A ChatGPT prompt for a warm introduction email

Why the first draft sounds like a robot

Ask ChatGPT to "write a warm introduction between Sarah and Tom" and you get something like this. Sarah is an incredible leader, Tom is doing amazing work, and you just know they will hit it off.

Nobody forwards that, and nobody replies to it with much enthusiasm either. The assistant is not the problem. It was handed two names and no facts, so it did the only thing it could and filled the space with praise.

Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh describe the human version of this mistake in Superconnector. The worst introduction they quote is a single line saying the writer met someone at an event and the two should connect. It tells neither person why they should give up an hour. An AI draft written from nothing is the same email with more adjectives.

So the useful question is not which magic words to type. It is what an assistant needs to know to write the email a thoughtful connector would write.

What a good introduction contains

The books on this agree closely, which is a good sign that the structure is real.

David Burkus, in Friend of a Friend, gives a four-part format. Name each person to the other. Give a short paragraph of background on each. Add a line on why you think they would benefit from talking. End with a call to action that says what should happen next and who should do it.

Superconnector adds the details that make it land. Say how you know each side, because that tells each one how much weight to give your recommendation. Describe people with specifics rather than superlatives, so a chief revenue officer with ten years of enterprise growth rather than the best salesperson you know. Put both full names in the subject line so the thread is easy to find later. And only suggest an angle you actually know to be true. If you are guessing that two companies could partner, leave it out.

Susan McPherson's The Lost Art of Connecting passes on a four-part shape for any short email: a greeting, how you know the person, what is in it for them, and a sign-off. It also warns against hedging words like just and hoping, which make a request sound unsure of itself.

Every one of those is a fact or a rule you can put in a prompt.

The prompt for making an introduction

This one is for when you are the connector. Fill in the brackets with real details. The more specific the history, the better the draft.

Write a short introduction email from me to two people. Keep it under 150 words, plain and warm, no superlatives.

First person: [name, role, company]. How I know them: [where and how long]. What they are working on now: [one line].

Second person: [name, role, company]. How I know them: [where and how long]. What they want from the conversation: [one specific question].

Why I think they should talk: [the real reason, in one or two sentences, only things I know to be true].

Both have agreed to be introduced. Next step: [who should reach out to whom, and what they should suggest].

Put both full names in the subject line. Say how I know each of them. Do not invent details I have not given you.

The last line matters more than it looks. Assistants are trained to be helpful, and when a gap appears they tend to fill it with something plausible. Telling it not to invent anything keeps the email to facts you can stand behind.

The double opt-in version

Gerber and Paugh are blunt that ambushing someone with an introduction they did not agree to is the most common mistake new connectors make. Burkus suggests adapting the same format to a double opt-in. Write privately to each person first with the background and the reason. Then, once both say yes, send an introduction that is mostly names and the next step, because the context has already been given.

That means two prompts. The first asks permission, and it goes to the busier person.

Write a short private note to [name] asking whether they would be open to an introduction to [name, role, company]. Give the reason in two sentences at most, say what the other person hopes to talk about, and make it easy to say no. Under 80 words.

Once they agree, use the introduction prompt above and say that both sides have accepted. The second email can be shorter, which is exactly how it should feel to the people receiving it.

The prompt for asking someone to introduce you

The other side of the same job is asking for an introduction, and here the assistant's work is to save the connector time. Derek Coburn makes the point in Networking Is Not Working that people offer to make introductions and then never get round to writing them. When he handed over an email already drafted, more of them actually went out.

Write two things. First, a short note from me to [connector] asking whether they would introduce me to [name, role, company]. Say why I am asking them specifically and why now, in two sentences. Make declining easy.

Second, a self-contained paragraph about me that [connector] can paste into an email to [name] without editing. Four lines at most. Who I am in terms that matter to [name], the one question I would like to ask them, and why the conversation could be useful to them too.

Read the forwardable paragraph out loud before you send it. The connector may paste it unchanged into an email with their name on it, so it has to sound like you, not like a press release. The longer version of this, with how to choose who to ask, is in how to ask for an introduction.

Where the facts come from

Every prompt above has the same weakness. You have to supply the history yourself, from memory, every time. Where you met someone, what they said they were working on, whether you have already introduced them to someone this month. For the five people you talk to every week that is fine. For the person you met once at a conference two years ago, it is the part you get wrong.

This is what connecting an assistant to your actual network changes. Instead of typing the background in, the assistant reads it.

NetworkOS is one way to do that. It connects Claude and ChatGPT to your contacts, email and calendar, so a prompt can be as short as "draft a double opt-in intro between Marcus and Priya" and the draft comes from your real history with each of them. It asks the other side first by default and sends from your own Gmail, and you review every email before it goes. The honest limit is that it can only draw on what is in your network. If your only conversation with someone happened in person and never left a trace, you still have to tell it.

If you would rather stay with a plain assistant, keep a short note for each person you introduce often: how you met, what they care about, and who you have connected them to. Paste it into the prompt. It does the same job by hand. The wider picture of what a connected assistant can and cannot do is in what you can do with your network inside Claude and ChatGPT.

Before you hit send

Whatever wrote the draft, read it once as each recipient.

• Does each person know why they in particular are getting this email?
• Is every claim about each person something you know, not something the assistant guessed?
• Is it obvious who should reply first, and with what?
• Would you be comfortable if either person forwarded it to the other's boss?

If any answer is no, fix the facts in the prompt rather than the wording in the email. The wording follows the facts. And if you cannot answer the first question at all, the introduction may not be worth making; when not to make an introduction covers the signs.