Senior Banker phobia / fear of printing
I have a question that I still can’t reconcile after ~5 years in the industry. It seems like senior bankers are always very apprehensive to print. No matter how early it was given to them / how many times they’ve seen it / how many turns…it has to be last minute, urgent high pressure printing scenario where we cut it close with print.
Would have to guess many of you have the same experience? My thoughts are that senior bankers generally can’t control themselves when there is an opportunity to make edits and they know they could only get in like 1-2 rounds of comments after something is printed (if they are lucky).
Most are tools who don’t get it that Corp Dev teams barely make it through their 100 pg books apart from exec summary pages. MDs that make last minute turns even though they had days / weeks to provide comments belong to deepest place in hell.
I'm conflicted on OPs post.
Whilst I agree that last minute printing is 95% of the time unnecessary.
The other side which you don't see as a junior is the number of plates being spun. We often don't have time to really input properly until nearer a deadline.
The bit that takes the longest is actually the thought that goes into a deck and how you bring put your angles. That's often a refinement process and that's why there are often changes of direction during on a turn.
The real dickheads are the tangential MDs who know a deadline and give comments after books have gone to print. Zero value add.
In reality - the decision is often made before a pitch and usually on a sponsor basis - who they owe the next fee to. Which is frustrating given the work that goes into formal RFPs and pitches.
Most of those inputs could settled early but some MDs are indecisive, so force juniors to crunch out numerous unrealistic scenarios and detailed model summaries which are such a waste of time for pitches.
Agreed the weak MDs need everything in order to feel safe in front of a client.
Most of us know what we are doing and it won't be our first rodeo on the subject.
Most edits made don’t make a difference at all and clients rarely read the deck. If your big thinking brain needs so long to come up with a conclusion it’s probably too late anyway or you don’t know the topic at all so you won’t win whatever pitch it is anyway. But if it makes you feel important, sure.
The best advisors know their worth and not uncommonly show up without a book at all.
Straight from the client’s mouth…Have you ever communicated this to your bankers before that you’d rather a few pages of tight analysis (if you even need it) rather than 50 pages of nonsense?
F@ck that. I insist my books are sent to the clients well in advance of any meeting to force all of us to think about what needs to be done and to ensure that clients have read in advance so we aren’t wasting each other’s time. I’ve had enough trauma with books going down to the wire as a junior banker that I swore never to do that as an MD.
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Sure. This is my preferred process.
Steo One: Agree the agenda in advance with the client. Typically, a couple weeks before the meeting I will send them an agenda and presentation outline and see if they have any thoughts. I do this whether this is a board meeting, a detailed review of a live deal, a bake off, a general pitch or even a coffee catch up. This shows the client and my team that I respect their time and my own.
Step Two: Detailed annotated outline of the deck. Either I do this or someone in the team does but I make sure all the stakeholders are signed off (me, and any other MDs below me, product partners or if for example my head of IB is coming to a meeting). That makes it much harder to change the deck.
Step Three (where appropriate): Identify the critical path analyses and do those in advance. The valuation, the merger consequences, the debt capacity. Front load this work so everyone knows the answer early and a) conclusions are drawn early and b) course corrections happen early. Once this is done, organize a session to ensure everyone is on the same page on the numbers. I get very annoyed when numbers are moving around in the days before they have to be presented.
Step Four: Draft the executive summary so everyone knows the conclusion we are looking to reach and can tailor slides accorsingly
Step Five: Review a draft early. Only two permitted iterations.
Step Six: Send to client ideally 48 hrs before the meeting. Offer a 10 minute preview call to make the meeting most productive.
In terms of what works, it’s always thoughtful tailored analysis. Don’t go through profile books in a meeting. No one reads one page profiles. If need be, send strip profiles in advance with a recommendation of which ones to do work on. Always ask yourself, what am I going to say that my competition isn’t. If it’s so obvious everyone is saying the same thing, what is the unique angle. Generally clients have one thing in mind they really care about and you have to figure that out.
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