On the show this week I talk to Natalie Grassi from White Glove Workshops
We chat about how White Glove turned to digital marketing to relaunch their educational workshop business, helping financial advisers to get in front of more potential clients.
Welcome to episode 190 of the Marketing and Finance Podcast.
What you’ll hear about in this episode
- Why White Glove educate rather than sell
- How White Glove came about and reinvented itself for the digital world
- The techniques they use to get workshop attendees
- The challenges they faced when moving into digital marketing
- How they overcome compliance issues
- How White Glove are different
Who is Natalie Grassi?
Natalie has been a seminar success coach with White Glove Workshops for the last two years. She was an elementary school teacher for eight years and is passionate about educating. White Glove share her passion, so she feels she can educate the financial advisers she works with on how to successfully host successful workshops and seminars. She also loves knowing that those advisers are helping thousands of people by educating them on complex financial subjects.
Summary of our chat
Natalie says that White Glove works to educate people rather than sell to them. They have a requirement that advisers are strictly educational in presentations to customers. They want them to share the passion for educate without being salesy or promoting themselves. It encourages people to meet with the advisers and want to work with them.
Founders Dean and Mike Thurman are cousins and financial advisers. They used the ‘pay and pray’ workshop model – spending money upfront on promotion – to build a successful firm. When these stopped working, they moved to using digital marketing to drive people to workshops, which was so effective they began to offer it to other advisers.
White Glove use a variety of platforms for digital marketing, such as LinkedIn and Google AdWords. The team looks for new ways to find the best prospects for financial advisers. Digital marketing means the target customer sees the workshop invitation multiple times, unlike with direct mail, increasing the chance of them wanting to learn more.
Their biggest challenge was rapid growth. They went from coordinating 100 events across the US per month to 500 in the US and Canada.
They had to find the most effective and efficient way to scale and find people with the same vision to help them grow. White Glove ensures everything is educational, so they’re confident that they’re in line with compliance regulations.
They have a team to work with compliance departments and carry out rigorous research. Individual advisers must share their presentation with their own compliance department and White Glove makes any adjustments needed. Natalie says the company is unique, because they do all the seminar planning for their advisers.
They take on the financial risk upfront and offer the next seminar free if there’s no take-up. They use digital marketing and competitors don’t, and they’re 100% invested in the adviser’s success.
Natalie’s Top Tips for Financial Advisers
There’s an incredible opportunity available to advisers at the moment. Every day between now and 2030, 10,000 baby boomers will retire. They need help from advisers now more than ever. Advisers should get out in front of people, because you could be the best adviser in town, but if your lobby is empty, you won’t be able to help people or grow your business. Natalie suggests advisers invest in their business, whether that’s through seminars or another marketing avenue. Seminars aren’t easy to do, because they take skill, courage and a willingness to put yourself in front of the public, but done well, with passion and integrity, can be the most enjoyable way to grow a practice.
A marketing campaign or product which grabbed Natalie’s attention
Natalie loves Airbnb, which allows more people to experience travel, and says the collaborative consumption model is a great way to give people what they want. She bought her first property recently and now generates income through Airbnb.
Recommended business book
Natalie recommends Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which she describes as offering timeless advice. It has super simple suggestions that you can immediately implement in your personal and professional life the improve your interactions with people you interact with daily.
She’s also enjoying The Challenger Sell: How to Take Control of the Customer Conversation, by Matthew Dixon and Brett Adamson, which is teaching her to be more assertive with her clients and to know that she is the expert.
Links and contact details
They have a limited number of $500 dollar vouchers available to listeners in America and Canada to spend with the company – either mention the Marketing and Finance Podcast in the chat facility or contact Natalie directly.
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