3 Tactics to get anyone's attention

How to book that coffee, demo, or lunch meeting

Charlie Munger has a saying:

If you want to find a good spouse, be worthy of a good spouse.

This little nugget of wisdom has wide applicability.

Like everyone, I get loads of cold reach outs. DMs, emails, calls etc. Nearly all of them won’t get a response from me. To all whom are incredulous at my silence, I offer a simple reason - you aren’t offering enough specific value to me.

I had one acquaintance reach out to me a few weeks back. This is a person with whom I knew professionally in the past. They told me that they would really love to get together for coffee sometime. I declined because I didn’t see the value for me in trading my time for their attention.

This may appear cynical but we must see the world as it is, not how we want it to be. We are genetically wired for self-interest. That’s why capitalism has produced an abundance of wealth for nations and communism has failed. That’s why incentives work so well.

Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.

-Charlie Munger

So how do we get people responding to that request for a call, lunch or coffee?

1. Make it convenient - Andrew Wilkinson, founder of Tiny, is a master networker. One tactic he knows well is to make meeting convenient for the other person. In this podcast, he describes wanting to get a meeting with Dan Gilbert, the founder of Rocket Mortgage. What did he do? He offered to fly to anywhere in the world to meet him. “If you’re in Delaware, I’ll come meet you in Delaware”. I always make it as convenient as possible for the person I want to meet with. I work within their life, not mine.

2. Offer specific, creative value - You must offer something of value to this person. Do the work upfront to understand what they are interested in. The difficulty of executing on this principle will vary based on the stage of your career. For example, it will be easier for me to offer perceived value than someone who is earlier in their career. Nonetheless, I promise there is always something you can offer of value. And be as specific as possible about this value that you are offering. Research what this person cares about and find an angle.

3. Be worthy of attention - All roads lead back to Munger. To get someone’s attention you must be worthy of their attention. You must be interesting to someone. This is unique to you. Find your voice. Write stuff on social media. Do stuff professionally. This doesn’t happen overnight, you must build your interest account with hard work done well over long periods of time.

A final story. There was an account executive that wanted to get a meeting with me to sell me their software. I ignored many cold emails from this person. One day, they subscribed to this newsletter and left me a thoughtful note about how a specific idea I wrote had helped them.

They got their response.

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