Please visit me at ProducersWEB.com

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Senior v Junior Decisioning

“Could brain changes make older people more prone to scams?”

“The findings appear to agree with what experts on scams and the elderly have long noticed, says Doug Shadel, Washington state director for AARP, a national grassroots organization that represents older Americans.

He said scam artists have admitted in interviews that their main ploy is to get their intended victim "under the ether," or in a heightened emotional state that puts them off kilter.

"They're bypassing that same part of the brain - the frontal cortex, the part that makes you doubt things - and bringing you to the present moment where you're going to make a rash decision," said Shadel.

"It's something that we in the practitioner world have suspected for years. But getting concrete science behind it is really important," added Shadel, a former fraud investigator.



In fact, the findings may help older people avoid such scams.

Taylor's own father was the retired school counselor who got scammed by the two young men, who were homeless and missing teeth. "He thought they were nice young men and he was making loans," Taylor said. And Taylor's aunt was the victim of telephone marketers who convinced her to purchase fake gems.

Given older people's weakness when it comes to judging whether a person is trustworthy, Taylor advises to reduce the temptation.

"You want to get people to shut it off before they ever have the conversation: to hang up without talking, to throw the mail solicitation away, to not go to the free lunch seminar," she said.

AARP recommends that people never decide to buy something while listening to a sales pitch or reading a mail solicitation.

"Always give yourself at least 24 hours so that you have time to engage your rational mind," Shadel said.”
Read the full article and credits here:

 http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/12/03/brain-changes-may-make-older-people-more-prone-to-scams/
 

Enter…Zillion Dollar Thinking:


 
The key question to this dilemma is “what will you use to help you make an informed decision over that 24 hour period?”

As with many sales techniques and attempts, sales approaches often rely on emotions and various degrees of pressure…often neglecting the fundamental requirements of due diligence and suitability.

Point is, when your intuitive facilities begin to wane, you may well need rely more on an objective model of decision making.

In our book (Zillion Dollar Thinking which I heavily recommend that you own in this emerging environment), the simple framework has four progressive steps.
 

Step One:Discovery and Identification of the Problem
 Step Two:Your Commitment and Their Commitment
 Step Three:The Best Solution for the Identified Problem
 Step Four:The Actions needed to complete the Decision

Simple, objective, tangible, repeatable, demonstrating, understandable…applies to little or big decisions…you get the picture.

To summarize, if for any reason your emotional and intuitive instincts are not as sharp or reliable as before, please consider a model (as above). If not this one, there will be a zillion others from a web search.

Going forward, there is really no substitute for objectivity.
As always…you decide.