Senior or elder? Knowing your audience

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Senior Marketing

Knowing Your Reverse Mortgage Audience

While we’ll all become “seniors” if we live long enough, not everyone attains the status of elder. The former term refers to someone who has reached a certain chronological age; the latter to one who has evolved into something of a sage.

In his landmark book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, social entrepreneur Marc Freedman speaks continually of “generativity,” which he labels a cumbersome word for an essential function: guiding and supporting future generations. (see Pressing the Reset Button/Part 1: Encore, Encore!)

Senior MarketingI disagree with Freedman’s distaste for the word generativity (coined by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950). To me, generativity is a glorious, onomatopoeic expression of the highest calling of our later years: vivifying subsequent generations through creativity, care, and compassion.

Reverse Mortgage Marketing To Seniors

For reverse mortgage professionals, understanding this distinction can help you speak in the language of your audience, because those who are ready to enjoy a well deserved retirement, and those who are reinventing themselves to create a post-midlife career or volunteer position, may perceive their home from very different perspectives — yet both groups can provide valid, viable, and valuable reverse mortgage leads.

Perhaps it’s also a question of reclaiming the word “senior”. In school, this term signifies exalted status: upperclassmen nearing graduation, stepping into the next phase of their personal development. Yet in later life, it’s generally been viewed disparagingly.

Reverse Mortgage Marketing And The Aging Process

As we reimagine the aging process to include a “Third Age” of vibrant, mature, post-midlife adults who are reversing the collective image of aging as surely as a reverse mortgage provides income to those who have earned it through the years, “senior” can evolve to mean one who has earned the right to live their later years in whatever manner best suits who they have become, whether that means mentoring a single grandchild — or, like Gene Jones, deciding at 84 to create Opening Minds Through the Arts, an Arizona program that today serves more than 20,000 school children throughout greater Tucson.

Senior and elder Jones typifies the new mature adult, who, as Freedman describes, now has “the opportunity to live a legacy — not just to leave one.”

 

Hangouts for new RM prospects: The Reset Button: Gap Years part 2

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Reverse Mortgage Client Demographic

Locating Potential Reverse Mortgage Prospects

Sixty is the new sixty: a watershed birthday for the Baby Boom generation, who are reaching this milestone at the rate of one every ten seconds. But this is not your grandfather’s sixty, or even your father’s sixty. People who reach 60 today can expect to live at least another quarter century — ideally in good health, with vision and purpose more sharply focused than at any other time in the life cycle, due to an awareness of one’s mortality.

Reverse Mortgage Client DemographicManagement expert Daniel Pink proclaims, “When the cold front of demographics meets the warm front of unrealized dreams, the result will be a thunderstorm of purpose the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Are you poised to connect with these reverse mortgage prospects, who are redefining what it means to grow older in the third millennium?

The first step is locating them. While a sixty-something Boomer might pop into the local senior center for a game of ping-pong, she’s more likely to do so as a change of pace from her demanding marketing consulting business than simply to socialize. Thus, you’d be more likely to target this potential reverse mortgage market by broadening your scope.

Seniors And Retirement

Where do the newly minted seniors, who are creating a new life stage known as the Third Age, spend time?

Community service. Think causes: the environment, education, health care, economic change. Civic, cultural, and service organizations are attracting mature adults seeking both paid and non-paid work. These encore careers take place “at the confluence of money, meaning, and social impact,” says Marc Freedman, author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife.

School. Whether they’re training for an entirely different post-midlife career, enhancing existing skills, or studying something they’ve always wanted to learn, lifelong learning is hot, as record numbers of seniors return to school in both traditional settings and online.

Health clubs. Even if they don’t aspire to swim the Florida straits or play college football in their 60s (see Pressing the Reset Button/Part 1), Third Stage adults are focused on staying healthy and fit.

Self-development classes. A yoga or meditation class, journal writing or drum circle, can provide much-needed emotional and spiritual support within a like-minded community.

Once you determine a few groups in your area that serve active older adults, start to network in these environments. Attend gatherings; you may even wish to join a group that appeals to you. Volunteer to give a talk on a topic such as “ways to fund your Third Age vision” — which would include reverse mortgage.

As you begin to build relationships with your potential market in their milieu, you’ll be the obvious choice for group members to consult when they’re considering alternative sources of income for financing future plans.

In Part 3, we’ll explore how Reverse Mortgage professionals can share their knowledge with the new demographic.

Boomers Rock with a guitar, not a chair

Reverse Mortgage Marketing to the Mature Home Owner

Marketing to the Mature Home Owner / Part 2:
If They Rock, It’s With a Guitar!

A business magazine recently ran this “humorous” column: “Middle-Age Texting Codes”. The list included such abbreviations as ATD (“At the doctor”), BFF (“Best friend fell”), BYOT (“Bring your own teeth”) and FWIW (“Forgot where I was”).

