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Branding for Investment Companies

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals

December 2013

Where are the Apples and Starbucks and Whole Foods of the investment world? Companies you know you can count on to deliver what you want consistently? That’s the essence of a brand, right? Standing for something consistent in the mind of the consumer. Given that investment companies are charged with delivering a product that is, by definition, inconsistent — investment performance — one might pose the question that is the topic for this newsletter, “How can investment companies brand effectively?”

With best wishes,

Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research

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Volume 3 | Number 10

In This Issue

Standing for Something Different

Differentiate or Die

The Enemies of Effective Branding

Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com

Standing for Something Different

This happened over 10 years ago and only now can I bear to think about it without a frisson of self-loathing. I had been hired by a European hedge fund manager to give a presentation during the company’s annual off-site and I found myself in a beautiful sylvan spot surrounded by fresh-faced new hires eager to learn about marketing as well as a few obviously skeptical veteran fund managers eager to be done with all this touchy-feely marketing stuff and get back to managing money.

I somehow let the topic drift away from the prearranged focus of the meeting — branding in general for investment companies — to the specific, thorny theme of branding for this particular hedge fund manager. To spark some audience interaction, I posed the question, “What does your company stand for? When people in the market think of your firm, what ideally should spring to mind?” After a really long silence, one of the new hires said, in a small, timid voice, “innovation?”

That’s when I knew I had lost control of the meeting. I soldiered on boldly anyway, still seeking answers to this big branding question, “What does your company stand for?” People said things like “integrity,” “a global footprint,” “research,” “risk awareness” and the like.

The reality is, most investment companies have not developed enduring brands. Some have tried and given up. Some never even bothered to try. Some succeeded for a short time, then drifted back into the sea of clichés that still characterizes so much of investment marketing. But a few inspired companies have created enduring brands — despite the complexities inherent in branding an intangible, volatile product that by law must wear the warning label, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

Here are five essential components for success in investment company branding:

1.

Define what you are branding. The firm, the investment strategy or both? For start-ups, the strategy and the company often are the same, but start-ups should consider their brand in light of likely growth opportunities. For investment conglomerates representing diverse global asset classes, the challenge of branding can be significant precisely because of this diversity.

2.

Stand for something different. Investment companies that say they stand for “in-depth fundamental research” or “a long-term view” concern me. Surely they know that all of their competitors make the same claims. And if they market their companies with zero regard for competitive realities, I reason, it’s also possible that they make investments with a similar lack of perspective. In all the years I have helped investment companies with branding, I have encountered only two firms without any source of competitive differentiation. Beneath the surface, there almost always is some compelling aspect of an attribute such as “in-depth research” that genuinely defines an investment firm’s competitive advantage in generating alpha.

3.

Verify external perceptions. Standing for something different is important, but it has to be something different that matters to your clients. Why did your clients hire your firm and why do consultants recommend it to their clients? If your answer is “performance,” that’s partly right. But what about how you generated that performance appeals to the market relative to approaches available from competing managers? What stories did you tell during a preliminary meeting and what ideas did you share in a finals that caused your firm to be selected for a competitive mandate? Interviews with clients, consultants, prospective clients, funds of funds, registered investment advisors and other consumers of a company’s investment products should be a required part of any investment company branding initiative.

4.

Create a brand that guides the actions of the firm. An effective brand isn’t just about logos and tag lines and advertising campaigns. It’s about how a company acts on a day-to-day basis, especially when the going gets tough. The brand might affect decisions such as where to cap assets under management, when to close an investment strategy, whether to avoid or pursue a certain type of investment, when to sell, the need to report malfeasance and if it makes sense to merge with a given suitor. One of the biggest compliments Alpha Partners ever received was a private wealth management company that told us the brand identity we helped it create ultimately steered the company away from a potentially disastrous merger.

5.

Execute broadly and be consistent. The key elements of a brand (see box below) are straightforward. But consistent, inspired execution is challenging; successful execution requires persistent effort by people who understand what the brand means and care about it. One of the biggest challenges to effective brand execution, I believe, is not lack of money or time; it is the human desire for diversity and change. Sticking to a brand requires commitment. You can’t have two brands and you must be faithful to your brand. (“No,” I assured the CEO of a mid-sized investment firm recently, “your company cannot have two tag lines. For maximum market impact, you must select just one.”)

