[AlwaysRock]

You might not be trying to sell them but you are still taking up their time. I talk to kind of a lot of folks who reach out to me with a similar ask because I'm happy to help when I can. But 90%+ are warmish intros from someone else I know.

I'm partially talking to the person to help them out, partially to help out the introer who I already know, and partially because who knows maybe this person will actually be good to know.

Can you get intros from others? One way to do this is when a random cold outreach does agree to be interviewed by you, at the end of your call you can say, "Is there anyone else in your industry that you can introduce me to/that I should talk to?"

Even better if you've looked at their linkedin connections and can say, "Hey I noticed you are connected with X and Y. Do you know them well enough to introduce me? I'd love to have a similar conversation with them."

If they say yes then send them a pre-written intro to make it as low lift as possible for them. "Hey x, I asked y if they could introduce us. I'm looking to learn about painpoints for yada yada..."

I've used that strategy in the past and branching like that tends to have a much higher success rate than random cold outreach.