summarizing what they are.

When you promise follow-up material, send it quickly. Don’t wait.

A very powerful tool is to cement the understanding you developed in a meeting or on a call with a follow-up email with your understanding along with any follow-up material discussed:

Thanks so much for your time today. It was great to finally meet you and hear about your business. As I understood it, your main challenge right now is X. We will await your discussion with the CEO and in the meantime we will send you some thoughts after I discuss with the team. As discussed, here is a one-pager about Gradient for you to circulate within the team

Do not trust yourself to remember the complexity of what was discussed. Take notes. It will also help you stay more engaged with the discussion. If you are on a video call, ensure that your typing isn’t too audible — consider taking notes by hand.

If external calls are a frequent element to your work, you should integrate your calendar with Loom Meetings to record them. This is a fantastic note-taking and video recorder tool that should be invited to all of your external meetings.

You should know ahead of time what the ideal next step will be; sometimes though you have to be flexible.

If it’s an intro call, you will usually aim to do one of two things:

• Get them to describe a particular problem they are facing so that we can write a memo summarizing how we would approach it.
• Get an introduction to the relevant person on their team for a next contact.

Sometimes the “next step” is something disappointing: e.g. “follow up in a few months after they finalize their budget” — but there should always be something.

The point of networking events is to network. So get out there! This is the one time you are allowed, without a shadow of a doubt, to start conversations and meet new people. So don’t be shy.

After you meet someone you think is interesting, do a few things:

1. Record them in Airtable.
2. Follow up quickly. It is imperative that you seize the moment to get the ball rolling. If you wait too long, the lead will dry. Jump on the opportunity.

You have no way of knowing who will be a good connection. You may know immediately that someone is a bad connection. But as long as you don’t know they’re bad, they’re all the same.

It is easy to get wrapped up and excited about meeting someone that sounds like they may have a live, juicy opportunity. But those opportunities pan out at about the same rate as random luck. It’s a numbers game more than anyone else, so get out there.

The point is to introduce yourself and Gradient so they know who we are.

Have a stock pitch to explain:

• What Gradient does
• Who our typical clients are
• What you do at Gradient
• Why you’re there and what you’re looking for