How to Value a Family Office Database Resource - What to look for before you buy

I’ve discussed these elements before in other articles but a recent stream of questions from people in my network has prompted me to reiterate these points in a more summarised way and all in one place ... eh ... blog.  I trust this blog will help you to establish a value for a Family Office database resource you are considering purchasing, and also hope that as you explore family office databases you will quickly learn what makes them worth acquiring or not. More specifically I hope to provide in this summary basic insights into how to value specific Family Office lists and database resources.

Here are some of the components that make a Family Office database worth the asking price. Ask yourself and/or the vendor these questions:

How often is the Family Office database updated? It should be at least semi-annually. If not what is the reason behind it and does the reason make sense to you?

Is the vendor active in the industry? e.g. does the vendor have a consulting business for Family Offices, or do they operate a Family Office association, an online or offline Family Office social network or networking group? If not, what qualifies them to create, maintain, and update a Family Office list?

Does the vendor offer a refund and what is their refund policy in respect of the Family Office list resource you are considering? At the very least there should be an accommodation for bad data. The best firms in the Family Office industry will gladly offer between a double and quadruple pro-rated refund for bad date in the Family Office resource. This keeps them honest and on top of their game.

What level of work and effort went into the creation of the Family Office list? Okay, so this is tricky ground. How can you determine that? Well, use a couple of basic pointers to the level of seriousness both of the company and the information they offer about the database resource.

• What does their website look like?
• How detailed is their FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section?
• What level of statistics do they give you in respect of the list?
• What do they say about their methodologies for creating, maintaining, and updating the Family Office database?

This next one is crucial to your productivity. Even if everything else is great this one can cause more frustration than it is worth.

In what format does the vendor supply the Family Office database to you? Here’s the thing. If the list is web-only, i.e. you can only access it via the web then you could lose access, for example, if the company goes belly up or if your subscription payment does not go through. How often does it happen that a credit card is nearing its limit because the accounts department hasn’t processed the expense reports? Or even more basic, the expiry date lapses, you forget to update it in the system, and the vendor doesn’t have an early warning system to remind you. 

Make sure that you have a resource that can be downloaded (i.e. avoid CD & DVD based resources if you can) and where the format in which it is supplied is at least Microsoft Excel (.XLSX), or Comma Separated Value (.CSV) These formats are the most flexible and allow you to quickly and easily integrate the new data into your customer relationship management (CRM) system, for example Salesforce.com.

Value is a tricky thing and like beauty it is in the eye of the beholder. If you use the above suggestions to assess for yourself the value of the resource I hope you will make some good decisions. Ultimately the proof will be in the quality of the relationships you are able to build with the Family Offices listed in the database resource that you purchase. Until you have the list though you need to use your gut, some good common sense, and the above tips to figure out whether or not your money to purchase the list is about to be invested wisely or simply spent.

 

About Paul J. Lange:

Paul J. Lange is a business mentor and business performance coach who helps small to medium enterprise and entrepreneurs to apply big business, enterprise disciplines and solutions to gain a competitive advantage and increase profits. 

Paul's 'Business DIET'© system has helped countless entrepreneurs and business owners around the world to launch start-ups, expand existing operations, and greatly improve bottom lines.

Paul is also one of Australia’s most connected management consultants, and leading business strategists, with a passion for helping entrepreneurs and business owners who are committed to achieving outstanding results.

Paul’s support will help you to develop strategic direction, implement it, execute and make more money. He will have you starting to work on your business, instead of in your business, right from day one; and if you have already started down this path, he will help you to complete the transition to business owner from business manager.

Web: http://www.paullange.com.au

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pauljlange

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pauljlange

Ecademy: http://www.ecademy.com/user/paullange

Klout: http://www.klout.com/pauljlange

Peerindex: http://www.peerindex.net/pauljlange

Empire Avenue: http://www.empireavenue.com/pauljlange

Posted via email from Blue Oceans

Positioning Your Start-up Using Blue Ocean Strategy - Part 1

By using Blue Ocean Strategy innovative start-ups can identify market spaces that have no competition, and in doing so render their traditional industry competition irrelevant.

The basic premise of Blue Ocean Strategy is that every market can be segregated into both a red ocean and a blue ocean.

