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How to run successful seminars

July 01, 2008

‘Seminars are a great way to showcase your skills and expertise. Planned well, they can be used as
an effective tool to target new prospects or service your existing clients. Based on our experiences of running seminars we have put together this guide to help you with your own events.’

Tips for running a successful seminar

Step 1

Set specific objectives for the seminar

One of the first steps in preparing for a seminar is to have a clearly focused outcome for the event. You must be clear on what you want the audience to do or think. For new or existing clients, it might be to strengthen your relationship and educate them on the products and services you offer, with the end benefit being increased sales and client retention. For referral sources, it might be to showcase your expertise to convert referrals into new clients.

Step 2

Define your audience

In order to plan your presentation you need a strong understanding of who your target audience is, their age, education levels and interests. Ask yourself, are they new or existing clients, referral sources or a mix? This is a necessary step to ensure you tailor your information to meet their needs and you achieve your objective.

Step 3

Develop your key message

Your key message needs to offer attendees an overriding benefit and ensures you obtain your desired end result. An example of a key message might be to educate your attendees about the need to plan early for retirement with the desired outcome being to set up an appointment with you.

Your content might be based on:

Theme – Targeting individuals at different stages of their financial life cycle such as planning for retirement, gearing strategies and estate planning

Technical – Keeping clients up to date on taxation and social security issues

Product – Presenting on a fund manager’s products and features

You – Showcasing your services and expertise

Step 4

Structure your presentation

Having a well structured presentation will help you to control your argument.

The opening – Start by welcoming your audience, thanking them for attending and introducing yourself. Manage their expectations, let them know how long the presentation will go for, if there will be question time and make mention of any handouts the audience will receive. This will set the tone of the presentation, provide you with a great opportunity to warm up and ease your audience into the discussion.

Have a clear, straightforward agenda – Once you have your key message and topic you can start to work on the agenda. Start by thinking about w hat information your attendees will need to hear to be convinced of your key message. Avoid having an agenda that has too much detail or gives away your conclusion. Use evidence – Using testimonials, analogies, case studies, quotes or research is a great way to breathe some life into your presentation and reinforce your key messages.

Visuals – Many people find it easier to absorb information effectively if it is supported visually. Visuals can help to simplify complex issues and vary the tone and pace of the presentation. They need to be clear and fairly simple. Using visuals that are relevant to your audience will help to keep the audience’s attention focused.

The conclusion – Begin by giving a quick recap, reiterating your agenda and mini conclusions for clarity, “The issues I wanted to highlight today were” and finish by bringing the presentation all together into one point. “With that in mind, the key point I need you to remember today is.”

The next step – It is important that you address what the action items are. It might be to fill out the evaluation forms included in their kits, put their card or details in a competition box or discuss how the attendees can set up an appointment with you.

Step 5

Tips to remember when presenting your seminar Be natural – When presenting you should use your everyday communication skills. You need to talk with your audience and not at them. This will not only make your presentation easier to listen to but it will also be easier for you to deliver.

Involve the audience – An excellent way to avoid your audience drifting off is to involve them. You can do this by asking rhetorical questions, using detailed examples that directly involve the audience, asking the group or an individual to participate in an activity or posing questions that require an answer from an individual. It’s a great way to maintain your audience’s attention.

Rehearse – There is no better way to prepare for a presentation than to rehearse. This requires more than just reading your notes through. To properly rehearse you need to stand up, practice using any visuals you have, choose the words you are going to say and say them out loud. Rehearsing will give you the confidence you need to deliver your presentation as well as clarity.

Step 6

What logistics need to be organised to run a seminar?

Once you’ve set your topic and worked out who your target audience is, you need to start thinking about the venue, time of the presentation, audiovisual requirements, invitations and handouts. Below is a quick checklist to help make sure you are well prepared in the lead up, during and after the presentation.

