The Magnet Effect: Stop Chasing Wealthy Clients. Give Them a Reason to Come to You.

0:00Hello, this is Mark Satterfield and welcome to the Velvet Rope Playbook. Tonight's chapter, The Magnet Effect. Stop chasing wealthy clients and give them a reason to come to you. For almost two years, Andrew Kellerman had been trying to get into the right rooms. Andrew is 51 and owns a boutique insurance advisory firm in Boston, specializing in complicated property and liability coverage for wealthy families. Not particularly glamorous, perhaps, but extremely valuable when your client owns three homes, a collection of contemporary art, six cars, a boat, and a teenage son who has recently discovered that cars have accelerator pedals.

0:42Andrew has been in the insurance business for 26 years. He's smart, successful, very good at what he does. His problem isn't expertise. His problem is access. Most of his best clients have come through introductions from attorneys, wealth advisors, and existing clients. And Andrew has become convinced that if he could simply meet more people like them, his business could grow considerably. So he starts going where he believes those people are. He sponsors a charity golf tournament. He buys a table at a hospital fundraiser. He attends a family office conference. He joins two business organizations.

1:19And then he makes what he considers his boldest move. He spends$18 ,000 sponsoring a regional wealth Management Conference. The sponsorship comes with a booth, his logo on several signs, four registrations, and a very attractive banner containing a photograph of Andrew looking considerably more serious than Andrew actually is. The conference attracts nearly 600 people. Andrew thinks this is exactly what he's been looking for. By the end of the first day, he has collected 73 business cards and scanned another 41 badges. This feels like success. Six weeks later, it feels considerably less successful.

1:59There are a few pleasant email exchanges, one meeting with an advisor who turns out to have little interest in referring anybody, and a long conversation with a man who mostly wanted to know where Andrew had ordered his booth furniture. No new clients. And certainly nothing approaching$18 ,000 worth of business. Andrew concludes that events don't work, but that's not quite what happened. The event didn't fail, Andrew's strategy for the event failed. And that's an important distinction if you're trying to attract affluent clients, because events can be extraordinarily effective in affluent market, but often not for the reasons people think.

2:40The problem with the booth. Andrew's booth looked exactly like almost every other professional services booth at the conference. There was a table, there were brochures, there was a bowl of candy, there was the aforementioned banner, and there was Andrew standing behind the table waiting for wealthy people and their advisors to wander over and ask him about insurance. As you might imagine, this did not happen very often. When people did stop, Andrew immediately explained what his firm did. He talked about coverage reviews, risk management, umbrella policies, art collections, coastal properties, and all the other things his firms could help with.

3:18Nothing he said was wrong, but he was trying to create a relationship at precisely the moment everyone else was trying to create one too. That's the first lesson. Being in the same room as affluent prospects doesn't automatically give you access to them. Sometimes it simply means you're one of 75 people trying to get their attention. If you're considering sponsoring an event, don't begin by asking, how many people will attend, ask, what will this sponsorship allow me to do with the people I actually want to know? Those are very different questions. 500 attendees who walk past your logo may be worth considerably less than 10 people you have an opportunity to actually get to know.

4:04Then Andrew meets Claire. Several months later, one of Andrew's clients introduces him to Claire Beaumont. Claire is 58 and spent most of her career in the luxury hotel business. She started in operations at a resort in Scottsdale, eventually became a senior executive for a small collection of high-end properties, and left the corporate world in her early 50s. She now advises families developing boutique hotels and private residential clubs. Claire is one of those people who seems to know everyone without appearing to network. Andrew tells her about the conference. I don't think events work for me, he says.

4:42Claire asks him a very simple question. What happened after the event? Andrew explains his follow-up sequence. She shakes her head. No, I mean what happened with the people you actually wanted to know? Andrew isn't sure he understands what she means. Claire explains that when she goes to an event, she doesn't care very much about how many people attend. She usually identifies perhaps six people she would genuinely like to know before she ever arrives, and she's not necessarily looking for clients. One might be a private banker. Another might be an attorney. Another might run a family office. One might simply be an interesting person who Claire suspects she'd enjoy knowing.

5:24Her objective isn't to leave with 100 contacts. It's to leave with two or three relationships that have a reason to continue. That's lesson number two. Don't measure affluent events primarily by the number of contacts you collect. Measure them by the number of worthwhile relationships you begin. So before your next event, try this. Identify five people you genuinely would like to meet. Learn something about them. Then figure out why a conversation between the two of you might actually be useful or interesting to them. That's considerably different from figuring out how you're going to pitch them.

6:03A few months later, Claire invites Andrew to dinner. There are only 10 people. The dinner is in a small private room at a restaurant in Boston. No podium, no PowerPoint, no name tags dangling from lanyards. Claire has invited a family office executive and estate attorney, a residential architect, two former hotel clients, a wealth advisor, Andrew, and a couple who recently sold their manufacturing company. But here's what Andrew finds interesting. Claire isn't selling anything. The evening has a theme. What wealthy families wish they'd known before buying a second home. The architect talks about design.

6:42The attorney talks about ownership structure. Andrew tells a story about a family that discovered after a hurricane that several things they assumed were insured weren't. The conversation wanders. People tell stories. They disagree about things. Dinner lasts almost three hours. And at some point, Andrew realizes something. This tiny dinner is doing what his$18 ,000 sponsorship never did. It's allowing people to experience his expertise without Andrew having to announce that he's an expert. Nobody is being prospected. Nobody is being closed. They're simply having an interesting conversation with interesting people.

