Ask HN: How should one respond if a sales call turns into an investment call? - kumartanmay
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kumartanmay
Who doesn't like a strategic investment from a customer? I was pitching to a
client and he offered that his company would like to explore investing rather.
Now he wanted to know the details of the company and I told him some figures
of the company. Have I jeopardised my chances of even turning him into a
customer?

~~~
ddingus
Would have been nice to qualify the interest more before sharing the company
details. Did you do that?

(If you did not) Now you operate at a very significant disadvantage. They have
a lot more information about you than you probably do about them. Generally,
but not always, control over where this all goes is more in their hand than
yours.

Had that discussion been better qualified, you probably would know more about
them becoming a customer, for one, and would have gotten value in return for
value given. And control would be better managed by you.

Why do they want to invest? How long have they been looking for an opportunity
like your firm?

Why?

And with that, for what returns and how do those align with both your business
and theirs?

~~~
kumartanmay
Oh yes, I did qualify him for investments and thankfully, I did get answers to
all the questions above. I was directly talking to the founder and had
researched about his story before getting on the call. He sold his previous
venture and is also a partner at a fund in US. I also understood his interest
in our company and what are other similar companies he has considered? We also
talked about the competition in US and global, both. It flowed like a
conversation and I am glad that he was upfront about investing rather than
using tricks to fetch information.

I was worried because I just went with the flow and had afterthoughts if I
should ever change the context of a call! I am very wary of investors who do
not have any entrepreneurial experience. Most of these investors, at least in
India, have a very cosmetic entrepreneurial experience?

~~~
ddingus
Seems to me you could wrap all this up into a summary call.

Next steps along the investment track.

Does a sale make sense given investment potential and need / timeline
previously identified, if it was identified?

(Was it?)

In the spirit of working more closely, are they aware of any prospects?
Perhaps jointly approaching them, or some other arrangement makes sense?

Continuing to grow makes all the sense in the world, right? Taking it that way
is hard to find fault with.

You are likely to get the info and maybe position in the conversation you
need. At the least, next steps will become more clear.

