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Why did that pitch fail? · Two in Twenty

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Tune20, the news podcast from the team at White Marble Consulting.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kirsten Hastings, head of content at White Marble.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: In each episode, we seek to lift the lid on investment marketing issues, challenges, and industry trends.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Featuring in this episode, we have Nick Pilkington, Consultancy Director at White Marble.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Over the next 20 or so minutes, we will be talking about value propositions, specifically how asset managers can stand out.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've spent most of my career before White Marble in boutique land.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as a marketer in boutiques where there aren't teams of product specialists, you're often heavily involved in all aspects of the product messaging, product stories, et cetera.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned my trade as a marketer very much in the mode of a product specialist in a larger organization.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's given me the fortune of having a good understanding of how farm managers work, how they think, but also from the investor's point of view, what they need to know.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, I lead on all the investment value proposition and product messaging projects that we do as consultants.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And these days, the rise of alternatives, the mix of products that we're asked to help on gets more and more diverse, more and more weird and wonderful things that we're asked to help build up these stories for.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a really interesting part of the marketing mix to be involved in.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the areas that we're going to be talking about over the next 20 or so minutes is value propositions.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if regular listeners to this podcast know that I'm a fan of starting with definitions.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So for any of our listeners who are newer to the industry or less familiar with the jargon, what do we actually mean when we talk about value propositions?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is a clear sense of what you're offering, what your investment capability offers to the client.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And most importantly, then how to tell that as a story that is going to make them sit up and listen and resonate with them.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what makes your investment process, your investment capability work, and a very clear sense of why investors can be confident in its long-term effectiveness.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they want in their investment decision making.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, it's a very clear sense of why investors should choose us and our funds.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's face it, everybody at some point in this industry has sat through a presentation, whether it's from a salesperson or if it's from a fund manager that perhaps didn't quite have the impact that was intended.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So what you've come up with and what you're going to share with us are five factors that you believe are the key ingredients for a successful pitch or presentation.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one, I believe, is clarity.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So what is it that we need to take on board here as presenters when it comes to clarity?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is the basis of success.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Be absolutely clear in your messaging.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: The quality of your pitch is built on that clear sense of what you want the client to know, what you want them to remember why they should buy this fund.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can build that up as a story that enables them to be confident in how and why this fund will deliver on its goals, then they are going to remember that.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you need to get to a simple sense of what the factors in their confidence are, and then a clear way of telling that as a story.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the power of three, it won't always be three.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can get to that sense of a clear structure and then use that as the driving narrative for your pitch.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So at the outset, if you can say there are three things I'm going to talk to you about today, be that simple and concerted about it, and then have a very clear lineup of slides as your pitch book that is telling that story and enabling you to tell and validate that story.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got that sense of clarity in your own mind as to what those three things are, then you will deliver a pitch that is clear and concise and with a clear narrative structure, beginning in the middle and an end to it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so your conversation, and it is a conversation, not a monologue, but we'll come on to that.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Your conversation is going to be that much more clear and impactful to the client.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: One other thing I'd add in this point of clarity is something I'm always struck by is sometimes how hard it is for investment teams to be really clear on what is the role of the fund from the client's point of view.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: What part does it play in their portfolio?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: How does it sit in their asset allocation?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: As I say, it's surprising, but it's quite hard sometimes for investment teams really to answer that question.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can, and therefore back drives that story of how you sell the fund and how you're positioning it in terms of their asset allocation thinking and decision making, your story will be that much more powerful.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Help the client fit this into their existing asset allocation framework.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So find out from them what it is.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we'll come on to that conversational element a bit later.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Being clear on what is this fund here to do, and then that story based on why you can be confident that it will, that drives the logic, clarity, and impact of your presentation.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing in my list of five is put the client at the center of it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: This relates to that aspect of understanding what part the fund plays in their asset allocation.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than holding forth on that at the top of the meeting, get them talking.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ask them what are their current concerns, what are they worried about, what's keeping their clients awake if it's an advisor intermediary relationship.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Get them talking.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then you're able to position your fund or funds or whichever capability you have in your arsenal as a solution for what it is that they need.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Just think how different that is from the plastic opening gambit of most asset managers talking about how big they are and how many offices they've got.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're coming in with a completely different tone to the conversation.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Get them talking about, respond to what they're worried about.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then you can bring in those creds about your scale later on, but in the context of why they matter as to how you can provide the right products to help solve those concerns that they have.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a consultative conversational approach to the whole idea of fund saying, becoming much more common now.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of people are taking that approach.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: But what it does in then the way we present when we get to the fund presentation, the way we present the fund is that you've got that emotional hook as to what they're thinking.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that you can present it, we use the word emotional.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know it sounds odd in the context of selling investment funds, but choosing funds is an emotional decision.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And however sophisticated the audience is, they're human.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we can present our offering in the context of frankly how it will allow them to sleep at night.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So really tapping into that humanity, that emotional element of the decision-making process that they're going to.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean in practical terms?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Asset managers are very good on the what and the how of their investment process, mainly the what, a bit of the how.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: What they're not good at is the why.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: How will the investor benefit from your approach, from your capability?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you've got a huge research platform, lots of analysts all over the world, but you know, so what?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Why does this matter?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: How do I, the audience, the investor, benefit?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: We mentioned before about that approach of asset managers coming in and kind of talking about themselves.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that mode, let me tell you how many offices we've got.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got nine offices and 150 analysts all around the world with no sense of the context of that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why is that important to me?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Versus if you bring that in later in the context of the success, the key ingredients of success in how you run your portfolios, and take an approach more along the lines of the reason we can run this fund to deliver reliable returns is the breadth and depth of our local research in local markets, and the comprehensive framework that we use built on that local insight for selecting high-ield bonds or whatever it might be.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the same story about depth and breadth and people, but you're telling it in the way as to why it leads to better outcomes.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a very different tone and approach to the typical numbers-based look how big we are.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about how many offices we've got.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody cares about that, but they do care that you can do a good job on running their fund and why.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So for first one, we had clarity, and then we had client centricity.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So for the third of your five factors for success, we have relevance.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So relevance.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can see decks where the investment team have built the deck over time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a criticism, but they don't have a filter of what's important in their process and which parts the client really need to know and what is salient for a good story that will help them in their decision-making process.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Think about that kind of the salient key phases in your process that enable you to build up that clear, short, that's important, story as to how you do this and why that matters.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking about that in the context of an initial pitch, what's important.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that initial pitch is the same story, but it's a different version of it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a different level of material and information you need compared to a due diligence meeting coming much later in that sales process.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's think of it as the buying process.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to live up to this client-centric standard.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: That due diligence meeting, yes, you need to go into the detail of, yeah, we have weekly meetings looking at um stock selection and fortnightly meetings looking at macro views and all of this kind of stuff.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: You find that level of detail creeping into these initial pitches, and it's just not the bit for the most part that is going to affect the client's decision.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Really, is it going to mean that you're going to get through to the next round?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the bit that we should be focusing on.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of this comes back to that first point around clarity and impact.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: A key ingredient in that is being selective as to what's important in building up that story.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: The other bit on relevance also relates to what we're talking about about research platforms and things like that, which is to differentiate.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: That is actually extremely hard to do, whether it's at a product level or at a kind of asset class capability level.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're using this examples.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of companies have big research platforms, but just talking about its existence isn't going to set you apart.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But what does set you apart?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: What distinguishes yours?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why is there high quality security selection coming out of your research platforms?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is it about the behavior, the culture of the team, the way that they interact with each other and with the portfolio managers?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: What drives and nurtures that proactive behavior?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: You hear lots of companies talk about collaboration, very few of them actually doing a good job of illustrating that it happens and illustrating why it matters.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you can do that, that will differentiate you.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Differentiation can exist sometimes in the power of your storytelling rather than you've got a radically different story to what everyone else is doing.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: You probably haven't, to be fair.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And let's all be realistic as to how much we can differentiate from our competition in a service-based industry like this.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hard to do.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes, yes, focus on the storytelling element to differentiate in the emphasis on the showing, not just the telling around things like collaboration.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: That actually leads in quite neatly to my fourth point, which is about authenticity and evidence.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Be true to who you are and show, not tell.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So being true to who you are, actually don't see many groups falling down on this, but I do still think it's really important.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Make it absolutely authentic and realistic to who you are.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then sometimes just thinking about the claims that you're making and the language with which you're doing so.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I am gonna call out here the investment marketing bingo from our point of view, phrases like we have ESG in our DNA.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't come off as realistic.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you're saying you've been doing it since 1980, I could have used some dates going much further back that that would start to make it a bit obvious who we're talking about.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not realistic.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So be authentic to who you are.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then that element of show and up tell, you know, validate the effectiveness of what you do with real case studies.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: We see so many case studies that are really interesting stories of what we've just been investing in.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Great, interesting to talk about.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: But what we're actually trying to do here is get people confident in our process and our approach.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the case studies should be case studies of you, told through the lens of the work that you've done in analyzing something that you have invested in.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it is a case study of your approach, your process, and how it works.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So use them as simple stories and clear illustrations of what are sometimes quite complicated investment processes.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: So these are a really, really powerful way of bringing that alive beyond the you know hypothetical investment process slides that everybody has.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is where you can you can make it real.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we've gone from first we have clarity, then we had client centricity, relevance, fourth, we had authenticity and evidence.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is your fifth top tip when it comes to storytelling?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: The last one is is consistency, and this is really thinking about it beyond just meetings when you are selling your capability or your product, either before that meeting or afterwards, the client will be doing their own work.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: They have a research process that extends way beyond the time you have with them in face-to-face meetings.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's therefore absolutely crucial that whatever you're saying, whatever you've landed upon has that clear, simple story of why they should buy this fund or your capability rings true and comes through to them in every touch point that they have with you.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: All the literature, even the ongoing portfolio updates, it's there implicitly and possibly explicitly in a little summary down the side, in your front pages on your site and the copy around your asset class capability in your PR.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Everything, everywhere.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard, it takes time, it takes effort to do, but that consistency of message persistently told everywhere is a very important ingredient of success here because the whole credibility of everything that you're saying is completely undermined.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: If they then either don't get any sense of it in the interactions that they have with you as a company when you're not in the room, or if there's actually something slightly different that they're seeing, then you're kind of hold below the waterline in that situation.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So think about how you apply this and how the client is going to see and research everything about you and your product, beyond just the proposition that you're building as to how you're selling it in face-to-face meetings.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's my five principles of success for effective value propositions.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So telling this investment story is really a struggle for every single asset class, right across the industry.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And why do you think that is?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a good question thinking back 10, 15 years ago, where almost everything was at a product level and building fairly simple reasons why for a product isn't hard.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: The world has moved on a bit.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think now a lot of groups, given the size of their product range and the way in which investors are engaging with them and the sophistication of the fund buyers and the role that they have as professional fund analysts, etc., means that these days it can be much more important to sell and paint that picture of your broad asset class capability rather than just right this quarter or this year, we're selling these three funds.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't work so much anymore.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is not generally the way in which most groups go about it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And these days, an approach that just focuses on those principal products is not really going to be what resonates with the end investors, be they institutional or the sophisticated fund buyers in the wholesale environment.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: That means that the emphasis is much more on asset class capability, and you need that overarching proposition as to why your capability and ultimately the underlying products in that asset class are any good and why investors can be confident in them.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you're doing so at a different level to just the single product.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to build this story up at an asset class level.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's always been hard.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know, me saying make it about the client, make it benefit-led, you know, tell stories.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy to say these things.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to get this right.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's changed is it's become even more important.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a few factors behind that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of groups now, yes, they will have their priority products that they're focusing on is sales-wise in any given period, but they also know that that's not enough, that you need to have an almost always-on sense of your capability and the promotion of it in any asset class, the sophistication of the fund buyers in every audience, the move to a more kind of solution-based mindset amongst both the asset managers and the clients as to what they need.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if we take that through to its logical conclusion of personalized investment products, where we're all potentially going in the years to come, all of that means that this broader messaging around your asset class capability plays a bigger role than just pushing a few products that change over time according to what you've got to sell and what investors need.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot for marketers to do in all of that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: The areas that they need in their skill set has become incredibly complicated.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So perhaps it's not surprising that sometimes the level of expertise in the investment side of the story is in some marketers not as strong as it used to be.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that is not a criticism given the breadth of skills that marketers need wherever you turn.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: But this concept of a powerful story and the right way to tell it is crucial as an ingredient of success.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that awareness of what makes a good investment story is crucial for a marketing function.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone needs to be fully immersed in the nuance of your investment approach, et cetera, et cetera.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's not necessary, but it's such an important factor in success that that's why we wanted to share with you what we see as the key ingredients of success in getting this right.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, other than the very simple and clearly straightforward task of adopting those five aforementioned factors in every single presentation, whether they be clarity, client centricity, relevance, authenticity and evidence, and consistency.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: For our audience of investment marketers, is there anything else that you would like them to take away from this episode?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something different.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's something we've already talked about, but it's think about the client.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Put them at the heart of the story in how you start, how you pull through the benefits rather than just the features and how you're trying to build up their confidence in the future success of what you do.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you can do that, they will be really happy to invest in your fund.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to the end of our 20 minutes.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: My thanks to Nick for sharing his insights and expertise.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about value propositions, presentations, or any other topic in this podcast, please do get in contact using the details in the description.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe to Two and 20 through Apple, Google, and Spotify.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: If there are any other topics for investment marketers you would like Two and 20 to cover, please do get in touch.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find episodes from our earlier podcasts in High on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening until next time.