The introduction that says too much
Here is the usual version. Someone sends a message or makes a call and says, “Hey, I think you should talk to Joe. Joe is an expert in XYZ. He has been doing it for this long. He specializes in XYZ, and I really like him.”
Sometimes they attach a one-pager about what Joe does. Sometimes Joe even writes up a short bio so the person making the introduction can copy and paste it in.
It is nice, and the effort to help is appreciated. I still think all of those things are bad ideas.
Every detail is a reason to say no
In my opinion, every detail you share about Joe decreases the chances that Joe gets the meeting.
There is research behind that hunch. In a 2012 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research called “The Presenter’s Paradox,” Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen Garcia, and Norbert Schwarz showed across seven studies that people tend to average what they hear rather than add it up. When mildly favorable information is added to highly favorable information, the overall evaluation gets less favorable. The people doing the presenting did not expect that and kept including everything they had. A long bio is the same mistake: the good parts get watered down by everything else.
All those descriptions, the one-pager and the bio, are really a list of reasons not to meet with him. “I already have that covered.” “I understand who he is.” Now Joe is a commodity, just like the other 20 people who seem to do the same thing, and he never gets a chance to talk.
What I do instead
The best policy is to reach out and say, “Hey, I just talked with Joe. He does marketing. I think you two should talk.” A one-word description, and that is it.
With an introduction like that, there is no reason not to meet. The other person is going purely off your recommendation, and that is the best way to get those calls going.
Your word is the strongest part of the introduction. Nielsen’s 2015 Global Trust in Advertising survey of more than 30,000 online respondents in 60 countries found that 83 percent completely or somewhat trust recommendations from friends and family, the most trusted of the 19 formats it measured. A short introduction leans on exactly that.
One addition. If you do not know Joe very well, say, “I met Joe today and I thought you two should talk.” You are still making the introduction, but you are not putting your reputation on the line for someone you just met.
Less is more. Introductions and referrals are what my networking work is built around. To talk about how that could work for you, book a networking chat.