Maintaining high-quality relationships with your company investors is essential for your firm’s success. Being transparent, open, and authoritative is essential for attracting more funds.
But what, precisely, do you need to do to improve these relationships? Here we take a look at specific strategies you can use.
Communicate Clearly
Top of the list of priorities is to communicate clearly to all stakeholders and make clear what you expect. Clear communication helps to build trust and encourages further investments.
Make sure you communicate the good and bad news. Tell investors when things go wrong and why you think the company is getting off track. Being open about the state of the firm provides them with more feedback they can use to make better decisions and guide the company’s development.
If you have a complex set of relationships to manage, private equity CRM tools like Altvia are now available. These tools let you coordinate how you talk to everyone involved in your operation, including those putting in the money.
Make Face-To-Face Meetings Routine
You also want to make face-to-face meetings routine. Actually sitting down and talking to investors helps communicate strategies, future plans, and more details about the company's performance.
Investors also feel happy that you are taking the time to do it. It inspires confidence in your activities and gives them the impression you are running a solid business operation that considers all parties. It also gives you the opportunity to show them what you are doing on the ground in more detail, again helping to improve transparency.
Adopt Active Listening Strategies
It’s also a good idea to adopt active listening strategies. Being able to take on investors’ concerns, ideas, and perspectives, gives them confidence you are listening to what they are saying and willing to take action. Avoid the temptation to sit there passively while receiving a lecture. Listen to their ideas and suggest ways to implement them in the firm to make it more successful. See the investors as the owners and you personally as someone who is carrying out their instructions.
Manage Expectations
While doing this, you also want to manage expectations. Investors can often believe the impossible is possible when, in reality, it’s not.
When you set realistic expectations, it helps to put everyone at ease, including staff members. You want to be aggressive and generate returns, but you don’t want to get into a situation where your promises are clearly unrealistic.
The best way to approach this problem is to advertise your growth strategy and the plans you are putting in place to generate revenue rapidly. Keep your performance forecasts conservative while emphasizing these parts of your business.
Offer Value Beyond Returns
Finally, you can try offering investors value beyond returns. For example, you could provide them with educational materials or special insights that help them make better long-term decisions or shift their investment strategy.
When you can provide this type of guidance and value, investors are more likely to trust your business and have faith in your operations.
