Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

A friend in real estate does no paid advertising to promote himself – only advertising about his listings — but has continuously built his business.

This is almost unheard of in an industry where marketing expenditures per agent are often 30 to 40% of revenue for a first-year agent and 10% of yearly revenue for established agents. How has he done it? Part of his secret is that he never misses a chance to ask for referrals. But the bigger reason is that he is a master at cross-marketing.

For example, his friends and clients recently received from him a letter recommending a pet-sitter. A few weeks later, they received another letter from him recommending a golf instructor. Next up: A flower shop. His clients know and trust him, and they know through experience that he always recommends someone whom he himself has used and been pleased with. That makes his letters genuine, believable and effective.

But why recommend a pet-sitter, golf instructor or florist? Here’s the key: He mails recommendations to his client list in return for others mailing recommendations of him to their mailing list. The result is that they get new business, and he gets new listings. (He also keeps his name in front of his clients, and that top-of-mind awareness generates referrals in itself.)

In doing cross-marketing, he sticks to some rules.

• He never recommends someone he isn’t absolutely confident in. (The quickest way to business failure, someone once said, is great advertising for a bad product.)
• He collaborates with his recommended businesses in preparing the letters to his clients, and they collaborate with him in preparing letters to theirs.
• And he finds businesses whose client demographics match up well with his.
• With more of his business coming from seniors who are downsizing, moving nearer to children and grandchildren or buying second homes or investment property, he hopes to partner with a travel agency on a mailing because such a high percentage of the travel agency’s clients are seniors.
• He says, “Business contacts are good for business.” (SCSA’s Senior Resource Alliances™ function on much the same principle.) His results prove it.

More than any other age group, seniors prefer to be regarded as individuals. Direct marketing gives you the capability to do that. Seniors began their lives as consumers at a time when merchants knew them personally. They now are the last group of people in our society to enjoy personalized relationships with the people who provide them goods and services. Unlike the generations that have followed, the mature market is not a product of an impersonal, mass-produced world, and that poses special challenges to marketers. Direct marketing is one way to overcome those challenges. Here are some tips for using direct marketing to reach seniors:

The more you can personalize the buying-and-selling process, the more rapport you build with your senior clients.
Seniors react better to examples than statistics. Numbers don’t impress seniors as much as the example of an individual with whom they can identify who has benefited from a certain product or service. (That’s one reason you see so many celebrity endorsements of products aimed at seniors.)

Seniors like getting mail. It’s a misconception to think that seniors aren’t willing to read or that they don’t understand what they’re sent. Seniors are one of the most responsive groups to direct mail. They are willing to read longer letters and more copy. They are the best mail-order buyers measured by frequency, number of purchases and dollar amounts spent.

Marketers talk about the “Five Great Motivators”: fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed and need for approval. Together, they comprise virtually all of the advertising appeals you’ll see. Which one works best for seniors? Exclusivity. Seniors are especially prone to buy products and services that aren’t necessarily available to everyone else.

Advertising must relate to seniors’ experiences. These experiences should be acknowledged if you want to motivate a senior to buy. Instead of modern jargon and images, consider language and references to what seniors remember fondly.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

Three fundamental principles for working with seniors

Know your client. For example, you wouldn’t attempt to market a product or service to teenage girls unless you’d learned something about what’s important to teenage girls. Remarkably, most persons assume they have an adequate knowledge base to work with seniors, only to learn the hard way that they don’t. Certified Senior Advisors know more about their clients because of Society of Certified Senior Advisors’ wide-ranging curriculum. The CSA Designation Program exposes aspiring CSAs to 23 subject areas that are of vital interest to seniors and those who care about them. The CSA curriculum encompasses Medicare and Medicaid, housing, caregiving, economic considerations, advance directives, physical aspects of aging and a number of other subjects that combine to shape the lives of today’s seniors.

The more you know about seniors, the more likely you are to earn their trust. Think about your own business relationships. You’re much more likely to do business with someone who knows you as a person and not just as a prospect. You want to work with someone who understands what’s important to you, your situation in life, your unique circumstances. Seniors are particularly attuned to the value of working with those who respect them and understand them.