Red oceans are consensus driven; more specifically a consensus that defines a default customer, the vendors and their expected behaviours and characteristics, and the type of product the market has to offer. You end up with a situation where everyone is doing the same thing with the same stuff, selling it to the same people; the result, commercial carnage with massive competition and paper thin profit margins.

Uncontested Market Space - the New Frontier

Blue Ocean Strategy is about breaking free from the bonds of traditional market thinking and realising new vast blue oceans of untapped resources. The first realisation of understanding Blue Ocean Strategy is like standing inside a large box leaning against the wall and suddenly there are no walls. You realise there is no box. Blue Ocean Strategy focuses entrepreneurs and business leaders in the direction of a new uncontested market space for their industry. They create a market niche where the venture is so uniquely positioned that competition is rendered irrelevant.

How does that work? How can one recognise these new market niches?

The answer: Value Innovation

Identifying market niches requires a thing called "Value Innovation". Value innovation involves seeing the values and desires behind peoples’ spending decisions. When you witness these patterns you can take a decision yourself to restructure your business resources to provide an alternative that is significantly better and which remains consistent with the values you have witnessed. 

Let’s look again at Cirque Du Soleil. It seems to be the one that everyone quotes from the book Blue Ocean Strategy and it is an example I myself have referred to before in articles, blogs, and speeches. When Cirque du Soleil began the circus industry was on its tail. It had stagnated itself into virtual oblivion. Not exactly an industry one would imagine entering if profit had anything to do with the equation. Rather than creating yet another big top, or little top, circus, the founders of Cirque du Soleil looked at the overall value system of circus goers and the live entertainment industry more broadly so that they might understand what the people, who went out for the evening of entertainment, were looking for.

What motivates or persuades people to go to the theatre or the cinema, instead of going to the circus?

What they found was that the circus was viewed generally as low-brow, juvenile, even crude level of entertainment. The founders of Cirque Du Soleil found that the concept of the traditional three ring circus distracting, annoying, and off-putting to the majority of the public.

Also, public opinion was swaying away from the use of animals in circus. This was pretty dramatic as animals have always been a centrepiece of the circus experience. Driving this was the sensitivity to the possible abuse of the animals behind scenes.

Take Out the Trash: Remove That Which People Don’t Value

The result is Cirque Du Soleil, an experience that is world renowned for being very different to anything else that is out there; indeed since Cirque du Soleil start nothing has even come close to knocking them off their number one spot. The recipe was simple for the founders. They eliminated the three rings; they presented the entertainment more theatrically, more sophisticated and in the form of a narrative; and they removed the animals from the equation – which probably saved them a bundle as well.

By combining the popular and most valued fundamental elements of what people sought from live entertainment, more specifically from both the theatre and circus perspectives, and removing everything that was seen by the public as a negative of both, the founders of Cirque Du Soleil were able to create an alternative far superior to the original; an alternative that neither other circuses nor the theatre industry can contend with directly.

About Paul J. Lange:

Paul J. Lange is a business mentor and business performance coach who helps small to medium enterprise and entrepreneurs to apply big business, enterprise disciplines and solutions to gain a competitive advantage and increase profits. 

Paul's 'Business DIET'© system has helped countless entrepreneurs and business owners around the world to launch start-ups, expand existing operations, and greatly improve bottom lines.

Paul is also one of Australia’s most connected management consultants, and leading business strategists, with a passion for helping entrepreneurs and business owners who are committed to achieving outstanding results.

Paul’s support will help you to develop strategic direction, implement it, execute and make more money. He will have you starting to work on your business, instead of in your business, right from day one; and if you have already started down this path, he will help you to complete the transition to business owner from business manager.

Web: http://www.paullange.com.au

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pauljlange

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pauljlange

Ecademy: http://http://www.ecademy.com/user/paullange

Klout: http://www.klout.com/pauljlange

Peerindex: http://www.peerindex.net/pauljlange

Empire Avenue: http://www.empireavenue.com/pauljlange

Posted via email from Blue Oceans

Some Basic Tips on How Not to Use a Family Office List

Many people make some very basic mistakes when interacting with Family Offices and lists of Family Offices that they acquire. It is as if by simply having these lists they feel connected, empowered, and invulnerable, and end up making some often irreparable mistakes. The reality is that you should conduct yourself with the same level of decency and integrity as you would with any other human being.

