Cohen: Develop a tailored approach for distribution

Imagine you have a good story to tell, but investors don’t take your funds as seriously as you would like. What should you do?

That was the premise for a panel at the Cohen Fund Services client conferences entitled "Sales, marketing and distribution best practices."

SunStar’s Dan Sondhelm was one of the panelists, along with Russ Parker, rpmAUM and Dave Swanson, SwanDog Marketing. The panel was moderated by Cohen’s Chris Bellamy.


"While the room included large and small managers, most shared the challenge of building distribution in an increasingly mature category, " said Swanson. "The smaller firms struggle to establish relevance with a limited support team. The larger firms struggle to meet demands that come with having more products than you can focus on and more customers than you can properly service. But both use size to their advantage - one through a personal touch, the other through technology and scale."

"Distribution trumps product," said Parker. "Witness how there are too many examples of great investment shops with terrific numbers that have little AUM and more examples of less-than-stellar investment shops with big AUM. Not suggesting lesser managers are better, but getting product on the shelf and getting advisors to present it to investors is key." 

"From the discussions with our clients, it was clear that entrepreneurial managers can be well-positioned to experience significant asset growth," said Bellamy.  "Managers should develop a tailored approach for distribution that highlights the strengths of the manager and their funds.  One size does not fit all when it comes to distribution strategies."

The panel spoke about issues such as distribution and marketing, being proactive, digital strategies, importance of brand, engaging advisors, sales teams, among other things.