Venue
To help improve attendance at your seminar you need to choose a location which can be accessed easily by your target audience, is close to public transport and has parking facilities. Your venue will need to have a room which comfortably fits everybody and can be set up so that everybody will be able to see and hear you. For large audiences this might require staging.

When finalising the layout of the room, it is important not to forget about you. Make sure you and any supporting speakers have room to move, a lecturn if required and somewhere to sit when you’re not presenting. Lastly, make sure your room is not in a hard place to find at the venue. Signage at the entrance of the venue is a great way to make sure your attendees don’t get lost.

Audio visual
The number of attendees you expect to come will guide what size screen you will need for your presentation. The screen should be big enough and high enough so that everyone in the audience can easily see the slides. If it is a large audience you should also consider a microphone. If there will be question time at the end of your presentation a microphone for the audience will ensure you can hear all questions. It is important that on the day of the presentation you get there early enough to test the equipment and make sure you are comfortable using it.

Invitations
How you promote your seminar will be guided by who your target audience is.

Existing clients – As existing clients already have a relationship with you, an invitation or letter, clearly stating the key benefit the client will receive by attending may be all you need to promote the seminar, perhaps supported by a phone calling program. On your invitations it is important you make sure it is easy to RSVP to your seminar.

New prospects – For new prospects it is even more crucial that you focus on the key benefit you are looking to offer to this group. Once you’ve exhausted your database of prospects and referrals by mailing out invitations, you may need to widen your invitee list by using a combination of both advertising and publicity to generate interest in you and your seminar.

Before booking any advertising, choose publications and devices that effectively reach your target audience. Advertising in local newspapers, newsletters and notice boards of sporting and hobby clubs, business and civic groups are great places to generate interest within your local area.

Confirm attendees
Once you receive an acceptance to attend your seminar, make sure you contact the client/prospect and confirm that they have a place. This can be done by email, letter or a phone call. Two days before the seminar, a good way to ensure attendance is to send a final reminder stating that you are looking forward to seeing them and reconfirming the venue and timing of the presentation.

Registration
Name tags are an easy way to ensure you don’t forget any of your clients’ names. In an audience of new prospects, they also make introductions a lot easier. At the beginning of your seminar, you should have a registration table at the entrance of your room. The name tags should be laid out alphabetically. Make sure you have extra blank name tags for additional people who turn up, and for any names you have incorrectly deciphered from their registration.

Catering
Catering can be very expensive and is not a prerequisite for holding a successful seminar. Depending on the time of your seminar, having tea and coffee or drinks served after the event can provide a great opportunity for you to network with your audience. You might find that the time you spend networking with your audience after your presentation can be more valuable than your talk, especially in an audience of new prospects.

Step 7

What to include in your seminar kit

After a presentation it is nice to leave something tangible that the attendee can take home with them. Handouts can be a great means to provide more detailed information on what you have presented. They also allow the reader to interpret the information at their own pace.

Too much information may be too daunting for the attendee to read, so choose documents which support your presentations key message in a concise manner.

Step 8

Budget
It is important that your budget recognises all of the costs associated with the seminar. These might include the costs of the invitations, venue, catering, use of hotel equipment, audio visual support, printing of kits and name tags, advertising and any signage required. This will help you to budget for your next seminar.

Having a budget detailing your expenses will also make it easier to calculate the return on your investment. A table that might help you to do this is included below.

At a time chosen by you, you can track the amount of inflows generated from your seminar and divide these by the total costs of holding it. You will then be able to evaluate the success of your seminar.

Step 9

Follow–up
To maximise the impact of your seminar you need to make sure you follow-up all leads and answer any unanswered questions asked during the seminar or on the feedback form. The first step is to make sure the responses from the feedback forms collected on the day are collated, perhaps into an excel spreadsheet.

In the case of a new prospects seminar, you need an action plan to contact all attendees who indicated that they would like an appointment with you. You then need to decide who will do the follow-up calls to organise appointments. Will it be you or your support staff? If it is you, you need to block out time in your diary to make the telephone calls. For maximum impact, these should all be made within 1-3 days of the seminar.