Key Investment Brand Elements*

Internal Brand Components

•

A brand manifesto

–

What the brand means

–

How to act consistent with the brand

•

Execution of the investment philosophy
and process

•

The infrastructure required to execute

•

Culture

–

How clients are treated

–

How employees are treated

•

Growth strategy

External Brand Components

•

Name, logo and tag line

•

Description of the firm and specific
investment strategies

•

Client communications

•

Research, articles and white papers

•

Website and social media

•

Email marketing initiatives

•

Advertising, public relations & sponsorship

•

Presentations and road shows

* This chart was initially presented by Alpha Partners at the 2001 Schwab IMPACT conference.

Through experiences such as that long-ago off-site, I have learned that “What does your company stand for?” is a question that must be answered from the outside in and the inside out, from the vantage point of competitor analysis and a clear understanding of diverse client views. Answering this question as a foundation for action requires the drama of a grand rollout combined with behind-the-scenes negotiations worthy of Machiavelli. It should not be broached casually when all people want is a few marketing tips before they hit the golf course.

Differentiate or Die

For inspiration, I recommend this classic on branding, Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition, by Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin. One of the lessons I learned recently while reading this book is that “you can’t overcommunicate your difference.” Many people, myself included at times, often find the consistency required for effective branding to be hokey or somehow overdone. As in, “Do we really have to have some branding element on our holiday card?” But the realities of intense competition and short client attention spans argue for erring on the side of too much repetition rather than too little.

Another classic in the field of branding is Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand, by David F. D’Alessandro with Michele Owens. Mr. D’Alessandro, the former CEO of John Hancock, accurately portrays the joys and frustrations of getting branding right for a large financial services firm and the obstacles along the way.

The Enemies of Effective Branding

A successful brand can define your company’s competitive advantage, impart a sense of mission to your employees, facilitate expansion, make it possible to charge higher fees and, if applicable, ultimately sell for a higher price. According to Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2013 report, “CEOs are placing greater emphasis on their companies’ brands in investor communications,” taking their brands seriously enough to report on their value over time to investors.*

But there are many forces aligned against effective branding. In addition to inconsistent and sporadic implementation, there is fear of commitment, absence of useful market research, the tendency to imitate, the problems always associated with too many cooks in one branding kitchen and still, even today, the erroneous belief that the value of the brand cannot be measured. Of course all these obstacles only magnify the opportunity for companies that are able to build a strong brand and reinforce it consistently.

* Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2013 report provides a look at the financial performance of the brand, role of the brand in the purchase decision process and the strength of the brand. Every year Interbrand applies its brand valuation methodology to rank the 100 best global brands. Interbrand does not rank investment management firms. But in 2013 eleven financial services companies were included in the top 100, including American Express, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, AXA, Allianz, Morgan Stanley, Visa, Santander and MasterCard.

Questions? Comments? Dissent? Click here.

Click here for other issues of Excess Returns.

© 2013 Alpha Partners LLC Alpha Partners LLC
Marketing for Excess Returns®
1062 Oakridge Road South | Park City, UT | 84098

You are receiving this newsletter as a member of the investment community. If you no longer wish to receive it, please respond to this email with “No More Penguins” in the subject line. To subscribe to this newsletter, send an email with your request to info@alphainvestmentmarketing.com. Your privacy is important to us. We will never rent, sell or share any information that you provide.

Investment Marketing 1.0

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals

November 2013

Maybe it’s a sign of optimism due to current stock market strength. Or perhaps more portfolio managers want to control their own destiny in an increasingly volatile world. Whatever the reason, Alpha Partners lately has received many calls from new investment firms wanting help with the ABCs of investment marketing. A recurring theme of these inquiries is, “We don’t know where to start.” This issue of Excess Returns defines and prioritizes key first steps, with advice on how to avoid the most common mistakes.

With best wishes,

Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research

Print a PDF of this newsletter

Volume 3 | Number 9

In This Issue

Investment Marketing 1.0

The Art of the Start

20 Ways to Win & Keep AUM

Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com

Investment Marketing 1.0

A few years ago, a board member for a fledgling private equity company introduced me to the managing partner. The board member explained that the company badly needed help with its marketing. Several conversations ensued and Alpha Partners ultimately submitted a proposal to the managing partner. After reviewing the proposal, the managing partner explained that the firm did not want to move ahead at that time. Instead, he told me, he and his partners wanted to focus on “just getting the word out.”

