|
Greetings!
Welcome to the premier email newsletter for referral-minded independent sales professionals who want the Big Picture.
*To guarantee that the most exceptional and motivated sales professionals and sales managers are not missing out on the excellent ideas from this ezine consistently, be a resource and please forward this on and recommend that they sign up on my website: www.thereferralauthority.com
Date: November 26, 2007
Word count: 950
Reading time: 3 minutes
Benefits of Taking Action: you never the benefits of knowing what the latest trends are
In this issue:
1. 3 National Trends to Watch from one of Bill Gates' Advisors.
2. What's your plan for getting more referrals in 2008?
3. Seminars for You and Your Company to Get More Referrals.
3 National Trends to Watch from one of Bill Gates' Advisors.
Before you pass over this e-zine as not relating to referrals, think again. With some thought, this might give you a great idea for a target market (or new business venture,) a specific referral request, and/or a way to better connect with some of your clients. Mark Penn's credentials are quite remarkable. Before he wrote Microtrends in 2007, he had advised Bill Gates at Microsoft, helped Bill Clinton, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Senator Hillary Clinton win successful elections as well as over a dozen other heads of state around the world.
His primary argument is that "many of the biggest movements in the US today are small" and that Americans prefer small reasonable ideas and small town values over big grandiose schemes. 1% of the population can still make a terrific market segment (since it's 300,000 people).
He argues that the guiding principle for trends not just in the USA but around the world should be that "The voters are not fools; the average Joe is actually pretty smart." (Although he does concede that we are also full of contradictions in how we live our lives ex. we are huge bottled water consumers and yet we guzzle down new caffeine-loaded energy drinks.) The book contains 75 microtrends. I've clumped together some of those and focused on three broad areas that are more likely to relate to your business and life.
How to use this E-zine:
Read slowly and ask yourself:
1. Does this trend impact my business or my life? If it might:
2. How can I use this info to grow my business?
3. Is it a potential target market? Should I network differently? (ex. at least 40% of America's millionaires are not country club types. They are the type of people described in Thomas J Stanley's Millionaire Next Door. He says the place to find millionaires is at their children's private schools or involved with their favorite non-profit cause).
4. How can I modify the way I do business to incorporate this new trend?
5. Is there a specific referral request there for one of my top clients based on the people they know?
Three Trend Areas.
1. Home owning trends
a) Single people owning homes (only 1:4 households are married couples with kids)
b) The commuter marriage - dual career couples living apart during the week
c) Second home buyers
d) 'Splitters' - people who split their time between more than one home
e) International home buyers - people from overseas buying property in the US.
f) LATs: living apart together (couples), people who prefer to live alone (or just with their own kids) and be in a relationship. There are 2 million LATs in the UK (which is 3 in 20 people between 18- 50). Look for this to happen increasingly more in the US.
g) Mamonis: 82% of men in Italy 18-30 live at home - mostly for economic reasons. In Australia they call them 'kidults'.
h) 4.2 million Americans work from home
2. Financial Trends
a) Shy (under the radar) millionaires. See Thomas J Stanley's The Millionaire Next Door. These people DO value working with financial advisors.
b) Bourgeois and bankrupt. The increasing numbers of bankruptcy are due primarily to (1) there being too much easy credit available; (2) in 2005 Americans saved at a negative rate for the first time since the Great Depression!
c) Squeeze of the middle class - some of whom have less disposable income than in the past
d) The number of over 65 year-olds working may explode: "The traditional ideas of retirement are up for retirement." Many Americans love to work and their health is permitting it. They have no intentions of retiring. Some people will have to keep working whether they like it or not.
3. Lifestyle Trends
a) Extreme commuters -traveling more than 90 minutes each way to work
b) The average commute continues to rise (25 minutes in the USA, 45 minutes in the UK, 60 minutes in China)
c) Social geeks: the most social and extrovert people are now becoming those who use technology the MOST, ex. Facebook and MySpace
i) Long attention spanners (want much more than sound bytes; think marathon runners, golf players, movies like Titanic, books like Harry Potter, deeper political analysis)
j) Cougars: older women dating younger men
k) Online dating (with more educated, urban Democrats doing it than any other group)
l) The paid childcare industry
m) Many changes in the working choices of women, inc. clergy, military, professional sports, and politics. Journalism, PR and broadcasting are now majority female industries.
n) 30 winkers (16% of Americans and 40% of Japanese people average less than 6 hours of sleep/night): many negative consequences
o) Older men becoming fathers
p) Black teen role models/success stories: "a testament to what's right in America"
q) Teen entrepreneurs
r) Neglected dads (by media and marketers)
s) Native language speakers (not English)
t) Snowed-under (overwhelmed) slobs (20 million adults describe themselves as living like slobs: 55%/45% male/female)
u) New Luddites (anti-technology who do not use the internet, I-Pods, cell phones). These people are more often pessimistic, less trusting, and introverted.)
v) College dropouts: enrollment is at a record high but retention has been consistently weak: graduation rates at colleges have hovered around 66% for some time.
Action Plan:
This e-zine is one that needs some re-visiting to give your brain a chance to mull over how some of these might impact your business and your life, ex. I talked to one 20-something Realtor last week about Facebook. It just might be a networking tool for the future. It's certainly how many younger Americans are communicating.
Be a resource. Who else do you think might get value from reading this? Please forward this on.
|
