Get Invited to the Dance: Working with Institutional Consultants

Sometimes it seems that working with institutional consultants is like an intricately choreographed waltz. With potentially billions of dollars in play, it pays for investment managers to learn the steps.

Recently s2 Financial Marketing and Edelman hosted a roundtable discussion with Maura Murrihy, Principal of EnnisKnupp, to discover how to get invited to the dance.

She provided a number of insights into how consultants evaluate investment managers, while outlining the moves that investment managers and their marketing staffs can make to increase their chances of connecting with the institutional consulting market.

• Set the stage. Provide the backdrop and the color related to your firm and its portfolio managers. Highlight the backgrounds, tenure, interests, and decision-making processes of your key players. Help the consultant understand the principles, beliefs, and working relationships of your portfolio managers and their teams─whether they fox-trot, jitterbug, or tango.

• Take the lead. Be proactive with consultants. Provide information and contacts and, by all means, complete any requests for information (RFIs) from consultants. A carefully constructed RFI response with thoughtful and complete answers will get you noticed. Do your homework to discover who at the consulting firm is the decision-maker regarding your investment specialty.

• Be creative. Don’t be afraid to be inventive and try out a few new approaches to presenting information to consultants. Move away from the boilerplate and let the conviction and personality of the firm and its managers shine through.

• Be a good partner. Follow the consultant’s lead and be sure key decision makers are available. Consultants like to know who is managing their clients’ money and what tendencies and styles they pursue.

• Commit to the dance. Spend the time to understand the consultant’s needs and build relationships. Good dance partners take a while to develop and to learn each others’ moves. Invest time getting to know the processes and nuances of their businesses, their methodologies, and what’s important to their clients.

• Pay attention to timing. The best times to contact consultants are December and January when they have more time to enjoy the music. Their busiest times are February, May, August, and November. That’s when they are preparing and presenting their quarterly performance reports.

Of course, the most important thing involved in getting on the floor is performance. If you have a good track record of performance, adding the above elements to your polished routine for developing relationships will improve your chances of keeping your dance card full.