How to identify the "invisible rich" by using publicly available information

You want more clients, with significant assets, to fully take advantage of your range of investment and insurance products. Here's what you can do.

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Does this describe you?  Working at home. A good internet connection. Time on your hands.  A desire to hit the ground running when you get back to the office.  The ability to press-gang one of your brilliant children into service. You want more clients, with significant assets, to fully take advantage of your range of investment and insurance products.  What can you do?

Let’s assume you wanted to assemble lists of people with different types of wealth.  Some people have it. Others earn it. Maybe they’ve got it but can’t touch it. Let’s look at how you can research these people in your local market.  Ideally, you would like to know where they live. Why? Because your current clients might be neighbors. You might be their neighbor!

You are about to discover an interesting fact:  If you are a normal, honest, upright person, it’s amazing the amount of information about you that’s available in the public domain!  But it takes time and research to find it.

Whoa!  Read this before you start

There’s lots of information available on the Internet, but it isn’t necessary all “free.”  It might be “entailed,” meaning it officially belongs to someone else or can’t be used for a specific purpose.  Lists of donors to political campaigns are a great example. The information is made public, but it’s illegal to use it for any commercial purposes!  You might say “Who will know?” “They” will. “They” sometimes seed the list with dummy names, certain spellings or certain addresses to catch violators.

Remember three rules:

Here’s a logical reason why some sites might be touchy about you accessing data for marketing purposes:  They might also package the information to sell as a product to people like you! That’s good news of a sort — if necessary, you can buy it.

Wealth category #1: High asset, high cash flow wealth

These are people who have a lot of money put aside and are also bringing in pretty hefty incomes.  Senior executives at listed public companies are an obvious example. Put another way, if they are listed by name in the company’s annual report as a senior officer or director, they are probably doing pretty well.  If the company is headquartered in your market, these people likely drive to work, same as you.

You need to find these companies.  It’s easy to find the Top 10 or Top 25 listed public companies in your market.  Your local business journals often publish a “Book of Lists.”

Here’s the challenge:  There are more that haven’t made the list! Do some internet searching for lists of local public companies.  You will often find there are dozens more than you thought. You have certain criteria – they must be still in business, not entering or emerging from bankruptcy, not being acquired.

Build that list, complete with town and zip code for each company.  Many will be in the suburbs. Include the stock ticker symbol.

Check the share price.  Eliminate companies selling under $ 1.00/share, also known as penny stocks. Obviously eliminate the ones selling at zero or with dashed lines for prices.  Eliminate those with no stock ticker symbol.

This should yield a list of legitimate companies, many trading on NASDAQ.  Go to the company’s website. You should easily be able to access their annual report, usually a PDF file.  If it isn’t obvious, enter “annual report” in the company website’s search field. You want the pages listing officers and directors.  The average company should have about 30 names total.

Can I even find home addresses?  How?

Remember, if you are honest, there’s lots of information available about you online. Years ago, we had “the white pages” phone directories. Now that information is online. There are many sites that serve as phone directories. Predictably, phone companies have them.

Run the names and the city where the company is located through their search system. You should find a lot more than you expect!  Why? Shouldn’t they be unlisted? Today people have multiple phones. Landline. Wireless. Home business lines. There should be some breadcrumbs.  Also, your objective is to get the home address. Birds of a feather flock together.

What about privately owned businesses?

In many communities, local wealth is in the hands of the owners of established local businesses.  Property developers and car dealers come to mind, but there’s lots of money in everyday businesses that don’t get a second thought.  Think about ones where you’ve always suspected the markup is high: Auto body shops. Jewelers. dry cleaners. Funeral homes. Florists.  Next, think about businesses making it on volume: Gas stations, convenience stores, liquor stores, car washes and laundromats. Add in services billed hourly, like plumbers, electricians and auto mechanics.

