People who are on the client side of investment banking now- do you read the slide decks bankers bring you?
I work on the buy side in the finance team of a large corporate. Meaning every now and then some MDs/VPs from investment banks come to meet us to talk about the market and essentially pitch for some sort of capital markets /advisory work.
Every time these bankers come to visit us (from the usual suspects I'm sure many Wall Street'ers are familiar with) they bring us these 20-30 page slide decks with lots of aligned logos, fancy charts and triple checked numbers. Yet in reality the senior bankers never even reference the slide deck, we just sit and chat and then in the end they hand us out their slide decks...which we then rarely read. Obviously some junior analysts worked for hours on it, only for it to be of no use later.
How have other experienced similar situations?
I think it all really depends on the context.
When we get a CIP / CIM on a company we've been waiting to go to market for >1 year? Of course were gonna read every scrap of info the bankers give us, and the CIM / CIP multiple times. I.e., when bankers have an interesting opportunity or they reach out to us because we are genuinely a good fit for an opportunity, we comb through every line of the materials they send us.
However, when it comes to more general catch ups and "soft pitches", probably not going to read half the slides. The reality is bankers try and manage relationships with our Corp Dev team as well as our core competitors by pitching all of us the same shit we've either:
A. already thought of and decided not to pursue
B. never wanted to pursue because it isnt an attractive asset, or
C. never considered because it makes absolutely zero sense.
Sometimes they get it right and actually have something interesting, but most of the time its honestly pretty lazy. For example, we met with a few MDs from a well respected bank recently and they pushed us on making a play for a PE owned asset THEY KNOW WE PASSED ON 2 YEARS AGO. They also know our rationale for why we passed, so us providing the same rationale should have been of no surprise. So for them to force some analyst to build out 10 slides on a company we already made a decisive decision on = huge time waste. They then went on to push for another stupid play, a platform play that would yield them a fat fee and stick us with an unattractive asset that doesn't meet our general new platform criteria. Then again, this was a bank we have an arms length relationship with, and leaving the meeting I could tell you with 100% certainty that they knew their 120 slide deck did nothing to curry favor.
I mean this topic has been beaten to death and well-debated by both sides, but it's so paradoxical for seasoned execs to hire banks or MBB, to have 22 y/o analysts fresh out of college build useless slide decks that no one reads. In reality, the mechanics of a deal comes down to 3 or 4 core drivers, and people know that all the crap beyond that is useless fluff
I had this view as a freshman in college too...
Once you actually start to work in the industry, you'll see how many stakeholders are involved and how naive of a view this is.
Unless both companies are 100% private and completely controlled by a single individual with no large minority shareholders, you can't just make a decision like this behind closed doors and bully it through. There are a million stakeholders that all have their own priorities that you need to placate in some fashion.
You need to convince both boards, if you're issuing equity as part of the deal you'll need to market the deal to new shareholders. If it's a public company, you need to sell the deal to existing shareholders. You may need a fairness opinion. If there are any large pre-IPO stakeholders, you need to get them on board. You may need shareholder approval.
Upset one party and it'll end in an extended legal battle, your seniors will likely be deposed and everything you've ever put together for the deal will be discoverable.
With all that background, you tell me. What do you think is more likely to convince a board or a new investor this is a great idea. A nicely formatted, buttoned up, snazzy presentation or something that looks like a 5 year old put it together that's filled with typos?
As a long term (30 yrs) professional sales person, I get so peeved by bankers even thinking they're in the sales game as they have virtually zero sales acumen. The whole idea of "throwing up on your desk" with all this crap you don't care about, and making junior bankers sweat through 100 hour weeks to create is so foreign to me.
Here's an idea: why don't they actually learn what's important to you, uncover real issues and then provide solutions. I don't care if you're selling paper clips or jet engines, it's all the same. Find solutions to their problems. It's not about what you have to sell (bankers), it's about what the client needs to solve their issues. Most who suck at sales (which is actually most) spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to sell a solution for a problem that doesn't exist or isn't a high priority to the client. You can have the best X, but if I don't need / want one, who cares? Don't spend time telling me about all the great advantages, technology, craftmanship, economic advantage, etc. of your new gizmo when I clearly don't care. I'd rather have an old gizmo that solves my problem. How about asking me what hurts?
Sorry, rant over!
All true but how do you get in the door in the first place? Majority of CEOs aren't going to broadcast their biggest challenges on a megaphone for the world to see, and certainly aren't going to share potentially sensitive information with you until there is a relationship there and trust developed.
Until you have a certain amount of info about what their goals and priorities are, it's essentially impossible to have an informed view as to the right solution for them. For the most part, your goal at the beginning is just to spend time getting to know each other until you've developed enough trust that they start to let you in under the tent. Until then, you're really just guessing and trying to maximize facetime in the hopes of developing a certain level of trust.
As part of that you don't want to come across as lazy. If all your competitors have a nice shiny presentation and you don't, you risk being at a disadvantage from the start. The reality is that most of these pages are off the shelf and just market refreshed by some team in India, so it's not like it's a huge extra burden on your end.
Not going to get in to a whole sales coaching session but what you describe is no different than any other sales situation. You have to find a way in, build a relationship with the right people, ask good questions to determine need, and provide a solution if your firm can be that or connect them to another source that can help if you can't. In today's world it's easier than ever (some would say more competitive but the players are the players) with all the platforms to provide information / value. You can automate / drip the right type of info to the right people at virtually no cost and very little effort. You can become an industry thought leader, Do podcasts on various topics. All kinds of ways to become an expert on X. Then when an issue boils up you'll be top of mind.
At the end of the day, just throwing out ideas to people when they may or may not care is like throwing darts. It may work, but it won't be your fault.
lol, you're pretty much describing to a tee what MDs do, minus the podcasts.
Blast out thought pieces / case studies, benchmarking, share random thoughts with clients, find an excuse to get in front of them and pitch an idea.
The "pitching" I guess is the difference. I've sold all kinds of things. Tangible products, investments, services, etc. Insurance policies to enterprise mission critical disaster recover systems for large dollars. Sold a 150m life insurance policy for a business succession plan. Have received many millions of investment dollars and typically manage 80%-100% of a client's investable net worth. Can't recall a time when I ever "pitched" anything. Including corp sales (started with IBM) I'd get to know the players at all the major accounts in my area. Let them educate me on where they were / where they want to be. Help them evaluate their situation, and when they clearly wanted to make changes, add power, storage, networking capability, bring a new plant online, etc I'd craft a plan. I never went to a paper mill in central Maine and said, "You know what, you guys should consider automating everything and here's 7 proposals to network all your sites, another one to put a pc on every station, etc. I found out how they planned to grow, what their key issues were, what budget they were willing to assign to accomplishing X and then I'd put a plan together.
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