Customers are definitely different from years ago. A lot of selling concepts fit for the people who were totally loyal to their jobs and company. The company’s pain was their pain. Little else mattered. That’s when most people stayed with their company for their entire career. They never saw massive downsizing and indiscriminate reductions in the workforce. In their world, when a layoff took place, the company stock went down. It was a sign of trouble. In contrast, a layoff today signals lower costs and higher profits, resulting in stock prices being driven up.Take a close look at the tools you’re being taught and make sure they’re suited for NOW.

I’m not saying that customers aren’t loyal and devoted to their companies as much any more. Different priorities are now in the forefront of all prospective customers’ minds.

You may have a product that relieves your prospect’s pain and would solve a major company problem. However, if your solution requires that the buyer (A Gen Y or X) stays after work two extra hours a day for three months, watch out. It might conflict with what he perceives as his gain, which is getting home for dinner each night.

Go ahead and uncover the pain. But you also have to find the gain or you won’t make the sale.

It’s been said that we’ve experienced more change in the past 50 years than in the previous 500 years. This has left a wake of out-of-date strategies from four distinctive generations whose points of view and opinions must be taken into account.

“Selling in the NOW” is recognizing different generational groups. Learning to understand, test, and then validate any perceptions they might hold will help you relate to them and gain their trust—and ultimately assist them in buying.

1. Mature (traditionalists) – born 1909 to 1945

• Experienced World War II and possibly also WWI
• Strong belief in duty, honor, country
• Lived through the Great Depression
• Hardworking, loyal
• Slow to embrace change
• See technology as having little value
• Financially conservative
• Strong desire to work out issues and meet company goals

Many traditionalists today are approaching retirement or have retired and hold temporary positions in an organization.

2. Baby Boomers – born 1946 to 1964

• Born to post-WWII parents
• Make up 28% of the population and 48% of the workforce
• Raised to believe they can accomplish anything
• Willing to give up family for advancement of career
• Competitively seek advancement because of their numbers
• Seek to please management, thus becoming skilled at company politics
• Look down on others who don’t come into the office early and leave late
• Pay attention to the amount of time spent at the office versus what gets accomplished
• Place efforts on acquiring wealth
• Value learning new things
• Rebellious toward existing policy, especially if it’s not geared toward their personal goals

3. Generation Xers – born 1965 to 1984

• Raised in times of rapid change
• Make up approximately 16% of the population
• Technologically savvy
• Have witnessed major layoffs
• Do not expect employer loyalty
• Change jobs quickly
• Work is not the most important thing in their lives; they seek a balance
• Work hard and expect to be well compensated
• Favor receiving money today versus future benefits (stock options, vesting bonuses, etc.)
• Want to be regarded as individuals rather than be labeled by what they do.

4. Millennials – born 1981 to 1999

• Recent college graduates entering the marketplace
• Grew up in the computer age
• Can apply technology to the workplace easily
• Confident and ambitious
• Skilled at retrieving volumes of information via the internet
• Entrepreneurial and resourceful
• Eager to learn and enjoy questioning
• Desire career options that are open-ended
• Can multitask with ease
• Have a sense of civic duty
• Their ambition is greater than their knowledge of how to execute new things

There’s little demand today for a 26-page boilerplate proposal. Most customers want their information fast, to the point, and on demand. And today, direct mail pieces find their way to the trash can faster than to the decision makers. No, the tools aren’t bad. But they definitely need updating. Doing spam email blitzes has introduced an electronic aggravation and makes discarding the sales approach even easier.

“Selling in the NOW” means making sure you find out exactly who your prospects are. That includes knowing the effects that different generations may have on the sales process. The generational differences are not hard fast as we all know Baby Boomers that have the traits of Gen Y and X’ers and the opposite can be true but being aware is a starting point to test and not assume. The point here is validating who is catching before you start pitching.