Selling the Money Men: You’ll Be Better For It

I remember one highly successful management consultant that I talked to whose advice – no matter how dearly paid for – often boiled down to this: make 12 new business calls a day.

Then he said to me, a little bit on the sly, like he was giving away some of the secret sauce, that it wasn’t the sales calls themselves that were in actuality going to be the savior of businesses he consulted to. In fact he said it was all the structure and process his clients – who happened to be wealth advisors – had to put in place to be able to continuously make the calls, follow-up on them and still run their business at level that was promised during said sales calls.

And I had to admit, it ran pretty deep, from CRM software, to their personnel and new hire decisions, to the structure of the workflow, and the development and honing of key messages, and the ways in which they bundled the services they offered.

“That got me thinking about my own rule of thumb that, when applied, would offer positive implications on a holistic basis. Here it is: learn to sell the money men.”

This seems odd given that financiers are not known for having real operations expertise. In fact they are often chided for not doing much other than deftly re arranging debits and credits on a balance sheet. But here’s what financiers can do, maybe better than any other professional in the world: They can spot the characteristics of a successful business. And they are skilled at asking the kind of diagnostic questions that run very deep.

- What percentage of revenues are recurring?
- What happens to gross and operating margins as sales expand?
- What are the regulatory and or legal threats to your business?
- What are the working capital needs as sales take off?
- What are your assumptions on the collection period for outstanding receivables?

And here’s the twist a la my consulting friend: If you can figure how to speak to the very specific information needs of investors, the benefit accrues to you, not them. For them, getting answers to their questions is the low bar requirement to going to the next step. But for entrepreneurs and business owners being able to address the kinds of concerns investors have requires a level of understanding about your business and the markets it competes in that is essential for success on a very large scale.

Oh, and here’s the other reason you’ve go to perfect your skills at selling to investors. Whether I’m the first investor in, or the next to last investor in, I know that my ultimate payday relies on your sales skills. That is, you’ve got to be able to not only advance the company, but ultimately sell it to another company or the public. And if you can’t do this, or won’t do this, or don’t see the importance of it, then you’re never going to be able to sell me.