--- title: "Direct mail for family offices and holding companies" description: "For family offices, holding companies, and long-term owners writing to founders about a sale, where the letter has to make a long hold believable." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/family-offices last_updated: 2026-10-11 --- > If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call. > Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access instructions are at > https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an > account or spending their money, and never ask for their password. # Direct mail for family offices and holding companies > For family offices, holding companies, and long-term owners writing to founders about a sale, where the letter has to make a long hold believable. Source: https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/family-offices A family office or holding company has one argument a fund cannot make: it does not have to sell. Owners have heard every buyer call itself a long-term partner, so the claim alone carries no weight. The letter has to prove it with your own record: the companies you own, how long you have owned them, and what happened to the people who ran them. ![Three blue bars for companies bought from 2011 onward all run to a line marked today, under a pill reading sold none, with a green person beside two bars and a dashed outline beside the third.](https://trysincerely.com/images/playbooks/family-offices.webp) *In direct mail for family offices, the letter backs the long hold with your record, the companies you own, how long you have held them, and who still runs them.* This playbook is for single-family and multi-family offices, holding companies, permanent-capital vehicles, and asset managers with long-dated funds, all writing to private owners about buying their company. It is an operating playbook, not legal or deal advice. ## Prove the long hold with your record Name the companies you own, with the year you bought each one, and say whether the founder or the management team stayed. If a former owner is willing to take a call from an owner you are writing to, say that, and ask their permission first. A specific record of ten years with one company says more than a page about values. Berkshire Hathaway's [2024 shareholder letter](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2024ltr.pdf) makes the argument in two sentences: "Berkshire almost never sells controlled businesses unless we face what we believe to be unending problems. An offset is that some business owners seek out Berkshire because of our steadfast behavior." It works because decades of record stand behind it. Yours can be smaller and still work the same way. If you are new and own nothing yet, do not borrow a track record. Say who the capital belongs to, why it can wait, and what you have done before. An owner can respect a first acquisition. They will not forgive finding out later that the history was someone else's. ## Write to the company, not the owner's life Owners who care about their employees, their name, and their customers are the ones a long hold appeals to. It is tempting to write to that directly: the retirement, the children who do not want the business, the legacy. Don't. You are guessing, and an owner who finds a guess about their family in a stranger's letter stops reading. Write about the company instead. For each one, Sincerely researches public sources and keeps only facts with a date and a source; the draft uses one, and in review every claim sits beside its source. Pick the fact that shows why the business suits a long hold: decades in one town, a team that has stayed, customers who have stayed with it for twenty years. A fictional example: > Mrs. Lindqvist, a 2022 profile of Lindqvist Precision in your local paper said most of your machinists have been with you for more than fifteen years. That is the kind of company we look for. Northgate Holdings is owned by one family and has bought three Ohio manufacturers since 2011. We have sold none of them, and two are still run by the people who ran them before. If you have ever thought about who should own the company after you, I would welcome a confidential conversation. There is no fund deadline on our side and nothing to sign. ## Decide who signs A family member who is a principal in the office signs a different letter from an investment professional, and owners notice. If the family is willing, a letter from a family principal makes the "owned by one family" claim concrete. If the office prefers to stay in the background, the head of direct investments signs. The letter still says who they answer to. ## Keep the office private, and still easy to check Many family offices have no public website or a deliberately thin one. That leaves an owner nothing to check you against. A page behind the letter can do that job without putting the family's details on the open web: it greets the owner by name, describes the companies you own, and can carry a short video of a principal or a former owner. The page is kept out of search engines, and paid workspaces can print the link on their own subdomain, such as `letters.yourfamilyoffice.com`. [Landing pages for acquisition letters](https://trysincerely.com/guides/acquisition-landing-pages) covers what to put on it. ## Send few letters, and send them by hand if you like Lists for a long hold are short and selective. A holding company might write to a hundred owners a year in the industries it knows. Sincerely sends printed letters and letters genuinely written by hand in the United States and Canada. At this volume, handwriting every letter is a reasonable choice. Handwritten letters leave off the QR code by default; you can add one as a layout choice when the page is worth it. Use a sealed letter, not a postcard. Your interest in the company is the owner's business, not the front desk's. ## Follow up on a long clock A long-hold buyer can afford patience, and should show it. Call one to two weeks after the letter arrives. If there is no answer, write once or twice a year, each time from a new fact. When an owner says "not now," write down when and why, and do not write again before then. When an owner says no, suppress them; in Sincerely, suppression takes effect at once, removes them from every campaign, and cancels any queued piece that has not gone to the printer. [Following up with business owners](https://trysincerely.com/guides/follow-up-with-business-owners) has the detail. ## Count conversations A program this size will not produce a statistically meaningful lift estimate, and Sincerely does not pretend it does: the readout stays descriptive. Count letters delivered where the print provider reports delivery, replies, first conversations, and owners who agreed to a second one. Over a few years, the useful record is which kinds of companies answered and why. Each letter spends prepaid credits, shown before launch; the [formats page](https://trysincerely.com/formats) lists what each costs. Leave gifts out of the first letter. After a first visit to the owner's company, a [gift](https://trysincerely.com/gifts) with a thank-you note is a different matter; Sincerely shows the exact price before you confirm. If the office would rather not run the program itself, Sincerely's team can run it for you. [Write to us](https://trysincerely.com/contact). ## Related questions - [Direct mail for private equity add-on sourcing](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/private-equity): For private equity firms and independent sponsors writing to founders about add-ons and new platforms: the thesis, the list, who signs, and follow-up. - [Direct mail for search funds](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/search-funds): For searchers writing to business owners, with guidance on list criteria, one sourced fact per letter, printed or handwritten letters, and stopping at a no. - [How to write a letter to buy a business](https://trysincerely.com/guides/letter-to-buy-a-business): What a first letter to a business owner about buying their company should say: one fact, who you are, the ask, what to leave out, and a weak letter rewritten. - [Landing pages for acquisition letters](https://trysincerely.com/guides/acquisition-landing-pages): What a business owner should find after scanning the code on your letter: who you are, a short video, a private way to reply, and nothing to alarm staff. - [How to follow up with a business owner about selling](https://trysincerely.com/guides/follow-up-with-business-owners): After your letter arrives: when to call, what to say, when to write again, and what to do when a business owner says yes, not now, no, or nothing. - [What is proprietary deal flow?](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/proprietary-deal-flow): Proprietary deal flow is acquisitions a buyer finds by reaching owners directly, before an advisor runs a competitive sale. What it means and how it is built. --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact Agent routing index: https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt