I was interviewing an experienced investor/venure capitalist recently. I was interested in learning if the initial process intestors undergo with potential investees was anything like what you’d see on Dragon’s Den. Typically the investee is given a short period of time to catch a Dragon’s attention and if anything is missing (data, information, confidence, dress, etc.,) the investee is swatted to one side like a school boy tackling 19 stone Jonah Lomu.
I was expecting him to laugh and say “of course not Paul, that’s TV land, it’s different in the real world.” I was a little taken aback when he told me that it wasn’t far off what really happens.
“It’s like this Paul”, he added, “deciding one who and what it invest in is like watching a movie. If anything I see reminds me of a movie I’ve already seen where the acting was ham, the plot line lacked substance and the director failed to keep me engaged, I switch off or change channel
Clearly, he was speaking metaphorically. Like Malcolm Gladwell highlights in his seminal book Blink – The Power of Thinking without Thinking – we make snap judgements if we feel we’ve seen the movie.
Gladwell’s major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decision made cautiously and deliberately. What we are actually doing is what Gladwell calls ‘thin-slicing’. When we leap to a decision or have a hunch our unconscious is sifting through the situation in front of us looking for a pattern, throwing out the irrelevant information and zeroing in on what really matters
So, when you’re on the phone or in front of a prospect, what movie are you directing and what’s going to make the prospect want to be still there when the credits are rolling?
Recent Comments