We recently had a chance to interview Maureen Wolff-Reid (bio at the end of the article), a pioneer in the investor relations and corporate communications industry. She is a past chairman of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) and President and Partner of Sharon Merrill Associates in Boston. This post originally appeared on New Rules of Investing.
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It seems in regard to newer channels of communication, Reg FD has led to a diminishing in frequency of communications. In spite of leveling the investment playing field, is this a long-term good for investors?
Maureen Wolff-Reid, President: Reg FD has largely succeeded in leveling the playing field while maintaining the frequency of communications between companies and the investment community. This is a long-term good as investors have a higher degree of confidence that they can make educated investment decisions with access to the same information as any other investor.
What’s the communication plan for companies in the future with new technologies like webcasting, XBRL, blogs, Facebook and Twitter?
MWR: Webcasting has been a ubiquitous tool for companies to reach out to investor audiences for many years, and XBRL soon will be a requirement for all public companies. It remains to be seen how prevalent some of the new technologies will be, although blogs are being used increasingly by both investors and public companies. The next generation of investor communications is still in its early stages. In the future, online resources such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter may offer opportunities for groups of investors to exchange ideas.
Are execution issues with wire services perpetuating a form of selective dissemination for paid subscribers to these services? Will companies follow Sun’ Microsystems’ lead and go direct to EDGAR in the future and bypass the wires?
MWR: Wire services currently constitute full disclosure of material news. News releases distributed over a wire service are publicly available on the services’ websites and are sent to online resources such as Yahoo! Finance. Bypassing the wire services as Sun has done may offer companies significant cost savings; but there is a trade-off in the loss of potential visibility and opportunity to fully explain the news. In the future, posting to the company’s website might constitute full disclosure under the SEC’s guidelines and then companies may decide to simply post press releases on their corporate web sites in lieu of wire service distribution.
SeekingAlpha is providing free access to earnings transcripts. Is this something that individual investors will benefit from or are these reports somewhat arcane for most investors?
MWR: Quarterly conference call and investor conference transcripts have become a valuable resource for both individual and institutional investors. SeekingAlpha’s approach to publishing transcripts at no cost to the public is a great asset for individual investors, who previously had limited access. Very few people have the time to listen to a complete webcast or comb through the SEC filings of all the companies in their portfolio. Additionally, with more companies holding their conference calls closer to the 10K and 10Q filing deadlines, there are many calls being held at the same time. By making the transcripts available and easily searchable by keyword, SeekingAlpha is saving investors time and money, while helping them to make more educated investment decisions.
Thanks.
Maureen T. Wolff-Reid
President & Partner
Based in Boston, Sharon Merrill Associates has been executing award-winning programs and staying in daily contact with Wall Street and the media since 1985. Today, the firm is a nationally recognized investor relations and corporate communications strategic advisory firm serving public and private companies in a broad range of industries. In addition to providing Sharon Merrill Associates with leadership and long-term vision in her role as president, Maureen supports clients with strategic counsel, directs the agency’s operations and is active in business development. During her more than 20 years with the agency, Maureen has conceptualized, planned and implemented investor relations and corporate communications programs for a diverse array of companies across a broad spectrum of industries. A nationally recognized leader in the fields of investor relations and corporate communications, Maureen is a past chairman of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) and is currently serving on the editorial advisory board of NIRI’s IR Update publication. She was a member of the board of directors of the organization for four years. She also is a past president and honorary director of NIRI’s Boston Chapter.
She is a frequent speaker on IR issues and has authored numerous articles for business publications. A noted expert on IR topics, Maureen’s comments have appeared in Bloomberg Magazine, CFO Magazine, CBNC, Compliance Week, FinancialWeek, Financial Times, Investor’s Business Daily, IR Update and Management Review. Maureen’s work at Sharon Merrill Associates has earned her awards from the Public Relations Society of America and Publicity Club of Boston. In 2005 she was named as one of the “Top 10 PR Specialists” in Boston by the readers of Women’s Business magazine. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Montclair State University.
Over at BizzyWomen.com, I came across an interesting read written by Miriam Schwab, talking about web presence and the importance of a corporate website. Schwab writes, “Today it is generally agreed that a business is not serious if it does not have a website. People look to websites to find out more about businesses, see how the company presents itself, and what are the services that company provides. People also want to be assured that the business has other, satisfied customers by viewing client lists and testimonials.”
Today, the Israeli financial daily Globes has a piece ranking the websites of Israeli companies that trade in the US. Globes is looking to find out which websites provide useful and up-to-date information for investors to enable them to learn essential information about a specific company, and make informed investment decisions.
The article says: “Being an investor in the age of the Internet is a cinch. If you are an investor, either private or institutional, and come across a company that could be an attractive investment, one of the first and easiest things you can do (aside from calling his broker), is to navigate to the main page on your favorite search engine, type in the name of the company in the search field, and then log on to its website, if it has one. When you gets there, you should find all the details he need: the company’s line of business, who its CEO is, how he or she got the job, the company’s revenue and profit for the latest quarter, who sits on its board, who are the analysts covering it and how to get in touch with them.”
