First and foremost, crowdfund investors expect you to focus on your business, so you don’t have to spend five or ten hours a week on communication. Instead, take one hour per week to scan e-mails that investors have sent you and look for common themes of questions or issues.
Create a spreadsheet so that each week, you can quickly jot down the top five (or even two or three) questions/issues/concerns/successes of that week that you heard about from investors. Then respond to these items in a brief weekly update. (Depending on your business pace, you may determine that you can send this type of e-mail every other week or even once a month; only you can determine the most appropriate frequency.)
Spend no more than 30 minutes writing your e-mail update. After all, your investors are busy people, too, so you want to create something concise. Don’t include filler content, and don’t repeat information you discussed in a prior update. Keep the e-mail short and simple. Use bullet points to make it easier to read (and write). Bullets also give your writing a more action-oriented feel.
Here’s an example of the kind of weekly update you might provide:
Dear Investors:
It has been a week of ups and downs, and as always, I will let you know the bad news first, and then the good news.
One of our top salespeople quit this week. He had to move his family to a different town, and we’ll need to quickly find someone to replace him. If anyone knows a top-notch salesperson in town, please let them know we have an opening and to send their résumé as soon as possible. Thank you for your assistance and support.
Budget cuts have put the deal with the school board on hold. We were hoping to close this deal this quarter, but it won’t happen. This revenue is no longer projected for this year. However, because we knew this was a strong possibility, we didn’t factor it into our budgets (which means that it won’t force us to cut planned expenditures).
We closed 18 more deals last week! That’s a record for a week, and we’re very pleased! Having our top salesperson leave will impact sales in the short term, but it usually takes only about six weeks to get a salesperson up to speed, and I’ll put the sales hat back on and hit the streets until that person is ready to sell.
Per investor suggestions, we completed two new customer success stories that we’ll use in sales efforts starting next week.
In response to several questions: Customers are reordering products about 9 percent faster than we anticipated. If this pace continues, we should end the quarter 2 percent to 3 percent ahead of revenue forecast.
Thanks again for your investment, for your ongoing support, and for all that you do to help our company reach its goals! We appreciate you!
Warm Regards,
J. Jones, ABC Corp.