Having read his company’s existing marketing literature, I felt compelled to ask, with a bit more edge than I had intended, “Get the word out about what?” For “the word,” as far as I could tell, was a pallid variant of “Got deal flow?” And claiming “deal flow” as a competitive advantage in private equity is akin to claiming “bottom-up fundamental research” as a competitive advantage in public equity.

My question (“Get the word out about what?”) underscores one of the biggest mistakes that start-up investment firms typically make: they confuse sales with marketing. But there are other mistakes — and ways to get it right straight out of the starting gate. Here are a few basic guidelines that may be helpful — not only for recently founded firms but also for established companies launching new strategies:

Know what you are selling. As an investment company, you are selling two things: (1) your performance numbers and (2) the story of how you achieved those numbers and why you believe your approach is repeatable. The numbers are vulnerable to change; your story, by contrast, should have the clear ring of unalterable, timeless truth.

Present the numbers correctly. Firms such as The Spaulding Group can help your company navigate the complexities of GIPS compliance and otherwise bless your numbers as needed depending on the audience you plan to target. The next step is to make sure the numbers are updated regularly in the consultant, manager of manager and investment platform databases that your firm has identified as targets.

Understand the difference between marketing and sales. Many start-ups incorrectly believe that their placement agent or third-party distribution firm is going to handle the creation of marketing materials. Yet most placement agents and third-party firms specialize in sales (i.e., getting the word out) — not marketing. Some of these firms may well have the wherewithal to meet your new company’s marketing needs, but it would be wise to confirm this in depth. Ask who, specifically, will be responsible for creating the marketing literature? What is that person’s experience in investment marketing? How long has he or she been in this business? Does the individual have the critical faculties required to articulate a strong story about your company when a strong story is vital to raising assets? And finally, will there be an additional fee for these services or is it all part of one package?

Keep it simple and start small. Early in the life of your company, you need clear language free of clichés and simple, clean, clutter-free graphic design. You don’t yet need a tag line or white papers or advertising and the like. That can come later. But if you are to be taken seriously by consultants, registered investment advisors, managers of managers and prospective clients, you do need the following as soon as possible and in this order:

1.

Corporate identity such as letterhead, memo forms and business cards.

2.

A one-page profile of your firm and its investment strategy. (In the push to develop the presentation book, firms often forget that there is a more efficient way to share preliminary information. The presentation book should unfold the larger story introduced in this profile.)

3.

A 15- to 20-page presentation book consistent with institutional presentation best practices.

4.

A library of answers to frequently asked Request for Proposal questions.

5.

A simple starter website describing the firm, its reason for being and its approach to investing.

These are the must-have components of any investment marketing program. Getting them right requires a lot of work. You cannot merely (as some firms do) slap a PowerPoint presentation online and say, “Here is our new website.” The good news, however, is that much of this content does overlap. Once the firm has crafted a strong one-page profile, for example, that same language and look can serve as the foundation for the story told by the presentation book.

Respect intellectual property rights. I am aware of two firms that had to change their names within a year of starting because they failed to do a clearance search and secure the rights to their name. So if you think your company or product has a cool name (or logo or tag line), keep this firmly in mind: it might already belong to somebody else. And that somebody else, cautions our firm’s intellectual property attorney, Charles Roberts, does not have to be another investment company for conflicting ownership to become a big problem.

Test drive frequently to build conviction. Once you have a solid foundation for a strong investment marketing program, the final step is frequent test drives. Simulate situations where investment and sales professionals have opportunities to tell the story. Conduct mock presentations and Q&A prep sessions. In this way, you polish the marketing story and build genuine conviction in everyone who needs to tell the story well consistently.

In sum, that’s where to start: with a well-informed, tested, high-conviction, legally approved answer to the question, “About what?”

The Art of the Start

“I wish we could post all the information in this book on Sequoia Capital’s website,” said partner Michael Moritz, “because it would make our jobs much easier.” Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start covers all aspects of starting a business, from writing a business plan to raising capital to branding and rainmaking. The chapters on “The Art of Pitching” and “The Art of Branding” will prove invaluable to investment companies seeking to build a brand.


