One could write a book on this. In point of fact, there are a lot of books on this topic. I'd suggest you consult The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank,

One could write a book on this. In point of fact, there are a lot of books on this topic. I'd suggest you consult The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, the series by Jeff Thull that begins with Mastering The Complex Sale, and The New Solution Selling by Keith Eades. As for some specific, tactical gambits you can use, here's one I've gotten some mileage out of: browse LinkedIn for people who used to work for companies you want to find out more about. Cold contact them, explain that you're researching $COMPANY and that you were hoping they could share some insights. I find that this is often better than contacting current employees, because the ex-employees don't get that defensive "guards up" thing from this kind of engagement, since you're not - by definition - trying to sell them anything. Then, armed with whatever information you glean from these calls (which ideally will include some suggested names of people to contact!) you can make contact with the target $COMPANY. Even better, if the call with the ex-employee goes really well, they may offer to (or be willing to, if prompted) actually make an introduction to somebody they are still in touch with at the target. This can go a long way towards greasing the wheels and getting an "in" there. It won't always happen, but it does sometimes IME. Or if they aren't willing to actually make an introduction, they may at least agree to let you name-drop their name, as in "Hey, Bob, I was talking to Susy who you used to work with, and she mentioned your name as somebody I should talk to about X..." Just don't do the "name drop" thing without explicitly getting permission from the person in question first. Doing otherwise is unethical and if the person you ping happens to call their good friend Susy and she says "I did talk to that guy, but I certainly didn't give him permission to use my name" then you're going to find yourself persona non grata real quick. Anyway, if you read some of the books I mentioned above, one common theme you'll see revolves around doing a lot of research on your target companies before making contact. Doing that takes more effort, but it's also more likely to pay off, since people are more likely to respond to people they perceive as offering legitimate value as opposed to people sending blast spam. Note: but don't do the generic thing of trying to make it sound like you did your research without actually having done any! Think about how you feel when you get messages that start with something like "Hey, Centigonal, I've been researching Centigonal Inc and I love what you guys are doing in your space, and I think I could help you generate an extra 10,000 high quality leads every month..." Blah, blah, blah. To me, those things are 100% "auto delete on sight" since the person not only obviously didn't do any research, but on top of that they lied about it. Dishonesty is not the best way to initiate a relationship.