Are their goals the same as when they were working and had children at home? You might be amazed at how many retirees still view themselves as 40 years old and have their finances set up accordingly. They still are trying to get the highest return possible when what they really want is to keep the comfortable retirement for which they worked so hard. At 40, they needed as much growth as possible to ensure they had enough to retire on when they got to their chosen retirement age.
However when they choose to retire, the first thing they need to look at is if they have enough money to retire. If they do not, they should not retire. If they do, then their goal has changed from growth to some growth but more importantly not to loose the chunk of money they accumulated that ensured their comfortable retirement in the first place. Growth cannot help as much as loss can hurt them. You need to help them re-frame their thinking about their investment goals.
They need to work with someone who only works with people who are retired: a retirement specialist. Why? I work exclusively with advisors in the top five percent of all advisors in the senior market. Many of them initially tried to work with both the senior market as well as their general practices. They found it just too difficult to switch the mind set from growth to protection and back to growth again at the flip of the switch.
They found themselves recommending great growth products to seniors, not because the seniors needed them, but simply because they were great growth products. As the most recent bear market proved, this is a dangerous mistake to make but an easy one to do.
They also found that they could not honestly look a senior in the eye and say, "I only work with seniors. That is my one and only concern and specialty." Unless that really was the case.
Do seniors care if you exclusively work with seniors? I don't know. Do you care if your heart surgeon only works with heart patients? You may think that is different. Maybe to you, but not to a senior. They will put up with a general practitioner if that is the only game in town, but once they understand a specialist exists, they are going gravitate that direction.
Why would you want to specialize just in seniors? Because they are the nicest and most appreciative people you will ever meet.
The great thing about working with people age 55 to 75 is that when you have an agreement, there is a high likelihood that they will honor it. Therefore, the emphasis has to be on the agreement before any work is done. They do not care about cost as much as everyone else. They do not care about return as much as everyone else. All they want is the information up front. They want honesty.
But heaven help you if they find that you didn't give them the whole truth up front. They are not a forgiving lot.
Why wouldn't you want to work with seniors? Well as I indicated earlier, many advisors are rushing to this market. The good, the bad and the ugly. Seniors have become very skeptical and jaded with the amount of attention they have been receiving in the last few years from advisors. If your heart is not in the right place they will sniff you out instantly and take you for all the free information you are willing to dole out to them.