Introductions v Cold Emails

I just read an article on Mashable making “the case against business introductions” that mainly refers to Iris Shoor’s post where she discusses how she made appointments and sales at Twitter, LinkedIn and Github using a direct approach. She talks about how the direct approach led to better sales results than introductions.

I can see how this works if you know who you are targeting but introductions have provided Terem with new clients that could not have been gained through direct contact because we didn’t know they existed or had a need for what we do.

As a side note, her results fly in the face of those saying “cold calling doesn’t work”.