7:21Two weeks later, the couple who sold the manufacturing company asks Andrew to review their insurance. They eventually become a client. The estate attorney introduces him to someone else. The wealth advisor asks Andrew to speak to several members of his firm. Andrew has stumbled onto a different kind of marketing. This is where Claire gives Andrew an idea. Why don't you do one? Andrew initially thinks she means host a seminar. She doesn't. She means create a room people would actually like to be invited into. So Andrew organizes his first dinner. Twelve people. Four existing clients. Three people he'd like to know better.

8:01And five people who are simply interesting and relevant to the others. He makes one important rule. Andrew's company will not be the subject of the evening. Instead, the topic is protecting valuable collections, art, jewelry, automobiles, wine, and other things people accumulate without necessarily thinking about what happens when something goes wrong. He invites an art conservator to join the conversation. There is no presentation, no pitch, no stack of brochures by the door, and no 37-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining the benefits of comprehensive risk management. It's simply an intelligent conversation.

8:41The first dinner produces one client within three months. More importantly, two attendees ask, when are you doing the next one? That question gets Andrew's attention. The first one wasn't perfect. Andrew made a mistake with his second dinner because the first one worked so well, he decided bigger must be better. Instead of 12 people, he invites 38. He rents a larger space. He hires a photographer. He creates a more structured program. He gives a 20-minute presentation about his firm, and the magic largely disappears. People sit with the people they already know. The conversation becomes more superficial.

9:18Andrew spends most of the evening hosting rather than actually talking with anyone. Nobody complains. Everyone says it was lovely, but very little comes from it. That gives Andrew lesson number three. Don't confuse scale with effectiveness. Particularly in affluent marketing, intimacy can be an advantage. Eight people can be better than 80. Twelve can be better than 1 ,200. Because you're not simply buying exposure, you're creating familiarity. There's another thing Andrew begins noticing. The person who eventually produces the most business isn't always the affluent prospect. At one meeting, he meets Elena Vasquez, a 47-year-old trust and estates attorney who represents several multi-generational families.

10:05Elena never becomes a client, but over the next two years, she introduces Andrew to four families. That's worth considerably more than any individual prospect Andrew might have met. This changes the way he thinks about events entirely, instead of asking how many potential clients will be there. He starts asking who already has relationships with the people I want to know. That's lesson number four. At affluent events, some of the most valuable people in the room may be the people surrounding your prospective clients, attorneys, accountants, wealth advisors, private bankers, architects, luxury real estate professionals, specialists, people whose judgment affluent clients already trust.

10:47You don't need to ask these people for referrals five minutes after meeting them. You need to become somebody they're comfortable recommending when the right situation eventually occurs. Interestingly, Andrew doesn't stop sponsoring events. He simply stops buying sponsorships based primarily on exposure. Before writing a check, he starts asking different questions. Can he host a small VIP dinner the night before? Can he moderate a conversation? Can he invite several of his own clients? Can the organizer introduce him to three or four people he'd particularly like to meet? Can he provide something useful to a small group of premium attendees?

11:27In other words, Andrew stops buying visibility and starts buying access, and that's a distinction I encourage you to remember. A logo on a banner is visibility. A meaningful conversation is access. And if you sell a high-value service, access may be considerably more valuable. So here's something I suggest you try. If you've been trying to figure out how to get into the rooms where affluent people gather, consider reversing the question. What if you created the room? You don't need a ballroom. Start with eight or ten people. Invite a mixture of good clients, prospective clients, and people your clients would genuinely find interesting.

12:07Then choose a subject adjacent to what you do, but don't make your business the subject. If you're a luxury residential architect, perhaps it's a conversation about what people wish they'd known before building a second home. If you're a wealth advisor, maybe it's a discussion about preparing adult children for significant wealth. If you're a luxury real estate professional, perhaps it's a conversation about what is changing in the market that sophisticated buyers should understand. And bring in someone else with expertise. That matters. Because the more the evening feels like you've assembled interesting people for an interesting conversation, the less it feels like you've assembled prospects for a sales presentation.

12:50And then do one more thing. Pay attention to the introductions happening between everyone else. If someone leaves your dinner saying, I'm really glad I met that person, you've created value even if they never hire you. And that gives them a reason to accept your next invitation. Eventually, something interesting begins to happen. You're no longer trying to get invited into somebody else's network. You're building one of your own. And perhaps that's the larger lesson here. Affluent marketing isn't always about reaching more affluent people. Sometimes it's about becoming the person who brings the right people together, the person who introduces interesting people to one another, the person who creates conversations worth having, the person whose invitation people are pleased to receive.

13:39Andrew spent nearly two years trying to get into the right rooms. What finally changed his business was realizing he could simply create one. And once he did, some of the people he'd been trying so hard to meet started asking if they could come. So if you'd like more ideas for attracting affluent clients and information about my books, my programs, and even how about to work with me personally, go to getwealthyclients.com. There you'll find all the information and hopefully it'll be something that you will find of interest. And of course, if you're enjoying the Velvet Rope Playbook, subscribe and pass this episode along to somebody who might find it useful.

14:18You don't need to make a big production out of it. Just say, thought you might find this helpful. That's how most good ideas and most good introductions tend to travel. This is Mark Satterfield. Hope you found this interesting and helpful. I'll be back at you soon with something new, but until then, bye for now.