The Power of a Recorded Conference Call When Raising Money

[Joe Fairless]

This is going to be a super simple lesson and you might say "duh" and, if you do, then I don't blame you. BUT, it's something I didn't do on my first two multifamily syndications (168 unit and a 250 unit) and I figured if you don't currently do it either then it would help you out when raising money. 

Here's the tip:

- Have a conference call with qualified investors to talk about your deal and...record it! 

I'm in the middle of raising money for a 155 unit apt community in Houston and decided to have a conference call with my biz partner to present to accredited investors. We did one of them on our last deal when we bought a 250 unit apt community but we didn't record it. 

For this one, I recorded it and it's been tremendously helpful with raising money for our deal. 

Two reasons why a recorded call is helpful: 

1. Most accredited investors are, well, busy making money which is why they have the money to invest. So this helps them listen to the presentation on their schedule. 

2. The questions being asked are from a group of people which is beneficial to others who are listening but didn't think of those questions 

Here's how I do it: 

- First, I make sure the attendees have the presentation prior to the call so that they can review and come up with questions 

- Then I use Freeconferencecall.com (I have no affiliation with them) and simply set up the call 

- During the call, I have the attendees email me questions. That way I know who is asking the questions and I can follow-up with them afterwards. 

- We do a Q & A session at the end and answer all the questions that are asked 

As you're raising money I highly recommend this simple approach as I've personally seen a benefit and confident you will too. 

[Brian Burke]

Great advice, @Joe Fairless.  Like you, I used to do conference calls to describe my syndicated offerings, and like you, I didn't record them.  But I learned that lesson a long time ago and more recently I decided to take it one step further. 

Now I do a recorded webinar, so it's similar to the conference call concept but with a visual component so I can share photos of the project, charts, and data during the discussion so that viewers don't have to flip through printed material to keep up with the conversation.

And not only can the recorded webinar be useful to busy investors that want to watch it on their own schedule, but it's useful for recruiting new investors to our interest list even when we have no current open offerings ("here is a webinar describing our last deal so you can get an idea of who we are and what we do...").  After all, we are always in capital raising mode, even when we aren't opening a specific offering. 

There's another tool for the toolbox!