Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

new podcast out on youtube on cold outeach

5 Jun 2023 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:28

In this podcast excerpt, the speaker shares a personal anecdote about cold‑emailing billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Rather than following generic templates, the speaker introduced themselves with a brief story and asked Cuban a distinctive question: “What books are you reading?” The speaker explains that asking about the books someone reads reveals their influences, aspirations, and personal persona, offering a deeper connection than surface‑level compliments. The narrative emphasizes that once a professional reaches a certain career stage, understanding a prospect’s influences becomes a valuable tactic for building rapport and increasing response rates in cold outreach.

What you're going to get. I feel like I had read a lot about how Mark Cuban responds to his emails, but I ended up emailing him and I was just like, hey, here's my story. You know, what books are you reading? That's one of my favorite questions to ask people because I feel like you often see like the person and like you see their persona. But I think sometimes even more interesting than that is like, who are their influences? Like, who do they look up to? Who do they want to emulate? Once you're at that point in your career,