Guest post: Attaining and Sustaining High Productivity in Investment Management Marketing

Investment management firms need optimal internal collaboration to achieve the best possible communications, marketing, and client service as they cope with anxious clients, tight budgets, and lean staffing. Tips for how to achieve this goal are the focus of this guest post by Jacqueline L. Charnley and Christine M. Rostvold, founders of Charnley & Rostvold, a marketing communications firm.

Now more than ever, investment firms need to become well-oiled machines, leveraging every possible resource to produce the highest quality communications and service.  Timely and relevant content, whether for reporting or sales, needs to be developed, produced and distributed…all too frequently with too few resources.  What are best practices to attaining and equally as important, sustaining high productivity in marketing and communications?  How can counterproductive politics be minimized, good decisions be made and stressful deadlines be met in the face of rapidly fluctuating workloads?

Know Your Objectives and Plan to Achieve Them
First, management must document key objectives and agree on a plan to achieve them.  Communicate both the goals and the plan to everyone on the team and to senior management.  Document priorities (by product, by client, by consultant) and adhere to those priorities.  Stay focused by making it okay for anyone to question whether an activity is a fire drill or is on plan.  At the same time, recognize when deviating from the plan is a good idea.

Train People for Success
One firm is known for promoting people to roles where the individual’s past experience is not relevant to the new role.  Then when the individual fails, the firm simply moves to another candidate.  Instead, know the required skill sets for the new role in advance.  Know what can be trained and what cannot be.  Measure the individual against criteria required to do well in the role, and train and support that person to be successful.

Document Your Procedures
In a recent survey, members of  the Professional Association for Investment Communications Resources (PAICR)) shared that only 57% had written procedures for their firms and only 56% for their marketing departments.  You need procedures that are current and easy to follow.  In addition to being written, procedures need to be updated regularly.  Empower employees and trainees to question existing procedures, and to rewrite them to reflect their most current (and useful) form.

Commit the Time to Communicate, to Train, to Debrief
Time is one of the biggest obstacles to regular communications, training and debriefing.  Other priorities will always come first until you recognize and commit to the importance of communicating your plan and procedures, to train people to succeed and to debrief after major projects as to what worked, what didn’t work.  Debriefing leads a team into greater and greater productivity and away from politics and failure to produce.

Evaluate Systems and External Resources
New systems and technologies to enhance productivity are constantly being brought to market.  One of the biggest time and resource drains is updating and proofing data.  There are systems that can connect and update client files, presentation books, database responses and RFPs instantly and provide tracking.  Software and service systems can help with project management and communications.  Commit resource and time to stay on top of what is available.

“You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”
Keep your culture positive and supportive.  Constantly ask what can be done differently to help clarify and streamline a direction or process.  Avoid blame games when something does go wrong.  Instead, find the solution that will make it go right the next time.  Evolve from your own experiences.  Critique in private, praise in public.  Celebrate victories and accomplishments.  Celebrate being a productive team.