To further expand their support for advisors and share their practical learning of an increasing number of ways to engage clients, White Glove announced at their conference their new White Glove Social Connect, an automated program that continues to market to attendees and no-shows after the seminar and their new Syndicate program—a more full service business development support platform that brings together other industry client engagement firms and industry leaders to help build out advisors’ engagement skill sets and leverage other resources that can heighten client connection.
It is particularly interesting how they built this alliance network and chose partner firms by breaking out dimensions of client engagement into the following pillars: seminars, education, nurturing, training, and practice management. The following is the premise behind each area being a key pillar, the strategic partner chosen with resources they provide and a brief comment from each.
1. Seminars as a pillar—On the effectiveness of seminars as an engagement tool, Bill Good, at Host University, reinforced the power of a community seminar strategy: “In my experience there is no better, more effective and faster way - even coming from a ground start - of building your business, converting prospects to clients and raising assets.”
White Glove provides a core service that focuses on leveraging the power of educational seminars to transform an advisor’s business and catapult their growth trajectory. White Glove’s annual Host University is an example of the dedicated support to that end by providing a two-day, in-person training program for professionals who want to take their seminar skills to a new level of effectiveness and results.
Mike Thurman, White Glove: “The White Glove mission is to partner with financial services professionals who share our passion for educating the public on important topics — such as retirement planning, maximizing social security, retirement tax strategies, healthcare decisions and real estate opportunities—to help people make significant improvements to their lives. “
2. Education as a pillar—Deep knowledge on topics of greatest concern for clients and prospects is the greatest differentiator and tipping point needed to truly connect with and convert qualified prospects. Advisors need to invest the time to thoroughly command the crucial topics and solutions needed. Investors going into retirement don’t want to be sold, they want their money protected. They want a plan to take them through retirement from someone they can trust to give them accurate, unbiased advice. Advisors need to be perceived as knowledgeable and accessible experts on key retirement issues. They will need to answer retirement savers’ most important questions and continually provide practical, applicable and easy-to-understand information on IRA, retirement, tax and financial planning topics.
Ed Slott and Company—Known as “America’s IRA Experts,” is the nation’s leading source of accurate, timely IRA expertise and analysis to financial advisors, institutions, consumers and media across the country. The company educates financial advisors, CPAs, attorneys, insurance agents and more on the complexities of IRAs so they are better equipped to navigate their clients through tax and distribution planning, necessary to achieve financial security.
Ryan Fortese, Ed Slott & Company: “The first thing advisors can do to truly engage clients is to help them face their fears and solve their concerns with retirement and tax planning. The average advisor has all these disclaimers, “We don’t do tax or legal planning;” you’ve got to get rid of that mentality! If you touch an IRA or Roth IRA, if you’re doing a rollover from a 401(k) to an IRA, if you’re talking about Roth conversions - you’re doing tax planning! This is why it is crucial advisors learn advanced tax planning strategies to help clients better protect their money. As the advisor, it’s your job to help implement a distribution strategy that limits unnecessary taxes and penalties and helps navigate your clients away from all of the costly traps. Advisors who master and stay at the forefront of this knowledge have a significant advantage in deepening their value and engagement with clients and prospects. These are the high-value services where clients can actually quantify the value you bring to the table - and I believe that is how you engage clients today.”
3. Nurturing as a pillar—Staying top of mind with clients and prospects through various social media channels and print outreach programs is instrumental in building in strong and ongoing connection.
ReminderMedia —A unique marketing firm and follow up specialist, their flagship engagement tool is American Lifestyle magazine—an advisor branded, 48-page publication that features their information and valuable general interest articles on topics like art, food, interior design, and travel. Advisors are able to use the magazine to stay top-of-mind with their clients without it feeling like a marketing tool.