CCRS Exam

From capital raising surveys conducted at our live events, developing Marketing Materials is the #1 capital raising frustration.

In a video featured in the book titled, Family Office Investment Priorities, Richard talks about investment priorities when working with family offices for those who are not familiar with the family office space.  Please select all that apply:

Ordering the responses from the largest issue faced by capital raisers to the least, which answer set accurately represents the survey responses:

You need to hire people who have a current network with real first name relationships in order to raise capital. 

Fill in the blanks to complete the following statements from the book: Building Momentum Through ______1________.  This book is all about getting your firms positioning, focus, and energy _____2_____ with market trends.

Most capital raising is still done the old-fashioned way, starting with friends and family and then cold-calling potential investors or slowly networking in local circles to form new relationships. 

The Capital Raising book is built out into 5 distinct topics and practices titled: Analyze, Position, Architect, Execute and Integrate.

In a video highlighted in the book titled, The Importance of High-Conviction Mindsets, Richard recommends that capital raisers assess what is taking their time and eliminate those aspects that you do not have a high-conviction mindset in. 

In the Capital Raising book, Richard mentions different types of analyzing that are necessary to fully craft your unique investment proposition.  Select all answers that are part of the analysis:

As a capital raiser, investors are never considering your pitch or opportunity independently.  

What does HNW stand for?

Once you know who you are competing with, you will have a better sense of the investors that you can conceivably target. 

Which of the following statement most accurately describes reasoning Richard mentions when he uses the phrase, Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment?

In the book, Richard mentions a rule by Dan Kennedy that he often utilizes in his own businesses.  Fill in the blank with the most correct answer choice: Look around and see what everyone else is doing and ___________________.

When identifying inevitabilities, Richard interprets this as seeing what trends are coming and beating your competition to the punch “ even before the trend has unfolded 100%. 

Typically only the largest dominant players, long-time incumbent players, or very well-financed players can use a mass-market generic approach and make it profitable before running out of cash or patience on their path to profitability. 

Fill in the blank with the text that best completes the following concept from the book: Select a sandbox to compete in that is not crowded and to make sure that you _________ that is well defined and valuable.

Richard presents the analogy of capital raising strategies to the Excedrin medication because a capital raiser needs to alleviate those initial general and generic pain points before they can succeed with trying a focused solution. 

Reversing the flow is a sales strategy where an individual positions themselves to solve a problem for a customer that is unique to them and allows the customer to find you, instead of having to hunt down the prospects yourself. 

An investor avatar is a well-defined picture of the exact type of investor from which you hope to raise capital. If you try to raise capital from all types of investors, youll fail or struggle. 

When focusing on your targeted customer avatar, please select all of the relevant aspects to consider as a capital raiser: 

A choke point is a strategic bottleneck or critical limited resource in your industry that if you controlled would provide great leverage over your own ability to succeed and others as well. 

1.     As presented in the book, a quote from Peter Thiel mentions that the whole goal in business is to _____1_____ a niche and be able to charge _____2_____ prices in it.

Positioning, intellectual property and Strategic access to resources are examples of strategic choke points. 

First and foremost, the ___________ of your team can be the thing that attracts the attention of a new investor, attracts additional talented professionals to join your team, and helps you build a credible board of advisors if they really believe in the portfolio management team and the executive team of the hedge fund.

To expand the experience, training, and education of your team, non-traditional methods may include bringing on consultants and business partners that will help compliment your firms experience. 

In the Capital Raising book, Richard writes about 7/70 Rule by Verne Varnish that refers to the idea that 70% of your capital raising funds will come from just 7% of HNW individuals that you reach out. 

All else equal, you can raise capital faster from local contacts than those who are halfway around the world. 

Richard mentions in the book that one way to generate more investor relationships is to involve yourself in layers of social groups that are enjoyable and filled with high-net-worth individuals and potential investors.  This strategy is referred to as:

A lot of businesses spend money on leads that arent very valuable because they target the wrong demographic or the wrong location, or use keywords that arent a direct fit with the conversion goal. For an online ad campaign, it has to be carefully customized, budgeted, and geographically balanced while maintaining enough search volume for the term you select.

Title searches in real estate are an example of how to grow relationships with property investors to increase deal flow.

Social media services such as LinkedIn and Facebook are great tools for generating social proof and relationships but are difficult to utilize for capital raising purposes. 

According to the table and chart on Facebook Demographics in the book, what is the percentage of internet users that use Facebook?

Within Facebook, you can upload a list of email addresses to find those people on Facebook to target them with advertising. Facebook also allows you to embed a single line of code on your website which allows you to re-target them and advertise to them on Facebook.  

LinkedIn may not have Facebooks number of users, but it skews in favor of higher incomes and college-educated professionals. 

The concept, Stand for Local, refers to the idea:

In a video linked to in the book titled Using Investor Databases for Leads, Richard explains how sourcing databases and leads through paid platforms is one way to secure contacts within the industry.  Because the contacts and information are available online, many sources of data are interchangeable between platforms. 

In the book Richard recommends finding 10 connectors to partner with by first adding value that can then help open up local choke points in your own community and local area.  

With the rise of social media and targeted pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns that can focus on geographic areas, direct mail strategies should be avoided when you can target them more effectively with more modern techniques.  

Before executing on targeted media campaigns and outreach, it is important that you are aware of applicable general solicitation rules, such as 506(b) and 506(c) if you are in the US, before sending information about something that you are raising capital for.  

According to the Investor Funnel Architecture, which of the following is the most similar to the example provided?