Seniors don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. CSAs communicate better, understand more, have greater empathy and know how to find seniors the resources they need. Seniors deserve to work with people who have taken the time and made the effort to learn about the needs of seniors.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

The front door

What about parking? The safest and most convenient option is a parking lot or garage that is adjacent to the entry to your building. If you have parking, ask your customers if they have any problems finding the entry and exit signs or difficulty parking their vehicles.

Three ways to make your location more attractive is to add more handicapped spaces than required, provide “senior only” spaces, and widen the size of each space or stall. While the “senior only” spaces would rely on people’s good faith, the added parking would be an indication of your desire to serve senior customers.

Your building is the front door to your business. It should be welcoming and well-maintained. Make it easy for seniors to enter and navigate your premises. Seniors with arthritis or degenerative diseases may find it difficult to open heavy commercial doors. Installing automatic doors or push-button doors solves that problem.

Customers with canes or with walkers or wheelchairs appreciate wide ramps, wide doorways, wide aisles and stairs with handrails. Look out too for dangerous buckling carpets and loose carpet strings. Highly polished or wet floors should be roped off and alternate routes should be well-marked. Clean restrooms, of course, are a must.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6940

A fundamental principle for any field is: Know your client. For example, you wouldn’t attempt to market a product or service to teenage girls unless you’d learned something about what’s important to teenage girls. Remarkably, most persons assume they have an adequate knowledge base to work with seniors, only to learn the hard way that they don’t. Certified Senior Advisors know more about their clients because of Society of Certified Senior Advisors’ wide-ranging curriculum. 

Here’s the second fundamental principle: The more you know about seniors, the more likely you are to earn their trust. Think about your own business relationships. You’re much more likely to do business with someone who knows you as a person and not just as a prospect. You want to work with someone who understands what’s important to you, your situation in life, your unique circumstances. Seniors are particularly attuned to the value of working with those who respect them and understand them.

That leads to the third principle: Seniors don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. CSAs communicate better, understand more, have greater empathy and know how to find seniors the resources they need. Seniors deserve to work with people who have taken the time and made the effort to learn about the needs of seniors.

Seniors and Financial Issues

Seniors Get a 5.8 Percent Pay Raise
In 2009, seniors will get their largest pay raise from Social Security since 1982. Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits increase automatically each year based on the rise in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). This year’s increase in the CPI-W was 5.8 percent.

Many Older People Are Adapting Their Behavior to the Bad Economy
AARP commissioned a nationwide survey to determine how people age 45 and older are responding to the current economic slowdown. The survey included an oversample of Hispanic Americans. Results show that a majority of respondents believe the economy is in bad shape and that many have adapted their behaviors in response to the floundering economy.

Survey findings include:

    * Eighty-one percent of all respondents, and 86 percent of Hispanic respondents, say the economy is in fairly bad or very bad condition. A similar percentage feel the economy is getting worse.
    * More than one-fourth of all respondents, and 41 percent of Hispanic respondents, said they are having trouble paying their mortgage or rent, and one-third have stopped putting money into their retirement accounts. More than one-fourth of all workers and Hispanic workers ages 45+ have postponed plans to retire.
    * As the economy slows and prices rise, most middle-aged and older respondents, including Hispanic respondents, report that they are having difficulty paying for food, gas, utilities, and medicine, and they are responding to the situation by cutting luxuries and postponing major purchases and travel.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

Do You Follow These Practices to Keep Your Marketing Ethical?

Is “ethical marketing” an oxymoron? Not at all. Some people seem to think that seniors need to be put in a bubble that’s off limits to anyone selling anything, a view that is as unrealistic as it is ageist. And what many never talk about in the context of ethical selling to seniors is the obligation of the seller to have some formal knowledge about aging and working with older adults – precisely what you possess as a CSA. If you can agree with all the statements below, you’re exactly the kind of person who should be marketing to seniors.

