BY 2016 there will for the first time be more than 1m households in the UK with wealth of more than £1.5m, an increase of 276% in a decade, according to a Wealth Insights survey conducted by Barclays.

And this year someone would have needed at least £80m in assets to rate even a mention in The Sunday Times Rich List (the 1,000 richest people in Britain), up from £60m two years ago.

With money like that, these super rich are not too troubled about their ability to pay a mortgage and feel no need to cut back on discretionary spending. In other words, they are just the kind of customers that every small business needs to see them through the tough times ahead. But how do you go about finding – and keeping – them?

Martin Nieri is the managing director of CMW, a communications agency, and has worked extensively with Porsche, advising the luxury-car maker on its marketing strategy. He said the key to selling to the super rich was understanding what they want and what makes them tick.

For a start, he said, they want straightforward sales pitches. “These guys are probably drivers of a business; they like facts, they like things to the point.”

They also value exclusiveness and rarity. What appeals to them is not more products but access to exclusive experiences. “It is about giving them bragging rights among their friends,” said Nieri.

So how do you go about getting your business in front of the rich? Surprisingly, Nieri said one of the best ways to target them was by direct mail. This is because, if you can get hold of their home addresses, you can in effect bypass workplace gate-keepers such as personal assistants and receptionists.

“But it obviously has to be what they want to see. If you are communicating from Porsche, there is a relevance to these people. If you are communicating with a home-insurance policy, there is not.”

To reach your target audience you need to know how to use mailing lists. If you are trying to sell luxury cars, you can use lists sold by insurance companies. They give a record of which people are asking for quotes on what type of cars. Then you can overlay this with, for example, a tool by Experian called Financial Strategy Segments that will give you an indication of how affluent these people are. Another way of finding the super rich is through the subscription lists of specialist titles such as yachting magazines, which have a high net worth readership.

Once you have made contact it is vital for everyone in your firm to know exactly what they are talking about – and for your staff to have the power to take decisions.

Nieri said: “There is nothing more frustrating for this audience than to talk to someone who doesn’t have the full answer or tries to make it up as they go along. If a rich customer decides to buy something, he wants to do it very quickly.”

Dave Davies is the founder of PR Sports Entertainers, which supplies sporting celebrities, and Soccerbid.co.uk, which deals in sporting memorabilia. He has had more than 20 years of experience in selling to the rich.

“Moneyed people are very loyal,” he said. “ I find that if we look after them they will come back time and time again – and they will recommend us to other people.”

Davies said the secret to selling to the rich was to adopt a suitably subservient attitude and be able to deal with rudeness.

“The super rich don’t ask, they tell you. You have to tolerate that if you want to continue working for them. Provided people are spending money with us, then within reason I am happy to be subservient.”

The rich are also not very good at being told they can’t have exactly what they want. “Quite often they will just put the phone down on you. Then they will have a sulk but after while they will call back.”

You must also be prepared to deal with unusual demands. “Quite often they don’t want to trust a courier or the post and they want something delivered by hand,” said Davies. “We have sent people to deliver things by hand to the south of France and Switzerland many times.” He has ground rules for dealing with the rich. First, he is respectful – he will never, for example, talk to a footballer about a game. Second, he is extremely discreet and does not name names.

Davies said that, contrary to what you might expect, the rich are careful with their money and expect good value.

“I have found that generally the rich will watch every single pound and penny,” he said. “You will always struggle to get your money out of them. We have to say, hold on a minute, can we just arrange when you are physically going to pay us for all this because 120 or 240-day credit is not a good way to run a business.”

Charles Bradstock is the joint owner of Browse & Darby, an art gallery on London’s Cork Street that deals in paintings and sculpture. Many of his clients are rich. He said it pays to be extremely know-ledgeable about what you are selling, and unfazed by unusual requests.

The other key is not to pigeonhole the rich. “Some like to be left alone to gather their thoughts by themselves, while others very much like having tutorials and being told exactly what this or that artist is about. They are two very different approaches and one has to gauge that accordingly.”

Piers Pollock is strategy and planning director of The Gate, an advertising and communications agency that works with financial-services companies such as private banks and hedge funds. He said that because they can buy what they want, the rich place a big value on experiences rather than products.

“If you are going to try and attract them then you need to be offering something they can’t buy – like meeting someone or being at an event that they couldn’t have got to by themselves.”

Pollock said that it was also important to remember the super rich place great value on time because they don’t have much of it. “They don’t want to waste time so that affects the sort of product you are offering. You need to make sure it is simple to buy, very intuitive to use, and offers an intelligent solution.

“For example, moving money around the world can be very complicated, so if you are a private bank you want to be making that extremely simple.”

The good news, said Pollock, is there is nothing to stop even the smallest enterprise doing business with the rich. “As a small business you can break into that market because you have knowledge, contacts and access that sometimes the super wealthy don’t have.”

Times Recommends

• C&G axed - 1,660 jobs to be lost
• UK house prices rise 1.1% as buyers return
• Mixed reaction to US banks repaying bailouts