Quantity Surveying

An issue was raised by a real estate professional concerning the lack of past clients’ children, now of home purchasing age, utilizing him as their agent. There was a mixed set of responses from the members of the BNI power team. The age range of the BNI power team was from early twenties to late fifties which yielded a very broad spectrum of questions and potential solutions. The question and responses continued to occupy my mind because of clients’ similar concerns regard the lack of loyalty of second generations, taking over control of existing businesses, to long time suppliers. Is it possible to service multiple generations of the same family? If so, what are the best methods to build the know, like and trust (KLT) relationships with the subsequent generation?

Understanding the Generations

Targeting the Correct Generation

Which generation are you trying to market to? You have to be able to clearly identify who your target market is and then understand their tendencies. The generations are distinct, the exact chronological starting and stopping point are generally defined, be cautious in classification when approaching a transitional point.

The “mature” group was those born prior to 1946. This generation’s attributes include duty, victory team work, and sacrifice of individual indulgences for the good of the group. They are also skeptical of technology, threaten by computers because they are shortcuts, not part of their “honest day’s work” and “long-term toil” equals delayed satisfaction attitude. In today’s economy they are a financial power house since the goal was to buy and pay-off the house rather than continued refinancing to pull inflationary equity.

The “baby boomers” are those born between 1946 and 1965. This generation’s attributes include individuality, youth, self absorption and personal indulgences. Their generation was that of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Their struggles were associated with understand significant technology advances, attempting to adapt while having deep roots in their parent’s method of doing things (old dogs learning new tricks). The closer to the end of the chronological period they were born has a definite effect on how, when and why they use technology today.

“Generation X” (X’ers or baby busters) were born from 1966 to 1980. This group’s attributes include diversity (and acceptance thereof), being extremely savvy and have their roots in entrepreneurism. They value a pragmatic, realistic approach to daily life, balanced work and social lives, they are tech savvy and nimble, interested in function, efficiencies and resourcefulness. They have a mastery of the internet, blogging and publishing resources.

“Generation Y” (millennials, Y’ers, net gen or echo boomers) were born after 1980 and before 2000. Their attributes include authorship, autonomy and authenticity. They have live with the internet virtually their whole lives. They value quantity over quality. They are the “multi” generation, multi media, multi tasking, processing information with amazing speed, as if in parallel and opposed to past generations serial absorption. This generation’s preferences are mobile, handheld devices, using text and media to communicate, to the extent that relationships begin and end via text.

The concerns, turn-offs and hot buttons are listed in the table for each of the generations.

To see the table: http://bit.ly/30sjlD

Targeting the Correct Generation

Which generation are you trying to market to? You have to be able to clearly identify who your target market is and then understand their tendencies. As mentioned earlier, the closer a target is to the chronological transition point the more difficult it may be to target them, you may see attributes from two of the generations. For example, I fall in the baby boomer generation, right in the middle, however I have been involved with technology my whole life, having been raised in the heart of Silicon Valley, having dealt with technology clients for the first twenty years of my career, technology is my friend, other attributes of the boomer generation are definitely my attributes.

Targeting the correct generation doe not only mean identifying the age bracket, it also means targeting the message and the method of delivery for the message. Refer back to the chart that displays the “Right Message” by generation.

Targeting Your Clients’ Children

A very logical assumption is that the children will be loyal to their parents trusted advisors, especially if they see what they have be able to accomplish. It may be logical to a mature or a boomer, it means very little to the X’er or th Y’er. First, you don’t communicate the same way they do, you want to have a face to face meeting, “that’s the way business is done.” Not so, the X’ers and Y’ers are comfortable with digital communication, remember even intimate breakups can be done digitally. Face to face meeting take time, time to plan, time to execute, too slow when you are accustomed to rapid response digitally from your peers.

Boomers and X’ers are planners and schedulers; Gen Y’s are coordinators. When faced with a need to meet, Gen Y’s are likely to ascertain each other’s immediate coordinates, and then home in on each other. Older colleagues would almost certainly prefer to rely on pre-planned schedules — and may be very annoyed by younger team members’ seemingly seat-of-the-pants approach. To Y’s, the extent of scheduling that goes on in most workplaces today seems stultifying and inefficient. Erikson (2009)

Other considerations include the younger generations’ need to be their own person, do things without riding on mom’s apron strings. To overcome that barrier you need to make a genuine effort to get to know the younger generation, really get to know them. At the same time don’t communicate information back to the parents, keep it confidential, just as you would with independent clients. People do business with people they know, like and trust, they don’t do business with people that they don’t know, don’t like and don’t trust, at least, not for long. You may have more success once you break through to a single member of the younger generation and use them to refer you, rather than their parents.

References

–(Erikson T 2009216 Four Biggest Reasons for Generational Conflict in Teams)Erikson, T. (2009, February 16). The Four Biggest Reasons for Generational Conflict in Teams. Retrieved October 23, 2009, from Harvard Business Publishing Web Site

–(Weaver M C 2007 Entrepreneurial Collection – Success Skills Archives)Weaver, M. C. (2007). Generational Marketing. In Entrepreneurial Collection – Success Skills Archives. Retrieved October 23, 2009

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