It’s doubtful these acronyms would amuse many people in their eighties, let alone someone who considers him- or herself middle aged. President Obama celebrated his mid-century birthday last month, and while he loves his BlackBerry, it’s unlikely he’ll be texting any of the above messages any time soon.
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The eldest of the approximately 79 million Baby Boomers reach retirement age this year, at the rate of about four million per year. For reverse mortgage professionals marketing to active adults 57-65 years of age — early Boomers who are planning work and lifestyle changes — respect is the keynote that will win their attention, and ultimately, their interest in qualifying for a reverse mortgage. As noted in the first post in this series, Marketing to the Mature Home Owner / Part 1, nobody becomes “old” overnight simply because they celebrate a birthday.

From the Baby Boom generation onward, the new American senior might best be defined by the Dylan Thomas poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. They will forever consider themselves youthful, and as such, the marketing mindset that worked with previous generations must be modified if it is to succeed.

Younger seniors (many of whom prefer terms such as “mature” or “older adult”) will be interested in quotes for a reverse mortgage, not because they want to rock on the front porch (unless it’s with a guitar), but possibly because:

  • They’re planning to help put kids (or grandkids) through college
  • They need to care for an elderly parent (these days it’s not uncommon for two generations to be “seniors” simultaneously)
  • They want to travel
  • They’re considering surgery — plastic surgery, to look as good as they feel

To make the second half golden for both your “younger” reverse mortgage prospects and your business, focus on how you can help these elders fulfill the next great adventure in their lives. That’s the spirit that will win their trust, because while denial may not be a river in Egypt, it flows through the fecund minds of the newly minted senior set.

Personal Touch – Insights on Essential Reverse Mortgage Marketing Tools

Your marketing efforts are starting to pay off. You have converted some of your reverse mortgage leads into appointments.

How can increase your chance for success?

You CAN increase  your reverse mortgage fundings by learning how to relate and communicate to seniors, build trust, and successfully counter their common objections with your simple solutions. Ultimately, you will learn how to create your unique selling proposals.

Learn how to determine your unique selling proposition. On your way to developing your unique selling proposition, you will master these techniques:

  • Educating and presenting over the phone
  • Educating and presenting in the client’s home
  • Building trust
  • Relating to seniors
  • Countering common objections

We have found through years of experience just knowing the Reverse Mortgage Loan is a great fit for someone is not enough. Educating the potential client about the Reverse Mortgage loan is also not always enough. We as Reverse Mortgage Loan Originators need to actually be able to relate to the potential client. We need to understand where they are at and where they want to be. We need to understand what a fixed income really feels like and how this affects their retirement. These foundational principles are what we have used for years, and we know they will serve you well.

To get more resources on how to improve these skill sets, visit our special marketing section ‘The Closing Factor” on Reverse Fortunes.

Eric A. Hiatt

No Lead Left Behind

It would be nice to say that we never lose a reverse mortgage lead (potential sale) due to a lack of follow up, but how does one truly live up to the motto “no lead left behind”?

With the lead costs per funded transaction skyrocketing due to lower response rates and media costs, here are just a few ways you can create an air-tight system of reverse mortgage lead management.

Persistency:

Just how many “touches” or contacts with the prospective borrower does it take for them to make a decision whether or not to proceed? Studies show that you must touch your client a minimum of seven times before you can truly get a commitment. With this in mind creating systems for following up with your prospects is no longer optional. What counts as a point of contact? Mailing, phone calls, messages, emails are just a few ways to stay in front of the potential borrower. Each one cements in their mind your professional presence and commitment to follow through. That brings us to technology…

Technology:

If you serious about managing your sales process and never missing a call back then a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) is a must. Reverse Fortunes has developed RmCRM as a web-based CRM customized for reverse mortgage sales. Being able to track conversations (most of us don’t bother when we have to write down notes), schedule call backs and automate follow up tasks will keep any lead from slipping through the cracks. In fact, over the last six years I have averaged a minimum of one additional loan per month (sometimes 2-3) just by working my database. There’s nothing better than resurrecting what was once a ‘no-deal’ and turning it into a funded loan.

Systems:

Every successful business has a system to selling. Not just an idea, but an iron-clad, duplicate-able and non-wavering approach of how to approach every potential sale. Nothing is left to chance. What is your work-flow or predetermined sales path? If you supervise other originators, do they know this approach and are they accountable to employ it. What happens Day 1, Day 2 and beyond after initial contact has been established?

Sales is part science (the systems) and partly art (the magic of human communication). The more we can take uncertainty out of the process the more we can focus on the art of selling and effectively communicating with our prospective borrowers.

These are just a few ways one can insure “no lead is left behind”. If you would like additional training or information on this topic, contact Shannon Hicks at Reverse Fortunes.