You’ve done your homework, found the right investors, reached out to them and secured their commitment. That’s a critical near-term win. But your work has—in many ways—just begun.
To ensure your firm’s long-term success, you’ve got to keep investors coming back for more. If they don’t have a positive experience with you, this may be their one and only interaction with you.
5 Steps for Increasing Investor Retention
Take the five actions below, and you’ll find that your investor retention increases significantly.
- Take small actions frequently to reinforce trust. Consistency is key. By touching base with investors regularly (but briefly), being transparent, and exceeding their expectations in every way you can, you let them know you’re attentive and responsive. You also make them happy with their decision to work with you.
- Anticipate investor needs. What vital information can you provide to them before they ask for it? Or, at a minimum, what data can you have queued up and ready to send within minutes of a request? For example, they may need proof of track record and thesis execution documents, market reports, industry perspectives, etc.
- Don’t take the cyclical nature of relationships for granted. Investors like working with people and firms they’ve worked with successfully in the past. However, you shouldn’t assume that your investors will return to you. After all, many other firms will try to entice them to invest with them. A better approach is to assume an investor won’t come back and that you have to earn their interest continually.
- Reduce operational friction when closing a fund. The faster you can answer questions and the better you can adhere to compliance standards, the happier investors will be. If interacting with you is challenging, an investor will look for other less-stressful opportunities.
- Use technology built for supporting firms and investors. You can “get by” using systems and processes that you’ve modified for your purposes. But to thrive, you’ve got to implement solutions designed to make it easier for you and your investors to share information securely and seamlessly.
Be Proactive in Managing Investor Relationships
When it comes to investor retention, perhaps the worst experience is when you know you should make changes to your operations, but as you drag your feet, you lose a crucial investor—or multiple investors!
It’s easier than ever to implement purpose-built solutions. But it still takes time to find the right one, make the purchase, and get up and running with the system. Even if you aren’t in a position to adopt a new system today, you can do much of the legwork now so that you’re ready to take action when the time is right.
Don’t wait until the loss of investors forces your hand. Do your research, schedule some demos, and find the best solution to meet your needs and your investors’ expectations. With the results of your evaluations in hand, you can implement a system and get your team up and running with it as time permits.
Contact Altvia today to request a demo.
