How to nicely invite business owners to talk about things they would like to automate?

Try calling instead. Write a better email, although cold emails are going to miss more often than they hit. What you're doing now is basically casting the widest possible net, emailing people just asking them what they need help with. People are busy, esp business owners, they don't have time to respond to your vague cold email about what you can automate for them. As a business owner, I get tons of emails, calls, etc every day, and most of them already have a product and value proposition. You have neither.

"Hey XYZ my name is CloudAvenue, I'm a senior software engineer that has developed multiple pieces of business automation software that has saved my former employers millions annually. If you are available for a quick chat, I'm currently working on a project in your industry that I believe will revolutionize your day to day workflow and increase efficiency exponentially. In exchange for your input in building this disruptive software, you'll receive free lifetime access to the software when it is completed($5000/mo is the current base price), as well as a few other helpful perks.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to making your acquaintance."

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One thing I'd never do, is to send out 10k emails in one campaign. Send less but analyse your open rate and how many leads you've got from there. Then, optimize another chunk from your mailing list taking into consideration your previous results. Otherwise you might just blow your whole hit list wand waste it completely. So much prospecting down the drain.

The problem with email is that from the very start, you're asking people to do something for you. I mean, if you were a super busy CEO/founder, how likely you'd be to devote your precious time to a random person wanting a call to ask you questions about your business? Without knowing what's in it for you? Do something for them first before you ask for anything in return. They need to see their benefit before they'll be willing to give you the answers.

Another tip is, if you're looking for answers like this, try communities instead of emails. Facebook/LinkedIn groups, Quora, networking events and so on.

Think about it from their perspective. From their perspective, your email/call is basically saying:

"Will you give me some of your time today so that I can try to sell you something tomorrow?"

There are a few possible solutions.

One is to go through warm introductions. This makes them more likely to do you the "favor" of talking to you now, even though the potential pay-off for them is very delayed.

A second is to forget about interviews altogether, and instead just watch what they're already doing. This isn't my preferred strategy, but it's very easy and it's better than nothing. The idea is to find opportunities online to just watch what your potential customers are already doing, trying, and complaining about, and then treat that as your customer understanding. (Amy Hoy calls this the "sales safari" and she has some good blog posts about it.) Remember, the goal isn't to talk to customers. The goal is to understand customers. Talking is just a fairly reliable way to understand them, but there are other ways too if talking isn't working.

Another strategy is to create a situation where they get immediate (and free) value today, instead of the promise of potential value in the future.

One option for immediate value which works well in big cities is to organize an industry lunch/meetup around the topic of "sharing experiences attempting automation in X type of business" or whatever. You can either keep it entirely casual, or you could find one or two people to give a short presentation about what worked (or didn't) in their company. This accomplishes several goals: it brings the people you want to learn from into a room where it's easy for you to chat with them about the topic of automation, and it also immediately makes you credible (since you're the organizer) and allows you to be more successful in talking to them 1-on-1 later.

A similar approach is to say that you're doing research/podcasts about this topic in this industry, and are interviewing a wide range of businesses to get their experiences in succeeding/failing to do it (or thinking about it or whatever). This flatters their ego by positioning them as an expert (which is a sort of value, from their perspective), and also gives them the opportunity to benefit from the rest of your reserach/interviews/podcasts after they're completed.

Plenty more options exist, those are just a few. But the general idea is that people aren't going to want to give up their time for nothing, so how can you either reduce the time cost (by watching them) or increase the value (by giving them something they want right now in return for their time). Good luck.

Write a email that provoke curiosity. Something like below

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Do you know how big company build better business day by day ?

Do you know how big company save lot of money ?

The secret sauce is Autmoation.

They invest once in automation and reap benefit for years.

I am _________ with ___ years of experience in business automation.

Could you please give me a chance to build automation for your business ?

If yes, reply back to this email.

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