The Cliffnotes Of Raising Institutional Capital

Often times, it is hard to see the forest through the trees. Here is a very simplified outline of how to raise institutional capital.

1. Acquire a list of prospective institutional LPs. (We like Preqin.)

2. Categorize the lists according to who is most likely to invest.

3. Use an email verification platform to determine which email addresses are valid. (There are a lot out there.)

4. Set-up a CRM system. (We use Zoho.com)

5. Set-up and email system with lead score capability. (We use Act-on.com.)

6. Build a lead score model to profile interest. (If you don’t know what this is, google it.)

7. Build consensus across your team as to the three or four core messaging points you would like to reenforce in market. (To accomplish this, get your team in a room, or on Zoom, and write down all the reasons why someone would want to invest with you. At that point, everyone should rank the top 4 reasons individually. If there is any misalignment, you need to talk through it until there is consensus. After you go through that process, screen the list based on the competition and scrub anything that everyone else is saying. What’s left is your inherent value proposition.)

8. Come up with 12 emails (so you can send 1 per month) that reenforces your core attributes. (These emails should be interesting and take different forms – video, webinar, podcasts, blogs, whitepapers, etc.)

9. Email your list – adhering to all regulatory restrictions surrounding email marketing.

10. Monitor the lead score after every email.

11. Send a personal email to all prospective LPs that engage heavily.

That is the general idea and path. The challenges to all of this are plenty. You don’t want to talk about performance because you can’t guarantee performance. Being interesting is a hard thing to be. Yet the marketing artistry is in the consistency of communication. Sending one email is easy. Sending one email a month for 12 months is hard. Perhaps the hardest part of it all is building an email list adhering to all the regulatory requirements. That takes time.

In executing this process, out of the gates, understand that you are competing for time, not trying to prove your legitimacy. When you compete for time, you need to take some marketing risk. It is important to say something different or do something different. Yes, this will eventually morph into something more traditional, however, if you can’t get someone’s attention, they will never become an LP.

Finally, don’t sell too hard too fast. An allocation should flow from natural dialogue and process. Don’t rush it, put in the time, build genuine relationships and the money will come.

By Kyle Dunn