In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki provides marketing advice that start-up investment companies would do well to emulate.

20 Ways to Win & Keep AUM

Recently formed investment companies and established global firms alike will find inspiration in the Alpha Partners Presentation Best Practices Guide. The Guide provides straightforward advice on how to win business through the power of a strong story well told. Commissioned by one of our clients to train a global sales and marketing team, Alpha Partners retained the copyright to the Guide and now uses it to prepare participants for our presentation strategy and coaching sessions. The Guide provides a framework for developing an institutional-quality presentation and explores 20 presentation best practices in depth, including (my personal favorites) “Be Specific — Prove It” and “Sharpen Your Focus on the Audience.” This primer focuses on the presentation but has broad application to all investment marketing initiatives.

The Guide can be purchased directly or used in conjunction with a training program. For more information, please contact me by email or phone: 435.615.6862.

Questions? Comments? Dissent? Click here.

Click here for other issues of Excess Returns.

© 2013 Alpha Partners LLC Alpha Partners LLC
Marketing for Excess Returns®
1062 Oakridge Road South | Park City, UT | 84098

You are receiving this newsletter as a member of the investment community. If you no longer wish to receive it, please respond to this email with “No More Penguins” in the subject line. To subscribe to this newsletter, send an email with your request to info@alphainvestmentmarketing.com. Your privacy is important to us. We will never rent, sell or share any information that you provide.

Conviction = Credibility

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals

October 2013

It’s the most important ingredient in any winning presentation. The secret sauce. Only it’s not so secret because everyone knows what it is; they just don’t always know how to create it consistently. I am talking, of course, about conviction — the heartfelt belief that your investment company offers the best approach and the keen desire to share that belief with your audience. This month, Excess Returns considers the importance of conviction: how to get it, how to keep it and how to communicate it consistently.

With best wishes,

Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research

Print a PDF of this newsletter

Volume 3 | Number 8

In This Issue

Conviction = Credibility

Spy The Lie

“That’s A Good Question”

Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com

Conviction = Credibility

Long, long ago and far, far away, our company was hired for an odd assignment: presentation coaching on delivery only — not content. We were told that this particular investment team had worked hard on its story and messaging and now just needed to fine-tune the delivery. I understood the need to maintain consistency, but I still felt compelled to ask, “Are you sure you don’t want us to address content as well, perhaps only where we see the need for refinement around the edges?” No, said our contact, the investment team was completely comfortable with the content.

It turned out that, while senior management was comfortable with the content, the investment team was less than 100% on board. We acceded to this company’s bizarre request because I thought it would be interesting, and it was. During the coaching session, one person said “That’s a good question!” in response to every question. Another delivered a disquisition on the shortcomings of performance attribution in response to a relatively simple inquiry about the track record. And yet a third person responded to even layup questions with a peculiar wincing motion, as if about to be struck.

What was going on here? For any number of reasons, this team lacked conviction.

Sources of Conviction

Conviction can’t be faked. You either have it or you don’t. Even when you do have strong conviction, however, there are many things you and your firm can do to communicate it more effectively and to foster conviction in others on the team who do not live the investment process day to day.

Strong content. Delivery is content. If your content is weak, then you cannot deliver the investment story with conviction. There are several reasons why content might be weak. Content that started strong may have been killed by committee. Or content may have been created in a vacuum of ignorance about competitors with virtually identical content. In the latter instance, presenters know on some level that they sound exactly like their competitors, which does not exactly contribute to high-conviction delivery.

Ownership. Even strong content can fail, devolving back to bland uniformity, if the whole team does not get behind it. Our firm has developed processes to ensure that everyone charged with presenting an investment strategy feels a sense of ownership regarding the story and the presentation materials. Without such buy-in, presenters may appear to lack conviction or, worse, wander off the reservation altogether, telling a story inconsistent with the larger messages a firm wishes to convey. (We work with many investment companies that sometimes send product specialists and salespeople to a finals instead of portfolio managers; it is particularly critical that these professionals demonstrate conviction, especially when competing with teams from smaller companies that do include the portfolio manager.)

