By Shankar Ganapathy, Co-founder, Boomerang AI. Updated October 27, 2026.
Short answer: a relationship mapping template has one row per target person and seven columns: account, target person and role, connector (who on your side knows them), relationship type, strength, evidence, and owner of the ask. Fill it for your top 100 accounts in five working days by pulling from four networks in order: your executives and team, your investors and board, your customers, and your partners. The template is below.
Why run a relationship mapping project at all?
Because the paths already exist and nobody has looked. LinkedIn's 2026 Trust Advantage research puts it directly: "Your organizations existing relationships are an underused competitive asset." It also finds that sellers who exceeded quota generate 20% more meetings from warm introductions than those who fell short.
Scott Barker, then host of the GTMnow podcast and formerly at Outreach, described the manual version on air: a tiger team took Outreach's top 100 accounts, mapped connections across its VCs, board, advisors, partners and top executives, and scored them in spreadsheets with help from virtual assistants. He said it closed some of their biggest accounts. You can run the same project in a week.
What goes in a relationship mapping template?
- Account. What to enter: Target company. Example: Lexora
- Target person and role. What to enter: Economic buyer, champion, technical evaluator, skeptic. Example: VP Revenue Operations (economic buyer)
- Connector. What to enter: Who on your side knows them. Example: Your Series A lead partner
- Relationship type. What to enter: Team, investor or board, customer, partner, former colleague. Example: Investor (sat on a board together)
- Strength (1 to 3). What to enter: 3 = recent, two way contact; 2 = worked together; 1 = connected only. Example: 3
- Evidence. What to enter: Why you believe the relationship is real. Example: Shared board seat 2023 to 2025; met last month
- Ask owner and status. What to enter: Who sends the request and where it stands. Example: CEO to ask partner; drafted
Copy those seven columns into a sheet. Add a tab for connectors with their limits: how many asks a quarter they will take, minimum deal size, and anyone they will not introduce.
How do you fill it in five days?
- 1. Work: Pick the 100 accounts and the 2 to 4 seats that matter in each. Output: About 300 target rows
- 2. Work: Your executives and team: export LinkedIn connections, check calendars and CRM history for prior meetings. Output: First connectors, strength scored from evidence
- 3. Work: Investors and board: ask each partner for their portfolio and advisor networks, and check shared boards. Output: Senior paths into the hardest accounts
- 4. Work: Customers and partners: list champions who used to work at, or sell to, your targets. Output: Peer paths and reference style intros
- 5. Work: Score, pick one path per target, assign an owner, draft the first 20 asks. Output: A ranked list and asks ready to send
How should you score relationship strength?
Score from evidence, not from a LinkedIn connection. Recent two way email or meetings beat shared employers, and shared employers beat a connection request accepted years ago. Write the evidence next to the score so the connector can sanity check it in seconds.
Who should make each ask?
Match the introducer to the deal. Save your CEO and board for strategic accounts. Use customer champions after a success moment, such as finishing onboarding. Use partners when the account is evaluating a competitor. Never send a connector more asks than they agreed to.
What breaks the spreadsheet version?
Three things: the map goes stale as people change jobs, nobody owns the follow up when a connector goes quiet, and outcomes never make it back to the CRM. That is why teams that prove the project by hand move to tooling. Boomerang AI runs the same map continuously across team, investor, customer and partner networks, and Rudy drafts and routes each ask through Path to Power. Armis built 26,000 warm intro paths this way. For the account executive version of the play, see the AE playbook, and for the concepts behind scoring, network mapping and relationship scoring.
Frequently asked questions
What is a relationship mapping template?
It is a sheet with one row per target person that records the account, the person and their role, who on your side knows them, the relationship type, a strength score with evidence, and who will make the ask. It turns a vague sense that you know people into a ranked list of introductions to request.
How do you map relationships into target accounts?
Pick your top accounts and the two to four seats that matter in each. Then check four networks in order: executives and team, investors and board, customers, and partners. Score each path on evidence such as recent meetings or shared boards, and assign one owner per ask.
How long does a relationship mapping project take?
A focused team can map 100 accounts in about five working days by spending one day on account and seat selection, three days on the four networks, and one day on scoring and drafting the first asks. Keeping it current is the harder part, because people change jobs.
How do you score relationship strength?
Use evidence. Score 3 for recent two way contact such as meetings or replies, 2 for having worked together or served on a board together, and 1 for a connection only. Record the evidence beside the score so the connector can confirm it quickly before agreeing to introduce.
