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iPad – a sales game changer

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 28, 2011, in Thoughts

Mike and I are skeptics naturally.  And we’ll be the first to wonder just how important is Apple’s iPad to sales and marketing practices within the industry.  So while I’d love to remain skeptical about the iPad’s use in business, I’ve come around to agree that – used appropriately – the iPad can be a game changer for sales forces throughout the industry.

Many people have already said this; they usually mention the iPad’s robust e-mail capabilities or CRM access.

I think the game changer functionality is more subtle, closer to etiquette.  Think of this situation.

Sales person and prospective client meet for lunch.  They get to talking about a product feature, performance, or something related.  The sales person wants to use some data to prove a point.

Most likely the sales person isn’t going to pull out his laptop, boot it up, log in, plug in a USB networking device, access the Web, find the data, and then turn the laptop to face the prospect. By this point, the prospective client has finished his sandwich.

Also, it’s unlikely that the sales person’s BlackBerry is fast enough to access the data quickly or big enough to keep the sales person from squinting.

Most likely, the sales person will fumble through a dossier to find something printed that approximates proving the point.  In this case, the sandwich may get finished and the printed material may not be exactly right.

The iPad’s instant-readiness (powering on and connecting to the network) married with the resolution give the iPad “game changer” potential. The sales person could pull it out, immediately turn it sideways for both people to see and navigate to the exact data.  In this case, the conversation continues.

For the right sales person, the iPad can complement a sales process in a way that other technologies can not.

Asset Managers as Content Aggregators?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 27, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

Many of our asset management clients face a common issue – they don’t generate as much high-quality content as they’d like.  It’s a frustrating issue for marketing teams and most often chalked up to a lack of resources.

As I read about some recent developments at Seeking Alpha, a thought came to mind – should asset managers invest more effort in content aggregation and less in content creation?

Seeking Alpha is among the better known and regarded financial blogs out there.  The site publishes 250+ articles daily, drawn from a pool of 3,000 (non-proprietary) contributors.  Some of the authors, who include financial advisors, and individual articles get quite a bit of attention (upwards of 50k followers and 30k page views, respectively).

What’s interesting is that Seeking Alpha has accomplished this having paid exactly $0 for content.  $0.  For 250+ articles per day.  My takeaway is that being a content aggregator has advantages over being a content creator.  Three broad reasons why:

  1. Relevant third-party magazines, newspapers, and blogs produce much more content than individual organizations.
  2. All things being equal, more content should mean more traffic/attention for aggregators.
  3. There may be economic efficiencies in pooling strong external content versus creating proprietary material.

Given the challenges in producing proprietary content, should asset managers consider content aggregation as a strategy?  I think yes.  Would researching, licensing, and packaging 30 top-notch articles from external sources be more fiscally efficient and valuable to clients than producing 30 internal pieces?  I think maybe.

That’s enough for asset managers to at least investigate aggregation as a part of their content strategies.

The One Question to Ask Passive-Leaning Advisors

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 26, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , ,

Second in a series of posts on the sales and marketing implications of the ongoing debate between active and passive management.  Read the first here.

A client came to us with an issue – internal wholesalers were repeatedly encountering the same objection when discussing the firm’s emerging markets products with advisors.  The objection:  I use index products for emerging markets exposure.

We suggested a number of ways to address this objection with facts (more on those later this week).  But given the relative inexperience of many internal wholesalers, we suggested that they pose the objecting advisor a simple question:

Do you use actively-managed products anywhere in client portfolios?

Why is this type of question effective?  Two reasons:

  1. If the answer is no, the wholesaler immediately knows that there’s not much point in further engaging the advisor.  No further, unnecessary investment of time by anyone.

  2. In the more-likely scenario where the answer is yes, the wholesaler can open up a conversation on the criteria the advisor uses in evaluating active products.  The discussion becomes advisor-centric, not product-centric, and sets the table for the wholesaler to better position the firm’s products.

So much of the active vs. passive management discussion is one that revolves around analytics and data.  And for good reason.  However, for firms dealing with this discussion in day-to-day field and phone interactions, it’s best to first focus on the client.

Designing a Market Research Plan

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 21, 2011, in Thoughts

Often, we’re asked about market research.  The research idea is usually tied to an initiative that brings something new to a firm’s clients.  That initiative can be a new investment vehicle, marketing message, Web site, or something else.

I sat down with a career researcher recently to share perspectives on the best and worst client engagements.  Though her experience is exclusively with consumer products and ours is traditionally with intermediaries, we agreed wholeheartedly on three dimensions to great research:  … [read more]

Active vs. Passive Management Debate Rises Again

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 21, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

We’ve been asked to address the evergreen debate of active management vs. passive management with several clients of late.  Why?  Many firms with actively-managed mutual funds are experiencing challenges in specific parts of their product lineups (e.g., emerging markets, domestic large cap, etc.), leaving Sales and Marketing execs to answer:

  • How should our wholesalers handle the discussion with an advisor who is using (or considering) index products?
  • How can we counter an advisor’s move toward passive vehicles in our print/online messages?

Over the next week, we’ll use the blog to cover some of the answers we’ve come up with, including:

  • The one question wholesalers should ask advisors who say they use passively-managed products
  • The underlying complexity of investment indices
  • The sometimes imperfect construction of indexed investments

We’ll also cite some of the better research-driven arguments we’ve seen that can help distributors of actively-managed products with this challenge.  Stay tuned…