Is there a difference between client meetings & investor meetings?
I’ve spent last week thinking a lot about client meetings. No surprise, right!? If we don’t know each other, I’m the COO & Co-founder at Connect4, a UK based startup gaining traction as the Client Meeting Platform, where client relationships flourish.
The week brought two key challenges: 1. Design our customer onboarding programme and 2. participate in Female Founder Office Hours Remote Edition V. There were of course more, but these were the BIGGIES! In both cases, my focus has been putting myself in the shoes of the participants.
Can’t Get There from Here
Anyone reading this statement who’s from or has been to Maine, USA, may well recognise that statement. Usually it’s said by a local when a tourist gets lost in the summer months. And, they’ve gotten into a bit of a spot (or that’s what my dad always told me!). I think of it when thinking about customer onboarding and how it’s my role to ensure a seamless experience for those using Connect4.
With customer onboarding that means how will the participants using Connect4 — the account owner, the team and their clients — develop relationships seamlessly using our meeting pods (i.e. place or destination — see what we did there!).
The account owner needs to know how to setup their Connect4 account, how to invite team members and how to help those team members get comfortable and technically setup before using the platform for client meetings. The team members need to know how to setup a pod, invite clients, set agendas, use live meeting tools (agenda functionality, meeting minutes, action items), leverage the post meeting workflow, and how to communicate to their clients why they’re using Connect4. For clients, there are two key points we need to help our customers with: 1. Ensure the client is meeting ready (registered & tech readiness check) and 2. Know the value of why they’re using Connect4 vs other video tools such as Zoom, Google Meet or Teams.
That last one got us talking so we decided to take the Amazon press release approach and wrote the whys for our customers. Here’s what we came to:
It’s a bit rough design-wise, but it’s a start and it’s live for our customers to use. And, we’re getting great feedback on it’s usefulness!
In addition to this, we’ve identified 20 key bite-sized articles on features and workflow for all participants — working back from client to account owner — to ensure those using the platform have the seamless experience we want to deliver. All so they can have a place or destination (pod) where client relationships flourish.
Think Even Bigger
In my first weeks at Connect4, I put in an application to Female Founder Office Hours (“FFOH”)Remote Edition V and we thrilled to be accepted into the programme.
What is FFOH?
I had the pleasure to meet with 4 top-notch investors at leading Venture Capital (“VC”) firms and a remarkable angel investor, she’s often followed by leading VCs in biotech to find “those to watch” for future rounds. During these conversations, I asked for advice on how we address many things including product-lead growth (topic I’ll hopefully write about in the future) and angel vs VC for pre-seed funding. Our 15 minutes together were intensely candid and immensely productive for me to bring back to my team to process, debate and implement.
Here are my key take-ways:
💡 Think Even Bigger
👀 Seek Product-Lead Growth
🪄 Virality is Magic
🏗️ Build to Delight
🦄Female Angels Wanted!
Last one — I really missed using Connect4 for my meetings! Below is a photo of my set up. Usually my notes are on the screen in Connect4 — but they were stickynote madness instead as I conducted meetings on a different platform!
Client Meetings vs Investor Meetings
Before transitioning into software, I spent years in the private equity industry in the US. Part of that time was working in investor relations with institutional investors that had investments into the funds of the firm I worked at. It was amazing to learn — sometimes a bit of baptism by fire (think financial crisis 2008!) — how these investors looked at the portfolio of funds and investments based on the objections of the institution they invest on behalf of.
This puts me in an interesting spot when meeting with investors for something like FFOH. We’re what those in the US call a “baby startup” as we’ve just started, have 25 customers and a ton of potential opportunity to address a large target market. As we’re youthful, I decided the purpose of my meetings with the investors at FFOH was to seek advise.
Just like an client meeting, this is an important pre-meeting action to take.
I spent a couple years working on a PE portfolio monitoring software product called iLEVEL where I was an account manager. When there, I was asked often if there was a different between preparing for meetings with investors compared to clients — in this case my iLEVEL customers. The topics are very different, however the process of the meeting workflow are similar if you go with the “Keep It Simple” philosophy.
Here’s how my process looks:
- Set the purpose (pre)
- Prepare an agenda (pre)
- Take meeting minutes (during)
- Assign action items (during)
- Agree to next meeting (during)
- Send post-meeting follow-up (post)
Very happy to share that this workflow is exactly what we’re addressing at Connect4. This process for me used to be very fragmented. Agendas would be in my meeting invite and email to participants. Meeting minutes and actions scribbled in my note book for later conversion into digital form — CRM, notes app, to do list tools. Post meeting summary sent via email along with any actions assigned out, but lost in the flurry of my inbox.
The past week offered a great opportunity to get back to fundamentals. We’re building a fantastic product that I wish I had over the past 15 years of my career. (BTW — I’m feeling rather old reading this over again!) Excited to get more eyes on and meetings held in Connect4 — back to finishing our customer onboarding process so it’s ready for when you come to try it out!