No shows
Don’t forget to contact the people who didn’t make it to your seminar. Mail them a copy of the seminar and the supporting materials you handed out and make sure you invite them to your next seminar.

Step 10

Evaluate
The final step is to critically evaluate your seminar. You need to ask yourself if it met the key objective/outcome you set in Step 1. From your feedback forms identify what worked and what didn’t and what you could do better next time. This will help you ensure that every seminar you hold is better than the last one.

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Absolute Return Funds - Strategy Descriptions

June 30, 2008

Understanding absolute return investment strategies can at first glance seem mystifying or even threatening. However if you break down these strategies into their various components and then apply first principals of investing, they can be much easier to understand, even logical in their approach. In this document we try to demystify for investors a few of the more commonly used absolute fund investment strategies.

Market Neutral Investing

Generally when investing in shares you take on two separate risks. First, the ‘stock specific risk’, that is, the ability of the particular company to perform well in its operating business and deliver profits into the future. Second, ‘market risk’, the risk that the stock market overall will trade up or down, taking the value of most shares with it when it does.

Traditional fund managers normally only hold long positions, that is, they own shares in companies (typically 50 to 80 companies) because they believe they will rise in value. This means that their entire investment portfolio is totally exposed to both stock specific risk as well as general market risk. Market neutral managers on the other hand only wants to be exposed to stock specific risk and is not interested in taking on general market risk.

Similar to the traditional fund manager, the market neutral manager will hold a portfolio of shares that he believes will increase in value. Like the traditional fund manager the market neutral manager may have used fundamental, or relative value analysis to arrive at the conclusion that a particular company’s share price is undervalued and therefore should rise in price going forward.

In undertaking this analysis of companies both the traditional manager and the market neutral manager will also identify over-valued companies. These are companies who have share prices trading above their perceived true value.

Unlike the traditional fund manager, who will pass over the over-valued company shares, the market neutral manager will take a short position in these shares. By taking short positions the market neutral manager will profit from the predicted fall in the share price when it returns to fair value.

Therefore, the market neutral manager will hold an investment portfolio of long positions, say 50 stocks, which will return a profit when the undervalued share price goes up to fair value, and at the same time he will have short positions, say 50 stocks, which will return a profit when the over-valued share price goes down to fair value.

There are two reasons why the market neutral manager has gone both long and short. First, the market neutral manager has twice the opportunity to invest as a traditional manager. This is because the market neutral manager is selecting stocks from two pools, those stocks are undervalued and those stocks that are over-valued. Second, the market neutral manager has greatly reduced the risk that the overall investment portfolio will be affected by a severe down turn in the general stock market. He has done this by having an equal balance of long positions and short positions. Therefore, if the stock market falls across the board, he will lose money on the long positions (as would the traditional manager) however, he will make money on the short positions (because they profit from stock falling in price). If the market neutral manager balances his overall investment portfolio holding between long and short positions, then it is possible to eliminate the general market risk exposure.

In summary, the market neutral manager wants to profit by investing in companies (both over-valued and undervalued), while eliminating exposure to general stock market risk. That is, the market neutral manager is aiming to make a profit based on stock specific situations rather than general market situations.

Long / Short Investing

Put simply, a long/short manager does what a market neutral manager does, however, he does not strive to totally eliminate all the general stock market risk. Instead the long/short manager will tend to hold either a long or short bias. In other words, a long/short manager with a long bias will hold more long positions (eg. 70%) than short positions (eg. 30%) and a long/short manager with a short bias will hold more short positions (eg. 70%) than long positions (eg 30%).

The long/short managers principal interest is to make profits from over-valued and undervalued situations, however, without the same degree of focus on reducing general market risk exposure. It is useful to keep in mind that by holding shorts in the portfolio, regardless of whether it is a minority or a majority, the portfolio will still have less exposure to a general market downturn than the traditional fund manager’s portfolio who typically only has long positions in the portfolio.