• Your advertising is unmistakable about what you’re selling.
• You don’t appeal to seniors’ fears in your conversations, correspondence or advertising.
• You use the CSA Disclosure Statement before you complete a transaction.
• You don’t do or say anything you’d be embarrassed to see on the front page of your daily newspaper.
• You don’t prevent anyone from coming to your presentations because of their occupation.
• You stay current about issues and concerns specific to older adults.
• You respect Do Not Call rules and CAN SPAM restrictions.
• You are alert to signs of cognitive deterioration in seniors and know when to alert or involve other family members in their care or decision-making.
• Pressure is not one of your sales tools.
• You never sell a product or service to a senior that you wouldn’t sell to a member of your own family in a similar situation.
• You live up to your obligation to report to the CSA Board of Standards any CSA who violates the CSA Code of Professional Responsibility.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

Boomer Project Offers Five Need-to-Know Ideas

The Boomer Project (www.boomerproject.com) offers senior providers five things they need to know about boomer consumers:

Boomers have two faces. There are leading-edge and trailing-edge boomers. Because they have different needs, don’t treat them as a single group.

Single income equals multiple prospects. One third of boomers — some 25 million — head up single-income households. More important, during these difficult economic times, single-income households don’t have brand preferences that are as strong as dual-income households. That means providers trying to gain shares from a competitor might be more successful luring uncommitted single-income boomers. But what senior services out there are marketing to single-income boomers?

Boomers are zealots about media. They consume it all, but do so differently than younger consumers.  Grandparent boomers are manna from heaven. More than 37 percent of them are already grandparents. The average age of a boomer who is a grandparent is 53.  Oprah is 53.  We’re not taking about Estelle Getty from “The Golden Girls.” We’re talking young, vibrant, active spenders — especially on their new grandkids. Opportunities abound.

Reproduced with permission of CD Publications’ “Selling to Seniors.” For more information visit www.seniorsnews.net or call 1-800-666-6380.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

While the bad news of late has been mostly about big financial institutions and the automotive industry, perhaps the hardest hit segment of the population is seniors. This poses new challenges for professionals whose clients are seniors looking to them for help.

Many seniors face the triple whammy of seeing their investments evaporate, the value of their homes decline, and the prospects for earning extra retirement funds through part-time work becoming dimmer and dimmer as younger workers compete for jobs more traditionally filled by older adults.

Adult children aren’t making things any easier for them, either. Faced with job loss or home foreclosure, they’re moving in with their parents to make ends meet. Returning to the nest has gone from a relatively rare event to one experienced by nearly half of all those adult children leaving home.

What can CSAs do to help?

Anticipate the needs of your senior clients. Can you help them save money this winter by giving them information or help on winterizing their homes? Can you find coupons that will save them money on food and other essentials? Can you give them tips on how to make things tolerable if their adult children move back in?

There is a direct correlation between what you know and how well you can meet the needs of your senior clients. And that’s the whole rationale behind the Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) designation, now accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies. The designation can also set you apart as you struggle to compete in these tough times. You owe it to your seniors — and you owe it to yourself.

Senior Home Care Franchise Business driven by elders and seniors who want to live at home. Start your own home care business – Companion Connection Senior Care – Call David Goodman at (800) 270-6949.

The average TV viewer in America is now 50 — ironically outside the coveted 18 to 49 demographic that networks have used for decades to develop shows and woo advertisers.

New statistics from MAGNA (www.magnaglobal.com) reveal that the five broadcast networks’ average live median age was 50 last season — a television first. ABC (median age 50), NBC (49) and FOX (44) all saw their median age creep up, while CBS (54), which has been traditionally older, stayed steady.

Among cable channels, FOX News has the highest median age at 65. Hallmark Channel, Golf Channel and GSN also skew older, the report says.

Individual shows with the highest median ages included: ABC’s Women’s Murder Club (57); NBC’s Monk (58); and FOX’s Canterbury’s Law (55). In the later-night time slots, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno has the oldest median age (54), followed by The Late Show with David Letterman (53), Nightline (52), Jimmy Kimmel Live (50), and Late Night with Conan O’Brien (46).

Reproduced with permission of CD Publications’ “Selling to Seniors.” For more information visit www.seniorsnews.net or call 1-800-666-6380.