7 Negotiation Strategies to Get Your Investors Hooked As your negotiations progress, you need to simultaneously get off on the right foot, maintain your leverage, win the investor's trust, think with an open mind and arrive at a mutual understanding.
By Olga Fleming •
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As a proud entrepreneur, you're likely to be impassioned with a bold vision that keeps you up at night. You're on top of your company's growth metrics. You've recruited a fantastic team. You have an excellent pitch ready. You've impressed one investor after another in your preliminary conversations. However, it's possible that you, like many other entrepreneurs out there, fumble what comes next — negotiating with your investors. This is entirely understandable; negotiating in general is a nuanced art, and when high stakes and seasoned investors are involved, it's easy to get nervous and make mistakes.
As your negotiations progress, you need to simultaneously get off on the right foot, maintain your leverage, win the investor's trust, think with an open mind and arrive at a mutual understanding. You don't want to lose ground or give up too much control. And you certainly don't want to lose the investment! Complex though it may seem, taking the right approach, led by the right attitude, and backed by the right experience, can help you become a maestro negotiator.
As Victor Kiam, an American entrepreneur, once said, "A negotiator should observe everything. You must be part Sherlock Holmes, and part Sigmund Freud!"
