Do you treat fundraising as a one-off? Then you probably get disheartened by every rejection email from an investor.
Today, I want to help you shift your perspective and embrace fundraising as a process, instead of a one-off.
Today, I want to speak about how to change your perception when you receive that rejection message.
One of the strongest ways to change your own perception is to plan fundraising as a process.
If you decide you want to fundraise, please first create an Excel or a Google sheet.
In this sheet, put in the names of those hundred or so investors that you want to reach out to, and against each, put in a status column.
And in that, put in some current status.
It could be “Sent the initial email”,
or “1st call set up”,
or “2nd meeting set up”,
or “IC meeting set up”,
or “Term sheet received”,
or “Declined by investor”.
If they have declined, then add notes for this “decline reason”.
Always ask investors for a decline reason.
But build that process.
Run it as a process.
I’ll tell you why you run it as a process:
Let’s say you pitched to an investor and they sent you a rejection email.
As humans, we want to focus on that one rejection email, we keep it open on our screen the entire day.
Your entire attention is on that single message. You’re reading it twice, thrice, maybe ten times!
Am I right?
Instead, the first thing to do is to update your sheet.
Now, when you look at that investors rejection as a single row in this large sheet, maybe along side 99 other “non-rejections”.
This “rejection” suddenly seems like a small part of a big process.
Keep updating that sheet with all the responses.
Sure, over time the screen may show more rejections.
But we all know how the sales process works, right?
2% conversion.
However, you are now viewing fundraising as a process and at a macro level.
This changes your perception.
And this is incredibly important.
At the individual email level it’s just a stressful reminder that you got rejected.
However, at the macro level, you can use the feedback to make improvements.
After all, don’t you build such a dashboard for your CRM?
Where you have “Leads”, “Qualified Leads”, or “Sales closed”?
Don’t you build a dashboard for interview candidates?
Where you have people you have “Rejected”, “Invited for 1st round”, or “Invited for technical round”?
I don’t even need to teach you about such dashboards!
You are already doing it.
All that I’m asking is:
That you also create a process for your fundraising.