Talking to Seniors

Take away an elderly person’s feeling that he is in control, and you lose a prospect.

By Lucretia DiSanto Jones

Many advisors have experienced a communication breakdown with an elderly client—or with their own parents or another elderly family member. No matter what the advisor says, the receiver misinterprets the message. And no matter how the advisor interprets what is said to him, the advisor is wrong.

What’s an advisor to do, then, when sitting down to talk with a senior client or prospect?

David Solie, M.S., P.A., is CEO and medical director of Second Opinion, a life insurance brokerage corporation. In his book How To Say It to Seniors, Closing the Communication Gap With Our Elders, Solie draws on his expertise in geriatric psychology and years of experience as a physician’s assistant to help individuals—family members and professionals—learn to communicate with the elderly in a way that will effectively bridge the generation gap.

He explains that when communicating with an elderly client, advisors need to realize that the elderly are not done growing. “They don’t go into a cruise-control mode,” he says. As a result, the elderly need to be allowed to accomplish two developmental tasks as they move toward the end of their lives: maintaining control and defining their legacy.

Maintaining control
To be successful in working with the elderly, advisors must help them maintain control, because they live in a world where they have lost control on virtually all fronts, says Solie. “Their health is changing, many of their peers have passed away, their mobility is altered and they are no longer sought out in terms of being a consultative authority. You can make a very long list of ways they have lost control. At the same time, they are extraordinarily open to things that allow them to have honest control,” Solie says.

The advisor who learns to honor and navigate the elderly population’s need for control will forge successful business—and personal—relationships with these clients. “One way to do this,” says Solie, “is to learn the language that reinforces the issue of control. This involves using verbs and descriptors that allow people to define for themselves how they want to control things. Prompts like ‘Walk me through how you want this to be managed,’ or ‘Give me your ideas on the best way this can be controlled or handled.’”

How should this affect an advisor’s strategy? Once advisors respect the fact that control is absolutely paramount to this population, they must, according to Solie, “present products, resources and solutions in language that suggests how they influence, enhance and preserve control. If this does not happen, advisors will be off base from the moment they step into the process.”

Solie also says that communication with the elderly needs to be straightforward. “We need to acknowledge in our communication with older adults that the choice is totally theirs. Our job is to give them solutions that will allow them to determine what degree of control they will have, and when they want to exercise that control. This is the key,” he explains.

Defining a legacy
The elderly need to discover and define their legacy: What their life has meant, how they have influenced and been a benefit to others, and what their life will mean after they’re gone. Advisors need to provide a forum for this reflection within the estate-planning process.

“It’s important for younger adults to realize that individuals do not end up at age 85 with everything figured out,” says Solie. “Life review is huge. It’s in essence the part of the developmental tasks that means the most to them and to us,” says Solie. “It is where all the meaningful conversations exist—the breakthroughs, the insights and all sorts of other issues. It is in some ways a financial planner’s dream come true, because it is the emotional part of what means the most to these individuals.” It also provides the information an advisor needs to help the elderly client plan his estate—the way he wants to plan his estate.