Commentary: How Reverse Mortgage Pros Can Establish Credibility With Boomers
In my previous article, we discussed the importance of re-evaluating reverse mortgage marketing to “seniors” by dividing the current demographic into two groups: members of the post-World War II generation and baby boomers. This understanding informs our approach to marketing and sales, ensuring that we see and hear our customers fully. In turn, this allows us to forge stronger, more meaningful connections and provide solutions that truly resonate with their needs.
Effectively communicating with boomers requires relying on several different principles and strategies, but the primary requirement underlying them all is establishing your credibility. In the eyes of potential customers and partners, that is the single most important factor that determines how you get more business, but different groups see credibility in different ways.
Letting customers conclude you have authority
We cannot conjure credibility or authority out of nothing, or force it from a non-credible source. A person can manipulate themselves into short-term credibility, but nothing more. What I am sharing are strategies that connect the dots for your customers so they can reveal what already exists.
In some of these examples, you will notice a “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” type of association between the strategy and “credibility,” which is on purpose. It’s rarely the case that a person says or does something that immediately checks a “credibility” box in a customer’s mind, we just aren’t wired that way. We are wired to associate something like an important job title or career longevity with competency, which in turn is associated with authority, which then leads to credibility.
How long have you been originating? How long has your company been in business? The reverse mortgage space hasn’t been around that long, so a decade in the industry is plenty of experience to qualify one as “credible.” I used “decade” for a reason, and you should too if you can.
Saying “ten years” doesn’t carry the same weight. Twelve years is an excellent amount of experience, but “over a decade” is a much better phrase to communicate your longevity. If you don’t have too many years of experience, that’s okay. If your company does, however, that’s good. You can borrow a bit of that credibility from it.
The credibility flow
The same goes in the opposite direction. Do you have several years of experience in the industry but are now with a newer, up-and-coming lender? That’s excellent. You are helping bring credibility to the organization.
Currently, there is a direct correlation between the “newness” of a product and its mass appeal in the market, but this isn’t the case with “boomers.” The longer you or your company has been in the business (or any related field), the better.
No Comments yet!