Hopefully the following will provide you with some basic tips on what not to do with a Family Office list, so that you can avoid making common mistakes often made by people seeking to raise capital via a Family Office. Obviously the best way to raise capital via a Family Office or individual Ultra High-Net Worth (UNHW) person is through personal relationships founded on trust and confidence. If you, like most others, are in the situation that you have to start out by buying a list as a first step, strive to achieve such a relationship over the long term and if your enterprises are good you may one day join their ranks.

Here are IMHO the top five Family Office list mistakes you should avoid:

1. After you buy a family office list you cannot simply send an unsolicited email or snail mail to them with your offer to them. This is still considered spam, and you are not permitted to spam, even after buying the list. This is not like a double opt-in list of people interested in blue widgets. You must first develop relationships with each group on the list and they must opt-in to receive communications from you; double opt-in if by email.
2. Don’t delude yourself that you have unearthed the Holy Grail and that henceforth capital-raising is going to be a walk in the park because you have bought THE list. Certainly, by obtaining a resource such as a Family Office List will make your capital raising efforts and processes more efficient. If used correctly it will save you an immense amount of time. But how effective you are will rely on other criteria. Capital-raising is essentially a challenge at the best of times. It can be a wonderful challenge that people such as myself thrive on, we love the process and every step in it. Realise that you have increased your chances by obtaining a Family Office list and accept that it will require real work and genuine effort. There is simply too much money at stake and too much competition for the investment dollars for the process to be a cakewalk. 
3. Once you purchase a Family Office list, do not assume that you will receive a lifetime of free updates. These lists are expensive to update, maintain, and they take considerable time and patience to complete. Ask your list provider to see if they are included or not within your package.
4. Snatching up the first offer of a Family Office directory that you come across, just because it looks good enough is not really a good strategy. Be sure that you source the list from a legitimate company that has a phone number you can call and talk to real people. You know the ones. They have a pair of lips and a voice connected to a brain that gives real responses. Unless you have come across someone with terminal cancer and 30 days to live, do not believe people who tell you they have a boutique private list that they have worked with for the last 40 years or more. Such people exist, but unless the last item on their bucket list is to donate the list to some lucky schmuck you will not gain access to them. Go through a company that is reputable and has a real website. Before you buy anything do whatever you need to do to gain sufficient confidence that what you are buying is something of value.
5. Don't think you are smarter than the rest and use their list to create and sell your own Family Office list product. Apart from illegal (check the terms and conditions of your purchase) it is morally wrong and UHNW individuals have a way of smelling bullshit in the proximity. If you only have half a brain and do decide to take someone else’s list(s) to create your own, unless you are going for a smash and grab type of sale, how on earth will you ever maintain it? Be respectful, be ethical and use the list as the seller intended; hopefully to launch some great (new) product or service that will benefit many people and (at least by extension) society as a whole.

Hopefully these tips will help you know what not do once you have obtained your database or Family Office list. I am sure you will realise that this is all pretty common sense, but as the saying goes, there is nothing common about common sense.

About Paul J. Lange:

Paul J. Lange is a business mentor and business performance coach who helps small to medium enterprise and entrepreneurs to apply big business, enterprise disciplines and solutions to gain a competitive advantage and increase profits. 

Paul's 'Business DIET'© system has helped countless entrepreneurs and business owners around the world to launch start-ups, expand existing operations, and greatly improve bottom lines.

Paul is also one of Australia’s most connected management consultants, and leading business strategists, with a passion for helping entrepreneurs and business owners who are committed to achieving outstanding results.

Paul’s support will help you to develop strategic direction, implement it, execute and make more money. He will have you starting to work on your business, instead of in your business, right from day one; and if you have already started down this path, he will help you to complete the transition to business owner from business manager.

Web: http://www.paullange.com.au

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pauljlange

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pauljlange

Ecademy: http://http://www.ecademy.com/user/paullange

Klout: http://www.klout.com/pauljlange

Peerindex: http://www.peerindex.net/pauljlange

Empire Avenue: http://www.empireavenue.com/pauljlange

Posted via email from Blue Oceans