Cold emailing tips to Target lead devs/team leads
I want too start reaching out to lead developers/team leads to understand their problems . other than reaching out directly to people I kn ow, is getting a premium LinkedIn membership a good idea? Any other places I can find contacts if leaders in tech organization s? I plan to reach out on Reddit,hacker news as well.
As a lead developer/team lead, I personally always ignore cold contact emails to me, primarily because I am very busy at my job and if I need a solution to a problem, i'll look for that solution as and when I need it, my advice would be for you to either become someone who works in that position, so you get first hand experience of the problems yourself. Your other option is for you to do as Jeremy suggests and do a warm intro
yeah interesting. im a lead dev myself and do ignore a lot of cold emails. although none have ever asked me what problems i am facing. they are all selling some sort of storage solution.
Some tips for you (I wrote a short book on this a while back):
If you don't follow-up, nothing else matters. You will cut your response rate in half.
Busy clients look to remove spam from their inbox first. Sending an email with the subject: "freelancer" or something equally generic, will kill their response rate.
Most people don't have time to read long emails, this is quick way to end up in the trash folder.
Most cold pitches make big claims and do little to back it up. If you prove you can help in the first email by providing something of value, you stand out. Advice, tips, a question, or even a gift will make a client appreciate your email.
At the end of the day the people you're emailing are just that: people. Remember, it's going to take time to build a relationship... and this is just a first email. So just try to start a conversation and don't go for the kill in one stroke.
One of the best moves IMO is to give the client a simple path to reply. They shouldn't have to do work (like review your portfolio, or let you know if there's a fit) if they are interested. Instead ask them to send you a thumbs up or "sounds good" and take it from there.
A couple more (and a link to the full book I mentioned) found here
HN, reddit would be good. Warm intros are always best but if you can't get a warm intro cold emails can work.
Steve Blank has a good writeup on what to write to get meetings with busy people:
https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-to-get-meetings-with-people-too-busy-to-see-you-d50fd9c978cc
Bottom line: don't ask for favors, instead offer people something of value to them. If the person's time is very valuable, you need to offer commensurately more value in return. Lots of people want to help, but they can't help everyone, so give them a reason to pick your email to read and respond to.
If the person is super busy and cold emails dont work, do a first-degree cold email -- find someone that your intended target would respond to, cold email them (offering something of value), then if you get on well with them, can ask for an intro
I tried cold outreach for exactly this purpose with this exact group and came to the conclusion that only warm intros will do. I sent ~100 personalized messages and only received two responses, one of which was to tell me they didn't have time for me.
However, I'm far from an expert on cold outreach, so it's possible I didn't have enough top-of-funnel or was doing it badly.
interesting. were you looking to see what problems lead developers have? i am particularly interested in this group as being a lead dev i face problems of uncertainty and want to see if there is a pattern in involved.
Yes, that's exactly what I was doing. I am also an engineering manager, so it didn't surprise me that the response was lackluster.