September 16, 2022
If you’re a new Dakota Marketplace user, or you’re considering investing in the platform, you might be wondering where you should start. After all, Dakota Marketplace has over 10,000 accounts, 31,000 contacts, and over a dozen helpful features.
At Dakota, we value our members and feedback, and our Membership Services team is there to help you navigate the platform 24/7.
In this article, we’re highlighting some of the best features of the platform to help you get started — or decide if Marketplace is the best fit for your firm. By the end of the article, you’ll have a clear idea of the top 8 Marketplace features and how you can use them to grow your business and meet your goals.
In this section, we’ll jump into some of the key components of the platform and how we’ve seen our current members find success with them.
List building and custom reports are two of the most-used features within Dakota Marketplace. This functionality allows you to create custom views and reports on exactly the firms, asset classes, and people you most want to do business with.
Not sure how to build a list or report? Just reach out! Our Membership Services team is constantly helping new members pull these lists together. Reach out to one of our Customer Success Managers for assistance with getting started and we’ll help you pull together a curated and customized list or report your firm.
This functionality helps ensure that your most viewed and valuable information is just a click away.
Finally, there are plenty of templated reports ready to go within Marketplace that you can work from before you ever need to build your own!
We know that the investment industry moves fast.
With people constantly moving jobs and changing roles, it can be hard to track down the person you’re trying to reach out to.
Marketplace’s job and role change feature helps you make sure that you’re always calling on the right person, in the right role, at the right place, without wasting any time on bad emails and contact information — just think of it as your number one source of warm leads!
Do you travel to meet with clients and prospects frequently? If the answer is yes, then the Map It feature is the one for you. With Map It, you’ll be able to maximize your day by booking additional meetings, figuring out where you’re going to stay, and outlining how far you’re going to travel between meetings.
One thing we always talk about at Dakota is the importance of city scheduling. City scheduling means making the most of your time in a given city or state and setting meetings with as many firms as possible while you’re there.
Map It makes this not just possible, but incredibly simple. Find the best route for your day, make sure you’ve got the address right for each place ahead of time, and more.
Marketplace is home to more than one hundred manager presentation decks that you can view before you meet with someone.
In Marketplace, you’ll have access to over 150 presentations given to public pension funds by other managers for insights into what other managers are saying and investing in. This equips you with the knowledge of what others are saying to the firms you’re meeting with beforehand, so you have a competitive advantage.
If you’re calling on public pension funds, the Public Plan Minutes housed in Dakota Marketplace are for you.
These minutes are compiled daily by our data team, and provide key insights from public pension committee meetings as they happen.
You can opt in to receive daily reports of public pension investment committee meeting notes including recent hires, RFPs, portfolio allocation changes, and more, as well as access the complete library of past public plan minutes within Marketplace.
Finding out about a new search early on can be critical, and our searches feature helps you make sure you’re never left in the dark when a new search is listed.
With searches, you can opt in to receive comprehensive institutional investment search alerts delivered directly to your inbox via email.
In 2021 alone there were over 300 searches added to Dakota Marketplace.
A key element to the Dakota sales process is “always know what to say.” This means always being prepared before a meeting, doing your research and due diligence on a firm before you meet with them.
The investment statistics included in Dakota Marketplace make that simple, as these stats are right at your fingertips. You can determine how you’re going to target accounts based on where they’ve allocated previously, see their underlying investments, and then decide if you’re ready to reach out for a meeting.
The Marketplace homepage is your one-stop shop and the main hub of updates on Job Changes/Role Changes.
Most recently, we’ve added Dakota Live! Calls, and a comment activity stream from current members. You’ll also find new investments, accounts and contacts that have been added to the platform.
Does Marketplace sound like a fit for your firm? We’d love to invite you to request a free trial of Dakota Marketplace so you can try out all of the features listed above and see for yourself!
Gui Costin is the Founder and CEO of Dakota.
