The problem here is that among the multitude of emails / requests a working professional goes through everyday, you might often just end up being noise. Cold em

The problem here is that among the multitude of emails / requests a working professional goes through everyday, you might often just end up being noise. Cold emails are usually ignored when there is no context to the request; the attention span given might be only a few seconds and frankly, only a little thought would go into your "valuable" proposition — there are too many of them that land in the inbox everyday and not to forget, a "brief call", unlike a small response, is a good commitment to ask. Of course, the success rate won't be zero and you are bound to get your foot into the door in some companies but set expectation should be of getting a cold shoulder many many times. The success rate, however, can be tweaked by — a) Being a bit influential (like, having many Twitter followers or a somewhat famous blog) b) Establishing a context. (hey, I read your piece about the SPECIFIC PROBLEM and that's something we're working on). c) Writing something that puts you way above the crowd. (my friend often used to read people's Twitter and LinkedIn profiled before requesting anything. Like, "Hey. I read how you recently paid off your education loan. Mine is still pain in the ass") I understand that if the problem is super-relevant to the business, they might agree in a whim but usually, it won't be the case. I am not undermining the value of the approach, but it's just not that simple as often portrayed.