How to Gain Investor Confidence Before an IPO

Explore 4 surefire ways to increase investor confidence and feel ready for your exciting new endeavor as a public company.

Preparing for an IPO is a whirlwind time for CEOs and their growing companies. Knowing how to gain investor confidence while readying your company for its new position on the market is critical to your IPO success. Fortunately, the things that attract investors most are also the things that make for a well-led company with high growth potential.

In other words: when you invest your time, money, and effort into making your company an attractive investment prospect, you're also making it stronger from the inside out.

Let's explore 4 surefire ways to increase investor confidence and feel ready for your exciting new endeavor as a public company.

Quick Takeaways

• Storytelling is the most effective way to make important company information compelling and cohesive for investors.
• Predictable revenue (driven by RevOps) increases investor confidence in your long-term potential for success.
• Investors spend more time looking at financial information than any other information in company pitch decks.
• Investors want to see growth potential demonstrated for both the short and long term.
• Your leadership team is an important indicator of how your company will handle public visibility post-IPO.

Know your company's story

Investors will expect you to articulate everything about your company in a way that demonstrates why it's a good investment. Using storytelling as your method for sharing this information makes it more compelling.

This goes deeper than just an elevator pitch. Your company's story - as investors want to hear it, that is - will include the following and more:

• Purpose and value proposition
• History and leadership
• Financial performance (past and present)
• Revenue and growth forecasts
• Press coverage
• Competitive landscape and differentiating traits
• Performance against all important KPIs

For every part of your story, investors will want to see data and other supporting information that backs it up. It's important to create a data-driven strategy that integrates this type of insight into every part of your organization. Once you do, you can create a cohesive story that

both draws investors to your company and makes them confident in your future success.

Make your revenue predictable

Potential investors will look more at your company's revenue and growth potential than any other factor. Research has found that investors spend an average of 23 secondson financial slides in company pitch decks, more than any other slides included in presentations.

Image Source

If you're wondering how to gain investor confidence from a financial perspective, building revenue operations (RevOps) at your company is the way to do it.

RevOps is a holistic, 360-degree approach to earning and growing revenue. In summary, it aligns your marketing, sales, finance, and customer success teams to optimize your revenue strategy. RevOps is most effectively implemented when companies have a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)at the helm, leading revenue efforts with growth as the top priority.

Most importantly for your IPO, RevOps creates predictable revenue streams that will increase investor confidence in your company's long-term success. With transparent, agile revenue processes in place, optimized systems and teams, and accurate forecasting, you (and investors) can trust in your company's ability to weather unpredictable markets and succeed in the long term.

Demonstrate growth potential

Investor confidence needs to extend beyond your company's current state. As you prepare for your IPO, think about how your company story demonstrates your growth potential for the next 5-10 years (and beyond). Investors are more likely to want to invest in a company that is prepared for changing markets and potential challenges and shows preparedness to capitalize on new opportunities down the road.

Showing growth potential includes the ability to talk about:

• Revenue projections
• Plans for expansion into new markets and verticals
• Infrastructure to scale in the future
• Knowledge of consumer behavior trends that will drive demand
• Competitive analysis and plan for handling new market entrants

Growth potential should always be demonstrated in realistic and optimistic terms. Don't overpromise, but focus on opportunities, not roadblocks. As always, be prepared with data and other research to support your story.

Creating visual content (like charts and graphs) to show your forecasted growth is an effective way to make it more compelling and quickly digestible for investors who are no doubt looking at many pitch decks.

Here's a template example:

Image Source

Even better news: you won't have to reinvent the wheel. Do a quick Google search and you'll find tons of great resources and pitch deck templates (many of them free) to help you create visual and compelling slides that show your growth potential.

Build a strong leadership team

One of the biggest changes companies experience during the IPO process is the public visibility that comes with being a public company. Once you go public, everything about your company - including your leadership team - becomes open to public commentary (and often scrutiny).

Investors look for companies with solid, capable leadership teams in place. Both your board and executive team should have a clearly defined structure and outlined responsibilities to promote high performance and accountability.

Public companies are also required to maintain transparent and consistent governance policies and procedures. Once you have your leadership team in place, increase investor confidence by outlining your governance plan before you take your company public.

Gain Investor Confidence (and Increase Your Own!) with Intelligent Revenue

The best way to increase investor confidence in your company is to be confident in it yourself.

Xactly's Intelligent Revenue Platform can support your revenue-impacting teams with precise plans, better incentives, and data-informed insights to give them confidence in their pipeline.

As a result, you can confidently report on company performance to show investors and other important audiences your true growth potential.

Learn moreabout how we can help you transform your revenue strategy.

• Sales Performance Management

Author

,