Find the warm intro before you ever go cold.
Sweeps your team's network, customers, past colleagues, and shared investors for every warm path into a target account, scores each one, and picks the single best connector. When no path clears the bar, it says go cold and names the signal to anchor on.
In plain English: “Who can walk me into this account?”
Inside: Six path sources, the strength scoring, the one-path rule, the forwardable intro blurb, and the fallback rule.
Install it in one line, or paste it in.
~/.claude/skills/ and runs automatically when it is relevant.Connect your context. Set it to your motion.
it maps your whole team's collective network against the account automatically.
surfaces which current customers and past deals touch the account.
pulls mutual connections and past-colleague overlap at scale.
This was built for a B2B sales team selling into mid-market accounts. Set these to your world:
The sources are a menu, not a mandate. Check the ones your team can actually see into, and be honest about which ones you cannot.
| Set this | What it is | Default / Example |
|---|---|---|
| PATH SOURCES | which of the six sources you can actually check | team networkcustomerspast colleaguesinvestors/advisorscommunityshared vendors |
| STRENGTH THRESHOLD | minimum path score before you ask for the intro | 6 of 9 (re-tune to your market) |
| ONE-PATH RULE | max simultaneous intro requests per account | 1always 1 |
| INTRO-REQUEST TEMPLATE | your forwardable blurb format | 3 sentences: who you arewhy this buyerthe ask |
Everything the skill does, in full.
Takes a target account and answers one question before you write a single cold message: who do we already know who can walk us in? It inventories every plausible path, scores each one, picks the single best connector, and drafts the intro request that connector can forward in ten seconds. If no path clears the bar, it tells you to go cold and names the signal to anchor on. This skill runs before trigger-outreach: trigger-outreach turns a buying signal into a timely cold touch, while this skill decides whether you need to go cold at all by finding the warm path first.
- 1Inventory every path
For each target account, sweep six sources: your team's collective network (everyone's connections, not just yours), current customers who could refer, past colleagues of the buying committee members, investors and advisors you share, community and event overlap, and vendors you both use. List every named person who bridges you to the account. No name, no path.
- 2Score each path (three dimensions, 1 to 3 each)
- Strength: how well does the connector actually know the buyer? Worked together beats met once.
- Relevance: does the connector's relationship map to the buyer's world? A former teammate of the decision maker outranks a friend of someone two floors away.
- Willingness: will this person actually make the intro, promptly? A happy customer says yes. A dormant contact stalls. Sum the three. A path below your STRENGTH THRESHOLD does not get asked.
- 3Pick one path per account
Rank the scored paths and pick exactly one. Never spray intro requests across multiple connectors for the same account. Two people asking the same buyer about you looks desperate and burns both relationships. Hold the second-best path in reserve in case the first declines.
- 4Write the forwardable blurb
Draft the intro request so the connector can forward it in ten seconds without editing. Three sentences: who you are, why this specific buyer should care, and the small ask. The connector adds one line of their own endorsement on top. If they have to rewrite your blurb, you wrote it wrong.
- 5The fallback rule
When no path clears the STRENGTH THRESHOLD, do not force a weak intro. Go cold instead, anchored to a specific signal, and hand off to trigger-outreach with the signal named. A weak intro is worse than a good cold message. A warm intro skips the trust-building a cold sequence spends weeks earning, but only when the warmth is real.
- Never claim a relationship you cannot verify. A shared connection on LinkedIn is a lead to check, not a path to score, until someone confirms they actually know the buyer.
- One intro request per account at a time. The reserve path waits until the first path declines or goes quiet for a week.
- The connector always sees the final message before it sends. They are lending you their reputation. No surprises.
- If the fallback fires, the handoff must name the signal the cold message will anchor on, not just "go cold."
WARM PATHS · Meridian Logistics (sample data)
Rank Connector Source Str Rel Will Total Verdict
1 Dana Okafor customer (CFO 3 3 3 9 ASK. Worked with their
at Bluecrest) VP Ops for 4 years.
2 Sam Whitfield past colleague 2 3 2 7 RESERVE
(your AE Priya)
3 Jordan Liu shared investor 1 2 2 5 BELOW BAR. Do not ask.
The play: one request, to Dana. Forwardable blurb drafted below.
Reserve: Sam, only if Dana declines.
FORWARDABLE BLURB (for Dana):
"Priya leads sales at Fieldstone, they help ops teams cut carrier
invoice errors. Given what Meridian is doing with the new 3PL
rollout, she thought a 20-minute conversation with your VP Ops
could be worth it. Open to a quick intro?"
Where an operator takes this next.
The manual sweep is step one. Here is where an operator takes it once the ranked list proves out.
A path list goes stale fast. People change jobs. Refresh the sweep before every push.
Connect The Swarm so every teammate's relationships get swept against every target account automatically, including the connections nobody remembers they have.
Connect LinkedIn Sales Navigator so past-colleague overlap with the buying committee comes from live data instead of a one-account-at-a-time manual check.
Connect your CRM and Common Room so current customers with ties to a target account get flagged the moment the account enters your list.
Post each week's ranked paths and pending intro requests to a Slack channel so connectors get thanked and stalled requests get a nudge.
One skill is the on-ramp.
A single skill does one job. Chained into a playbook, or run as a full build, it becomes a system. Here is where this one plugs in.