Week 1: An evening of worldly wines and fashion
Week 2: Gardening is golden (and nutritional)
Week 3: Retirement management simplified: health care options, rollover distribution reviews and assisted-living alternatives
Week 4: Spreading the cheer – a holiday charity event at a local children’s hospital
The problem: In June, we discussed the value of creating lifestyle events for top clients built around their interests, not yours. You now have the tools — strategies, invitation and agenda templates, and event management checklists — to deliver high-value, low-cost events.
The challenge is execution. How do you actually deliver powerful lifestyle events with limited time and resources?
This week: Gardening is golden (and nutritional)
Event Goal: Building deeper relationships with your top 30 - 40 clients, gaining client referrals, and providing gardening tips from an expert.
Since gardening is one of the most popular hobbies among baby boomers and retirees, don’t underestimate the interest from your clients.
Event Time Commitment: Approximately three to four hours for selecting the event, inviting the guests and sending follow-up emails or letters.
Approximate Cost: $10 to $20 per person. The key to a successful gardening event is to piggyback on events that are being planned at a high-end florist or museum garden and tailor the event to your clients. By doing so, you can give the event an exclusive feel yet delegate event planning tasks — and the costs associated with it — to others.
Where do you start? In and near many cities across the country, the estates of many of the nation’s wealthiest families have been turned into elaborate gardens that are open to the public. In the Chicago area, for instance, there’s Cantigny
Cantigny.org the old McCormick (Chicago Tribune) family estate. Similarly, there’s the Getty Center and Gardens
getty.edu in Los Angeles; Longwood Gardens
longwoodgardens.org a former duPont family arboretum in Kennett Square, Penn., outside of Philadelphia; and Old Westbury Gardens
http://oldwestburygardens.org (the former home of U.S. Steel heir John S. Phipps) on Long Island.
These gardens, and others like them in your area, conduct events throughout the spring, summer and fall. One event we uncovered was a museum garden that brings in a guest speaker to share the nutritional benefits of fresh herb gardens. Most of the gardens will be happy to help you with your event, so visit their websites for examples of workshops and events that might be of interest.
Event Planning Checklist:
Review your
Top Client Background Chart and identify your list of clients and their spouses with an interest in gardening. If you are not sure, this is a perfect time to call them and find out. You may be surprised by how many clients will want to be a part of a gardening event — and be eager to return for more.
Next, contact the selected venue and secure spaces at the event. Keep the location close to your client’s homes for convenience and to increase attendance. Many of the gardens provide free demonstrations and workshops for all types of gardeners throughout the year. One museum even provides guest speakers and landscape artists.
Often the gardening event will have a pre-printed invitation or email version announcement to send out. If the event planner can track your guest’s attendance, that is ideal, but often you will need your assistant to handle the RSVPs. If the invitation is an e-mail format, have the announcement e-mailed to you and then forward it to guests with a personalize subject line. For a printed invitation, ask the garden to mail the card directly to your clients and have them include your business card.
Track your responses and call to confirm guest attendance the week before the event. Send an e-mail reminder the cay before. Add the personal touch with day before with a call or e-mail.
Event Delivery:
Customize your event by contacting the garden manager and asking for a reserved seating area for your guests. Museums often offer upscale coffee bars, high teas and wine-tasting venues, all of which are cost-effective entertainment and refreshment choices.
Reserve a set number of seats and arrive early for the event and put either your own welcome note on each chair or print a flyer with an attached handwritten note from you welcoming your guests. Again, this makes the event feel exclusive. Often you can get a program e-mailed to you from the garden or museum ahead of time so you can add a note or attach your business card. .
Ask your clients to each bring one or two family members or friends to the event. Take a moment to talk with your group while enjoying refreshments and let the guests know you would like to follow-up with them over the next few days to discuss their investment needs. Keep it simple. If you have 15 clients and each one brings one or two guests, you will have generated 15 to 30 referrals from top clients. Track the referrals on the referral tracker page of your Top Client Background Chart.
Follow-up after the event:
Have two follow-up emails prepared (one for referrals and one for clients) thanking attendees for joining you and letting them know you will be contacting them. Send the e-mail early the next morning.
Call each attendee within 48 hours and schedule follow-up meetings with referrals.
Success Story: A CSI gardening event: Here’s how one Chicago-area advisor took advantage of an opportunity at Cantigny Gardens.
In July, Gary Sinise of CSI: NY fame plays a benefit concert with his band at Cantigny to raise money for U.S. troops. The adviser purchases tickets to the concert online and invites guests by copying the online announcement and pasting it into an e-mail. It looks custom and clients love it.
A complimentary garden tour is held beforehand with refreshments and then guests are treated to an evening of music under the stars. It is a lawn concert, so the adviser arrives early and sets out large blankets (donated by his favorite fund company), so his guests are all together. Each brings a spouse or friend, and everyone has a great time. The cost is approximately $30 and the event consumes just about two hours of the adviser’s time to plan and organize.
Next week: Simplifying retirement management.
Maureen Wilke has helped thousands of advisers increase the value of their businesses. The founder of Wilke Associates Inc. (www.connectedadvisor.com) in Glen Ellyn, Ill., Maureen has spent nearly two decades in executive positions in wealth management, sales and training. She has been associated with several highly regarded firms, including Nuveen Investments, and currently advises many product and advisory firms on issues of practice management and adviser productivity.
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