By Steve Moran

Each of your prospects is facing an epic battle and you are the one person, the one organization that can help them win that battle.

Setting the Stage

As people age they either decline in capability or die. And neither seem that appealing . . . at least to me. If they go from high capabilities to death . . . think massive heart attack or stroke . . . you have nothing to offer them, no one does.

It is, in a sense, the ideal way or idealized way to die, for most people. A kind of Moses thing. He lived to age 120, then hiked to the top of a mountain, and God turned the life switch off. As the story is told, he had the strength and vigor of a young man.

Mostly though, people go through a period of declining capacity, both physically and mentally. When this happens, hard and often emotionally complex decisions have to be made.

Decline is NOT the Enemy

Decline is not the real enemy because it is inevitable. The epic battle is all about how each individual will live their life in decline. First, the right answer is not the same for every individual, but for most the reigning sentiment is to stay home and either manage alone or manage with some form of home care.

Home Alone

The home alone option is the instinctual preference that most people have. It tends to be the least expensive and it maintains the illusion of independence and self-control. This is what my friend Russell Rush, creator of the R3R1 sales methodology (and a Senior Living Foresight partner), calls a prior commitment, meaning it is their lifelong default position. 

What gets missed, here is the very real physical risks and mental health risks. This makes home the enemy that needs to be talked about.

Home with Help

This is the second biggest enemy older people face. The idea that having a few hours a day or week will solve all problems, except it rarely solves the isolation problem and does not address the risks and loneliness of the rest of the time.

Another Layer Deeper

Ultimately, the real enemies are one layer deeper. The first is the risk of something terrible happening when that person is home alone. The biggest is more subtle and that is that isolation and loneliness are killers.

If you are willing to call out these enemies it will make your sales process more successful.