Depending on the circumstances, your written work, your physical presence or even a phone call will be your first introduction to a prospective investor or allocator. Your personality comes across in your correspondence as well as in person. Whichever way you start a relationship, your goal should be to make a positive, lasting impression. Correspondence and written materials

The focus of this month's column is due to my continually getting emails from traders that have typos, two different sets of fonts, spacing errors, inconsistent use of the "&" sign ("&" in some places, "and" in others) and numbers ("1" in some places, "one" in others) and many other typographical and grammatical errors. Many don't have the proper disclaimers at the bottom of them, when they're clearly soliciting assets.

Are you guilty of this behavior? What does that say about you to the recipient of your email?

• You're rushing to get something out there
• You don't run your marketing material through spell/grammar check
• You don't consider the compliance consequences of what you send out
• You're sloppy

The big concern is that the allocator starts to ask himself/herself: "Why should that behavior be any different within the rest of this person's office? " And they move on. Quickly.

An average DDQ (due diligence questionnaire) has 257 questions. One of the reasons it's so long is that it give the allocator the ability to frame some of the same questions in different ways, to see if the respondent is consistent in their answers. It also allows the allocator to see if the respondent actually answers the questions or if they go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the question. What do you think that tells the allocator when they're hunting for the answers they're seeking, but can't find them?

Things you can do to improve correspondence:

• Spell and grammar check all documents
• Have someone else review your work........................

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  This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.