What’s the difference between a baby-boomer client and Generation Y client? No, this isn’t a set-up line for a joke, but it is an anecdote that sums up the generational differences financial advisors need to consider if they want to attract younger people who someday will supplant the boomer generation as clients.

Gen Y folks, said Cam Marston, founder of the consulting firm Generation Insights, were raised to think they’re special and unique, a mindset reinforced by participant awards handed out at summer camps, swim meets or other events where everybody gets a ribbon or trophy no matter how nondescript or poorly they performed.

“If you’re a baby boomer, were you as a child ever told you were special or unique from everyone else?” Marston asked the audience at a session today at the Investment Management Consultants Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. “No, you never heard such a thing, and if you did it sounded something like this: ‘What’ya think you’re special or something?’ It was an accusation.”

Marston’s comment caused attendees—most of who appeared to be boomers, along with early-stage Gen X’ers—to erupt in laughter. But his message was a key takeaway for the audience.

“This has significance for the way you engage that baby-boomer client and their child who will receive an inheritance. It has significance in what you say about yourself to the public, organize your promotional material or even how you introduce yourself.”

Marston was a one-man panelist at a session devoted to how investment advisors can become gen-savvy as the financial advice business slowly transitions away from relying on boomers to trying to attract the mindshare and walletshare of younger generations who are coming up through the pipeline.

Much of his presentation dealt with delineating the different generations and parsing their attitudinal and expectation differences regarding how they see themselves, their place in the world and how they want to interact with wealth advisors.

Marston defines the main generational cohorts as the so-called matures, or silent generation (ages 70 and older); baby boomers (ages 51 and 69); Generation X (ages 36 through 50) and Gen Y, or millennials (ages 15 to 35). Bringing up the rear is the iGen, or Gen Z age bracket.

From a marketing perspective, Marston noted people in the mature and baby-boomer groups are interested in an advisor’s story and how it paints a picture of something that’s “safe and predictable”—i.e., where the advisor comes from, length of tenure, the history and name recognition of an advisor’s organization and its perceived quality. 

Regarding Generations X and Y, their approach to advisors is more about the future than the past. “Show me what’s going to happen to me . . . show me my future” is how younger folks look at a potential advisor relationship, Marston said, adding they’re less interested in what a particular advisor did for their parents or how much assets under management they have or how many wonderful accolades they’ve received.

The advisor’s conversation with X’ers and millennials should be future-focused on the client, or the potential client, and not history-focused on what the advisor and his or her firm did in the past, Marston said.

Similarly, advisors should take a different approach with baby boomers than they did with the boomers’ parents.

Boomers, Marston offered, will be the healthiest and longest-living generation to date. Unlike their parents who viewed retirement as “stopping,” many boomers view retirement as “starting” a new active phase in their life.

“Always appeal to their values, not to their age or their life stage,” Marston said.

Regarding technology, he noted some boomers are starting to push back against too much technology in their advisor relationship because they still want to see their advisor’s eyeballs and hear their voice versus getting another encrypted PDF document to sign.

In short, personal relationships still matter for many boomers, Marston said.

But boomers won’t be around forever (despite what they might think), and eventually they’ll pass down their assets to their children. And that’s when things could get tricky for advisors who want to capture the business of their boomer clients’ children. The key is to hone the message specific to that particular age group.

Marston posited that Gen X’ers—his age bracket—tend to be cynical and pragmatic, and are big into researching financial-related matters online before taking the plunge, including when it comes to choosing a financial advisor.

“They stalk products and services, which means they’re checking out advisors and finding out as much about them as they can before the first meeting,” Marston said, adding they often already know a lot about an advisor before they even meet them. “The first meeting happens online.”

Gen X’ers aren’t looking for, nor do they trust, so-called “experts,” Marston continued. “Instead, they’re looking for someone to teach them. Become a solution to the noise [in the financial advice marketplace]. Offer options that demand your explanation and allow you to teach them.”

Regarding Gen Y, Marston said this demographic can be categorized as people with a group orientation who are generally optimistic and have been well cared for. They’re not adults and they’re not adolescents—they’re in an in-between stage, he explained, adding that delayed adulthood is symptomatic of affluent societies on the whole.

“You should take the millennial birth certificate age, subtract five or maybe even seven years, and this is where they are in life and what they’re going through,” Marston said. “And this is how you should interact with them. This begins to change in their late-twenties to early-thirties, but until the age of 30 this is how you should approach them.”

In other words, their financial needs during young adulthood won’t necessarily be the same needs experienced by their parents, and that should frame the conversation and the service offered by an advisor.