A Lesson on Selling Investors (or Anyone Else)
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a guy in another state asking me to talk to him about his business idea because I am an angel investor and have written about the topic.
I get a lot of those emails. Some of them are pretty good, really selling me on the business that the person has developed. If the email hooks me, I end up talking to the entrepreneur. If it doesn’t hook me, then I don’t.
I’ve gotten enough of these emails that I’ve begun to categorize them based on the author’s approach. The “good” emails talk about why I would gain from talking to the entrepreneur. The “bad” ones talk about why talking to the entrepreneur would benefit the entrepreneur.
I’m a professor and believe in educating people. So I usually respond to the “bad” emails with something pushing the writer to convince me to talk to them.
In this particular case, I wrote, “My screen on these requests is basically whether I can see something useful for me from the conversation. Your business isn’t in Ohio so I can’t invest in it. And nothing in your email suggests that the conversation will help me. So why should I take the time to do it?”
Perhaps I was too subtle here in my message because the author didn’t write me a new email “selling” me on why the conversation would be good for me. Instead, he wrote an email to a bunch of people asking if they knew that I write these types of e-mails, and asking if that is consistent with their values or the values of my university. And he added that my message “is going viral.”
This brings me to the purpose of my post. Obviously, I’m not writing this because I’m concerned that my email went public. If I were, then I wouldn’t reprint it here where even more people will read it (hopefully). And I’m not writing this post because I want to get back at the person who contacted me. I’ve paraphrased his message and he will remain anonymous.
I’m writing this post because I think there’s a lesson here (and the professor in me can’t let a teaching moment pass unused). If you are contacting a stranger for money and the stranger asks you to tell them why they should bother to talk to you, you should convince them of why the conversation is good for them. If you don’t, and they bluntly tell you to try again, you should.
If this entrepreneur had tried to persuade me, I might have invested in his company or helped him in some other way. At worst, I would have forgotten his name. But now, I actually remember him. And on the remote chance someone asks me about him, I won’t be favorably disposed.
To me the teaching lesson is this: Selling is a hard business. The key to it is always showing the value to the customer of what you have to offer.
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About the Author: Scott Shane is A. Malachi Mixon III, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of nine books, including Fool’s Gold: The Truth Behind Angel Investing in America ; Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By; Finding Fertile Ground: Identifying Extraordinary Opportunities for New Ventures; Technology Strategy for Managers and Entrepreneurs; and From Ice Cream to the Internet: Using Franchising to Drive the Growth and Profits of Your Company.
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