There are easy ways to find them.  Build a list of local chambers of commerce.  You might think of yours as “the chamber” but there are likely others, especially if the city is big or has suburbs.  Don’t forget cultural ones. They should all have websites including a membership directory on the public portion of the site.  Why? Because chambers want the public doing business with its members! These are usually organized by category (i.e., jewelers). Often the owner is the chamber member.

Not every business belongs to the Chamber.  The site you used for white pages research should have a business directory or “yellow pages” too.  Search by category. You should find the local jewelers you missed.

But you don’t have owners.  Every state should have a Secretary of State website with a Department of Corporations section.  There should be a search feature. Enter the business name. You should get a profile including the names of the owner of officers.  Sometimes you strike out and get the law firm that incorporated them, but you should get lucky.

Back into their home addresses too.

Wealth category #2:  Lower asset, high cash flow wealth

Now you are looking at people who work for someone else.  They don’t own the business. They might be a doctor, yet they work at a hospital.  They might be a lawyer, yet don’t own the firm. You want to find these people. Why?  They might not have lots of cash set aside, but they have great cash flow! They could easily send you a check every month.

What are the highest paying jobs in your market?  The Federal government can help. Search on “Bureau Labor Statistics Salary” and the name of your city.  You should find a study, with a very long table indicating the highest paying job titles by profession and how many people do them.

You will find lots of people doing well for themselves, especially physicians, psychiatrists, dentists, nurse anesthetists, lawyers and accountants.  You can also find the professions employing the largest number of people (nursing, teaching) if you are developing that market segment.

Let’s stick with those highest paying categories.  It’s highly likely you need a professional license to do that job. That’s public information, too. Searchsystems.net is a collection of 70,000+ databases, organized by state.  Visit the site. Choose your state. Look for business and professional licenses. That category should give you 100-200 professions, each with a searchable database on the respective state site.  Search out all the people doing that job in your city. Each state is different, but some allow you to even search by zip code. You should get home or mailing address information in most cases.

Wealth category #3: High asset, low cash flow wealth

Now you get to the “Old Money” — families that have been around forever, that have streets named after them. Their money might not be “theirs.”  It might be in trusts. Land. Private companies that have been in the family for generations.  There might be foundations involved.

Generally speaking, Old Money is philanthropic.  They often consider giving back to the community an obligation of great wealth. They support local charities and cultural institutions.  Think about museums, hospitals, the symphony, the zoo and the library.

Here’s a pleasant surprise:  These institutions usually also produce annual reports.  They have different names, like “Report to the Community” but they account for how the money came in and where it was spent.  These annual reports often list donors, organized by giving category. Those donors preferring not to be listed are represented by “anonymous.”

These reports should be accessible via the nonprofit’s website.  Search for “annual report” on their site. Now that you have the name, backing into a home address shouldn’t be difficult.  You are getting good at this.

Wealth category #4:  Under-the-radar wealth

Reading the combinations of assets and wealth, you might assume category #4 should be Low Asset, Low Cash Flow Wealth.  No. Those are the people pretending to be wealthy.

Instead, category #4 is people who don’t neatly fit into the other three categories.  They came by their money legitimately, yet don’t brag about it.  So many people come under this heading:

How to use this research

Why not just buy lists someone else built? That’s simple. But if you can buy it, so can everyone else.

What’s the point of trying to find home addresses for individuals?  Because you will discover they cluster in certain areas. You might live nearby.  Clients probably do. They likely know some of these people, but not in a professional capacity.  Their children go to school together. They BBQ on weekends.

These big lists turn into little lists.  Maybe they live on the same street. The same housing development. Work at the same firm. From time to time, you show friends lists of 10-15 names asking: “Who do you know?”  “This is the type of person I would like to meet” or “These are the type of people I may be able to help.” You follow up with “Would you introduce me?”

As the expression goes, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Bryce Sanders is president of Perceptive Business Solutions Inc. He provides HNW client acquisition training for the financial services industry. His book, “Captivating the Wealthy Investor” can be found on Amazon.

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