What is the purpose of an LP Meeting?

Is it to inform the limited partners about the performance of their investments? I don’t think so. 

The LPs already know the numbers.   They don’t come to the meeting to hear the numbers.  They come to hear what the manager thinks about the numbers.

There’s a big difference. 

Numbers are, we hope, facts about the past.  They are commodities—everybody has them, and their value is depressed. 

What we think about the numbers are opinions.  They have the potential for being unique and differentiated, and their value can be considerable. 

When a manager expresses a clear, compelling and fact-based opinion at an LP meeting, he has a chance of differentiating himself and his firm from the pack.

LP meetings have more to do with opinions than with facts.  If performance is down, a manager’s opinions about why are important, as are his opinions about the future.

And investors arrive with opinions about the numbers, and with a desire to hear the opinions of the manager.

Not only that.  Investors arrive with opinions about the manager and his team, and the manager seeks to use the meeting as a branding opportunity to reaffirm positive opinions about his operation, and alter the less-than-favorable opinions of the fence sitters.

Facts and opinions have to work together of course.  Facts are the bricks, opinions the building. 

LP meetings are based on facts, but they’re about opinions.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

I spend a lot of time in pharma and financial services, where content is king.  Smart people with expertise in narrow areas of vast importance spend weeks preparing presentations for MBAs, Ph.Ds, MDs and Pharm.Ds (to name only a few distinguished members of the alphabet glitterati they speak to.)

It is important to have no misspellings on the slides, no inconsistencies between the data displayed and the data verbalized; important to make tenable claims, and demonstrate the sterling methods by which the data were generated; important to argue logically, rationally, objectively, and demonstrate a clear understanding of the difference between fact and opinion.

My brilliant clients do all this.  They work long hours to make sure the content is thorough, precise, and accurate.  They make no turn without stoning any assertion to test its strength and weakness.

Yet they often disregard themselves and how they come across. By education, training, temperament and culture they dwell on the facts.  They know that expertise is necessary for success, and they often act as if it were also sufficient.

It is not sufficient.  It is necessary, but not sufficient.  Audiences also need the facts shaped into a narrative that holds their attention—one that is clear and meaningful, and flows in a manner that appeals to the mind.

And always, under its breath, the audience is muttering, “Do I trust this guy?  Can she make this happen?  Does he have what it takes?  Would I like to have a drink with her?”

It’s never not also the person.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.