I recently left banking and joined a PE fund where I am given material responsibility compared to what I used to have in the bank. One of my feedback points is that I am too quite / passive during meetings with management teams, DD providers and advisors.
I feel like I am having a hard time finding relevant questions to ask during meetings and prefer listening to what is being said and then ask questions at the end. This is however not the approach that is preferred in my fund. They won’t me to be much more aggressive and push the various providers. I am naturally introverted and find it very challenging, but am keen to get better!
Would appreciate any advice that you might have !
Bump
If you just started (like within the last month or so) maybe talk to a mentor/someone you trust at the firm about how they think critically about DD/deal stuff. Maybe that’ll help you learn how they want you to think about deals.
Just go bull in a china shop mode
I struggled with this early on as well given the "seen but not heard" mentality developed as an analyst - one piece of helpful advice was to just do 15-20min of prep before any diligence / team meeting to think through any weak spots to press on where the DD provider / team may have missed and have a handful of questions ready to go vs. trying to come up with them on the fly. It's a fine line between actually adding value and just getting your voice out there (which is a bad habit that many VPs have) though.
Two things that have worked well for me:
1) Prep in advance, make sure you come into calls / meetings with some questions already prepared so you aren’t scrambling in real time.
2) Try to get a question in early in any meeting. It’s way easier to break the ice then and it’ll feel a lot more natural to jump in with questions.
This is a very common area of feedback for new PE associates, so just keep working at it and you’ll get a lot better as time goes by.
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