You’re sitting at your desk and you have the name. It’s on your list, you think it could be relevant, but you’re not calling yet.

You’re anxious because you can’t answer one simple question. Do I know enough not to waste this conversation?

This summer I sat down with a distribution head who covers the institutional market on his own. Four days a week on the road, five to six meetings a day. The institutional segment was lying fallow at their firm, he said, and that needed to change.

For the coming week in Stuttgart he had built himself a list, 200 contacts. Going through it, 20 were left that he could seriously call.

He had still opened the other 180, one after another.

“We have to do something about this,” he said.

Why context before the call decides everything

In institutional fund distribution, the first call is decided by the right questions. And the right questions come out of context.

Who is actually responsible? Would this pension fund structurally invest in my fund? What is the firm’s investment focus? Is there a recent announcement that explains why this is a good or a bad moment?

Without those answers you have two options.

Call blind or spend an hour researching

Call blind. You call, but you can’t really sell a solution to a problem your counterpart has (even if he doesn’t know it yet, you have to). The conversation stays friendly, you get put off until later.

Was it the product, the timing, or did you simply speak to the wrong person? Afterwards you plainly don’t know.

Research first. Website, LinkedIn, asset allocation, recent news, factsheet, 60 minutes gone - at least - per contact. For five calls a month that’s manageable, for five a day it isn’t. So the preparation stops, and with it the quality of the conversations.

Both options cost you, the first conversion, the second volume.

Three questions before every investor call

The blockage doesn’t clear because you search longer. It clears as soon as you know what you’re actually searching for.

Three questions to ask yourself before every email and every call:

Structural fit Does this investor allocate to areas my fund covers? Is there public information on their asset allocation?

Right contact Who is responsible, do we have common ground, and is this person still at the firm?

Current hook Was there an announcement, a leadership change, a regulatory shift that makes this conversation relevant or irrelevant right now?

A prospect once did the maths for me without realising it. He said he could google that in ten minutes. He’s right, too. Ten minutes for one firm, and only to get one relevant contact. That’s pseudo-preparation.

With a list that runs into the hundreds, and contacts who keep moving, those ten minutes turn into a job that never gets finished.

If you can answer those three questions quickly, you call. If it takes you an hour, it’s rarely down to that one contact.

The distribution head with the Stuttgart list was well prepared. He still opened 180 firms one by one to keep 20 in the end. That sorting work comes back every single time, with every city and every list.

Saying his sentence took him a second. The list for the next city is still sitting in front of him, and it will be built exactly the way the Stuttgart one was.

As long as it sits with you, you’ll keep choosing between a blind call and a lost morning. What helps is focusing on a few questions, and on the processes that let you answer them fast.

Want to go deeper on this, or just talk it through? Then let’s grab a (virtual) coffee:

Tobias Rethmeyer · rethmeyer@arcvesta.com