An investor funnel is simply a series of intellectual property assets, forms of exposure, and relationship building sources that all lead to more qualified inquiries to meet with you face-to-face or to invest in your company or investment offering. 

In a video linked to in the book, Richard emphases the importance of creating genuine value through storytelling and positioning, while maintaining a true and authentic message.  

When building your investor funnel it is important to take each contact and lead through each different stage to allow the marketing strategy to work fully. 

A successful investor funnel may take just a few weeks to complete for an investor, while others will take years to get to the point where you are doing business together. 

The investor funnel is a practical example of how to  ____________?

In the book, Richard presents the example of intellectual property momentum that his team uses to create a system where all new content is focused on themes targeted towards these funnels and future book publications. 

Hiring a ghost writer is often a great way to cultivate content that will resonate with your investor avatar.  

The concept of Coca-Cola geographical distribution refers to:

Great examples of leveraging public relations include developing leads with relevant publications in your targeted sandbox, speaking at public events, or writing books and content on a specific topic or industry trends.  

In the book, Richard explains how many small firms fail to include multi-modal marketing materials such as using the phone, email, physically mailed materials, and audio/visual versions of the capital raising content.

Which of the following is not included in the basic checklist of fundamental marketing material pieces described in the book:

A Tear-Sheet is a detailed and fact based document that fully outlines your capital raising strategy with clear and defined project based milestones. 

A DDQ is a helpful master document of well-refined and compliance approved answers that can be used and pull from for common questions required by most investors throughout the due diligence process.  

In the book, Richard mentions a study that showed that ____% of institutional investors wont invest in something they do not understand.

A KPI is a measure of an action or activity which lets you know if work is getting done, if that work is leading to results, and what the yield is on the time invested in that activity. In capital raising, you will want to have different types of KPIs in place, with some activity-based and some results-based. 

When creating your capital raising key performance indicators, including subjectively based parameters helps create a holistic fundraising approach.  

In the book, Richard mentions a tool called a ______________ that he uses internally for his business and with his clients to measure their performance, goals, and strategies for moving forward.

In Richards experience, investors are looking for clues consciously or subconsciously that serve as evidence of a very long-term mindset or more of a short-term shortcut type bias. 

In Sam Carpenters book titled, Work the System, Richard mentions the following idea and concept:

A systematic approach can help streamline and focus your own capital raising machine.  The book provides the following quote by which author? If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.

In the book titled, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Richard explains how the author presents the idea that you become more effective and powerful when you first ________. 

When you sit down with an investor, you should spend the first 60-80% of the conversation asking questions, taking notes, and clarifying their background including past investment history and current challenges or problems. You should confirm that you understand them completely before diving into your solution, which is the pitch you are trying to raise capital for.  These statements are an example of:

In addition to listen and building rapport with the investor, which of the following are examples that were provided of additional questions to consider:

A contact report is part of a listening and attunement practice with investors where you email a concise summary of what was discussed and decided on at the meeting and shows that you are taking a methodical and organized approach to meeting their needs.  

As a practical and personal example from his own experience, Richard explains how to help stand out in a high-value niche one can do so by becoming an authority, being a scarce resource, and sharing knowledge in way that induced reciprocation, gained him valuable strategic turf in the family office investor space, and led to unique positioning. 

Which of the following is not an example provided of top influence strategies that can be used to raise capital:

Scientific studies have also shown that when humans are unsure how to act or who to trust, we look around to others for cues and we trust the decisions of the herd around us.  This type of influence strategy is referred to as social proof.

If you ignore copywriting, very little of what you write will get read, making it impossible for most people to pick up the phone or write you back. The headline of your letters, subject line of your emails, and the first few words of your speeches are the most important for getting what you write actually read.  

In a 2008 study conducted by Marketing Sherpa, the research showed that by using a professionals first name in the email subject line increased open rates by _____% and using both the first and last names increased open rates by _____%.

When honing your copywriting strategy, make sure to start by hooking the reader in the first paragraph.  You will want the first paragraph to cover what you will cover in the message and provide a general introduction about why you are contacting and try to tie in social proof positioning if possible. 

If you execute your investor funnel and after working it for several months, you either get no feedback or get negative feedback, you will have to again analyze your market, get real feedback from real potential investors, and figure out where the gap was in your thinking and implementation.

In the book, Richard provides a link to a video titled Capital Raising Pushups which refers to the idea:

A CRM tool is something which allows you to update a profile on a company or person so at every meeting you can record notes, contact details, and materials for reference later to help you keep hundreds or even thousands of relationships straight on who is who and what their preferences are. 

According to Dan Sullivan, he refers to a term called your _____________, which is the idea that all of us have some skill or type of work that we are passionate about, skilled in completing, and enjoy doing. This would be the type of work you can get lost in and feel a sense of flow and real accomplishment while doing those tasks.

Speed of Implementation is a concept where the faster you can learn something, incorporate it into your business, get market feedback, adjust and repeat the process to make further adjustments”the faster your businesses is able to grow. 

The Ironman Strategy concept refers to:

In the book titled Zero to One by Peter Thiel, he talks about how if you have a high conviction that something will become true and yet others around you dont see that truth yet (or better yet think the opposite is true), then that is the closest you can ever get to predicting the future.  

We can say Family offices are the home based offices of institutional investors where meetings often take place

And then for second one The whole premise of the book Capital Raising is that if you become an efficient hunter using a CRM, KPIs and documented processes you do not need to be as strategic or invest as much in positioning