You should approach fundraising the same way a salesperson would approach challenger selling. Your job is not to find a VC that understands the problems your company is facing, but to educate them on a better way to do something that they hadn’t considered before. Founders that are good at fundraising know something compelling about where the future is going and teach that to investors so they can come along the journey with you.
What is “Challenger Selling?” It’s an approach to sales where you take on the role of teacher, educating your customers through the sales process. You generally have a strong worldview, and you go through a process of helping them validate that your worldview is correct based on their lived experience.
Consultative sales might be a lot more about getting a prospective customer to define their problems and elucidate their needs, so you can show them how you help them. You adapt to their language, their definition of problems, their stated needs.
That can be a great way to sell – but it’s a terrible way to raise venture capital.
Most pitch deck templates ignore this completely. When you’re putting together a deck, you’re way better off adapting a great challenger sales deck and learning how to pitch VCs with a narrative approach.