Best Practices - Affinity for Investment Banking

Create, manage, and close deals faster and more easily with Affinity's dedicated relationship intelligence platform. In this article, we'll go over best practices and features you can leverage to get you/your team up and running in no time.

Overview

1. Getting started with lists
2. Importing data into these lists
3. Getting started with reporting/analytics

Getting started with lists

Upon sign in, you'll notice that Affinity has provided you with a few lists to begin with. Follow the suggestions below to understand how these lists work together to optimize your workflow.

These first three lists are meant to be centralized sources of truth for you and your team members:

1. Relationships: Sources of Capital is an organization list that will help you/your team track key relationships with capital providers (i.e. Private Equity firms) in one place.
   
   
   1. Keep these relationships warm by setting up reminder triggers to stay in touch if a certain amount of time passes since your last interaction.
   2. Make sure to fill out this list first so that whenever you create a new opportunity list for a new project (see Project Execution list templates below), you can easily bulk-create opportunities from the organizations in this list that fit the criteria for the new project.
      1. Example: If your client Company ABC is looking to be acquired, then you can create a new opportunity list using the list template Project Execution: Sell-Side Example, name the list to something like Company ABC Sells, then go back to the Relationships: Sources of Capital list and bulk-create opportunities from there in order to populate the Company ABC Sells list with relevant buyers for Company ABC.
         
         
2. Pipeline: Prospects is a separate organization list that will help you/your team track the progress of your prospects through the pipeline.
   
   
   1. Keep these relationships warm by setting up reminder triggers to stay in touch if a certain amount of time passes since your last interaction.
   2. Send out personalized bulk emails to your prospects with the ability to attach files and hyperlinks as needed.
   3. Make sure to also turn on email tracking to gauge the effectiveness of your emails.
   4. Set up an opportunity trigger so that once a prospect becomes a client, you make sure to track this client as an opportunity within the Pipeline: Projects list (see below).
      
      
3. Pipeline: Projects is an opportunity list that will help you track the overall progression of all client projects in one place.
   
   
   1. This opportunity list should contain high-level information about each project, including the team working on the project and expected fees.
   2. Note: Once you create an opportunity here for a specific project, make sure to create a separate opportunity list for that project (choose one of the Project Execution list templates in the next paragraph below). Since executing a project involves reaching out to many companies on behalf of a client, this separate opportunity list will help you track all the different parties interested in this particular project.

Unlike the three lists above, these next three should be viewed more as list templates to use multiple times. Therefore, it would be expected for you/your team to have many project execution lists - one list for each project (opportunity) in the Pipeline: Projects list.

Whenever you start a new project, choose one of the three Project Execution list templates below based on the nature of the project:

1. Project Execution: Buy-Side Example - This opportunity list will help you track interest and coordinate buy-side outreach efforts for your client project. Each row (opportunity) in this list would represent a potential seller looking to get acquired by your client.
   
   List Naming Tip: If Company ABC approaches your team looking to acquire a company, then you can name the list whatever Project Name has been assigned or by something more general, like Company ABC Buys.
   Opportunity Naming Tip: Each row in this list represents a unique, potential opportunity to partner your client with a particular seller. Therefore, we recommend naming the opportunities in the following format: [Project Name] - [Seller Name].
   
   
2. Project Execution: Sell-Side Example - This opportunity list will help you track interest and coordinate sell-side outreach efforts for your client project. Each row (opportunity) in this list would represent a potential buyer looking to acquire your client.
   
   List Naming Tip: If Company XYZ approaches your team looking to get acquired, then you can name the list whatever Project Name has been assigned or by something more general, like Company XYZ Sells.
   Opportunity Naming Tip: Each row in this list represents a unique, potential opportunity to partner your client with a particular buyer. Therefore, we recommend naming the opportunities in the following format: [Project Name] - [Buyer Name].
   
   
3. Project Execution: Financing Example - This opportunity list will help you track interest and coordinate financing outreach efforts for your client project. Each row (opportunity) in this list would represent a potential investor for your client.
   
   List Naming Tip: If Company 123 approaches your team looking to raise funds, then you can name the list whatever Project Name has been assigned or by something more general, like Company 123 Financing.
   Opportunity Naming Tip: Each row in this list represents a unique, potential opportunity to partner your client with a particular investor. Therefore, we recommend naming the opportunities in the following format: [Project Name] - [Investor Name].

Importing data into these lists

If you're migrating data from another platform and have this data in the form of Excel/CSV files, you can leverage Affinity's data importer to quickly bring this data into your lists. We highly encourage you to review these 3 articles/videos in sequential order:

1. Cleaning up your data before importing into Affinity
2. How to import your data into Affinity
3. Viewing your data import history
   Note: If you have Excel/CSV files full of notes that you'd like to import into Affinity, please check out: How to import notes into Affinity.

Getting started with reporting/analytics

Once you have your lists filled with the proper data, you can leverage our Basic Reporting feature (available to all Affinity customers) to access pre-made reports/visualizations of your data.

1. Getting started with Basic Reporting
2. Basic Reporting - List Summary Reports
3. Basic Reporting - Team Activity Reports
4. Basic Reporting - Funnel Analysis Reports
5. Basic Reporting - Opportunities Reports

If you have access to Affinity Analytics (only available to Premium and Enterprise customers), you can start creating more robust dashboards containing key performance metrics and custom visualizations:

1. Getting started with Affinity Analytics
2. Affinity Analytics - Status Reports for Investment Banking
3. Affinity Analytics - List Summary Reports
4. Affinity Analytics - Team Activity Reports
5. Affinity Analytics - Funnel Analysis Reports
6. Get notified when certain metrics/thresholds are met using Affinity Analytics alerts.