Here’s a funny story. A couple days ago a friend of mine who is a financial advisor got the axe from one of her newer clients. Her client told her she was “too young to give advice”. I imagine it wasn’t funny for her at all, she just lost a job prospect, but I found the excuse too ridiculous not to get a laugh out of it.

Seriously, it hurts as a service professional when people start to measure your ability based on your age and not on your abilities or work experience in the field. Many modern advisors and service professionals these days start young, around the early twenties. Ten years later, they’re in their early thirties, and they’ve been in the industry for a decade. But even so some people still find advisors in their early thirties too young to be giving advice. This is exactly what happened with my friend.

But if you think about it, they have their valid arguments. Who wants to receive business advice from a 25-year-old? If you were 32 and in need of financial assistance, would feel comfortable taking guidance from someone a year older, or a year younger, than you?

This is the dilemma of young age and being a service professional.

There are a number of ways you could take to avoid this scenario. First, you could get older, but we all know that happens on its own accord. Second, you could hire a stylist to dress you into a more mature, professional-looking individual-that works, too

But what I really want to emphasize regarding this topic is this: as a service professional, you must make it a point to blow away your client with your brilliance within the first five minutes of meeting him or her.

Give yourself only that much time-five minutes-to impress your client. Cut the small talk about the weather and high oil prices. Introduce yourself, shake hands, and then follow up quickly by saying something that would prove useful to the client right away-if possible, something he hasn’t heard from any of the other advisors he had met up to that point. I doubt he’d have the time to nitpick your age if you show him immediately why he should consider himself lucky to have you on his side.

Five minutes might seem like cutting it too high, but if you give yourself more than that it’s easy to lose track of your objective with endless small talk and harmless conversation. Next thing you know your prospect is curious why he’s talking about professional advice with someone younger than him.

The trick is to impress immediately from the very first introduction, the initial handshake. Don’t give him time to think about whether you’re younger or older than him by how many years, but show him you can deliver unlike every other senior advisor he’s met before, that in the world of service professionals age is just a number, and it is not an indication of your skills.

Prove to your client it’s possible to be young and be competent at the same time.

Author Bio: Calgary Internet Marketing is a great resource of up-to-date online marketing strategies and techniques for service professionals and small business owners in the Calgary area. Feel free to visit the website at Calgary Internet Marketing for more info on consultation services. Or you can simply visit the website simply for more related articles on online marketing.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: service professional, age dilemma