Data sourced from Dakota Marketplace, the global LP and GP intelligence platform trusted by thousands of investment professionals. Learn More | Book a Demo
CRM discipline is the single biggest leverage point available to a fundraiser, and it's getting bigger as AI tools get better at surfacing what's already logged.
On Episode 46 of the Emerging Manager Growth Show, Gui Costin and Rob Robertson broke down the exact workflow Dakota runs internally, from meeting to CRM to daily pipeline review.
None of it requires a large team or a big budget. It requires doing the same seven things every single time.
Top 7 CRM and AI Habits for Emerging Managers
1. Log Every Meeting, No Exceptions
Every meeting that gets scheduled needs to go into the CRM. Not the ones that seemed promising, not the ones with a warm lead attached: every single one.
Why it matters for fund managers: A meeting that isn't logged doesn't exist for reporting purposes, and it can't be surfaced later when an AI tool is scanning your pipeline for next steps or overdue follow-ups.
2. Log Meeting Notes for Every Meeting, No Exceptions
The same rule applies to notes. Every meeting needs notes attached, whether it produced a clear next step or went nowhere.
Why it matters for fund managers: Notes are what turn a CRM from a calendar into an institutional memory. Without them, no AI tool has anything meaningful to extract.
3. Dictate Meeting Notes Into Claude Immediately After the Meeting
Dakota's workflow: walk down to the lobby right after the meeting and dictate what happened into Claude. Because Claude is connected to the calendar, it already has the attendee list, and it writes the notes in about two minutes.
Why it matters for fund managers: Notes written immediately, while the conversation is still fresh, are more accurate and more useful than anything reconstructed from memory at the end of the day.
4. Push Notes Into Slack for Team Visibility
Dakota routes every set of meeting notes into a dedicated Slack channel (an investment-meeting-notes channel, in their case) so the whole team sees every interaction as it happens.
Why it matters for fund managers: A shared channel means notes don't live in one person's inbox. Anyone on the team, from the PM to a second salesperson, can see what was discussed without asking.
5. Funnel Notes Into the CRM Through an Integration
From Slack, notes should flow into the CRM automatically rather than requiring a second manual step. Gui pointed to Salesforce as one common destination, but the specific platform matters less than having the integration in place at all.
Why it matters for fund managers: Manual double-entry is where CRM discipline usually breaks down. An integration removes the friction that causes people to skip logging notes on a busy day.
6. Create an Opportunity Record for Every Real Prospect
Once a conversation has moved past a first meeting into something with real potential, it needs its own opportunity record in the CRM, not just a note buried in a contact's history.
Why it matters for fund managers: Opportunity records are what make pipeline reporting possible. Without them, you're relying on memory to know what's actually moving.
7. Run a Daily Opportunity Pipeline Report With Two Custom Fields
Dakota's report runs on two custom fields: current status and next step. It gets reviewed every single day.
Why it matters for fund managers: A daily review is what turns a CRM into an active sales tool instead of a filing cabinet. The two-field structure keeps the review fast: you're not reading full notes every day, just checking where things stand and what needs to happen next.
What This Means for Your Strategy
- Set a team rule this week: every meeting gets logged, every meeting gets notes, no exceptions.
- Start dictating notes into an AI tool immediately after each meeting rather than typing them up later.
- Confirm your CRM integration with Slack (or whatever tool your team uses) is actually connected and pulling notes through automatically.
- Add "current status" and "next step" as custom fields on your opportunity records if they aren't there already.
- Block 10 minutes daily, same time every day, to review the pipeline report.
Dakota Marketplace was built to sit inside exactly this kind of workflow, giving emerging managers the same data infrastructure larger firms use without the larger firm headcount.
Book a demo to see how it fits into your CRM and outreach process.
