Allocators are taking meetings right now. They want ideas. The salespeople following a real process are the ones capturing the demand.
Here's what we’re seeing. Munis closing left, right, and center. Equity strategies advancing. On-sites booked for funds that don't launch for almost a year. Venture picking up momentum across the board.
None of it accidental, and all of it traces back to 4 core principles of The Dakota Way that anyone raising capital can apply.
Below are 10 lessons you can take into your next meeting tomorrow morning.
10 Investment Sales Lessons
1. The Process Works — and the Proof Is in the Pipeline
We'll be the first to admit it: even our own team drifted from the process late last year. The reset was clear and disciplined — come back to The Dakota Way, follow it without exception, and watch the activity, pipeline, and momentum follow.
The result has been closes across the board, on-sites booked, and growing interest in strategies that were quiet just a few months ago. Allocators are taking meetings. They want interesting ideas. The salespeople following the process are the ones capturing that demand. Here's how to scale fundraising on a budget.
2. You Are Never Not in the Market
One of the most important mindset shifts we live by is this: do not stop fundraising between funds. We just had a final close — and the next fund is 11 months away. Last week alone, we did 3 on-sites and PM calls for that next fund's activity.
Sales cycles are long. Underwriting takes time. If you wait until the next fund launches to start the conversation, you will arrive at the first close with an anemic pipeline and have to rebuild from scratch. Plant seeds now, build relationships now, and be ready to be in the first close when the next vehicle comes to market.
3. Cold Outreach Doesn't End — It Becomes a Game
Fifteen years in, we're still doing cold outreach every single day. Going to Dallas? We want to find the people we've never met before.
A common excuse is that as you get more senior, the cold outreach should taper off. Our take: no, you have to keep doing it, and you have to make it a game. The professionals who sustain success are the ones who reframe outreach as a routine — not a chore — and never give themselves permission to coast.
4. Set Expectations With Your Boss — and Report Back Every Week
Core principle number 1 is setting expectations with your boss, and the only way to honor that is through a structured reporting cadence. We run a Monday 8:30 AM all-company check-in, an 11:30 AM dedicated investment sales update, and individual updates with each partner manager.
This isn't busywork.
It is the flywheel that powers everything else. If you can run past activity and pipeline reports at the click of a button, your weekly update writes itself — and your boss knows exactly where every opportunity stands. The structure starts with a written sales plan you can actually report against.
5. Product Structure Drives Channel Coverage
Core principle number 2 is knowing who to call on, and the cleanest framework for defining your TAM comes down to one idea: product structure drives channel coverage.
If you're raising for a long-only equity strategy — mutual fund, separate account, active ETF — your largest buyers are the RIA, multifamily office, and bank broker-dealer channels. If you're on the alternative side with a longer lockup, QP-only LP vehicle, your TAM is largely institutional plus the larger institutional-like RIAs. Define the product structure, define the channel, and stop guessing about where to spend your time.
Need help defining your TAM by channel? Dakota Marketplace gives you allocator data segmented exactly this way. Book a demo.
6. Use AI to Sharpen Your Target List
Dakota Marketplace now includes a cloud app attached to Dakota's data, where you can drop in your investment strategy and ask Claude to identify your most likely investors. Because the underlying data is so detailed on investment preferences, the output picks up nooks and crannies that traditional reports miss.
You don't even have to run a report. Drop in a description of your strategy — easily Googleable in most cases — and ask the question: who are my best fit investors? The output is a sharper, faster starting point for your TAM than any spreadsheet workflow ever offered.
7. City Schedule Five Cities at a Time
Once you have your TAM, the execution is city scheduling. Pick 5 cities — Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, Atlanta is a good starting set — and work them on a rolling basis. Within each city, build around 5 meeting times: 9, 11, 1, 3, and 4:30. That gives you 25 meeting slots per city to fill.
Once you book out a city, add the next one.
The discipline of constantly building out city lists creates a forcing function: every time you sit down at your desk, you know exactly what to do. The early friction — no one's getting back to me, the rejection feels personal — fades once you're in the flow. And if you can only make one meeting work, flip the others to calls. One meeting is one more than you would have had otherwise.
For the full breakdown of why this approach beats one-off travel, see Why City Scheduling Works.
8. You Are Selling a Meeting — Make It Easy to Buy
The cold email format is non-negotiable. Subject line: meeting request, with the strategy and date built in (e.g., real estate credit meeting request, April 15th). Body: 1 to 2 sentences on who you are and why they should care. Call to action: I will be in town on April 15th, can you meet at 11:00 AM?
That last detail matters. "I'll be in town the week of the 7th, can you meet?" is not a clear call to action. A specific date and time is. The perfect response — yes, please send a calendar invite — is only possible when you've made it that easy.
There's also a hidden benefit. Even when allocators don't reply, well-written cold emails act as advertisements. They get filed in a folder. The next time the allocator is sourcing an idea in your category, your name is already there.
9. The Meeting Has 4 Sections — and the Follow-Up Happens Inside the Meeting
Core principle number 3 is being a master messenger. The meeting breaks into 4 sections: a tight 1–2 minute overview that de-risks who you are (track record, AUM, team tenure, strategy), then one critical question — can you walk me through your investment decision-making process? — followed by your investment philosophy, process, risk controls, and team.
The biggest mistake fundraisers make is saving the follow-up question for the email after the meeting. Don't. The follow-up happens in the meeting. Before you leave, ask:
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Do you believe our strategy would be a fit in your asset allocation mix?
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Do you anticipate doing a search in the next 12 months? (Or for private funds: Can you make our final close?)
If the answer is no, mailing list. If the answer is yes, establish next steps before you walk out of the conference room. Don't wait until you're back at your desk competing with the 200 other emails in their inbox.
10. The CRM Is Where You Get 10x Leverage
Core principle number 4 — having a killer follow-up system — comes down to using a CRM. We use Salesforce. The non-negotiables:
- Get every meeting you've scheduled into the CRM. This lets you run past activity reports and surface follow-up triggers.
- Dictate your call notes in the lobby after the meeting. Don't wait for Starbucks. Don't wait for home. The intent is captured perfectly even if the grammar isn't, and an LLM can clean it up later.
- Create opportunities with stages, current status, and next steps. Stages mirror the buying process: active search, due diligence, finals presentation. Custom text fields for current status and next steps are what make the pipeline real.
The flywheel is this: meetings → notes → opportunities → pipeline reports → Monday update → next week's plan. Run those reports at the click of a button and you have a complete, defensible picture of your business — every single week.
The Bigger Picture: 16 Things You Can Control
The 4 core principles of The Dakota Way, with 3 sub-principles each, add up to 16 things that are entirely within your control:
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Set expectations
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Know who to call on
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Know what to say
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Have a killer follow-up system
You can't control the weather. You can't control the stock market. You can't control allocator decision-making.
But you can control your sales plan, your TAM, your city schedule, your meeting structure, your closing questions, and your CRM hygiene.
We've built two businesses on these principles… and they work!
Ready to put The Dakota Way into practice? Book a demo of Dakota Marketplace and join the thousands of fundraisers using it every day.
