Suggestions on how to track Series A investment round

[Mlaps]

I work for a startup and am looking to use Hubspot to help with reaching out to potential investors for our Series A round.  The process will look something like this.

1. Write to 100 investors a cold intro
2. Expect that 70 of them will not respond, or respond in the negative
3. For the remaining 30, follow-up by sending more info and/or scheduling an intro call
4. Continue moving through the funnel and winnowing down the number of interested parties until we hopefully get to a few that make an investment

I'd like to be able to easily track that process and have a single place I can go to that will show me info on which investors we've reached out to, which investors are still active, and at what stage in the process they are, etc...  I'd originally thought that creating a "deal" would make the most sense, but since I can only have one company associated with a deal, that doesn't seem like a good fit. Would be kind of crazy to create individual deals for every investor, when most of them won't even get through the first stage.  Even if I was to do that, it wouldn't get me the dashboard type of view where I could quickly see who was active and where we were at with them without having to drill in, which defeats the purpose and makes managing in something like Excel seem like a better bet.

Am I missing other options?  It seems like for a CRM aimed at startups, this has to be a pretty standard use case, right?

[accidentaljosh]

Thanks for the response here. I am planning on buying a Sales Pro subscription to make my dashboard look as pretty as this one.
I want to start my own cleaning business soon, and I am looking for all the ways I can use to generate more leads and make sure most of those leads go through the sales funnel. I know marketing is important in the modern economy because there are too many companies, and I need to convince people to use mine.
I have already done the analysis recommended on https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/resources/financial-modeling/sensitivity-analysis, and it seems it’s a good time to start a business like this, and I will have all the chance to make it successful.

[DianaGomez]

Hi @accidentaljosh hope you are doing well.

That's a fantastic idea 🙂

Best, 

Diana

[ASpringer]

I'm not sure if you have an account that allows you to create "Custom Objects". But I have been thinking about making a Custom Object called "Investments" and being able to attach contacts and companies to an "Investment" and be able to create the required properties related to it. Including tracking the status of investor conversations.

[r_whittington]

Hi @Mlaps ,

I'd suggest uploading your list such that there's a custom column for "Prospective Investor" and set them all to "Yes". This is for list segmentation purposes in the future.

If you're a Sales Pro subscriber, I'd suggest writing an email Sequence so that the one-to-one emails are automated. Your sequence might look something like this:

- Email 1 = Introduction, ask for meeting using meeting link

- Task to call contact and leave voice mail

- Email 2 = Additional information on opportunity, or link to investor page on your website

- Email 3 = "should I stay or should I go?" email

- Task to check contact to see if emails were opened/received, then perhaps call and leave a final voice mail.

Using this approach, you can measure opens, clicks, and responses in Sequence reporting inside the CRM.

I hope that's helpful.

Rick Whittington

Whittington Consulting

[Mlaps]

Thanks Rick, really appreciate the response. I'm not a Sales Pro subsciber yet, but I'd be willing to upgrade if that gives the tools I need.

I like the idea of sequences, but I don't fully understand the kind of reporting that I can get out of that.  Tracking opens is useful, but not my primary concern.  Automated emails are probably something I don't want, the numbers are low enough that I can do it manually, and because of the variety of investors background knowledge, I'm planning on customizing the type of information I send pretty heavily.  

From past experience trying to manage deal flow like this, where there is lots of back and forth, but only 1  winner, is keeping track of where we are with each prospect.  This is particularly true for the people who aren't doing the day to day interactions, but want to be able to get a summary view of where things stand.

Something where I can see that:

a16z: Replied to first email and asked for more info

Lightspeed: Scheduled intro call with management on the 16th

Sofinnova: Asked for NDA

Third Rock: Sent term sheet

All in a single place without having to look at 100 different investors that I've sent the intro mail too, but where the conversation isn't active.  Is anything like this possible without having to do it all manually?  I'm thinking not, based on my research so far, but would love it if I'm wrong.

[r_whittington · Accepted solution]

@Mlaps I'd say that HubSpot can get you the dashboard you're looking for, but not without automation on the sales and marketing side. 

You can also achieve this using Deals and Deal Stages, where you can see which Deals are in which stages in table format (like Trello).

Sequences in Sales Pro will give you the ability to send the automated stream of messages until you get a response, and give you metrics around the email sends. I've included an example below from a sequence we use from time to time:

Once someone replies, you create a Deal and specify Deal Stage, and you can see where everyone is in the process.

I hope that helps!

[Mlaps]

Thanks Rick, that is very helpful.  I'll need to look into it a little bit more, but that seems like it might get me what I need.  Can the status field be customized with a drop down list?  So that I would be able to see the status for every company on this screen?  Because I'm still not clear how it works if I have to create a separate deal for everyone who replies, unless there's some kind of parent deal view that shows me the status of all my deals?

[r_whittington]

@Mlaps I'm happy to walk you through a sample if you have 15 minutes next week.  That way you can see a real setup and the kinds of information you can see at once. Here's my calendar if you want to set up a time to talk next week.

Rick

[Mlaps]

Thanks Rick.  Just scheduled a time for next week.  Look forward to speaking.

[Mlaps]

Thought I'd bump this to see if there are any ideas?  From the playing around that I've done so far, I'm not able to figure out any good way to get this to work.  Should I look for a different product?