Musings of an entrepreneur

In one of my recent introductory calls with a unicorn for Valuation work, my client was amazed by the brands BetaFin Partners has worked for in the last 15 months

God has been kind !!

For the entrepreneurial community at large, here are my key thoughts on why we could achieve what we could

Client acqusition doesnt come easy - because its about Comptence and Trust

a) Competence

In my case, the chosen services lines, say Valuation, Financial Modeling or Content in form of Annual Reports / PPTs are activities which I have not chosen because they are the most lucrative ones but because I have done this day-in-day-in for 15 years - its a sort of obsession to excel at these. So, even though they are fiercely competitive war spaces, I know that if someone gives work, i will be able to figure out how my team can do it. Even if the team goofs up, I will be able to rescue it.

There was this presentation where the CFO of a manufacturing behemoth found our initial draft uninspiring. After few re-takes, they received fabulous response from the market. Could do this because writing comes naturally - have been mad about English since childhood.

If I have taken up design work and not involved experts or the chosen expert wasnt good, I have failed miserably because there are no rescue capabilities - because I dont have mastery over it. I used to get C+ in Drawing. Its imperative that my team members be amazing at Designing

It is very important to position yourself ONLY for those service lines which you have mastery over.

b) Trust

This is so critical . The work I got was given by people who trusted me for Service Delivery. Also helped that cajobportal.com has been running successfully since a decade and done a Billable CTC of 100 cr+, all thanks to Sonia Singal . So people know you are not a rookie.

Academic and professional credentials also help a lot. Tags like CA Rankholder, PGPX from IIM Ahmedabad, Articleship from Deloitte, 10 years at Aditya Birla are important initial hooks. People are obsessed by brands because it makes the trust decision easier.

Do first degree connects give you work. Yes, they do. Lets not paint a negative picture here. If you have established emotional bonding with someone, they will help. And there are nice people - people who will go out of their way and help you. I can specifically tag such people with thanks ......S.....G....N.....V.....R... ..S ...N ... but maybe for some other day

A lot of them whom you expect work from wont give you because they have developed apathy . Leave them in their state.

Does LinkedIn get you work. Answer is "It depends". Whether you have positioned yourself as a Subject Matter Expert or not, whether you have got traffic. But one important point to note is that people who are key decision makers in an organisation may not necessarily be active on LinkedIn or even find it useless.

In one of my pitches to this FMCG giant, I told the Finance Head that 110k people follow me on YouTube and LinkedIn. He perceived it rather negatively, as if I was having a lot of free time :)

But in general, being active and posting logical content builds credibility but may not give work

Word of Mouth is a zero cost marketing tool. Only cost involved is going the extra mile to impress existing clients. If you have done 'Purchase Price Allocation' for one client well, he/she often refers you to another. Even the auditor does

Influence the influencers. A lot of work will be given by professionals whom the client trusts but who are not practising in your service areas. say Lawyers . They can be good sources of referrals

Sometimes empanellments help - one client's PSU banker doubted if I was good - I said I was empanelled at this PSU Bank for Valuation. No further questions

Its a patient process. Client acqusition doesnt come easy.

But whenever I feel like taking a step back and running away, I remind myself why I had started this in the first place, the people who prompted me to jump in the water and I start selling again :)