I was about 12 years old when I first arrived in Zermatt, Switzerland. It was a snowy afternoon, and we had just stepped off the train to a waiting horse-drawn sleigh to take us to our hotel. At the far end of the village was the Matterhorn. My father and mother loved to travel, and we would go on epic adventures. At a very young age, I fell in love with travel too.
I’m going to share three main themes today: One, blend passion and work; two, pay attention to the details, show them something different and exceed their expectations; and, three, add tangibles to intangibles. Taken together, these three themes support a successful experiential client engagement strategy. Our approach blends experiential marketing techniques with deep engagement to enhance client loyalty and attract new clients in a services business.
Over the years, I was arranging trips for friends and family. Several encouraged me to start a tour company. They would say, “Hey, Hawley, where’s the next adventure?” Soon, MacLean Adventures was born. Our No. 1 priority is client satisfaction. We will travel with our guests to make their travel experience as easy and as enjoyable as possible. We are honored that they have trusted us to deliver their holiday. Our focus is building client trust. Our trips are long enough to really get to know people and for them to get to know us. Guests see us working hard for them and doing whatever it takes to give them a great experience, even schlepping luggage on and off trains. By the end of the trip, guests know us, and they have learned to trust us.
Thirty years ago, I started MacLean Financial Group. As the business grew, I hired a marketing person. One day, Will, our marketing manager, came into my office and said, “Did you know that you spend over $100,000 on marketing each year, and you’ve gotten virtually no new business from it?” I said, “I guess I should fire you.” Will quickly responded, “No, let me interview our Top 100 clients,” and he came back with some ideas. He said, “They’re all like you. They own a business. They like to travel. Several like to ski, many like trains, and a lot like fine dining and wine. Let us develop a target client and focus our efforts toward that type of person.” Hmm. This sounded like the perfect fit for something.
With a few very successful adventures under our belt, we discovered that MacLean Adventures had become the perfect experiential client engagement strategy to build our business, retain top clients, and build new relationships. One passion ─ travel and MacLean Adventures ─ supports another ─ MacLean Financial Group. The trust we are building with our travel clients is exactly what an existing or new client is looking for to be confident in selecting us as their financial advisor.
Initially, my staff did not understand how MacLean Adventures fit with MacLean Financial Group. I told them that this was just a type of business, like financial planning. You plan out the trip, pay attention to the details and exceed their expectations. Account numbers become room numbers, and policy numbers become reservation numbers. Soon, we became an accredited tour company. We had several tours planned and ready to go: Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Utah, skiing in Europe and rail journeys across Switzerland. When doing our financial planning, we always discuss what our clients’ goals and interests are. We really try to determine what they are passionate about and get them excited about doing their planning.
It’s very easy to transition into talking about travel. Many of them know that we love to travel, and when we told them that we had a tour company, many signed up for our adventures. We try to find special experiences that normally you would not be able to do on a regular tour. We limit our tours to 15 to 25 people. The trips are usually 1 1/2 to two weeks long and cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 per person. They are almost all all-inclusive except for airfare and incidentals. People were paying us to show them a great time. As a matter of fact, our clients came up with our name and tagline, MacLean Adventures, an adventure of a lifetime every time.
How does this all work? For existing top clients, this works out fantastically. It really builds wonderful bonding between us and the clients. As a side benefit, most of our clients will bring some of their family members and/or their best friends along. This is a bonus because it helps us really expand that relationship further within their family and friends. For the new clients who come through MacLean Adventures, this works out great as well. While we are on the trip, our existing clients inevitably start socializing with new MacLean Adventure clients. The conversation eventually turns to how everybody knows each other. Our top clients soon start talking to the MacLean Adventure clients on how they know us and our financial planning services. It’s a path that just naturally happens. Now we even have other advisors asking if we can put tours together for them.
This has been the most successful program that we have ever done. Oh, and by the way, MacLean Adventures is a profitable business. The secret is simple, and it’s nothing that you’ve not heard before: Follow your passion and blend it with your business. Do business with people whom you like, trust and respect. Present their plan in a manner that they understand and gets them excited. Pay attention to the details, show them something different, and exceed their expectations. Your passion may not be travel, but the lesson is to find that synergy between you and what your clients love to do. It could be food, gardening, biking, running or more. Find that alignment and run with it.
Hawley Harris MacLean, LUTCF, CLTC, is a 26-year MDRT member with 13 Court of the Table and five Top of the Table qualifications and an MDRT Foundation Excalibur Knight from Reno, Nevada. The president and CEO of MacLean Financial Group, he is an accomplished entrepreneur, senior executive and board member with more than 35 years of success spanning financial planning, employee benefits, banking and investment management.
