In the world of financial product sales, the quality of your pitchbooks can either make or break you. In order for salespeople to deliver great presentations, it’s important to have an effective pitchbook strategy that runs like a well-oiled machine.  If your strategy isn’t refined, you run the risk of sending out sloppy presentations that can damage your brand image, or worse, result in non-compliance. (more…)

It’s tough out there for investment management sales teams and only getting more challenging. Today, pitchbooks must be customer-centric, created or changed on a dime, on-brand, compliant and have digital output and tracking options. That’s like trying to make a delicious, vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, and sugar-free wedding cake in 10 minutes.

If that hits home, then this article is for you.

(If you didn’t find that amusing, you’ve clearly never tried to make a cake in 10 minutes.)

(more…)

I’ve been in the computer-driven publishing industry my entire working life. For better or worse, that’s going on 30 years and six firms worth of experience building and selling systems to support the print (or print-like) communications needs of large businesses selling or supporting high-value goods and services. I’ve worked with Airlines, Pharmaceuticals, Auto Parts, Reference Publishers, Military, and Financial business. All have significant data-and-rules driven content publishing needs, including well-designed print artifacts. Supporting publishing in the financial services world makes up a majority of this experience, but we gain wisdom by understanding similarities and differences between multiple business sectors and markets.

For 87.3% of my long and illustrious career in supporting print communications, people have taken the position that Print is Dead… or soon will be. While there are specific examples and versions of this narrative that are true, I’m here to talk today about where and why it is not true!

(more…)

This article, “Why Pitch Decks Should be Created by Sales, Not Marketing,” first appeared in Fundfire.

Recently, a salesperson told us about a deal where he went “rogue.” He got an opportunity to present to a major institutional client but didn’t have an up-to-date deck from marketing. So he cobbled together a deck using slides from previous presentations. He knew he was pushing the compliance boundaries, but he needed to land this deal.

His was the first presentation to the client, and he secured their agreement before leaving. As he walked out, three competitors sat in the lobby waiting for their turn to present. “If I had waited for marketing to send me an updated deck,” he said, “We would have lost that deal because the first sales guy to show them what they needed got the business.”

(more…)