Invesco Helping Financial Advisors and Plan Consultants Develop Unique Value Proposition Through New PlanForward Consulting Series Program

HOUSTON, Sept. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Invesco announced today a new PlanForward Consulting Series program designed to help financial advisors and retirement plan consultants build a compelling value proposition and enhance their brand recognition.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110131/MM39469LOGO-a )

"At a time when plan sponsors are becoming more sophisticated, winning new clients requires advisors and consultants to differentiate themselves by convincingly proving their value," said Terry Kelly, Director of Retirement Sales for Invesco's North America Retail Division. "Helping our clients develop a compelling value proposition, using an approach we believe is unique to Invesco, is key to allowing them to make their case with clarity and consistency."

Invesco's PlanForward Consulting Series: Developing Your Value Proposition is a program that will approach this process from a customer perspective, gathering critical insight with the use of a client survey that is easy to deploy and assess. Additionally, Invesco clients will have assistance from sales personnel trained on five years of groundbreaking language research on words that best resonate with investors and participants.

Staples of the program

• Client Survey:  All financial advisors have a brand and it's their clients' perception of them. Invesco believes that building a brand should begin with listening to your clients, and leveraging their insights to strengthen your value proposition.

The PlanForward Consulting Series provides an electronic survey that is easy for financial advisors to send, easy for plan sponsor clients to answer, and simple to convert into meaningful feedback about the clients' perceptions of the advisor's value.

• Assessment and Messaging: The program includes a step-by-step process for building a value proposition and integrating findings from the client survey. The process walks the advisor through determining their defining attributes as a firm, crafting benefit statements that correspond to those attributes, and adjusting the message depending on the nature of the presentation (Request For Proposal, PowerPoint presentation, etc.).

• Delivery Assistance: The PlanForward Consulting Series program will be supported by Invesco's Retirement Plan Consultants, who will lead clients through the entire process – from survey to value proposition development to effective and efficient presentation of the value proposition.

Invesco's retirement professionals have a deep knowledge of working with plan sponsors which comes from an average of 16 years experience in retirement plan sales and will also leverage communication principles learned from Invesco Van Kampen Consulting's "New Word Order" language program.

Words are the basic building blocks of a strong value proposition and choosing the right words is critical in communicating attributes and differentiators.  

"In a highly competitive retirement plan market, advisors and consultants must find ways to stand out in the crowd," Kelly said. "We believe these tools will help them better identify their own strengths and develop a unique value proposition that incorporates sales messages and benefit statements relevant to their client's specific needs."

About Invesco

Invesco is a leading independent global investment manager, dedicated to helping investors worldwide achieve their financial objectives. By delivering the combined power of our distinctive investment management capabilities, Invesco provides a wide range of investment strategies and vehicles to our retail, institutional and high net worth clients around the world. Operating in more than 20 countries, the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol IVZ. Additional information is available at www.invesco.com.

Invesco Advisers, Inc. is an investment adviser; it provides investment advisory services to individual and institutional clients and does not sell securities. Invesco Distributors, Inc. is the U.S. distributor for Invesco Ltd.'s retail mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and institutional money market funds and the subdistributor for its STIC Global Funds. Both are wholly owned, indirect subsidiaries of Invesco Ltd.

NOT FDIC INSURED, MAY LOSE VALUE, OFFER NO BANK GUARANTEE

SOURCE Invesco