Developing your firm and services to create ever-growing value for your customers should be an ongoing commitment. This is the single most strategic activity you can focus on, especially in our new business environment of accelerating rates of change. This effort will position you to continuously respond and thrive in this challenging and competitive financial services marketplace.
To better understand this value creation dynamic and how you can better compete to grow and retain your clients, we decided to reach out to Institute members Mike and Dean Thurman, financial advisors and co-founders of White Glove - an award-winning end-to-end premium marketing company that specializes in “done-for-you” marketing including lead generation, lead nurturing, and client engagement for financial advisors and other industry professionals. They just recently went through the strategic exercise of building and launching a new marketing technology platform White Glove ONE™ that integrates their unique package of services into a holistic offering.
We wanted to explore their thinking and process in creating greater value for their financial services clients that may offer advisors ideas for building a greater value proposition for your clients… and give you some new marketing and engagement tools to nurture your prospects and client relationships at the same time.
Hortz: What were the motivations and thinking behind launching your new White Glove ONE platform?
Dean: The founders are financial advisors and did a lot of seminars that helped us substantially grow our business. We wanted to help other financial services advisors just like us be successful. Our first iteration of White Glove was essentially that - offering completely done-for-you seminars. We quickly realized two things that we knew factored into an advisor’s success with seminars:
The first was that advisors learn and get better over time. You can have moderate success with one or two, but on the fourth, or fifth seminar, that’s when you are really doing great. So, we enhanced our initial offering of workshop services to White Glove ONE. It encourages and incentivizes advisors to stick with it, to sharpen their saw, and build skills so that they have a better outcome. It also includes access to numerous training resources through White Glove University to help with that too.
The second realization was that many registrants and attendees need to be nurtured before they become a client, so we packaged nurturing solutions into White Glove ONE to increase ROI for advisors.
Mike: That is exactly right! Growing your practice is more than just doing 1 or 2 workshops. It’s an entire system of multiple workshops, professional training, and nurturing past registrants. Our more comprehensive platform encourages advisors because of the subscription model – do more workshops because that’s when we see greater success – AND nurture leads who came to the workshops. This expanded and integrated value proposition provides a very powerful ROI increase for the host and maximizes the likelihood of success.
Hortz: What are the various service and product components you offer?
Mike: White Glove ONE is an entire system, within one platform. All done. All in one. Including:
- Proven lead generation tools and resources
- Workshops: in-person seminars and webinars
- Conversion Campaigns – to nurture newly acquired workshop leads into appointments
- Nurture services – to stay top of mind with prospects, build relationships, and book more appointments:
- Social media posts
- Email newsletters
- Advisor-branded content
- Engage solutions – to frequently communicate with clients to uncover more opportunities (referrals) and minimize client churn.
- Social media management
- Email marketing campaigns
- Advisor-branded content
- Review and referral generation
- White Glove University access – for all the tools and training necessary to be successful
Dean: Why these products and services are what they are is because Mike and I have a combined 60+ years of experience in marketing our practice. These are the products and services we found that were most efficient in growing our seminars and practices.
Mike: Our integrated platform goes beyond the workshop, also nurtures existing clients, and helps advisors maximize ROI from their existing client base as well.
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.
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 9 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 6 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 2 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.
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