“One of the biggest issues I see with salesmanship in VC is that most pitches start with an awkward… ‘so should I start with a little about me and the fund I’m raising’. For most VCs, the default is to just start giving their canned stump speech and steamroll through the meeting.” So says Dave...
[Continue Reading]Organizing a Fundraising Dinner: Template Best Practices
One of the most powerful ways to attract investors to your fund or company is to organize a carefully curated dinner for qualified potential investors. Here’s my quick template cheatsheet for making that happen: Invite [Firm] Investor Dinner Please join us at a curated salon dinner exclusively for existing and potential investors in [Fund] Where?...
[Continue Reading]How to Configure a CRM for an Investment Management Firm
I’m surprised at how many emerging managers launch without a CRM, just a shared spreadsheet. I strongly recommend use a proper CRM from day one. For advice on which to use, see What is the Best CRM and Marketing Tech Platform for a New Private Equity/Venture Capital Fund? Your goal should be to add ALL...
[Continue Reading]14 Tips on How to Sell to Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds
It’s hard enough to raise capital from VC, private equity fund, and family offices. How do you sell to them? I’m an investor in many companies which sell to these types of clients. I put together a cheat sheet with some of the sales best practices I’ve seen. I thought this would be helpful to...
[Continue Reading]How to find the right online communities
The user experience in the big, ungated social networks is getting steadily worse: spam, bots, fake news. There are three main solutions: technology (i.e., anti-bot tools, but that’s an endless battle); gating; and/or curation/moderation. One result: I think we’ll see people spending more and more time in gated online communities. Particularly in a time of...
[Continue Reading]Sales 2.0: why can’t sales be as efficient as online dating?
I’m teaching a class for Founder Institute July 8 on accelerating sales with technology. This has been a passion of mine for well over a decade, ever since I realized how inefficient sales was and how technology could be used to speed up the process. This is a core theme of my book, The Virtual...
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