The report basically admits that this is information used for the most part by retail investors, as institutional investors have plenty of tools, like Bloomberg, and rarely will take a look at a corporate website. In all honesty, I am not sure how often most retail investors will go to a corporate website to get more information. I always felt that most retail investors were happy with the information provided to them on Yahoo Finance. How many retail investors care about how a CEO ‘got the job’?
The Globes survey was looking for basic information that should be available to investors, such as contact information of analysts covering the firm, email addresses of at least someone in senior management, and up to date press releases and financial reports. Coming out on top was Voltaire (VOLT), which develop and design server and storage switching and software solutions for enterprise IT networks.
Near the bottom of the list are companies that are lacking some basic information on their websites. TAT Technologies (TATTF) does have an investors relations section and from there you can click on financial reports. Only problem is when you click on it it says “no items available.” Another company near the bottom was G. Willi Food international (WILC). On their website you can’t find out anything about senior management, including who they are. But in case you purchased some of their noodles, rest assured that on their navigation bar they have a recipe section, and you can get a tasty recipe for noodles and vegetables.
Hey, G. Willi could incorporate some social networking into their website and have readers submit and rate all kinds of recipes. Who cares about who is CEO, I’m hungry!
Disclosure: Author’s fund has a position in WILC, he has no position in any other stock mentioned as of 8/05/08.
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Sales 2.0 technologies
Web 2.0 technologies, like our new website, blogs, wikis, tagging, etc. are more than just some AJAX and cool, simple apps. The better technology and platforms have begun to take shape and are currently powering Sales 2.0 and making people real money. I’m currently employing some of these technologies and platforms to sell my business: investment research and management.
First and foremost, Sales 2.0 has begun to redefine the traditional sales funnel. Because web technologies are involved, a certain level of new automation has crept into the sales process. For me and others competing in today’s marketplace,
Sales 2.0 has done a couple of things:
- Increase the circumference of the funnel
- shorten cycle times in terms of how long it takes to get through the funnel
- Increase conversions
Increasing the Circumference of the Funnel
What I mean by this is that given Web 2.0 technologies, I’m finding that I’m able to get a dramatically greater reach with my marketing efforts, effectively creating wider and more frequent ways to connect with potential clients. From there, given Sales 2.0 tech and platforms, I’m able to push more people through a wider funnel.
casting a wide-r net: Web 2.0 technologies are effectively being used by sales organizations to build brand over a wider reach. Companies like mine are using these technologies to build huge marketing machines in a much softer, gentler, and more precise way: via content. Oodles of it. I work in the financial advisory field and am using my blog to effectively reach folks around the world who are interested in what I have to say. Because my firm is small, I have a relatively shallow reach. I work with blog aggregation firms like SeekingAlpha to ramp up my exposure. SeekingAlpha, due to its content base of hundreds of blogs, has negotiated distribution deals with Yahoo Finance and E*Trade, deals I could never have negotiated on my own. Now, my content shows us exactly in front of the types of people who are my potential clients.
I’m using metrics tools like Google’s plug-and-play Analytics to track my efforts and in step, I add more marketing/content gas to those sites providing the best feeders to my core business. Enabling my content with RSS allows me to get my content out there. Sites like RSS hosting/tracking firm, Feedburner, allow me to position my content to become portabilized and allow users to read my content wherever they may be. As I’m building a Sales 2.0 organization, it’s more important for me to reach a larger audience as this point than it is to drive direct traffic to my own blog.
reputation building or becoming an expert: these technologies provide companies and individuals to build their own brands in increasingly narrow niches. I run my blog on the WordPress platform. WordPress has developed an app so that my blog posts also show up on Facebook. Not only does this further my reach beyond my blog and any aggregators to whom I’m submitting content, it also gets my content onto Facebook. My existence on Facebook is centered around groups and people who overlap my sphere of influence, specifically investing in Israeli technology companies. By putting this content directly into their news feeds, I’m continuing to build my reputation as an expert in public market investing in Israeli companies.
I’ve just begun to use Twitter to microblog some of my market commentary during the day. As more and more mainstream users adopt twitter-like apps, I am sure that this will compete for other media as a way to build reputation and distribute my expert opinion.
I’m using sites like Vestopia and Stockpickr to increase sales. Both sites allow me to create model portfolios and submit them to a community of like-minded investors. Vestopia tracks real trades I make in my investment account while Stockpickr tracks play money, but both allow me to put my best ideas forward to potential clients. Another step in building my repuation as an expert in my niche.
Previously, as head of business development and sales at SeekingAlpha, LinkedIn was an invaluable tool for opening up deals and closing them. Creating a well-thought out profile was essential when I used the LinkedIn messaging system to target potential partners for content syndication deals. I was able not only to target the appropriate person for the deal, but they were much more likely to respond from an internal LinkedIn message than they were to a cold email or phone call. Why? Because they could see and filter out why I was approaching them. By the time we connected, the relationship was already in context. I closed deals with Dow Jones, Reuters and Etrade from approaches made via LinkedIn. Additionally, I participate in LinkedIn’s Answers to answer questions posted by my network to show that I know what I’m talking about in my field.
