Robert Lewkowitz ran seminars when it took 3,000 cold calls to fill a room. Here is what the model looks like today and why the lunch and learn approach changes everything.
Robert Lewkowitz built his practice in the era of cold calls. Two full-time telemarketers. Three thousand dials to reach 1,200 people. Two hundred said they would come. One hundred confirmed. Fifty showed up. And from those fifty, plus the hundred and fifty who showed interest but never came, relationships were built that lasted decades.
The numbers are different today. The do-not-call registry has changed the landscape. Social media has changed how people discover and evaluate advisors. But the fundamental power of getting in front of a room of people who are sizing you up and deciding whether they can trust you — that has not changed.
“I think it’s still effective. The marketing part has changed, but the seminar itself works because people are there to size you up as much as they’re there for the information.”
The lunch and learn model
The approach Lewkowitz now advocates for advisors who want to use seminars is the corporate lunch and learn. Instead of cold-calling individuals at home, you call businesses directly and offer a free lunch-and-learn session for their employees.
The pitch is simple: we require a minimum number of attendees, we use your boardroom or staff lounge, we bring the food, and we deliver a practical session on financial planning topics relevant to your employees. For a company with 200 staff, you might ask for a minimum of 25 to 50 people. You set the bar based on the size of the organization.
The advantages over the traditional seminar model are significant. The audience is already assembled. You are not fighting the do-not-call registry. You are providing a genuine service to the employer as well as the employees. And the attendees are already captive, in the room, eating lunch you brought them, listening to you present.
Picking the right businesses
Lewkowitz is deliberate about which businesses to target. The goal is to get in front of people with real assets or real income, not just bodies in seats. Engineering firms, biomedical companies, and industrial operations with skilled tradespeople earning well above average wages are all strong targets.
One lunch and learn per week at the right businesses would keep an advisor busy for a long time.
Document everything
A seminar is not just a lead generation event. With the right setup, it is content. Someone quietly photographing from the back of the room gives you images of a credible advisor in front of an engaged audience. Short clips of the presentation become social content. The questions that come up in the room become articles.
Lewkowitz notes that people have tremendous respect for someone who can command an audience. Being seen doing it publicly, consistently, compounds the perception of authority over time.
The real seminar model
Lewkowitz tracked every number when he ran seminars: show-up ratio, appointment rate, closing ratio, and eventually, long-term conversion from prospects who showed interest but never came. The clients who came from the 150 who said they would attend but did not, and were then dripped on consistently for years, were some of the most valuable relationships he built.
That is the real seminar model. Not the event itself. Everything that comes after it.
Robert Lewkowitz manages nearly $300 million in client assets from his practice in London, Ontario. He built it over 38 years without shortcuts. The $100 Million Dollar Advisor Workshop is what he built to help other advisors get there faster.