Event Driven Investing

Fund managers who base their investment strategies on the expected outcome of significant events of corporate life are known as event driven fund managers. The corporate events could include, mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies, spin offs (eg. listing part of all of an operating businesses or divisions or the larger corporate entity), divestitures (eg. sales of parts of the larger corporate entity), financial restructurings, law suits for and against a corporate entity, etc.

The investment opportunity lies in the uncertainty of how such events will unfold. Depending on whether a company succeeds in completing an acquisition (eg. Smorgan Steel takeover of Email, AMP takeover of GIO Insurance), is taken over (eg. Email being taken over by Smorgan), or, getting out of an anti-trust suit with federal government (Microsoft), its share price may move up or down significantly. Event driven managers scour the landscape for such corporate events and invest in the ones that will offer the best investment opportunities.

Unlike traditional investment managers, event driven managers do not focus on the overall business prospects of companies they track. Rather than being concerned with a company’s long term prospects, they have a much narrower interest, that is, how the company will be affected by a particular event.

Profiting and managing risk using Event Driven strategies Traditional fund managers will normally only take long positions, that is, they will buy shares in a company they think will increase in value. This means the traditional manager can participate in one side of a merger or acquisition, for example, buying shares in the company being taken over in the belief the share price will increase to the full value of the take over offer. Event driven managers however, will take a similar long position at the same time will also take a short position in the other side of such a transaction. (Short-selling shares to profit from the anticipated fall in the share price).

There are two principal reasons for holding a short position. First, the acquiring company’s stock price usually falls in a merger transaction. This can be for many reasons including, shareholder concerns over whether the merger is, or is not, a good direction for the company to move forward, or shareholders may have concerns about the company’s prospect of delivering on the operating synergies anticipated by such a merger, or simply the company’s ability to continue to pay dividends to shareholders post acquisition, etc. The event driven manager will take advantage of this share price fall, by taking an offsetting short position in the acquiring company’s shares. In this way the event driven managers anticipates a profit from both the fall in the acquiring company’s stock price and the rise in the takeover company’s share price.

Second, the event driven manager goes short to reduce the investment exposure to general market risk (see market neutral). In this way the event driven manager provides protection from a market downturn occurring prior to the event completing and the profit being realised. Remember, the event driven manager is investing and profiting from the event and not the general stock market.

If there were a severe fall in the stock market, what would happen? The event driven manager would suffer losses on the shares he owns in the company being acquired (as would the traditional manager), however, the event driven manager would make an off-setting gain from the short position he held in the acquiring company (unlike the traditional fund manager). In other words, the event manager would profit from the falling stock price of the company initiating the merger. Hence the event driven manager has positioned himself to profit from a specific event (merger or takeover) while minimising his exposure to the general stock market should the market suffer a severe fall.

All event driven managers generally follow a similar investment strategy as outlined above except it may involve divestitures, spin offs, anti trust suits, etc.

The Australian market for event based investing is a bit thin, that is, there is not a plethora of investment opportunities if you are looking to put any significant amount of investment capital to work. However globally (G7 countries), there can be over 10,000 mergers or takeovers occurring in any one year. In addition to the significantly increased number of investment opportunities available for international event driven managers, there is the massive increase in size of the transactions. Multi billion dollar transactions are commonplace internationally, thus allowing the deployment of far greater amounts of investment capital that could ever be possible domestically.

Arbitrage Investing

Historically, arbitrage was principally the simultaneous purchase and sale of like securities in order to profit from the price discrepancies between markets. An example would have been a company who had shares traded on two different stock exchanges (eg. New York & London) where the shares, once adjusted for foreign exchange were trading at two different relative prices.

