What to Know About Your New Contacts Before You Reach Out

You have the stack of business cards. You have your spreadsheet built. (If you missed last week's article on how to get that system set up, [catch up here — LINK TO ARTICLE 1].) Now, before you send a single message, take a few minutes per contact and do your homework. That research is the difference between an outreach email that gets deleted and one that gets a reply.

Most people skip this step entirely. They send the same generic "great meeting you" message to everyone on the list and wonder why the response rate is so low. The ones who take time to learn something about the person before reaching out almost always stand out.

Start With What Is on the Card

A business card gives you a name, a title, a company, and usually a website. That is enough to get started. The website alone can tell you a lot. What does the company actually do? Who do they serve? Are they a solo operation or do they have a team?

Read the About page. Look at their services. Check whether they have a blog or news section that hints at what they are focused on right now. Five minutes on a website gives you more context than most people bother to gather before reaching out.

Put Your AI to Work

Here is where the process gets efficient. Once you have the basic details from the card in your spreadsheet, ask your AI to help you go deeper. Claude, for example, can take a company name and website and give you a solid summary of what the business does, who their likely customers are, and how their work might connect with yours.

You can also ask your AI whether this type of business is a natural referral partner for your industry. A marketing agency, for instance, pairs well with printers, photographers, commercial real estate agents, and event planners. Your AI can help you think through those relationships and flag which contacts on your list are worth prioritizing based on industry alignment alone.

Try a prompt like this: "Here is the name and website of someone I met at a networking event. Can you summarize what their business does, who they serve, and whether they might be a good referral partner for a local marketing agency in Northeast Ohio?" The answer you get back will be far more useful than anything you could pull together by skimming a website on your own.

Check Their Social Presence

A quick LinkedIn search on the person's name tells you a lot. How long have they been at this company? Do they post regularly? Have they shared anything recently that gives you a conversation starter? A post about a new service launch, a community event they attended, or an award they received is a natural hook for your first message.

Facebook is worth a check too, especially for locally focused businesses. If they have a business page, look at what they post and how their community engages with them. For Northeast Ohio businesses in particular, you can often get a strong sense of how rooted someone is in the local market just from their Facebook presence.

Look for the Connection Point

The goal of all this research is not to compile a dossier. It is to find one genuine point of connection before you write your outreach message. Maybe you both serve the same community. Maybe their business fills a gap your clients frequently ask about. Maybe they just won a local award or announced an expansion.

That one detail is the raw material for an email that feels personal rather than automated. A message that says "I noticed you work with a lot of small retailers in the Aurora area — that overlaps with several of my clients" will always outperform "It was great meeting you at the event."

Add What You Find to Your Spreadsheet

As you research each contact, add a notes column to your spreadsheet and drop in two or three bullet points per person. What do they do, who do they serve, and what is your potential connection point?

Ask your AI to help here too. After it researches a contact, ask it to summarize the key points in three bullet points formatted for a spreadsheet cell. You now have a research assistant that not only finds the information but formats it exactly the way you need it.

A Note on What AI Cannot Always Find

AI is a strong research starting point but it is not infallible. Smaller local businesses may have limited online presence, outdated websites, or almost no social activity. When that happens, the card itself becomes your best source. Note what the person told you in conversation, what problem they mentioned they were trying to solve, or what made them memorable in the room.

Those handwritten impressions are often more valuable than anything a search engine can surface.

How Long Should This Take?

For most contacts, five to ten minutes of research is enough. You are not writing a report. You are gathering just enough context to make your first message feel personal rather than automated. For your highest-priority contacts — the ones you felt the strongest connection with at the event — it is worth spending a little more time.

A deeper look at their LinkedIn activity, a skim of their recent social posts, and a quick search of their company name can surface news coverage, reviews, or community involvement that gives you even more to work with.

Research Makes Everything Else Easier

When you know something real about a person before you reach out, the email practically writes itself. You are not staring at a blank screen trying to figure out what to say. You have a reason to connect that is specific to them, not just a reminder that you once stood near each other at a networking event.

That specificity is what turns a contact into a conversation, and a conversation into a relationship.

Next week: Before you focus on what new contacts can do for you, consider what they can do for the people you already know. We will show you how to use your contact list as a resource for your entire network.