I was told of an incident today where there was this building that was occupied mostly of elderly people and they needed to make a decision as to the types of services they would need to maintain the building that they lived in. Apparently many of the contractors that came in were pretty inflexible in terms of what they were offering with an attitude of they are the professionals and so the people that live there shouldn’t debate with them when it comes to pricing or the types of work needed.
The interesting thing though was that when it came to a younger group the same company acted completely different. Basically, they treated them with more dignity and respect to the point where this younger group was more in control of the pricing and the company felt that if they didn’t try to adapt to the request then they would lose a sale.
This is one of those things where it’s simply the sad reality that in many cases having like the younger person being the spokesperson here for example can make a huge difference in terms of how serious a business would take you. It is kind of no different in many cases such as when it comes to pitching an idea. While a lot of people will focus on what the person is offering, it’s not uncommon that if you sent say the “younger” or “better looking” person to do the pitch professionally for you then odds are it will garner more initial attention.
This can be true the other way around too such as a kid pitching what could be the best idea in the world but would be laughed out of the room simply because of their age. Like in that case, getting an adult to do it for them will probably yield different results. I guess the bottom line is in most cases there is a certain age group that works better in terms of getting you better deals or opportunities. In that case it kind of makes sense to play with the perception that people have with people of specific age groups.