My job is to generate business opportunities for my clients – based on my expertise of the customer behaviour of mature age Australians. I will start by declaring my expectations for this report.
Even though I operate in numerous modes – from trainer, mentor, specialist, facilitator – my intention is to work in the Coaching mode, which is ideal described as “producing the setting which makes it possible for the client to learn for themselves”. For that reason there will be much more inquiries than responses.
My intention is to plant some seeds, to go away you pondering. To have you looking for solutions to queries that you considered had been long settled.
Peter Drucker noticed that “Nothing at all is worse than climbing the ladder of good results only to discover, as soon as you attain the leading, that it was leaning against the wrong wall.”
Ideally, some of the sacred cows of your industry, and your group, conclude up as hamburgers at your following organization BBQ.
The first question I have, which with any luck , you will keep on to ask by yourself during this post, and in a lot of contemplative moments in the foreseeable future, is
What business are you in?
If your answer is that you are in the business of establishing and working Retirement Villages, or Aged Treatment facilities – that could be your best solution. Or that solution may possibly be what limitations your potential opportunities.
Perhaps your solution could be one thing more expansive, a lot more tough, more inclusive.
Maybe – “We are in the organization of delivering housing accommodation options for mature age Australians.”
That second reply opens up all kinds of opportunities, nicely past today’s realities – feel new types of affinity living, or micro developments with streets based on niche interests, or the notion of shared dwelling arrangements or multi-generational options.
What about the all important oxymoron “the Operating Retired”, or university based developments, communes for experienced age artists and writers, strategies for ageing-in-place.
Up coming key issue – What is important about the 12 months 2010?
2010 is the calendar year the first of the Child Boomers reach what has been regarded as the Retirement Age of 65.
By the way, when 65 was arbitrarily selected as Retirement Age, only fifty four% of males and sixty one% of women lived that prolonged.
Now I know you’ve go through all about this Silver Tsunami, and been inundated with statistics on this largest inhabitants wave in mankind’s historical past. But like it or not, the Baby Boomers are now clearly noticeable on your organization radar.
Let me give you one particular far more statistic to place this in point of view.
From Les Résidences St-Charles to 2050, the typical monthly enhance in the number of Australians over sixty five will be more than 20,000. That’s the population of a key regional metropolis each month for 40 several years. The aggregate increase in the above 65’s is better than modern populace of NSW.
Now prior to you rejoice and suppose that with this kind of a boom in demand from customers, any enterprise offering housing for this age cohort must be destined for fantastic instances, let me nominate two considerable caveats.
To start with, who can keep in mind the moments as children when the fireplace brigade utilised to change on the fire hydrant and enable it run down the street for a while?
Did you ever attempt to get a drink from the hydrant when it was turned on full?
Even if you failed to finish up with your teeth knocked down your throat, you finished up soaking soaked and still thirsty.
Only individuals with a clearly believed out and well executed technique accomplished their goal, firstly escaping significant injury, and acquiring the drink they needed.
2nd caveat. Although there is wonderful danger in applying any generalisation to Infant Boomers, they are not an homogeneous team in any factor, there is one particular precise generalisation: Baby Boomers are not their Dad and mom.
Your enterprise nowadays is predominately serving the Silent Era (as in struggling in Silence ), born among 1925 and 1942, and decreasingly the Finest (or WW2) Generation, born 1901 to 1924.
All generations have acknowledged norms and investigation confirms Boomers are diametrical opposites, in believed and action, to the two generations that preceded them. Boomers are rule breakers, committed to individuality more than conformity, and they present no indicators of expanding out of it.
This incompatibility in between Boomers and their parents’ era raises massive questions for companies thinking about the changeover to, or the integration of Boomers, into the compliant and conforming ranks of their preceding generations.
The arrival of the Boomers at the conventional Retirement Age of 65 has a prolonged record of problems for your business as a marketer, but it has an equally lengthy checklist of challenges for your enterprise as an employer, with the require to draw in and keep age-proper workers.
2010 is also the year of the labour industry “entry-exit crossover”. For the very first time, Australia is predicted to encounter a period of time of more leaving the labour power than getting into.
As an indicator of the impact of this, at the up coming all-employees assembly in your organization, ask for a present of fingers to point out how a lot of folks in the space are Little one Boomers – born amongst 1946 and 1964.
To wrap up this point, 2010 is the 12 months you require to commence a new era of enterprise training on how to market place to, and support the requirements of Boomers – each as supplier and employer.
When promoting to mature age buyers, item centred methods are much less efficient. As we age we are a lot more captivated to meaningful ordeals than gaining substance merchandise.
Retirement Lodging is not a actual estate “bricks and mortar” choice – it is a life-style knowledge choice centred on intangibles this sort of as a sense of local community, belonging, safety, insurance policy for the future.
What way of life does the potential resident want to expertise, and who do they have faith in to supply that encounter?
The Next Question – Do you go after a rational or emotional approach to Advertising and marketing and Income?
Study has constantly confirmed most product sales are emotionally pushed and emotionally made a decision (utilising what is acknowledged as the correct mind), and then justified logically (utilising the still left brain).
The potential customers in your goal market place, are exposed to one thing like 4000 to 5000 advertising and marketing messages every working day.
To defend our still left brain from becoming more than-loaded with the want to analyse and assess every single a single of individuals messages, our correct mind functions as a gatekeeper and discards the messages it is not emotionally attracted to. Which is true for people of all ages.
But as we age our cognition patterns grow to be a lot more appropriate mind oriented-that is exactly where feelings and recollections reside. The correct mind operates with sensual imagery, not phrases and quantities. That’s why photos can trigger recollections or prompt an emotional response.
Our verbal memory declines quicker than our visual memory. Who has not been stuck for a term, but we can obviously visualise what it is we’re making an attempt to describe?
What does that suggest in your marketing and revenue exercise?
The maxim that very best describes the course you need to have to take is this: “People never treatment how much you know till they know how a lot you treatment.”
Until finally your advertising and marketing or sales technique can make an psychological connection, which can be instantaneous, and until finally you set up an satisfactory degree of Have confidence in, no amount of logic or monetary justification will obtain the consumer response you are searching for.
So long-copy push advertisements and financial tables demonstrating “cost savings” on landing internet pages of sites will not likely do the occupation, nor will images that depict the age of recent inhabitants which is not appropriate with how your prospective customers see by themselves, which investigation suggests is thirteen to fifteen years more youthful than their real age.