Strategic Support for High-Stakes Pitches & Hard Performance Conversations
Quiet help for teams who think well and struggle to say it well
There are two moments in institutional investment work that expose every weakness in communication:
walking into a room to win (or retain) a mandate
walking back into that room when performance has turned against you
The investment philosophy may be sound. The process may be disciplined. The numbers may even be defensible. Yet the story lands badly, the room goes cold, and nobody can quite explain why.
This service exists for those conversations: new business pitches and difficult performance meetings where the risk is not just losing face, but losing clients, careers and trust.
The problem is rarely your process
On paper, your house is solid. You have:
a philosophy you can describe in a document
a process that has passed consultant due diligence
risk systems, compliance, and reporting in place
Yet in the room, small, very human “people” go wrong:
A brilliant portfolio manager talks in paragraphs nobody outside the team can follow.
A junior is wheeled in as “diversity” and left to flounder.
Two senior people contradict each other subtly and nobody notices until the client debrief.
Someone reads from dense slides the client has already received, adding nothing.
Jargon piles up until even peers are nodding politely and understanding little.
I have seen this from both sides of the table.
As an institutional investor, I sat in a small capital city where a large pension fund was run. The prospects flew in from bigger financial centres, overdressed and full of swagger. One called the city a “backwater” in his pitch. On paper, most of the proposals looked the same. In reality, the decision often came down to small tells: Did these people respect the place and the mandate? Did we believe any of these bio shots would ever get back on a plane to see us again when it wasn’t pitch day?
Later, as a fixed income product manager in a UK institutional shop, I watched my own industry from the other side: excellent processes undermined by sloppy communication, internal confusion about who should speak, and an unexamined belief that technical depth would automatically translate into trust.
And, editing a global trade publication for investment professionals, I saw how lax some of the world’s “best speakers” could be when left to their own devices: dense slides turned into dense articles, mountains of jargon, and theory that even peers would struggle to follow.
The gap is not intelligence. The gap is translation: from real thinking to spoken language that tired, sceptical people can actually absorb.
New client pitches: showing what you really do, not what the deck says
Most pitch decks look the same. The client knows that before you arrive. What they are really testing, usually unconsciously, is:
Do these people understand their own process?
Do they understand my constraints as a fiduciary?
Do they sound like humans I can ring when something goes wrong?
Do they respect this mandate, this place, these beneficiaries, or is this just another stop on a sales tour?
Our work together focuses on that layer.
We look at the actual mandate and the actual people in the room: CIOs, trustees, consultants, oversight committees. We strip back the canned language until your philosophy and process can be explained without jargon and without dumbing down.
We pay attention to:
who should speak first, and why
what each person will actually say, not just “be there for questions”
how to answer the predictable challenges without bluffing or flooding people with detail
when to defend a position and when to acknowledge a genuine concern
how to signal, credibly, that this mandate and this client will not be forgotten once the ink is dry; if they will be, then why even be there?
This is not performance school. The aim is not to turn a quant into a showman. The aim is for thoughtful people to sound as thoughtful as they really are, in language their audience can follow.
Difficult performance conversations: when the numbers don’t flatter you
Every serious investor knows performance is cyclical. Clients know it too, in theory. The test comes when your track record hits a bad patch and you have to sit across from someone whose job is now to doubt you.
In those rooms, bad habits show quickly:
blaming the benchmark or the regime in ways that sound defensive
hiding behind factor language that reassures nobody
pretending “nothing has changed” when the client can feel your anxiety
sending the most technical person because “they know the portfolio best,” then watching them freeze
I help you prepare for these meetings at a deeper level than just rehearsing answers.
We look hard at what has actually happened in the portfolio. We separate bad luck from bad decisions, and both from simple noise. We work on how to own genuine mistakes without writing your own termination letter, and how to talk honestly about underperformance in a way that respects the client’s role as fiduciary.
The conversation becomes less about “talking your way out of trouble” and more about showing you are the kind of partner who can be trusted under stress.
Culture, juniors, and what rolls downhill
Presentation style is not neutral. Whatever seniors do in the room becomes the template for the people watching.
If senior PMs improvise jargon-heavy monologues, juniors learn that confidence beats clarity.
If questions are swatted away or over-answered, analysts learn to dodge rather than think.
If everyone rushes and nobody breathes, whole teams live in permanent pitch adrenaline.
Part of this work is quietly resetting that sloppy culture.
We notice who actually has the clearest explanatory voice, not just the highest title. We give juniors specific, contained roles that build their confidence rather than expose them. We identify the habits that are quietly contaminating your client communication and replace them with ones you would be happy to see replicated.
This is not about polishing a few “stars.” It is about raising the floor so no one from your firm walks into an important room and embarrasses themselves, or you.
How I work with you
The work is practical, not theoretical.
We sit with real material: decks, IC memos, consultant reports, performance notes. I ask questions until your philosophy and process make sense in plain language. Then we build back up, keeping technical accuracy and losing the fog.
A typical engagement might include:
advance review of your materials, with suggested cuts, reshuffles, and clarifications
a session to walk through the pitch or performance meeting, including who says what, when, and how
live rehearsal where I play the sceptical client, consultant, or trustee and you practise answering under pressure
debrief after the actual meeting, to capture what worked, what jarred, and what should change next time
I move quickly. Years of listening to pitches and editing technical writing mean I can absorb a house philosophy or strategy fast and start reflecting it back to you in cleaner form.
Everything stays confidential. Your mistakes, your team dynamics, your internal doubts are not material for my marketing.
Who this is for
This offering is designed for:
asset managers and boutiques pitching to institutions or sophisticated private clients
CIOs and investment teams preparing for crucial board or committee reviews
wealth and family-office teams who need to explain complex thinking to families in turmoil
technically gifted PMs and analysts whose communication style is starting to limit their impact yet nobody on your team has the courage nor org chart authority to give you honest feedback
If you want someone to add a bit of theatrical sparkle to an unchanged deck, there are agencies for that.
If you want someone who speaks your technical language, respects your fiduciary reality, and tells you, calmly and directly, how you actually sound on the other side of the table, that is where I am useful.
If this resonates, treat the page as a mirror for now. When you are ready to talk about a specific mandate, performance review, or upcoming pitch cycle, you can reach me through the Connect page and we can see whether there is real work to do together.