CASE STUDY – Preparing An Investor IPO Roadshow

THE CHALLENGE: The investment bank needed some help. It was a Thursday evening. The phone rang. A big international bank was calling. The CEO and CFO of MoneySupermarket.com has just presented their roadshow pitch to the bank’s sales team, and it was not good. They needed some help.

But there was a small problem: today was Thursday and the IPO roadshow started on Monday.

OUR SOLUTION: At 8am the next morning we sat down with the MoneySupermarket team. We asked them to run through their pitch. After a couple of minutes, we stopped. It was terrible.

What Was Wrong with Their IPO Presentation

How We Fixed Their Presentation

– Both CEO & CFO were tired and their enthusiasm had faded. – The story, as told in the roadshow pitch deck, was not their story. It was the bank’s story. – They were lost in the detail of their business, and so did not communicate the future story

We asked them to tell us their story in their own words. As they told their story, you could see their eyes shine and their enthusiasm rise. This was a business they were truly passionate about. – We suggested they put aside their pitch deck and tell their story in their own words – Occasionally they would refer to a slide or a particular graph – visual aids to enhance the story – We stopped them “turning the pages of a presentation” – We helped them share their plans for expanding the business in an exciting way. – We helped them sound personal, exciting and interesting.

THE RESULT: A transformed IPO roadshow presentation

• By the end of Friday they were transformed. While the underlying story was the same, now a listener could hear the enthusiasm in the voices of the speakers.
• They then had the weekend to refine and practice so they were ready to go first thing on Monday.
• A few weeks later the bank announced that the MoneySupermarket IPO was a success and the biggest IPO since Google.

These three traps: Visual Aids as Handouts; The wrong story and the wrong perspective are three common problems that plague roadshow presentations.

Read more about our coaching for roadshows