Your first meeting with a potential investor - Part 1

Overview:

Don’t think that success in your first meeting is partly a fluke or a stroke of luck. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Reluctantly – but appropriately:

There’s no such thing as fluke or instant success in the field of entrepreneur / investor relationships! Success is the result of practical and constant preparation. I hate to use sport analogies here, but reluctantly and yet appropriately I will. Like (say) an F1 driver with only one place on the Grand Prix circuit to overtake, you must be fully prepared to take advantage of the right moment, when it arrives. In their case, on the track and in your case during your first face-to-face meeting.

Moreover . . .

Be prepared to cope with the unexpected, both the bad and the good

And never forget that . . .

Those first few minutes are of extreme and crucial importance and are the subject of this series of guidance notes.

Game over?

Once properly prepared your positive image can project a powerful charisma that will ke an indelible and everlasting impression on the potential investor. Get it wrong and you’ll not recover the situation. Game over!

On the other hand though:

Charisma and style will radiate only if you have the right opinion of yourself. This means not playing some game that you don’t fully believe in. This is crucial. Only complete honesty will let your feelings show through so they are perceived as both real and sincere. Investors didn’t (in the main) get where they are without the ability to spot bluffers.

You’ve only a few minutes to make the right impression or the indeed the wrong impression. Although an unhappy potential investor is not necessarily going to terminate the meeting immediately he/she spots a weakness, it’s probable that if you haven't scored powerfully in those first few minutes, everything that follows will be a waste of time.

Bonjour, stranger:

Never forget that you are meeting a stranger. Similarly with the potential investor as you’re a stranger to them – although our focus in this series is on you, the entrepreneur. The potential investor has the money and the time. Possibly you have only one and possibly neither. You are not at a disadvantage – if you follow the practical steps of pre-meeting preparation.

In those first few minutes both parties will have decided exactly how much they trust or mistrust each other. Those first impressions might change during the first meeting – but don’t bank on it.Why the handshake?

The first stage is to establish a communicative bridgehead between you. This starts with two handshakes. First, the physical one. Quite normal and straightforward. The other and arguably more important one is the metaphorical handshake. This is a serious subject and will be focused on in forthcoming parts in the series. The metaphorical handshake defines the approach in which each of you perceives the other. The way you give signals to the potential investor. Next time 'Identifying conversational clues'.

Link
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