duncan-buildroom Warm Outreach — start with people who already trust you
The fastest first customer almost never comes from strangers. It comes from someone who already knows you: a past client, an old colleague, someone in a community you're in, a person who liked your last three posts. This skill helps you dump that whole network onto paper, rank it, and write a first message that opens a conversation instead of pitch-slapping a friend.
The whole point is warm before cold, and honest before pushy. You are not blasting anyone. You are talking to real people you'd be happy to hear from yourself.
Personalization
This skill works in your brand voice. Before running, load the brand profile at ~/.claude/brand-profile.md.
- If it doesn't exist, run the personalize skill first (or just tell me your name, niche, offer, and audience — I'll create it).
- If a field this skill needs is blank, I'll ask one or two quick questions and save the answers back to the profile so you only answer once.
- Never invent facts or results about the user — use only what's in the profile, or ask.
Steps
1. Brain-dump the whole network (no filtering yet)
Ask the user to list everyone who already knows them, in loose buckets — accept messy, half-remembered answers. Prompt each bucket so they don't stall:
- Past & current clients — anyone who ever paid them, even once, even years ago.
- Colleagues & work history — old bosses, coworkers, people from past jobs.
- Community & peers — people in any group, cohort, Slack/Discord, mastermind, or course they're in.
- Warm DMs & social — people who reply to their posts, DM them, or they chat with online.
- Friends & personal — anyone who'd take their call, who might know someone even if they aren't the buyer themselves.
Tell them: don't judge fit yet, just get names down. Aim for 20–40. If they freeze, ask "who are the last 10 people you texted?" and "whose posts do you comment on?"
2. Score each person 1–3
For every name, score two quick things:
- Fit — how likely is this person (or someone they know) to actually want the user's offer? (3 = clear fit, 2 = maybe/adjacent, 1 = unlikely buyer but a good connector.)
- Warmth — how strong is the relationship right now? (3 = they'd reply within the hour, 2 = friendly but quiet lately, 1 = we've lost touch.)
Sort by fit + warmth combined. The top of the list (high-fit AND high-warmth) is who they message first. Low-fit-but-high-warmth people aren't wasted — they're connectors you ask for a referral, not a sale.
3. Write 3 opener variations
Using the brand voice, write three first-touch openers the user can adapt per person. Rules that keep it non-salesy:
- Lead with them, not the pitch. Reference something real — their work, a shared moment, why they came to mind. No offer in the first message unless it's genuinely natural.
- Ask, don't announce. End on a light question that's easy to answer, so it starts a conversation.
- No fake urgency, no flattery bombing, no "quick question" bait. Sound like the user texting a person they respect.
Make the three distinct so different relationships get the right register:
- Reconnect — for someone they've lost touch with (warmth 1–2). Pure catch-up, zero pitch.
- Soft signal — for a warm, relevant person (fit 2–3). Mentions what they're building now and asks if it's relevant to them.
- Referral ask — for a connector (low fit, high warmth). Asks who they might know, not whether they want it.
Each opener should have a [bracketed] slot for the one personal detail the user fills in per person — that detail is what makes it not a template.
4. Save the artifact
Write everything to ~/warm-outreach-list.md:
- The ranked table (Name | Bucket | Fit | Warmth | First move).
- The three opener variations with their bracketed personalization slots.
- A short "start here" line naming the top 5 people to message first this week.
Confirm the path and tell the user: message the top 5 today, personalize one detail each, and don't send more than a handful a day — this is a conversation, not a campaign.
Input → output example
Input: User runs the skill. Offer (from profile): "I build simple client-onboarding automations for bookkeepers, $500 setup." They brain-dump 24 names.
Output — ~/warm-outreach-list.md (excerpt):
| Name | Bucket | Fit | Warmth | First move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dana R. | Past client | 3 | 3 | Soft signal (msg first) |
| Marcus (ex-coworker) | Colleague | 2 | 3 | Reconnect → soft signal |
| Priya, bookkeeping group | Community | 3 | 2 | Soft signal |
| Uncle Tom | Personal | 1 | 3 | Referral ask |
Soft signal opener:
hey Dana — was just thinking about [the mess we untangled with your intake forms last year]. i've been building little automations that handle exactly that kind of onboarding busywork for bookkeepers now. no pitch, just curious — is client onboarding still a headache on your end?
Start here: Dana, Priya, Marcus, then two more — 5 messages this week, one personal detail each.
Notes / edge cases
- If the user has almost no network, that's real — steer them to the "connectors" angle (referral openers) and to one warm community they're already in, rather than pushing them cold before they're ready.
- Never write an opener that misrepresents the relationship or fabricates a shared memory. If the user can't fill the
[bracket], the person isn't warm enough for the soft-signal version — use reconnect instead. - Keep the batch small. A huge list sent all at once reads as a blast and kills the warmth. Top 5 first.
- Pair naturally with the dm-writer skill when they want to fully craft the message for one specific person.