Preparation. Strong content also fails to create conviction if presenters are not well prepared. Experienced presenters all know that invincible feeling one gets when one has truly prepared well. Prepared individually and as a team. Prepared for the main body of the presentation as well as the Q&A. Prepared with the book and without the book. If you’ve been telling the same story for a long time, you are by definition well prepared. But you still need to come to the story fresh so as not to sound rote and formulaic.

Understanding the audience. The best way to prevent formulaic delivery is to understand your audience. What do they want, as a group and as individuals? How can your organization help them achieve their goals? How can you make this meeting the best possible use of their time?

Physical energy and freedom from distractions. Even the strongest conviction may fail you if you feel tired or distracted. It therefore is a good idea to avoid activities that will exhaust you the day of or prior to an important meeting. You also should make every effort to stay focused. Do you really need to schedule four meetings on the same day? Couldn’t that phone call wait until after the finals?

Whenever anyone offers us a “delivery-only” mandate now, we encourage the client to rethink this approach. There is an unhealthy “do-what-you’re-told” aspect to delivery-only that will never support genuine team conviction. Developing team ownership of a presentation is a demanding, dynamic, often time-consuming process — but the payback in finals-winning conviction is well worth the effort.

Spy The Lie

In “What Deception Looks Like” and “What Deception Sounds Like,” two chapters of the 2012 book Spy The Lie, the authors, former CIA officers, explore visual and verbal behaviors that indicate deception. What struck me about this book was the number and type of deception indicators that we also see as signs of weakness during an investment presentation. People who must tell a credible story (product specialists, sales professionals, CIOs and CEOs) should read this book, as should investment research professionals required to assess the credibility of company managements.


Ex-CIA agents have a lot to teach the investment world about detecting deception. In Spy The Lie, there also are many valuable lessons for presenters who need to tell a high-conviction story consistently.

“That’s A Good Question”

For many years I have counseled our clients to stop prefacing their response to questions with “That’s a good question.” People who respond this way often do so almost as a nervous tick. Your competitors also very likely may answer most questions in precisely this manner. An even better reason to avoid this ubiquitous response, however, is that it may be perceived as evasive. Spy The Lie singles out “That’s a good question” as one of several “non-answer statements” designed to “buy time to figure out how to respond.” If the occasional “that’s a good question” slips out, it’s not a major problem, as long as the question is indeed a blazingly good question. On the whole, however, it is best to avoid this response. Show your respect for the question instead through the quality of your answer.

Questions? Comments? Dissent? Click here.

Click here for other issues of Excess Returns.

© 2013 Alpha Partners LLC Alpha Partners LLC
Marketing for Excess Returns®
1062 Oakridge Road South | Park City, UT | 84098

You are receiving this newsletter as a member of the investment community. If you no longer wish to receive it, please respond to this email with “No More Penguins” in the subject line. To subscribe to this newsletter, send an email with your request to info@alphainvestmentmarketing.com. Your privacy is important to us. We will never rent, sell or share any information that you provide.

Thinking Outside the Funnel

Excess Returns

Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals

September 2013

It is arguably the most important part of any new business presentation and a focal point of how consultants get to know investment companies. Why then is the investment process diagram so dull, so relentlessly the same from one firm to the next and, ultimately, so devoid of any genuine connection to what it is designed to portray? In answering these questions, this issue of Excess Returns considers different ways to bring the investment process to life.

With best wishes,

Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research

Print a PDF of this newsletter

Volume 3 | Number 7

In This Issue

A Radical Idea

Thinking Outside The Funnel

Getting Safely Down

Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.

Alpha Partners LLC
435.615.6862

www.alphainvestmentmarketing.com

A Radical Idea

I have just almost completed the first draft of a presentation book about a specific investment strategy, and I am pleased with it. But there is one looming problem still to be solved. I have not yet even started the most difficult and in many ways the most important page: the investment process map.

What will it be this time? The omnipresent funnel? Or a classic flow chart? Or perhaps a central point with lots of fat arrows around it, all flowing in and out dynamically? Happily, mine is not the challenge of designing this artifact. I do, however, need to help decide what it will be and somehow suffuse it with meaning. I also will work with the investment team on strategies for presenting the page effectively.

I have been involved in studying and creating investment process diagrams for almost 30 years now. One part of me understands how important these diagrams are, and I have very specific views on how to increase their information value. Another part of me understands that no amount of creativity applied to the diagram itself can help if investment company professionals do not fully understand its role and how to use it effectively.

