Conducting Post-JP Morgan Follow-up: Best Practices for Pharma/Bio/MedTec CEO, CFO, and IR
The following article has been posted on
The Actionable Ideas Blog by
Julie Huang, President of
Kaimen Company.
If, like thousand of others, you attended the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference last week, then you might have plenty of following up to do. As with other conferences, this is a valuable opportunity to build relationships with amazing people on a business and/or personal level. Given the time and money typically spent on these conferences, here are some actionable ideas to help publicly-traded and privately-held companies get the most out of the conference experience.
1. How Your Corporate Communications Team Can Help
If you received business cards or contact information from reporters you met, give these to your in-house or agency Corporate Communications Team. If you have already established a next step with any of these contacts, then please let your team know before they make their calls. Ask your corporate communications team to find out if these reporters have:
- Opinions after meeting with company executives. What issues piqued the reporters' interests? What other questions have gone unanswered?
- Written articles about the company or an industry peer after the conference.
- Published stories that can be shared and are worth commenting on. Do not hesitate to ask your team for ideas on what can be said to reporters, as well as how to help build better connections. See point 3 below.
- A pipeline of new stories under development that may be of interest. Have your team sort out how to best help these reporters with resources or introductions to other industry contacts within the boundaries of Regulation Fair Disclosure.
- Upcoming travel plans to attend investor, banking, medical, scientific, or industry conferences or meetings.
- Suggestions for you to meet with other reporters. It's always great for a company to have a reporter make an introduction to another reporter from the same media outlet.
- Twitter feeds to follow. These can be followed through a company Twitter account (preferred) or as an individual. This can be done by visiting http://www.twitter.com/ and doing a search of the reporter's name. Most reporters with a Twitter account will Tweet their latest articles, giving you and your company a heads up. Please note that a company can have a Twitter account for the sole purpose of following others and not to Tweet. Kaimen's Actionable Blog will cover this topic at a later date.
- Been considered as potential media targets for upcoming stories coming out of the company. Make sure that if you and your company have a pipeline of stories to think through, and if any of these stories might be interest to the reporters you met, you will have to plan accordingly when the time comes to conduct media relations for those stories.
2. How Your Investor Relations Team Can Help, Too
Have your Investor Relations Team (in house or agency) contact the current and prospective investors, equity research analysts, and bankers you met at the conference primarily for honest feedback on a non-attributed basis to help improve your company's investor relations program. When your team reports this information back to you, ask your team to distinguish between what is investor/analyst feedback and your investor relations team's own opinion.
As I mentioned before, if you have already established the next step with any of these contacts, then please let your team know before any calls are made. Here's a summary of what to ask your Investor Relations Team to find out:
- Investors'/analysts' opinions about the company presentation, the story, and the executives. Have the team generate constructive next steps for management based on this feedback.
- Information needs that the investors/analysts would like to see addressed in the next earnings announcement or future presentations.
- Names of other investors or research analysts who might be interested in the company's story and in meeting with management.
- Planned participation at upcoming investor, banking, medical, scientific, or industry conferences. It is always helpful to find out from investors where they plan to be and which conferences they care enough to leave their desks to attend. This can help you prioritize your conference participation.
- Buzz on the hottest issues at the conference.
- New presentation practices that were well-received.
Make sure that these contacts are added to your appropriate internal mailing and/or emailing lists.
3. After Follow-up: Nurturing your New Contacts:
Once the follow-up calls are made, reports are written, and contact details are entered and coded into a database, what's next? Andrea Nierenberg, a personal friend and business relationship and development authority, says in her article, Non-Stop Networking, to "make calls and send notes even when it is not directly business-related. As you stay in touch with people, they will remember you, thus will contact you when a need arises." Great advice, Andrea!
Please feel free to leave your comments below! Thanks.
@2011 Kaimen Company.