Calling Campaigns

If you’ve been paying attention to this blog at all you should know by now that my day to day involves finding the next great expansion stage company to invest in with some growth capital. Beyond that we look to help them with operational support, sales and marketing support and general value-add services.

I’ve been focusing on a couple specific markets as of late and trying to drill down and find the best fit company(s) within those markets, specifically Automotive CRM, disaster recovery and remote access software. The following is what I’ve found to be most helpful for a specific industry concentrated approach:

1. Having a firm grasp on the market and key word terms. Understand the interaction between the product and the target user, i.e. how sales managers use technology to help sell cars. 
2. Block off a certain amount of time each day to spend specifically on targeting the specific sector and do not deviate into other industries.
3. Have a clear next step. Once I was able to have a conversation with one of these prospects it was necessary to have a specific next step with them and be as upfront as possible with the prospect in this regard. If it makes sense to move a call to the next phase of development then do so, or maybe a company doesn’t fit for a partnership but might be able to provide valuable market knowledge.
4. It is important to have a resource either within the firm or a trusted source outside to be able to bounce ideas off of.
5. In an effort to make sure to speak with as many of companies as possible try different ways to get in touch with them. 
   • Specific tailored email. Personalized emails with information about what I was trying to accomplish and the qualifications I felt were important, giving the prospect a sense of urgency
   • Utilizing calling tactics and patterns that didn’t always include leaving a voice mail if the prospect was not available. Often I positioned myself as a curious information seeking VC and quizzed the person on the other end of the phone about who I might speak with, this seemed to help trigger a sense of importance on my end and a few times helped me get in touch faster.