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Making the Most of Your Company’s Social Capital

2 min read●Updated Oct 2026

The fastest way into a prospect isn't a cold email, it's something you already have in common. Your company's "social capital" is the web of shared connections your whole team carries: where everyone went to school, worked before, volunteers, and what groups they belong to.

Used well, it turns a 2% cold-outreach acceptance rate into something closer to 1 in 3. This guide, drawn from our masterclass with Conor Sullivan of The Endurance Group, shows how to find and use it.

Why Shared Connections Work

People do business with people they have something in common with. Conor's own example: he reached Mike because they're both Boston College grads. A cold call to Mike might land ~2% of the time; leveraging the BC connection, it jumped to ~36%. Yet, per a McKinsey piece on social capital, very few people do this; since COVID, networks have thinned, old contacts go untouched, and few are building new relationships. That gap is the opportunity.

The Four Steps

  1. Discover your social capital. Inventory the publicly available background of your whole team, schools, past employers, volunteering, interests, and groups.
  2. Build your ICP and map it. Take the prospects who fit your ideal profile and inventory the same data, then find the overlaps with your team. Use our Relationship Mapping Template to map it: Relationship Mapping Template
  3. Launch relationship-based campaigns. Reach out through the shared tie, not a generic pitch.
  4. Analyze and improve. Track acceptance and response rates, A/B test your messaging, and double down on what works.

How to Use the Overlaps

You can work the connections at three levels: the account ("who on my team connects to anyone at this target company?"), the individual ("this decision-maker worked at Deloitte and went to Michigan, who do we know from there?"), and the commonality (run a campaign to everyone who shares a school or former employer). The best campaigns lead with the tie: an ad featuring a school mascot ("Talk to a fellow alum at your company") outperforms a generic one every time.

The Playbook in Practice

  • LinkedIn first. Email is clogged and often legally restricted (especially in Europe/Asia), and cold calls rarely get picked up. Use email and phone as second and third touches that reference the LinkedIn connection ("you may have seen my invite, we're both BC alums").
  • Run relationship-expansion campaigns: a LinkedIn invite plus two follow-ups to everyone who shares a tie. Conor's own alumni campaigns hit a 57% acceptance rate (Boston College) and 20% response (Teach for America).
  • Empower the whole team. The best way in might be a colleague's connection, not yours. Anyone on the team can be the one to make the warm intro, so sales doesn't rest on one person.

A note on pace: LinkedIn allows roughly 100 invites a week; start slower (60-70) to look natural, and most teams see one to two meetings a week by the second or third week.

Social-capital selling pairs naturally with knowing exactly who you're targeting, so start with the Ideal Client Profile worksheet: Clarify Your Ideal Client Profile.