How do we avoid meetings with principals and EIRS? Any example of emails that worked for you to push the partner to join?

It might be tricky to avoid the meeting if you don’t have a direct intro with the partners, but you can ask them to tell you about their evaluation process and how soon they will involve the partners for a meeting with them. That at least puts a clear timeline to talk to the decisionmakers or just close the conversation if there's no interest to move forward!