MeetMax 1X1 investor conference software has a new feature to maximize 1X1s at an event (please e mail corporateaccess@twst.com for details). Extracting maximum commercial impact from investor conferences is likely to intensify as a business priority. Reinforcing this trend is the increasing competition for buy side commissions. One survey this week anticipates a 17% drop year on year for 2011 in buy side commissions (http://www.integrity-research.com/cms/2011/03/14/csa-use-grows-on-buy-side/).

MeetMax investor 1×1 conference software is a cloud application but has actually been on the market since 2003 and has now been used for 1500+ investor conferences.  Key benefits include:

1. Efficiency: centralizing data eliminates cutting and pasting and generates a new level of productivity

2. More 1×1 meetings: corporate access pays the bills at investor conferences and MeetMax will let you create more meetings.

3. Improve attendance: better looking forms, targeted outreach to investors, follow up programs to non respondents.

4. Greater Control: MeetMax summary level reports are generated at a click of a mouse and provide instant key metrics on attendance level and other key conference data sets.

CA Chevreux’s survey 2010 European Corporate Survey on corporate access emphasizes the importance of one on one meetings for the buy side. The survey revealed that for most investors “an investment decision is four times more likely to be made following a meeting with a CEO or CFO than after a meeting with a Head of Investor Relations, due to management’s in-depth knowledge of strategy and decision-making power”. MeetMax has argued for some time that a key measure of success of an investor conference is the average number of one on ones per management team. This metric is certainly comparable in importance to overall level of investor attendance.

Managing data is mission critical in financial services. Data is the lifeblood of the financial services industry. A recent blog on 2011 IT Service trends argues that “firms that know how data is used, where it is sourced, and how it moves will have an edge on their competition in responding to opportunities”. Meeting data is the single most unstructured data set of a sell side firm. MeetMax investor conference software prioritizes preserving the details of one on one meetings (who, when, where). Many times MeetMax has been asked for a quick report of which investors a particular management team met with at a specific investor conference. We launched MeetMax CAM, our reporting and scheduling application, to meet this market need.

What is the dollar value of a 1X1 meeting? A new survey on the value of corporate access by investment bank CA Chevreux is the subject of a Financial Times article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9e22138-048e-11e0-a99c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18BmfMudy). The survey of asset managers emphasizes the high value on corporate access placed by institutional investors. The Wall Street Transcript (MeetMax) did some analysis earlier this year to generate a theoretical dollar price for a 1X1 meeting. Please email us for more on this topic.

There is a central problem with the Event Calendar of many 3rd party roadshow management systems.   They tend to be accessible only by people with a username and password -  and this either limits their availability and usefulness, or it makes them very expensive.

MeetMax designed its calendar to be easy and  free to share across a sell side intranet.   Or even to share with select Clients – without the need to login.

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I recently found an article on Forbes.com that speaks to the business case for face to face meetings.  In their study of 750 business executives, Forbes reports that “executives expressed an overwhelming preference or face-to-face meetings, with more than eight out of ten saying they like in-person contact more than virtual. Asked why, those that prefer face-to-face meetings cited how they build stronger, more meaningful relationships (85%), the ability to “read” another person (77%), and greater social interaction (75%).”

Here at MeetMax, we specialize in working with corporations for which conferences are a key part of how they provide value to their clients.   At their conferences, they feature 1-on-1 meetings so that attendees can connect, in private pre-scheduled meetings, with companies with whom they may invest or otherwise do business together.  Just a sample of some of the events our clients have held this summer –

• China Conference: 451 registered. 119 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 1062 meetings in total
• Healthcare Conference: 478 registered. 92 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 542 meetings in total.
• Automotive/Transportation Conference: 304 registered. 228 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 2387 meetings in total.
• Energy Conference: 775 registered. 311 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 1212 meetings in total.

At these events, attendees had on average between 4 and 10 meetings.  These are meetings that are scheduled for them before they even show up at the conference — so they know in advance the value that they will get from attending.  And the conference sponsor/organizer can make a strong case for attending – because they can guarantee some minimum number of private meetings.   With travel budgets being slashed, conference organizers need to be able to demonstrate why attending their conference is going to provide a return on investment.  And as the Forbes article points out, for the majority of business executives, face to face business development meetings provide a strong return on investment.

So that’s the case for including 1-on-1 meetings as part of your conference.  But, imagine scheduling 2387 meetings on a spreadsheet!  It hurts my head to think about how complex and time-consuming a task that would be, if you tried to do the scheduling without good tools.

At MeetMax, we provide you with the tools that meeting planners need to successfully manage a 1-on-1 meeting program within a conference.  By integrating 1-on-1 requests with online registration, you can streamline the requests process.  Our one-click scheduling tools make it simple to build the meeting schedules for each participant.  And, built-in communications tools make it easy to email schedules to all participants in advance.  On-site tools help you keep track of what’s going on throughout the day, and make sure that people are notified of any changes in their schedule as the day progresses.

When you are planning your 2011 user group conference, or trade association annual meeting, or industry conference – think about how 1-on-1 meetings can help you increase the ROI for your attendees and your company.  If we can be of help to you, please give us a shout – meetings@twst.com.

The article below from the Wall Street Journal identifies very significant changes in the IPO league tables in 2010. Specifically strong gains from mid size investment banks. We have seen strong interest by investment banks in using the corporate access data set (buy side meetings with corporates) as part of the ongoing dialogue with a corporate issuer. The Wall Street Transcript software is able to generate detailed reports for these discussions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954804575381221139138074.html

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Next month we will be releasing the next upgrade of MeetMax CAM – with some unique features that other Roadshows scheduling systems don’t have.  Here’s a quick peek:

• An Event Calendar that can be published to the whole firm.  Let colleagues see the Calendar itself without them having to login to anything – or require an expensive username.
• Request Process for Roadshow Meetings  - again without requiring expensive usernames for salespeople and sales assistants.
• Batch reporting on Accounts – that will process activity reports on a schedule and email them to the correct salespeople or account contacts for a hundred or more accounts.  Automatically.

Greenwich Associates recently released some summary data from its 2010 survey.  For 2010 in the US – Greenwich estimates $6.4 billion in commission payments for research and corporate access and other services provided by sell side firms.  Of this – Greenwich estimates 33% is for Corporate Access, 27% for Research and the rest for Sales and Account Management. For Hedge Funds the share for corporate access is higher still at 40%.

So just over $2.1 billion for Corporate Access.  Greenwich goes even further and  divides this between Conferences ($0.9 billion) and Roadshows ($1.2 billion).  The Wall Street Transcript estimates that there are approximately 200,000 one on one meetings per calendar year at investor conferences. The Greenwich data would therefore suggest that an average value per conference meeting is about $4,500.   This is consistent with our working estimates, so its great to get some supporting data on it.   So, to be clear, on average, a 1×1 meeting is worth $4,500.