JP Morgan 2023 is right around the corner. Readjusting to attending the conference in-person can be a bit daunting. To help spark your muscle memory and prepare you for a successful conference, we’ve pulled together our top 10 tips & tricks to a better, more efficient and valuable JPM week.
1 | If you’re going to refresh your deck, do it now, not during the first week of January when everyone’s sprinting to the finish line and dealing with rush prices and high stress levels. Messaging and thoughtful graphics take time, so be sure to carve out an appropriate amount of dedicated time in your schedule over the next week to finalize your presentation deck with your IR and communications teams.
2 | Focus on quality over quantity. Schedules for JP Morgan fill up quickly—prioritizing your meeting list with your IR team is essential to making sure your time and efforts during the week are as valuable as possible. Focus on buy-side investors and target funds you were unable to meet with on your last roadshow. Use residual space in your schedule for your covering sell-side analysts and those within your space who don’t yet cover your company. Strategic prioritization will allow you to have fewer conflicts, less exhaustion and likely a happier week.
3 | Have something new to say. JP Morgan is a time where many companies will display new strategies, revamped messaging and lay out next year’s milestones. To avoid falling flat in investor meetings, we recommend bringing something new to the table. No one wants to walk into a meeting to hear the words, “well, nothing much has changed.” A quick tip for remaining Reg FD compliant: consider putting out a “cleansing press release” ahead of time so that you’re free to talk about whatever you need to during meetings.
4 | Do the necessary health and wellness prep and packing. Get your flu shot and COVID booster in advance and bring painkillers, an umbrella and comfy pair of shoes with you. Nothing is worse than taking meetings when you are ill or aching, and with 2023 being the first in-person JPM since COVID, bringing your cough and cold into meeting rooms will largely be frowned upon.
5 | Have something to look forward to every day. It’s no secret that J.P. Morgan can be a daunting week and take a toll mentally and physically. Be sure to take care of your emotional wellbeing to avoid burning out too early in the week. Take time to hit the gym, go to a cocktail reception, meet up with an old friend or carve out 30 minutes of down time to rest. Being in the best mental and physical space will ultimately translate over into more productive, efficient meetings.
6 | Don’t drink too much/make sure you get enough sleep. Meetings can be tough to sit through as the week goes on, especially if you’re not the principal speaker. Maintaining a healthy balance between having some fun at networking receptions and getting enough sleep is essential. Try your best to look alert and interested in even your fifth or sixth meeting of the day. The overall optics of your management team during investor meetings can make all the difference.
7 | Optimize logistics and be amenable to going off-site. Companies aren’t the only ones who secure dedicated JP Morgan meeting space. Some financial institutions will only take meetings in their own reserved space or in their San Francisco office locations. Ensure that your IR team or scheduling manager is optimizing time by arranging your on-site meetings on the same day, and reserving space on other days for traveling around Union Square to meet with funds and investors in their dedicated meeting spaces.
8 | Don’t arrange your BoD meeting for JP Morgan week. Why make the week any more difficult than it has to be? There are plenty of other weeks in January. Board meetings take a lot of preparation, work and effort. Despite being “all in the same city at the same time,” a better use of energy and effort might be to catch-up with your board in a more informal setting over dinner or drinks and save the formal board meeting for later in the month.
9 | Consider only going for 1-2 days. Make efficient use of your time by limiting your attendance. This is also a great way to avoid extra costs, burnout and exhaustion. You can maximize your efficiency and minimize your down time by opting for 1-2 days. This goes without saying, but you can make yourself and the larger management team available during the rest of January to anyone whose schedules were unable to accommodate a meeting during your days at the conference.
10 | Use a mobile app like Expensify to track your expenses during the conference. Mobile expense apps make multi-day trips like J.P. Morgan so much easier. They save you the time and effort of going through all of your receipts when you get back to the office. Expense-tracking apps are quick, easy and mean that you can be done with classifying your J.P. Morgan expenses by the time you board your plan back home.
All-in-all, the JP Morgan conference takes an immense amount of planning, strategy and forethought. With decades of experience attending the conference, we hope that our Top 10 Tips & Tricks to a Better JP Morgan helps to further prepare you and your team for an intense week of meetings. To learn more about how Gilmartin strategically partners with our clients, please contact our team today.