The fastest way to find who knows someone at a target account is to search across your full team's extended network — weighted by real relationship strength, not just LinkedIn proximity. Tools like Via AI let you type any name or company and instantly see who in your orbit has a real connection, ranked by how strong it is. Manual approaches — LinkedIn mutuals, Slack messages, CRM searches — are slow, unreliable, and only surface connections you already know to look for.
The manual approach and where it breaks down
Most reps follow the same playbook when they need to reach someone at a target account:
- Check LinkedIn mutuals. You search the person, see who you're both connected to, and hope one of those mutuals actually knows them. Problem: LinkedIn connections don't mean real relationships. You might share 15 mutuals and none of them could pick your target out of a lineup.
- Ask on Slack. "Hey team, does anyone know someone at Acme Corp?" Sometimes this works — if the right person happens to see the message and happens to remember. But most of the time it gets buried, and people don't surface connections they don't realize they have.
- Search your CRM. You look for past interactions, old deals, logged emails. CRMs capture what your team has done — they don't capture who your team knows. A rep who spent four years at Acme before joining your company won't show up in Salesforce.
- Ask your manager. They might know someone. They might know someone who knows someone. But this only works if your manager happens to have the right network for that specific account — and it doesn't scale across a team working hundreds of accounts.
Each of these methods gives you a partial, unreliable picture. Worse, they only surface the connections you already know to look for. The strongest path into an account might be through someone you'd never think to ask.
Why this is harder than it looks
Most sales teams have connections to their target accounts and don't know it. The paths exist — but they're spread across the team, buried in second-degree relationships nobody's mapped, and invisible in the tools everyone uses every day. Your CRM shows who you've emailed. LinkedIn shows who you've connected with. Neither shows how reachable an account actually is through your real network.
What most teams miss: the extended network
When reps search for connections, they almost always limit the search to themselves and their immediate teammates. That's a fraction of the network your company actually has access to.
- Advisors and board members. These people have decades of relationships across industries. A board member who spent 15 years as a CRO might know half the sales leaders in your target market — but nobody on your team thinks to ask.
- Investors. VCs and angels sit on multiple boards, attend the same conferences, and are often well-connected to executives at the companies in your pipeline. Your lead investor may already know the CEO you're trying to reach.
- Former employees. Someone who left your company six months ago still has all the relationships they built before and during their time with you. A former AE who now works at your target account is one of the strongest paths you could ask for.
- Customers. Your happiest customers are often willing to make introductions — especially to people they know at companies that would benefit from your product. They're credible because they've used it themselves.
- Community memberships. Industry groups, founder communities, peer networks, YC batches — shared membership in a tight-knit community often creates stronger ties than a shared employer. Two founders in the same accelerator cohort may know each other better than two people who worked at the same 5,000-person company.
The best path into an account is often not through someone on your sales team. It's through someone adjacent to your company who has a relationship nobody thought to map. The question isn't "do I know someone there?" — it's "does anyone in my company's entire orbit know someone there?"
What works better
The approach that consistently surfaces real paths:
- Start with the target, not your own contacts — search by the person or company you want to reach
- Look across the full team network, not just your own connections
- Weight relationships by quality, not just proximity — shared work history beats a loose LinkedIn connection
- Include advisors, investors, and past customers in the search — not just current colleagues
When you do that systematically, you find paths you'd never surface by scrolling alone. This is what Via AI automates — you name the person or company, and Via searches across your entire team's network to show you who has a real connection, ranked by relationship strength with context on what the connection is based on.