Hedge IT Blog

This article is contributed by Richard Wilson of Hedge Fund Blogger and provides unique hedge fund marketing tactics that managers should investigate further while attempting to raise capital for their funds. The topics covered include public relations management and educational marketing.

Public relations has to be one of the most ignored marketing tools of hedge fund managers today. I have worked with over three dozen hedge funds on their marketing plans and capital raising efforts. So far, the most intense public relations effort I have seen set forth was a single press release over a four-year period. This is not to say that any hedge fund that is not publishing at least four press releases per year is doing something wrong. However, many could benefit by simply making themselves more available to the press.

The media is hungry for real time opinions of hedge fund managers, traders and marketers. They need comments on current market conditions, trends in hiring and firing of traders and portfolio managers and what prospects lay ahead for the industry as a whole. Many hedge fund managers shy away from contributing to stories in the press. I would strongly encourage you to speak with your legal counsel and see if they would approve of your discussions with the media if you stick to industry trends, general market trends and long-term movements you are seeing within the industry.

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Good relationships should be a key goal for any manager because they help secure and retain clients. In a previous blog entry on how to prepare for investor meetings, we cited two pillars of relationship building: credibility and rapport. A lack of credibility will give potential investors a reason not to do business with you. Strong rapport will give them every reason to do business with you. Since investor decisions often hinge on the meeting, the in-person contact that leads them to trust – or not to trust – the hedge fund manager with their money, building credibility when making a presentation is crucial. In our last blog entry, we outlined specific steps to build credibility. Today, we’ll do that for rapport, excerpted from our most recent Strategic Commentary, “It All Comes Down to the Meeting.”

Understand, and be understood. Accurately appraising and connecting with your prospect/client/investor’s situation, needs, and goals is crucial to the sales process, and will directly affect their ability to understand you. Learn to actively listen, to ask for clarification, to stop talking and answer questions. A caveat to the advice above about preparing talking points is to be prepared to go “off book” to address questions and concerns from the other side of the table. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about them. If you want their money, you have to give them their due.

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Good relationships should be a key goal for any investment manager because they help secure and retain clients. In our previous blog entry on how to win and retain assets, we cited two pillars of relationship building: credibility and rapport. A lack of credibility will give potential hedge fund investors a reason not to do business with your firm. Strong rapport will give them every reason to do business with your firm.

Since investor decisions often hinge on the meeting, the in-person contact that leads them to trust – or not to trust – the hedge fund manager with their money, building credibility when making a presentation is crucial. Today, we’ll outline specific steps to do just that, excerpted from our most recent Strategic Commentary, “It All Comes Down to the Meeting.”

Know your audience. What are the roles of the people you’re meeting with? Their responsibilities, decision-making powers, place in the pecking order? Being familiar with this most basic of data points will not only help you pitch, it will communicate interest and respect. Know their level of sophistication so you can gear your language appropriately. How difficult is a quick Google search before the meeting to discover any relevant issues or unknown (to you, anyway) connections?

Know your goal. What message do you want to get across? Remember, there are tactical messages that are explicit (our operational efficiency has increased, your hedge fund portfolio is now poised to recover losses, etc.) and there are meta messages that are implicit (we are hedge fund professionals who take our business seriously, we are not in panic mode, etc.). Close with a call to action: what is the next step you want them to take?

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This article is the first in a three-part series from guest contributors Eric Brand and Kevin Kasper, Principals at BK Communications Group. To contact Eric and Kevin directly, please email them at info@bkcomgroup.com.

The investment management business is more fiercely competitive than ever before, making it difficult to de-commoditize and stand out from the pack. Regardless of a manager’s track record, pedigree, or organizational excellence, investor decisions often hinge on the meeting, the in-person contact that leads them to trust – or not to trust – the manager with their money. Yet managers commonly minimize the importance of meetings, and are thus often either ill-prepared or ill-behaved. What’s more, many non-sales personnel lack the natural presentation skills or requisite experience to successfully navigate a meeting. Clearly, ineffective prospect meetings can be an obstacle to winning assets. Yet that’s not all. Poor client service meetings are a business hazard as well, since they can add to client dissatisfaction and the costs of lost assets is so great.

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Eze Castle recently hosted a live web event focused on Marketing and Communications - two topics which, up until recently, many managers simply did not associate with hedge fund operations. These days, however, the topic comes up pretty frequently as managers are realizing that hedge fund investors are demanding more of them. And it doesn't end there! The competition for all the capital "out there" is becoming increasingly intense.

The question is, how do you make a hedge fund manager more comfortable in the Sales and Marketing role? Then, once you've landed the capital, how do you communicate effectively with the hedge fund investors? A whole new slew of issues arises here - how, and how often, can a fund communicate with hedge fund investors? How does one do this while staying in compliance with regulations?

In this blog post we'll explore the most salient advice from the webinar around hedge fund communications, marketing, websites and hedge fund CRM systems.

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Transparency is the buzzword of 2010 and, rightly so, investors expect it -- make that, demand it. As a result, nearly every hedge fund product is touting its ability to provide greater, faster, better transparency. I’ll try to avoid that in this post and instead focus on a budding buzz-phrase – investor relationship management or hedge fund CRM as we like to call it.

Yes, I know everyone’s heard of Salesforce.com, but we’re talking about a CRM application that is built specifically for hedge funds. As a tool that supports investor relations, a hedge fund CRM gives funds the ability to centralize all of their investor data, including contacts, documents and correspondence while also allowing investors to access fund information at any time, including transaction history, account balance statements and other investment data.

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