Hortz: How does combining multiple services into an integrated platform deliver more value to your clients?
Dean: White Glove is all about “done-for-you” and a smooth easy, one-stop host experience. Combining all these services makes it easier. It allows advisors to get even more out of their marketing without doing any additional work. It puts more time back into their calendars.
Mike: We designed the overall package of services to be an “easy button” experience. Everything they need to maximize ROI comes from one place. They don’t have to go from vendor to vendor to find all these little pieces. They only have to go to one place. In a nutshell, it just makes it easier.
Hortz: How do you practically go about designing the integration of various services to ensure it delivers added value?
Mike: At the core of any of our products is our unwavering commitment to solving real-life challenges for advisors. Our goal is to simplify our services for advisors we work with, at every touchpoint. It is steeped in our experience as advisors. To make sure that we achieved that goal with this integration, we designed with technology to facilitate simplification. We are also privileged to have an advisor panel with a wealth of industry expertise. As with any of our other product launches, their input and feedback were instrumental in how we approached this integration.
Dean: White Glove is advisor built; advisor owned. When it comes to our products and services, it means that we are the test tracks. Mike and I own a financial planning firm with nine financial advisors, it’s our test lab. We made sure that all our products and services worked together and add practical value before we bring them into the world, before offering them to other advisors.
Hortz: Can you share an example or two of how this integration works and the benefits it provides?
Dean: With the nurturing tools inside of White Glove ONE, hosts can continue to pick up clients sometimes years after a seminar. With nurturing no one says “no”, they are saying “not right now.” If you nurture them, you turn not-right-nows into yeses. That takes time, sometimes years, but now it’s all automated.
For example, we’ve been doing White Glove workshops for six years and by adding Nurture, one of our advisors is still picking-up clients from people who attended four or more years ago. Specifically, she picked up two clients at the end of 2021 from four years ago and took on close to another $1million in AUM.
Mike: White Glove ONE integrates data from across the platform and allows advisors to understand what resonates with consumers, what is generating the best leads for them. As an example, I am always shocked at how many good prospects show up for our estate planning seminar.
Hortz: What have you learned through your journey of building your services into an integrated offering?
Dean: One size doesn’t fit all. Fortunately, our experienced team can customize a package that best works for the type of advisor that you are and your geographies.
Hortz: Any other thoughts or recommendations you can offer advisors about navigating today’s challenging and competitive marketplace to grow their business?
Dean: I would tell advisors to be positive: the supply and demand equation is in favor of advisors right now. I hve been an advisor for 33 years. There has never been a better time to market your services, grow your business, and pick up new clients. Baby Boomers are retiring, and advisors are also retiring. So, more and more people need financial advisors (Demand) and there’s a diminishing number of advisors available (Supply). But people need to find you.
Mike: White Glove ONE is here to scale advisors’ marketing capabilities and power up their community outreach and engagement to be more easily found and referred.…saving them time in doing so and increasing their ROI. All done. All in one.
The Institute for Innovation Development is an educational and business development catalyst for growth-oriented financial advisors and financial services firms determined to lead their businesses in an operating environment of accelerating business and cultural change. We position our members with the necessary ongoing innovation resources and best practices to drive and facilitate their next-generation growth, differentiation and unique community engagement strategies. The institute was launched with the support and foresight of our founding sponsors—Ultimus Fund Solutions, NASDAQ, FLX Distribution, Pershing, Fidelity, Voya Financial, Advisorpedia and Charter Financial Publishing (publisher of Financial Advisor magazine).