MichaelSullivan
Sales Specialist
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Sep 7, 2010, 12:17 PM
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By Michael P. Sullivan
50-Plus Communications Consulting: www.graymoney.biz
Boomers and older adults begin to rely more on emotion, big-picture thinking, and life knowledge as they grow older. You need to engage them around these preferences, or they just won't be persuaded by you or your sales and service staff.
In the 1960s, experimental psychologist Roger Sperry focused his work on the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain and the corpus callosum, which connects them. He won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1981, and decades of subsequent research have yielded hard facts about how we process information.
As you probably know, the left brain is associated with analysis and the right brain with creativity. Among other functions, the left processes language, while the right handles images.
As people grow older, they will tend to move from a left-brain orientation to a right-brain orientation. This is important for you to know, because it means you need to change how you communicate with your residential housing customers as they age.
In effect, a 30-year-old processes information differently than a 55-year-old or an 80-year-old. It's not just a matter of no longer processing information as accurately or completely, but of developing a different way of processing information.
As individuals grow older, they become more right-brained; it is more effective to explain sales concepts using pictures, storytelling, and emotionally enriched words.
Rely on right-brain communications
Semantic processing—the processing of words and numbers—and fluid intelligence—quick reasoning and abstract thinking—are both required to comprehend issues and concepts. These are both primarily left-brain functions. As boomer and older adults grow older, you can make their grasp of issues easier, faster, and less fatiguing if you deliberately engage sensory processing and learned knowledge which occur in the right brain.
Memory is sensory, not analytical. It occurs in the right brain in the form of images, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. It does not occur in the left brain as whole abstract thoughts. By using the senses to communicate with the right brain, you can directly tap into their memory.
At the most basic level, these are phrases like "cloudy day" and "green hills." We can immediately see these images in our mind's eye. When you get more elaborate, you are in the realm of literary devices, including similes, metaphors, analogies, word-pictures, and storytelling. Those devices are used to describe and explain unfamiliar concepts in ways that make them part of the listener's prior life experience.
By using literary devices as an integral part of conversations with Boomers and older adults, you accomplish three important goals simultaneously -- increase comprehension, reduce fatigue and retain more energy for use in processing complex information.
For a short quiz you and your associates can take to determine which side of the brain is dominant, email me at Mps50plus@aol.com.
Michael P. Sullivan, President, 50-Plus Communications Consulting, Charlotte, North Carolina, (704) 554-7863. Mike consults and trains staff at retirement facilities, home care living firms, financial services and health care organizations. His book, “101 Easy Ways to Increase Business with Boomerplus Clients” is available on his website,www.graymoney.biz. Contact him at mps50plus@aol.com.
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(This post was edited by MichaelSullivan on Sep 7, 2010, 12:25 PM)
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