In a world filled with overwhelming cold sales emails, finding meaningful professional connections can be a daunting task. Executives are bombarded with messages daily, often struggling to discern which meetings are worth their time. Jay Allen, founder of Influence Board, saw this frustration and turned it into a solution that not only makes business connections more impactful but also creates positive social change with every interaction. Through Influence Board’s concierge service, vendors no longer need to waste time on cold outreach. The platform handles everything on their behalf, ensuring that every meeting is relevant, purposeful, and philanthropic.
The Spark Behind Influence Board: Solving a Growing Problem
With over 25 years in business development and entrepreneurship, Jay Allen founded 15 organizations that brought together influential executives across various industries. Through his extensive experience, Jay realized that a common pain point was emerging: executives were overwhelmed with irrelevant sales emails, leaving little time for valuable networking.
As Jay explains in his interview with Yusuf Toropov for Sandler, “Executives were getting bombarded by sales outreach, often struggling to filter through the noise. This problem worsened during COVID and continues to grow, compounded by AI-generated emails.” For vendors, the frustration was just as real, with response rates plummeting to under 1%. Something had to change.
Rather than pointing fingers at salespeople or executives, Jay and his peers recognized that the solution had to come from the executives themselves.
A New Approach: The Concierge Model
Influence Board’s concierge service emerged from Jay’s experience with top executives. One key moment came during a lunch with CIOs and CTOs from billion-dollar companies. One of them shared that he had stopped taking meetings unless they were from someone he knew or had been referred by a trusted connection. Jay posed a simple question: “How will you access the innovation you need with that mindset?”
That conversation sparked the idea for a new, more effective way to connect executives with vendors—a way that didn’t involve sifting through countless irrelevant emails. Jay and his peers brainstormed a solution, which initially started as a flawed auction model for executives’ time. But through refining that idea, they developed a concierge service that handles all the logistics and outreach for vendors.
The beauty of this model is that vendors don’t need to sign up, create profiles, or manage their own outreach. Instead, the concierge team at Influence Board does it all for them, ensuring that they only engage in meaningful, relevant meetings that support a charitable cause.
How the Concierge Service Works
- Customized Outreach for Vendors: Influence Board’s concierge team works closely with vendors to understand their goals and target audience. Instead of vendors sending out hundreds of cold emails, the concierge team takes care of everything from initial outreach to scheduling meetings with top-tier executives.
- Relevance and Control for Executives: Executives define the topics they’re interested in and set the number of meeting requests they’re willing to receive each month. This ensures that only the most relevant meetings make it to their calendars, and they’re never overwhelmed with irrelevant requests.
- A Charitable Element: One of the most unique aspects of Influence Board’s concierge service is the philanthropic side. When a vendor secures a meeting with an executive, they agree to donate a portion of their meeting time’s value to a charity chosen by the executive. This way, each meeting—whether or not it results in a business deal—has a positive social impact.
This approach offers a hassle-free experience for vendors who want to generate high-quality meetings without lifting a finger. The Influence Board concierge team handles the outreach, scheduling, and even ensures that every meeting supports a worthy cause.
The Impact: High-Quality Connections with Zero Hassle
The results speak for themselves. Influence Board has more than 1,500 executives actively participating, with new executives joining every day. What’s more, the acceptance rate for meetings through the platform is far higher than traditional cold outreach—ranging between 20-40%, a massive improvement over the typical sub-1% acceptance rate for cold emails.
Vendors have praised the service, with one vendor sharing that after using Influence Board, they secured 27 meetings in just 45 days—far more than they had been able to generate with 10,000 cold emails. The outcome? A $14 million sales pipeline built with ease and efficiency, thanks to the concierge service.
“This is the type of value we aim for,” Jay says. “Vendors are getting meetings with the right executives, and executives are engaging with innovative companies that match their interests. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
What’s Next: Scaling for Even Greater Impact
As Influence Board continues to grow, Jay and his team are focused on expanding the platform to even more executives and vendors. With plans to raise funding and scale the concierge service, the goal is to help more executives and vendors connect in ways that are mutually beneficial, efficient, and impactful.
“We’re looking to scale this model significantly,” Jay shares. “Our mission is to continue helping both executives and vendors meet in a way that eliminates the noise, minimizes the effort, and maximizes the positive social impact.”
Takeaway: Networking with Purpose
Influence Board’s concierge service is a game-changer in the world of business networking. By taking the burden of outreach off the shoulders of vendors, the platform enables them to focus on what really matters—creating genuine connections that drive business results, all while supporting causes they care about.
For executives, the platform provides a way to control their time, engage in purposeful meetings, and give back to the community. For vendors, it offers an efficient, hassle-free way to secure high-value meetings with decision-makers, all without the risk of wasted time or resources. And for the world, it’s an opportunity to make business meetings a force for good.
