NMA Article

Nathan

Good Morning All


I have been asked to write a small piece for New Model Adviser about how to present to paraplanners.  I think this is great opportunity to communicate with providers what we do and don't want from a presentation.

Paraplanners are always very discerning when it comes to anything sounding remotely like a product pitch, what would you like to hear from speakers? Tech knowledge? New digital solutions?

Any examples of who has done it right?

What are the keys for engaging a paraplanner audience in particular?

I would love to hear your thoughts and of course if you would like me to credit your response within the article then please say so.  ( Although I cant guarantee the credit will make the final cut because I am at the mercy of the NMA editor.)

Many thanks in advance.

Nathan

amarshall

The things that I am most interested in learning from a presentation are either how what I am being told will improve my working day or how it will improve our clients' situation.

I definitely don't want any sales pitches but (except for a few dinosaurs) that type of approach is now dead. RDR, professionalism, the death of commission and inducements and the increase in standards (of which we are a driving force) has largely put paid to it.

I am a big fan of the Vanguard Adviser Alpha document and this is exactly the sort of thing I mean when I say 'how it will improve our clients' situation'. We need to demonstrate the value that we bring to our clients and if a provider has a means of doing that which I am not aware of or not utilising, then I am very interested to hear about it.

There can be a fine line to tread between helping us add value and blatant product pitches so speakers (providers) have to be very careful. If they cross that line, they will quickly lose credibility and attention. We do enough research into products to establish what is best for clients. There is no need for somebody to come and try to tell us that theirs is best when they don't know our clients.

I hope that is of some use.

Andy

Nathan

That is awesome Andy, thank you

Jamie_Barnes

I would agree with the above and the only thing to really add is that 'our time is precious', perhaps even more so than the advisers when you take into account the breadth of work we are often required to do. Any presenters need to be concise and to the point, it needs to be relevant and not something we could pick up on in our general day to day work and research. We screen before allowing providers to come into our offices. The financial world has moved forward - comes back to the talk of professionalism in our industry - benefits need to be for the client at the end and whether this is by helping us improve our efficiency or by improving our technical knowledge, it still needs to feed back to them.

Definitely no sales pitch! I like tech updates personally, but we actually have a tech specialist who comes in quarterly for 2 hours to give us pretty much the lowdown on everything, and in between we have so many online sources of information other presentations simply are not needed.

One final point, companies should consider improving their technology so that they are able to give webinars that can be of use, and in much shorter timeframes. Some fund houses are very good at this, others are not.

Jamie

Nathan

Thanks Jamie....