Turn cold calls into warm calls

Research the person and find a genuine point of connection before any outreach.

Why it works

A cold contact treats the recipient as a resource to extract; a warm call treats them as a specific person whose work you know and care about. The difference is immediately legible — people respond to genuine specificity because it signals that the time cost of engagement is worth it and that the caller is the kind of person who does their homework.

How to do it

1. Before contacting anyone new, spend 15 minutes on genuine research: what are they working on, what have they written, what do they care about?
2. Find a genuine connection point — a shared interest, a mutual contact, something they’ve said publicly that you found valuable.
3. Reference it specifically in your opening message, not generically ("I read your piece on X and it changed how I think about Y").
4. Keep the first ask minimal — a short call or a single question, not an immediate major favour.

Evidence

Research on personalisation in communication shows higher response rates to personalised versus generic outreach. The warm-call principle applies this to networking outreach. (mechanistic)

Effect sizes for personalisation vary widely by context and channel; the principle is directionally supported but the specific impact of warmth vs. other factors (timing, relevance) is hard to isolate.

Common mistake

Doing surface-level research (reading the first paragraph of someone’s LinkedIn profile) and thinking that counts as a warm call — people can tell.