Anonymous wrote:You are asking an acquaintance to use her personal connection to make you a business connection? When you ask someone to make a connection for you, you are asking them to vouch or endorse you to someone else in their network. You have no idea how this acquaintance feels about you. This acquaintance of yours may not want to endorse you on a business level, and by forcing the issue, you put your acquaintance in a difficult position.

I think that you should let it go. If you think that this connection is very important, you can find the person's contact information on your own and follow up.

Not OP and I agree with you that the acquaintance may not want to make the introduction and that's his right. But in that case the acquaintance should have refused (politely) to make the introduction rather than lie about doing it, if that is what happened. Then also presumably taking credit for making a connection which would leave OP feeling that he owes the middle man.

I agree with 16:49 and also think 15:24 raises a valid point.

You can contact the person directly, forwarding the exact email you sent the middle man, to the person you want to reach and saying "I just wanted to f/u on the email Joe told me he forwarded to you. It seems like a great opportunity for us to work together, and I'd love the chance to speak with you about co-adaptors for beluga whales over coffee. Love, Larla"

You are asking an acquaintance to use her personal connection to make you a business connection? When you ask someone to make a connection for you, you are asking them to vouch or endorse you to someone else in their network. You have no idea how this acquaintance feels about you. This acquaintance of yours may not want to endorse you on a business level, and by forcing the issue, you put your acquaintance in a difficult position.

I think that you should let it go. If you think that this connection is very important, you can find the person's contact information on your own and follow up.

bump

09.38 if you read the original post again you will see that the title states "possibly sabotaged", not definitely sabotaged and the OP stated that the intermediary may have changed the email to sound bad. That would count as sabotage. You may not have much experience with business/work introductions but in fact an introduction from someone known to both parties is generally more likely to carry weight than a "cold call".

First you should learn the definition of sabotage. Your friend may or may not have forwarded your email but that's hardly sabotage. As others have noted, just reach out directly. If your friend sent the email she'll be waiting for your call. If he didn't you still win by mentioning him-should at least establish a common connection. And hopefully whatever you are contacting her about is worth her time so she would be willing to talk even without the personal intro.

"Dear MCFoolies Foolio,

It has come to my attention that you may have engaged in Deeply Slanderous Acts (DSAs) pursuant to MD Rule 2.507. In such instances the tortious interference you have inflicted on my client, Mr. Paranoia Extremo, are subject to both criminal and civil penalty. As a result, I have advise Mr. Paranoia with a dose of schizo to seek counsel, of a different kind, namely that of a trained professional counselor. In an abundance of paranoia, I have been asked by my client to file a motion in limine to ensure this fact cannot be introduced at trial. I have so done and charged him aptly for this waste of the courts time.

Sincerely,

Run Lola Run"

I would find out that person's email address and forward the initial email to her with a preamble similar to what was posted above. That will do two things; get your information to the person whom you were trying to reach and also let her know that you sent it to your "friend" a while ago. What's the worst that can happen now? She'll actually receive your information....

You can google, bing, yahoo anyone's name along with their company name and get their email address rather easily. Try it to see.

Write the desired contact directly, and cc your friend.

"Dear XXX,

I've known [mutual contact] for 5 years and I understand he passed along some information to you about my company. I just wanted to touch base personally with you and let you know that I am very interested in [potential business opportunity/subject of mutual interest].

[Question that will provoke a response]

Sincerely,

Larla"

Several months ago I had asked an acquaintance for a professional introduction to a woman he is connected to (who knows well) and he agreed to make it. He asked me to send him a short email introducing myself to the other person and he said that he'd forward that email to her with his introduction. I sent my acquaintance a very good email to be forwarded to the woman I want to connect with. After some weeks I asked him if he made the intro and got a response (as he did not copy me on the introductory email). He said that he did send the email but did not get a response.

I know there are a number of valid reasons why someone might not respond to an email introduction and its possible that may apply in this case. If that is what happened, I'm fine with just letting it go. But I actually think this person never sent the email introduction (for reasons alluded to above) and/or changed my email to sound so bad that the other person just ignored it. I also have heard that this acquaintance/middle man can be selfish if he has nothing to gain by doing something for others.

How to proceed? Obviously I can't force the middle man to show me proof that he sent the introduction. If he didn't send it and is just pretending that he did I can't change his mind. But I also don't want to just give up on this opportunity if the lack of response was due to sabotage by the middle man. How would you suggest approaching the other person that I wanted to connect to without burning bridges with the middle man and also without directly involving him?