investor relations – Page 3

July 14, 2020March 19, 2023

Do you know how vocal skills can make your IR presentations stronger?

Traditionally, IR presentations are heavily focused on content, with a couple of rehearsals in front of your advisors as a practice run. Of course content is critical in investor relations, but the public speaking skills are also essential.

I recently shared some cool tech tools and apps that will help boost your public speaking skills ahead of the upcoming reporting season and the roadshows.

But have you ever worked specifically on your voice? There are several key aspects that you can focus on

Register (not volume)

I don’t mean the sign in register to see which investors and analysts are taking part in your event. It’s your vocal register. One of the first public speaking skills I was ever taught was by my mother, a teacher, and it’s probably my top tip. If you want to make an impact, lower your voice. She used to say if you want to be heard across a playground, you don’t scream, you boom. If you don’t believe my mum, did you know it’s been proven that people tend to vote for the politician with the deepest voice? Not sure how to do it? It’s actually pretty easy – the trick is to drop the voice from your throat to your chest. It sounds weird, but it totally works, guaranteed.

I do want to stress this is totally different to volume. There’s great coaching exercise where you put people into pairs (name them A and B) and then make them stand at opposite sides of a room. Try getting all the As to read a passage from a book aloud at the same time. Is it easier for B to hear their partner when it’s shouted or whispered?

Timbre

That’s basically a fancy word for tone. Think of the velvety voice in the M&S food adverts “This is not just a chocolate bar, this is a molten caramel chocolate bliss bar” (OK I made that up, but it does sound rather yummy). Compare it to the screechy YouTubers that my teenage son insists on watching (I’m not going to name names, but you can imagine). I wouldn’t suggest you go full on rich chocolate bar for a results presentation (even if you’re M&S), but you can experiment to get the right energy levels.

Rhythm

Basically you’re looking for a more poetic sound vs. a flat monotone. Regional accents can also come into play here (e.g. the Australian accent – sorry guys – has a tendency to have an upwards tilt at the end as if it was a question which you might want to vary in a longer presentation.

With 42 million views, this has to be one of the best TED talks! It covers these points, and more.

If you’d like to work on the delivery of your IR presentations, I offer a Presentation Power Hour for only £97.

July 6, 2020March 19, 2023

IR post Covid – how do your plans compare to others?

The IR Magazine has published the results of a survey on the impact of Covid on IR globally. It’s not gloom and doom, but there are some key takeaways

a third of IR teams expect their budgets to be cut (and a much higher proportion in Asia)
more cuts are expected for IRs at small caps than large caps
IR team sizes are expected to be broadly unaffected, with no obvious regional biases
senior management has been more “hands-on” in IR than usual
after an initial decrease in external providers, outsourcing is expected to become much more common going forward, particularly in small companies

The report goes on to cover working practices and give interesting stats on the use of virtual roadshows and conferences.

If you want to make sure your IR plans are ready for this new world, our one-hour strategy review will give you clarity on the path, and it’s only £125. If not now, then when?

June 24, 2020March 19, 2023

Sneaky ways to boost your public speaking skills

Clients often come to me looking to work on their investor messaging. That can be written or verbal. Public speaking has always been a mix of voice and body language. With the current reliance on Zoom style meetings, I reckon the verbal aspects are currently more important – I mean, isn’t everyone wearing shorts with their work shirts since you can’t be seen? Luckily, there are so many ways you can practice, and since we’re at home, nobody will ever know.

The elevator pitch

The “elevator pitch” is the 30 second spiel you have ready for when someone asks “so what do you do,” or “why should I invest,” or whatever the burning question is. The theory is, you only have 30 seconds to grab their attention before the lift arrives at their floor, or in real life, before their mind wanders. No matter how strong the story is, you have to have a catchy soundbite. There are three steps to nailing this

1. Write it down, as it would be spoken

This is an absolute must. In speech, we tend to use very short sentences – say 8 words. Force yourself to write in a way that sounds natural.

2. Record yourself reading it

Any voice recording app will work here. Now listen back. Is it clear? Does it sound clunky?

3. Test on an audience

If you can, try to persuade a non-specialist to listen to it, ie someone who will call you out for any technical/ complex stuff that might have snuck in. Family members give better feedback than the dog (although the dog will probably feign interest more convincingly).

Bigger events

1. Practice

When I work with CEOs, we always do a practice auditorium speech in front of a room of advisors and colleagues. That’s not feasible for everyone, but we can generate a fake audience. It’s definitely worth checking out the VirtualSpeech app – you’re going to need a VR headset, but it’s so worth it. If you’re a bit of a geeky perfectionist like me, the analysis is going to blow your mind.

