The Importance of Researching Potential Prospects

By Danielle Silva, VP of Business Development, LSN

Many life science fundraisers believe that the first step in phone canvassing is simply picking up the phone. Although the “smile and dial” method may sometimes work, it is much more effective to adopt a more strategic approach to phone canvassing and take a minute to understand your target before reaching out. Before speaking with an investor, you need to get a better understanding of the type of investor you are speaking with and get some further background on their firm. Taking a look at their past life science portfolio companies or past investments is also important to do if this information is readily available on their website or through press releases. You also need to understand who you should speak to, and realize that this person’s role or job title may not be the same for every kind of investor.

A good approach to getting more information is by again simply looking at the company’s website. Going through press releases, or the news portion of the company’s site can also be helpful, as well as using websites such as LinkedIn to get a better understanding of the right person to reach out to, as well as understand the structure of the firm you are contacting. Sometimes, finding the correct contact at the firm can be as easy as simply asking an administrative assistant who the person in charge of deal sourcing is, or who handles life science investments.

However, there is one pitfall to asking the secretary who the correct contact is. Often times this will be a red flag to the administrative assistant because it tells them you are not familiar with their firm. If they believe that you are cold calling, they are more likely to send you straight to the person’s voicemail, or give you a general company mailbox to send an email to instead of putting you directly in contact with the person. Even though you may be able to call back and the administrative assistant may not remember that you called previously asking to point you to the right person, this approach can often times be a way in which fundraisers get stonewalled. This is why a life science fundraiser needs to do as much research as possible before picking up the phone and dialing.

Before you start calling, you should also know the individual’s title as well as what their role is in the due diligence process for life science investments. In some cases, you can easily figure out the person’s role from their title – but sometimes it is much less obvious – especially in the case of family offices. You should always check their website to see if there is a description of this person’s role. If there is none, see if they describe the position on LinkedIn; even checking the groups the person is a member in on LinkedIn can be useful.

After doing some research on the person you are trying to get in contact with, the next step is determining a time to reach out to this person. Catching the person at the right time of the day is key. Although this may seem obvious, you should first check what time zone they are in, or simply do a search on Google with “time in” then the name of the investor’s city preceding the aforementioned phrase. If you’re on the East Coast, you will have to try to call European investors early in the morning, unless calling the UK, who you may still be able to reach around 12 pm. If you’re on the East Coast, trying to call the West Coast then it’s easiest to reach out to these investors during the afternoon. If you’re on the East Coast trying to reach investors in Asia, then you may have to dedicate your evening to trying to reach these investors. If you’re based on the West Coast however, you should dedicate the end of your workday to reaching these investors.

Above all else, being successful at phone canvassing necessitates that the fundraiser stay focused on the task at hand and committed to sticking to all of the aforementioned processes necessary to prepare for the call. For this reason, all other tasks need to be put at bay when you are engaging in a phone canvassing campaign. When you stay focused and start to make call after call, your number of calls will start to increase to 20, 30, and maybe even 50 dials. The mantra of phone canvassing is that it is a numbers game; to be successful, getting to this level of focus is key.