Why Most Deals Are Won Post-Intro Call

One of the themes I’ve been hearing a lot of lately when speaking to founders is that people are losing a lot of deals AFTER they have had intro calls with investors.

This boils down to a basic sales / biz dev problem.

Not having concrete next steps.

The problem for a lot of people isn’t necessarily getting the intro call in the first place. With networks, and industry connections a lot of you have, this is not the core bottleneck.

But knowing what to do, how to follow-up, how to set next steps into play, and how to move the DD process along - seems to be the root issue.

Based on our philosophy and experience, here is how we approach it:

Finding the Root Issue

The biggest reason this issue exists is because of inconsistencies and variables with investment groups and their DD process.

This is all dependent on who you speak to, what time of year it is, how much of their fund they have left to deploy, and a million other things.

And the problem with this is that this process varies between every single fund you speak to.

How on earth are you supposed to navigate this?

Micro-commitments.

You’re not going to speed up a VC’s process for reviewing your deal and making a decision just because you want them to move faster. It’s just not going to happen.

What you have a much better chance at doing, is getting them bought into micro-commitments that will slowly and surely move a deal along. Here are some examples:

“We’re going to show this deal to our IC and you’ll hear back from me by Thursday”.
“We’ll set a follow-up for next Tuesday, if you can send your deck and data room over now we’ll come to that call having reviewed them”.
“You can expect to hear back from us on Wednesday regarding next steps, if we don’t hear by then, we’ll follow-up just to make sure timelines stay aligned”.

This process ends up doing a few things:

• Subconsciously gets them, and you, aligned on a timeline. If things go off the rails, the deal was never going through in the first place. Either way you have clarity.

• Puts a formal schedule in place for them to get back to you. Eliminates follow-up purgatory (the last place on earth you want to be).

• Gives you 10x better clarity on where your deal stands with them, so you can make decisions around other investor conversations that you’re having.

Before you jump off of every single call you have with an investor, I highly recommend that you leave with a crystal clear understanding of what you need to do next, what they need to do next, and a schedule / timeline for when you will reconnect / discuss next steps by.

If you feel that this is over the top and you’re being a nuisance, be completely open and frame this to them honestly.

“My apologies for all of the questions on next steps - I know how busy things can get from your side, and we’re balancing a lot of conversations like this as well. I just want to make sure we can align closest to your internal review process and make this as efficient as possible for both sides.”

If you lead with this, it is rare you will ever get flack from the investor themselves. They will see it as sophistication.

“Follow-up” seems like it is a boring part of the investor review process, but I assure you it is one of the most important things you can nail about the whole funnel.

Having a tight grip on clear next steps is the difference between winning and losing term sheets.

I hope this helps shed some light on how we help make this process as efficient as possible. If you have any questions, please reply back and I’d be glad to help.

Thanks for reading,

Ryan Bryden
Breakout Capital Group