The arbitrage manager would buy the under priced share in the company on one exchange and sell short the over priced share in the same company on the other exchange. With the advent of computers, all this happens in the blink of an eye, and such discrepancies do not exist for long. As with the market neutral manager, the arbitrage manager will have eliminated his exposure to market risk by going long and short in the same stock, and like the event driven manager, will make a profit from a specific event, rather than general market movements or the long term prospects of the company.

Pure arbitrage strategies are about making small gains, however with low risk. You will not get rich from such a strategy but you can earn a good return.

Today the arbitrage manager will invest in like securities as outlined above, and will also invest long and short in similar securities, such as shares and convertible bonds. In such a transaction the manager might invest long in an undervalued convertible bond (a convertible bond is a company debt instrument which can covert into company shares at some point in the future) and go short the company’s shares.

In doing this the arbitrage manager has investment in the market while eliminating market risk. He has investment in an undervalued debt instrument (that has equity like qualities and relationships), which he believes will rise in value. At the same time the arbitrage manager has gone short the company shares. Therefore if the general market falls he will profit from the shares falling while making some losses on the debt (usually there will not be the same degree of loss. This is because a debt instrument is a good investment relative to shares in a falling market). In effect, the arbitrage manager has created a situation where market risk has been eliminated, and like the event-based manager, he has restricted his profit and loss exposure to the realisation of the true value of the convertible bond.

These arbitrage opportunities arise mostly because of the complexity of modern investment securities. Such securities can have options or other complex restrictions, etc. embedded into them. These are difficult to understand, let alone price, unless you are a sophisticated financial engineer. Financial arbitrage managers tend to be well-educated financial professionals who spend their lives dissecting and evaluating complicated financial instruments to assess their true value, and then take offsetting positions to realise that value.

Macro Investing

We will not say much about macro managers, other than they seek high returns while undertaking high risks. They tend to speculate on global economic events, such as the revaluation of currencies, and then take positions to realise value from such events.

Macro managers tend to use high degrees of leverage and debt and make large concentrated bets on the outcome of events. They may or may not take an off setting short or long position to reduce risk.

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Absolute Return Funds - An Introduction

May 30, 2008

In this document we introduce absolute return funds by posing questions commonly asked by investors considering them as stand alone investments or as part of a more diversified portfolio of investments.

What is an Absolute Return Fund?

Absolute return investing is investing in a fund which aims to deliver consistent absolute returns to investors regardless of underlying market returns. Investors are often surprised to learn that the first absolute return fund was created more the 50 years ago as an investment approach designed to protect capital from market downturns. From this pioneering concept has grown a US$750 billion plus industry and although remaining a relatively misunderstood corner of the investment world it is one that attracts the best and brightest investment managers of our time. Drawn by the opportunity to invest with these top money managers, who seek returns outside mainstream market indices, individual and institutional investors alike are increasingly using absolute return funds to boost portfolio returns whilst managing risk.

Absolute return funds use a set of strategies other than the traditional purchase of bonds and equities (ie: traditional managed funds). There are many different investment strategies utilised by absolute return funds, each with its own set of return and risk characteristics. Examples of these alternative strategies include:

Short Selling - selling shares after borrowing them from a stock lender, planning to buy them back at a future date at a lower price in the expectations that their price will drop.

Using Arbitrage - seeking to exploit pricing inefficiencies between related securities such as shares and convertible notes.

Investing in out-of-favour or unrecognised undervalued securities (debt or equity) attempting to take advantage of the spread between the current market price and the ultimate purchase price in event driven situations such as mergers and acquisitions.

How do Absolute Return Funds “protect” against market risk?

Most absolute return funds seek to deliver consistent and stable returns rather than focus on the magnitude of return as their key priority. Event-driven strategies, for example, such as investing in mergers and acquisitions or special corporate situations, can reduce risk when included in a traditional portfolio of investments by being uncorrelated to the markets (ie: making their returns irrespective of the markets general direction). They may buy companies undergoing reorganisation, bankruptcy, or some other corporate restructuring, counting on events specific to a company, rather than market trends, to deliver investment returns. Thus, they are generally able to deliver uncorrelated returns with low risk. Long/Short equity funds, while more dependent on the direction of markets, hedge out some of the market risk through short positions that can provide profits in a market downturn.

