How to Request Intros From Your Advisors: A Team SOP

Advisors are one of the highest-trust, most underused intro sources on your team. They know your business, they said yes to advising you because they want you to win, and they usually have deep networks in your space. Most teams still treat them like a name on the website instead of an active channel. Here's a simple SOP to fix that.

1. Tag your advisors as Supporters

This one flag changes what you see. Run a search across your whole network and you might get a thousand possible paths to your target accounts, most of them weak. Tag your advisors as Supporters and filter to just their paths, and that thousand might drop to the sixteen, or the hundred and sixty, that actually matter. It turns a wall of options into a short list you can work.

2. Know which of the two searches you need

If you already have a target list - specific leads or accounts you're going after - run a Target Search and filter the results to your tagged Supporters. That shows you which of your existing targets your advisors can actually reach.

If you don't have a list yet, run a Supporter Search instead. Point it at your advisors' networks and search for a title - Head of Marketing, VP of Marketing, Director of Marketing, CMO, whatever your buyer looks like - optionally filtered to a set of accounts. This builds your target list from what your advisors already know, instead of requiring you to show up with one.

3. Ask with the real relationship, not just the connection

The generic version of this ask is "I see you're connected to Sarah Chen, would you make an intro?" The better version uses what Draftboard actually surfaces: "I see you worked with Sarah Chen five years ago at McKinsey, any chance you'd be up for a quick intro?" That's the difference between knowing two people are linked and knowing the relationship is real enough to ask on. Always lead with the second one.

4. Ask first, send the email once they say yes

Don't hand over a forwardable blurb before you know they're in. Ask if they'd be open to making the intro. When they say yes, that's your moment: "Great, I'll send you a clean email you can forward along." Draft it for them so their only job is to hit forward. Advisors who get asked this way keep saying yes.

5. Close the loop

After the intro happens, tell the advisor what came of it. A meeting happened, the deal moved, it closed or it didn't. Closing the loop takes two sentences and is the difference between one intro and ten.

The mistake to avoid