Nail Your Narrative

The 5 W’s

Welcome back to Fundicorn; the sales, marketing & distribution weekly designed for emerging fund managers & financial services firms aiming for a 10 figure AUM. ?

Last week, we talked about the importance of volume habits in all marketing & selling activity. To hit volume we need to be ruthlessly clear, concise & compelling in delivering our narrative first time, every time.

You’ve read the stats; even the most engaged investor or partner tunes out after 10 minutes & absolutely nobody is listening at all after 15 minutes. So, for all our 1st & 2nd meetings we’ll lose them after 3 minutes if we haven’t landed our story concisely. It’s even worse on video calls where the temptation we all feel to fidget when our new friend is rather verbose grows exponentially... ?

The aim, after all, is to do as little talking as possible and encourage & cajole your guest to fill 80% of the get together – your prospective investor is the star of the show, she’s the money, you want to derive as much information as possible so that you can swiftly establish fit, respect her time and move forwards.

Building relationships takes time, so there’s no need to pack everything you want to say into the first meet. ??

Conservatively, over the years I’ve sat with over 2500 fund managers. Less than 50 delivered a tight, short narrative which was oven ready to road test with allocators. It’s been a huge pleasure to constantly work with so many of those folks on their story & now I get to share the simple roadmap that I use with you here.

It’s all about installing some simple guard-rails to avoid going too far off-piste in every engagement. ???

1. Chunk it down Resist the temptation to throw everything you have into the meeting at the start. Deliver less than a minute early on to set the scene. Another minute when you see a bridge to a topic you know you have edge in. And the final minute later in the meeting to subtly repeat areas you need to land. ?The rest of the time should be asking questions and feeding off the natural flow with short & sweet observations.
2. The 5 W’s The journalists have it right, organise your narrative into the headings below and you won’t go far wrong. You may find you like to use the headings verbally step by step or stitch it all together into a flow. Whatever works for you. ?
3. Who What do you stand for, what do you enjoy, make it personal, what’s your origin, what is it about you that makes you memorable ???
4. Why What compels you to do what you do, to set up your firm, to serve your clients, make your why to stand out from the crowd ???
5. What We manage money in ‘frontier market equities’, our strategies are best suited to entrepreneurs and family offices – add in your #1 edge (avoid delivering multiple USPs)
6. Where We’re headquartered in ‘Charleston, South Carolina’ operating a remote team based in 3 countries that are committed to being alongside our investors in their geography ?
7. When We’ve opened a wait list for our new strategy launching in Q1, would you like to to be part of it to get all our future updates and special terms for early adopters ?

Once you have some thoughts written down, now video record a version on your phone in less than a 1 minute and another one in less than 3 minutes. Speak 25% slower than feels natural, smile as you speak, pause often. Show it to your kids, your partner & your most critical friend. Rinse, repeat until you’re happy that you have your narrative nailed.

Then, same day, post that 1-minute version on LinkedIn, once it’s out there, you’ll feel even more compelled to use that narrative to anchor every single meeting. Send that post to folks when marketing.

Over time, have fun with it, try and get a meaningful story delivered in less than 30seconds and watch the delight in the eyes of everyone you meet. The holy grail response: Wow, I’m fascinated, tell me more… ??

And breathe!

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Tune in, same place, same time next week where we'll be sharing hacks to help you choose an SMA, fund, note, listing or SPV wrap around your strategy to maximise adoption from new allocators.