Do Absolute Return Funds vary greatly in their strategies and range of risk / return?

Definitely. Absolute return funds styles are as different from one another as asset classes, just as a term deposit varies from residential property which varies from direct shares, so too, are global macro funds, event driven funds and long/short equity funds. Different absolute return fund strategies vary enormously in terms of:

investment returns
volatility
risk

Some absolute return funds which are not correlated to equity markets are able to deliver consistent returns with extremely low levels of risk, whilst others may be as, or more volatile, than traditional managed funds. Most absolute return funds have as their key priority absolute returns in an attempt to deliver profits irrespective of a rising or falling market.

What is the difference between an Absolute Return Fund and a Traditional Managed Fund?

There are four key distinctions:

1. Traditional managed funds are normally measured on relative performance, that is, their performance is compared to a relevant index such as the All Ordinaries Index or to other managed funds in their sector. Absolute return funds are expected to deliver returns relative to a stated objective. This objective could be a nominated level of return, volatility or yield.

2. Traditional managed funds can be restricted in their use of short selling and derivatives. These restrictions make it more difficult to out-perform the market or to protect the assets of the fund in a downturn. Absolute return funds, on the other hand, are permitted to use short selling and other strategies designed to accelerate performance or reduce volatility.

3. Traditional managed funds can be more limited in their ability to effectively protect portfolios against declining markets other than by going into cash or by shorting a limited amount of stock index futures. Absolute return funds, on the other hand, are often able to protect against declining markets by utilising various hedging strategies. Additionally certain types of absolute return funds are able to generate positive returns even in declining markets.

4. The future performance of traditional managed funds can be dependent on the direction of the equity markets. It can be compared to putting a boat on the surface of the ocean – the boat will go up and down with the waves. The future performance of many absolute return fund strategies tends to be more predictable and not so dependent on the direction of the equity markets. It can be compared to a submarine travelling in an almost straight line below the surface, not impacted by the effect of the waves.

What are Absolute Return “Fund of Funds”?

An absolute return “Fund of Funds” is a fund that mixes and matches individual absolute return funds. It spreads investments among many different funds or investment vehicles. A Fund of Funds investment simplifies the process of choosing individual absolute return funds. It blends together funds to meet a range of investor risk/return objectives while generally spreading the individual risks among a variety of funds (ie: not all your eggs are in one basket).

This blending of different strategies and asset classes aims to deliver a more consistent return with a lower risk profile.

So predictability of returns is greater with an Absolute Return Fund?

In any investment strategy the predictability of future results can be correlated to some degree with the volatility of past returns of each strategy. For example future performance of strategies with high volatility is far less predictable than future performance of strategies experiencing low or moderate volatility. Participants in the traditional managed fund industry, where the volatility of past results is quite high (because returns are so dependent on the direction of the stock market), know how impossible it is to predict future performance. Conversely within the absolute return fund industry many of the strategies are able to produce attractive returns with much lower volatility. As a result, focused absolute return funds, utilising low-volatility strategies, are often able to produce more consistent returns, not correlated or reliant on a rising or falling stock market.

How do I use Absolute Return Funds in my own portfolio?

Absolute return funds and Fund of Funds in particular have a place in most investors portfolios due to their low correlation to traditional asset classes. They provide strong diversification benefits and as such, an allocation should seriously be considered. The level of exposure depends on what an investors individual risk/return profile is and what it is that they hope to achieve by using absolute return funds. Specifically, does the investor want to lower portfolio volatility or increase overall return, or a combination of both?

Adviser Services: 1300 30 90 93
Email: contact@hfaam.com.au
www.hfaam.com.au

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