Salesforce.com and other CRM solutions like 37 Signals’ Highrise and Zoho are building more than rudimentary APIs for me to hook in other office/business critical solutions that I’m using, like Google AdWords. I’m using Meetup to plan, manage, and communicate with numerous seminars that I’m holding as a way to garner new business.
All these things are providing mechanisms for me to connect with as many warm leads as possible and bring them into a process that I can begin to close a proportion of them.
one-to-one sales: Sales 2.0 technologies essentially allow one to widen the mouth of the traditional sales funnel by creating a cheap and wide-reaching distribution network and given the ability to build brand/reputation along very narrow borders, companies are able to cast their message to the appropriate audience in a way that was never possible previously. The result is that I’m consistently marketing to my existing and future customers.
Sales 2.0 is all about relationship marketing. My future clients are reading my content on my blog, on SeekingAlpha and on Yahoo Finance. The next step in the process is to make the relationship a little more intimate by soliciting an email address. I accomplish this by using a email services company, like Contstant Contact or StreamSend. These service providers provide hosted email services including easy-to-use auto responders. So, when a prospect comes to my website after I’ve caught their attention on SeekingAlpha, I offer a quick, easy — and free — giveaway. A whitepaper. The user inserts his email address in the javascript email capture box I’ve embedded on my website and they’ve now entered my sales cycle. They get personalized emails from me with important information regarding markets, picks, etc. All these emails have a call to action to buy my product. I continue to convert my blog traffic to paying subs via this method — using all Web 2.0 type tools.
making customers into distributors: Sales 2.0, given its integration into the tangle of relationships that is Web 2.0, has some interesting outcomes. Satisfied customers actually become value-added distributors for my business. The more users I have tracking my portfolios on Vestopia or Stockpickr (see above), the more legs my sales and marketing efforts have. In turn, users who track or follow my followers are also exposed to my content. In turn, what’s occurred, is that my customers or soon-to-be customers reinforce my positioning as an expert in my field and in turn, act as quasi-distributors lending approbation to my efforts.
Shorten Cycle Time
Automation
I spend most of my time creating content and allow the hooks into various Sales 2.0 platforms to work their magic. Every article I write shows up on my Facebook profile because I’ve integrated Wordpress and
Facebook (see above). My email auto-responders treat every new trial subscription to my research the same way. A series of personalized, automated messages go out, creating a conversion channel for my readers. RSS feeds are pushed out automatically via Feedburner. Feedburner even has an automated RSS-to-email plugin that allows me to offer email subs to my web content and continue the sales conversation that way as well.
Something worth noting is that many of these apps have taken software and turned it into a hosted, web service. This means I just pay for usage, implementation is really simple, and the service company takes care of updating the service, not me.
Increase Conversions
The Sales 2.0 funnel is inherently more stickier than its predecessors. Potential clients enter my wide-mouth funnel and have access to my research, my blog, my real-time market commentary. It’s not hit or miss advertising. Instead, potential clients who don’t buy right away continue to hear, see, and feel my messages. They stay connected to me longer and instead of just slipping through the funnel, they hang out for a while. While cycle times are sped up, more conversions actually take place.
Integrating Sales 2.0 apps into existing apps
I think we’re still in the early stages of using Sales 2.0 apps and platforms and just beginning to integrate them into existing business critical platforms that we use to conduct business.
In the chart to the right, I’ve tried to describe the process of integrating these services. As they become
more integrated, not only are sales activities more and more automated, the ability to market directly 1-to-1 becomes greater as well.
1st Stage: Sales 2.0 in the Sales Process
We and many like us are currently using Sales 2.0 platforms and most of the time, these are standalone activities. Meaning, while I blog, use email services firms, facebook, twitter, most of these activities are accomplished individually. I blog on Wordpress, send email via StreamSend, and use Facebook and Meetup to get the word out there about my services using content as the marketing message.
The point is that while some of the apps are integrated in a minimal sense (the wordpress blog app allows me to blog on Wordpress and it shows up on Facebook) , essentially all these activities are distinct from one another.
2nd Stage: Integrating into other sales apps
As APIs get better and easier to work with for small businesses, more and more of these Sales 2.0 technologies mentioned above will get integrated in existing workforce management apps. By this I mean that the division between *new* sales apps (salesforce, email services, meetup) and *old* sales apps (ACT, Outlook, Excel) gets blurred.
3rd Stage: Integration with Company-wide apps
After integration between old and new sales apps takes place, the next step in the Sales 2.0 movement is to integrate these apps into mission-critical business apps like Office, Outlook, Finance/Payroll etc. We currently use ACT as our contact manager, Outlook as an email handler, and an in-house financial app/process. As our software gets better and more tightly integrated. APIs and platform-agnostic hosted services will eventually allow me to tie everything together and manage sales together with all the other functions
Summing Up
Sales 2.0 is not merely Sales 1.0 with some cheap and easy software. It’s a game changer. Given cheap and easy to deploy tools, I use content to market myself to millions of potential clients, effectively enlarging the circumference of the traditional sales funnel. Sales 2.0 then allows me to cycle through more leads in shorter times and convert more than I would through traditional, expensive methodologies.
Tell us a bit about yourself.