Connect the Dots (CTD.ai) Empowers You to Zero in on the Connections that Matter

Making the right connections in business has always been a challenge. But thanks to advancements in data analytics, we can finally see who truly knows who across all the major platforms like email, LinkedIn and others to make strong connections quickly.

That’s why I don’t send an email now without first looking at Connect the Dots. CTD.ai uses email metadata, advanced analytics and AI to automatically map who you know — and who they know. It’s the easiest, fastest way to see who you can reach to find the best way in.

CTD.ai tells me who among my contacts really knows the person I’m about to email. For example, if it’s an entrepreneur I want to meet, I might have 50 common LinkedIn connections but CTD.ai tells me the six people who are the warmest, most relevant contacts. This is important because platforms like LinkedIn are like playing the lottery — you never know who really knows who or what kind of response you’re going to get when you reach out.

Or say it’s an executive we’re trying to hire for a portfolio company. I want to see who knows them well so I can check references or learn more about them.

With Connect the Dots, I can search our extended network — fellow investors, partners, our portfolio executives and their employees, our executive network of people we have worked with over decades — and pinpoint the right people to put me in touch with whoever I want to reach.

How one company used CTD.ai to boost annualized Revenue by 7%

Companies like Vendr are now using CTD.ai to unlock the power of their relationships, build pipeline and close more deals. Vendr helps their customers to buy and manage their cloud applications more effectively and efficiently. Before moving to CTD.ai, Vendr faced a number of challenges. Its’ cold outreach was less than effective, deals were going dark and Vendr was having trouble calling on larger customers with larger deals and a more complex buying process.

Clearly, Vendr needed a better way. CTD.ai uses AI to map and score relationships, enabling Vendr to identify the strongest pathways to the people and companies it wants to reach. After a quick, 15-minute company-wide deployment, Vendr had a relationship map of everyone it knows and everyone it could know.

The company uploaded its target account lists to CTD.ai to analyze. It then got visibility into who it could reach to build pipeline, multithread deals and accelerate revenue. As an added benefit, the company’s investors are now much more willing to help make introductions, given how streamlined the process has become.

In the first six months alone, Vendr sent out 300-plus ghost emails and 700-plus intro requests via 40-plus external stakeholders and employees. These efforts resulted in a 100x annualized ROI on their initial investment in CTD.ai and a 7% increase in total annualized revenue.

The Vendr sales team can now uncover angles and referrals that they never knew existed, without disrupting their workflow. That means more opportunities, shorter sales cycles, better conversion rates and less time wasted playing the cold-call lottery.

“In the first four months of using CTD.ai, our referrals channel is outperforming our model at 160%,” says Andy Smith, VP of sales at Vendr.

Why warm intros are the future of business

CTD.ai is using cutting-edge tech to untangle the complex web of professional relationships. Its data analytics and relationship-mapping empowers sales teams to zero in on the exact customer connections that matter. As a result of their domain expertise and hard work with their users and alpha/beta company customers, CTD.ai has achieved “product market fit” — important words for customers, companies and venture firms alike.

Over the last two years, CTD.ai has added several game-changing features to help salespeople get their foot in the door. One of their key innovations is the concept of “ghost emails,” which let salespeople get warm intros from heavy hitters like investors, board members and CEOs. The emails come from the heavy hitters but are drafted by others. From the ghost sender’s view, you’ve made their life so much easier by filling in all the contents of the email. All they have to do is review it, make any changes they want, and then send. When you get that CEO connection making the intro, customer response rates goes through the roof.

Just listen to Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. “I make more than 1,000 introductions a year,” he says. “CTD.ai makes it easy to execute ghost emails and warm intros for my team.”

With email marketing facing more spam crackdowns, having those personalized warm intros is so important. Tapping into your existing networks and senior-level connections enables you to sidestep the limitations of blanket-outreach tactics to forge real connections.

“Warm introductions are like gold,” says Jeff Epstein, operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Connect the Dots is how you mine the gold.”

Quite simply, leveraging data-driven relationship insights and warm intros is the future of business networking. It’s about prioritizing quality over quantity and unlocking the power of human connections. Now, with CTD.ai, every organization can have a warm referral engine inside the company.

By Matt Holleran, General Partner, Cloud Apps Capital Partners