Before I deliver on the title of this article, let’s consider the information that an investment process map ideally should convey.

The Investment Process: What Potential Investors Want to Know

Clients and consultants (especially consultants) want answers to the following questions:

Is the investment process repeatable? Or is it more luck than skill? Obviously, a pictorial representation of who does what when is critical if one wishes to convey consistency.

Is it truly a team effort? Or does it exist solely inside the head of one portfolio manager? Is the culture of the firm such that the portfolio manager inculcates his or her beliefs and discipline in a team who could carry on if (s)he is struck down by the proverbial bus?

Is it understandable? A clear, linear representation of a complex, nonlinear investment process facilitates understanding. This simplified representation may not fully capture what goes on day to day, but the process map itself nonetheless can serve as a bridge to conceptual clarity.

Is it systematic? By answering questions about who does what when, the process map helps potential investors see directly the discipline built into implementation. A good process diagram also can help investment firms answer questions about how they systematically learn from experience.

Is it efficient? How is the investment process structured to ensure that decision-makers have the time and resources to decide effectively, especially in a smaller organization?

How does the team leverage the resources of the firm? As discussed in the June-July 2013 issue of Excess Returns, large global investment firms need to spend less time telling everyone how large and global they are and more time showing why investors should care. The investment process discussion is an ideal place to talk about how one investment team benefits from being part of a large organization.

Do the parts come together into one greater whole? Does the process integrate complementary elements such as macroeconomic analysis with company-specific research, quantitative data with qualitative insights and tactics with strategy?

Of course the best way to answer these questions is not with a diagram but with specific examples suggested by the diagram. The process map merely fulfills a requirement. Make it great, touch on it decisively and then move into the rich realm of real-life examples showing how the process works. Because (and here is the radical idea), the less time you spend on the process map, the better. Whether your process is a funnel or a flow chart, if you spend too much time talking about it in the abstract (as so many investment company professionals do), you will succeed only in losing the interest of your audience.

Thinking Outside The Funnel

Sometimes it is an inverse triangle. Sometimes it looks like a tornado and sometimes it is presented as a sort of giant sieve. The humble funnel has many different manifestations in investment company literature. And why not? The funnel shows, with clarity and simplicity, how the process navigates from a universe of potential investments to a portfolio of actual investments.

The problem with the funnel, however, is the lack of creativity it has come to imply. As a consultant once explained to me, “Frankly, we get very tired of looking at the funnel because if everyone explains their process using the exact same three-sided figure, then you start to wonder what differentiates these firms and maybe we should index our portfolio.”

So how can marketing and sales professionals tell a more interesting story about their investment process? The answer lies not in the shape of the diagram but in being more specific about what the investment team is looking for and what is different in how they go about finding it. Also, as noted in the next article, another still neglected key to a more interesting process map is the sell discipline.


Investment marketing professionals looking for alternatives to the funnel might enjoy Nancy Duarte’s book, slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. In the chapter entitled “Creating Diagrams,” Ms. Duarte provides a definitive, thorough discussion of many different types of process diagrams.

Getting Safely Down

Circa 2000 I wrote an article about why investment managers avoid discussing their sell discipline. Today, after a huge leap forward in the sophistication of investment marketing, many investment process maps still show the portfolio as their final destination with no mention of the sell discipline. Most firms also still say they sell for a standard set of reasons (valuation, portfolio rebalancing, a better idea and oh let’s not forget “deteriorating fundamentals”). And yet, as Sir Edmund Hillary once observed, “success depends on getting safely down.” So if you have the good fortune to represent a firm with a thoughtful sell discipline, then make sure you include it in the process description. And if you represent a firm without a thoughtful sell discipline, then realize that you might someday have bigger problems than the look of your investment process map!

Questions? Comments? Dissent? Click here.

Click here for other issues of Excess Returns.

© 2013 Alpha Partners LLC Alpha Partners LLC
Marketing for Excess Returns®
1062 Oakridge Road South | Park City, UT | 84098

You are receiving this newsletter as a member of the investment community. If you no longer wish to receive it, please respond to this email with “No More Penguins” in the subject line. To subscribe to this newsletter, send an email with your request to info@alphainvestmentmarketing.com. Your privacy is important to us. We will never rent, sell or share any information that you provide.

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