2. Get a good night’s sleep

Even if nobody can see your wobbly legs and there are no handshakes to give away your sweaty palms, a spot of meditation will calm those nerves. There are loads of meditation and guided sleep apps, and it’s such a personal matter, that you’ll just have to browse the App Store yourself, but they’ve come a long way from the whale music. Bedtime stories, hypnotherapy sessions ….

3. Teleprompter like a pro!

This was a recent revelation to me. Before you get too excited, I’m going to stress that I never recommend reading a verbatim script, but if you insist, make sure you write if for speech (check those sentence lengths). Or use it for speaker notes instead of index cards. There are apps which will give you prompts on your phone. Currently, PromptSmart seems the most established, but there are new ones being released. One final plea if you’re going to use these, watch where your eyes are on the camera!

4. Uhm blaster

OK, this is fun! How often do you think you use “like” or “uhh” … There are game-style apps that will call you out on these. Try the LikeSo app – let me know how addicted you get! It’s like CandyCrush.

I hope that helps, but if you’d like to work with me on your investor presentations, do get in touch.

January 6, 2020November 5, 2019

Best Practice In IR – Developing a Winning IR Toolkit

It won’t be a surprise to anyone to learn that investor relations affects the valuation of a company. A survey by Rivel Research showed

– 75% of buy-side believe good IR affects valuation, and

– poor IR can result in up to a 20% discount.

Here are some tips for your IR team to consider to get you off to a strong start:-

Curate the available information carefully. With more and more data being available to investors, curating it effectively can greatly aid the investment decision. Layering information so that it’s easy for the investors to access, regardless of whether the investor wants to spend only 5 minutes (to get the key information quickly) or a couple of hours (without getting lost any rabbit holes).
Know what you are. Articulate your message clearly so that no investor can be in any doubt as to the investment case is.
Be real and accessible. In most cases, the investment process still starts with a personal contact. If they haven’t met your IR team and/ or management, there is a strong probability that you aren’t even on the fund manager’s radar.

What about the toolkit? There is nothing particularly complicated required to create an effective IR toolkit:-

yourself, your phone and your voice
company website, but you can supplement this with social media, working with your communications/ PR colleagues
quantitative and qualitative investor targeting work
technology will make your life easier, from CRM systems tailored to help IR, to free scheduling and project management apps. Even simple things like pre-designed meeting note templates will improve efficiency.

This year brings the 20th IR Society annual Best Practice in IR awards. As you set the team goals for 2020, why not consider entering? There are self entry categories which are judged by a panel, as well as voted awards. In addition to the honour and glory for winners, entrants generally see far wider benefits including internal recognition and it’s a great way to focus the team on what works and, importantly, what could potentially be improved.

Good luck!

November 22, 2019November 4, 2019

Five books that should be compulsory reading for IROs

Last week I gave some non-technical book recommendations (a surprising number of which are also movies). This time, I’ve got some technical books to suggest which I reckon should be compulsory reading if you’re working in (or with) investor relations. Sorry – no movie options this time!

1. The Activist Director by Ira Millstein

This is a very detailed book written from a wealth of experience. The author is a corporate lawyer so it’s as dry as you might fear, but persevere! The governance points are spot on.

2. The PR Masterclass by Alex Singleton

Written by a former journalist who is now a communications and PR trainer and consultant, this is a clear, common-sense guide. Whilst the Activist Director is (admittedly) a dry read, this is easy, and will help any IR professional understand what their PR colleagues are working on.

3. The Financial Times Guide to Investing:The Definitive Companion to Investment and the Financial Markets

Despite the ridiculously long title (presumably to catch every single keyword in the Amazon algorithm), this book stands the test of time and is still probably the most comprehensive book on investing.

4. The Financial Times Guide to Using the Financial Pages

I don’t understand why this book isn’t higher ranked. Probably because it fails to cram 27 keywords into the title. Anyway, I think it’s brilliant and my own copy is well-read.

5. Best practices for equity research analysts by James Valentine

Written by a top ranked equity analyst who worked in most of the big houses on Wall Street. Unlike the Wall Street characters whose heady lifestyles have been made into the book and movies I spotlighted last week, this is the grafter taking pride in the rigorous of analysis done at their desk. Valuations, price targets and recommendations. It’s less headline grabbing for sure, but essential reading.

These will take a lot longer to read that the ones I included last week, but they are reference books that will be referred to over and over again during any career in financial markets.

Happy reading!