Craving for experience, failing eyesight and cynicism bar the way. The baby-boom generation has been a dominant force in the marketplace since it emerged from infancy in the early 1950s. Now its leading edge is heading into retirement, with the rest set to follow them there through the next two decades or so. For wealth advisors, that could mean a fat influx of investable money as affluent boomers roll over benefit plans, rake in inheritances and sell their businesses. But the key to capturing those assets, say industry insiders, is figuring out how to communicate effectively with the “me generation.”

At the American Bankers Association (ABA) annual Wealth Management and Trust conference in Orlando, Fla., last month, SEI Investments’ CEO Al West told delegates they’d have to utterly re-tool their businesses if they hope to make real headway with boomers.

“Wealthy boomers have a different view than previous generations,” West said in the conference’s keynote speech. “They see their wealth as the means to an end, rather than the end itself.”

Variously delineated to include people born between 1945 and 1963 or 1965, boomers have been re-shaping the culture for decades. Marcia Selz of the Los Angeles-based communications consultancy Marketing Matrix International, notes that the baby boom led to an “explosion” of elementary-school construction in the 1950s, followed, 15 to 20 years later, by an “explosion” of colleges and universities. So it stands to reason that we’re on the cusp now of an “explosion of wealth management,” as well-to-do boomers seek help in getting their financial houses in order.

Though boomers’ effect on markets is usually credited to their numbers – they make up about a third of the U.S. population – SEI’s West sees them having an influence on the wealth management industry that exceeds even their headcount.

For one thing, baby boomers are richer than their predecessors. The Boston-based Financial Research Corporation estimates that boomer-fueled rollovers from benefit plans will more than double from 2002’s $188 billion a year to $400 billion a year by 2010. Boomers are also in line to pocket the biggest ever intergenerational wealth transfer, one that could reach $5 trillion by 2017, according to the Center for Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College.

“If you’re really serious about providing a completely new, life-oriented client experience to wealthy boomers, you will have to break out of the mold of traditional industry thinking,” West said at the ABA conference. “The change has to be ingrained in your culture.”

SEI is trying to practice what it preaches. Oaks, Pa.-based investment service outsourcer service provider markets a boomer-centric “Wealth Network.” It’s geared, says the company, to take the advisor-client relationship beyond the usual wealth-management checklist of financial, tax and estate planning to include help managing a client’s “life events.” SEI sees those as turning points, some peculiar to boomers, such as retirements that transition into new careers or the need to care for invalid parents. In turn that calls for customized performance reporting that goes beyond traditional benchmarking to “report against the client’s goals,” says Jack May, head of SEI’s advisor solution unit.

SEI’s Wealth Network is backed by an advisor desktop application, a best-of-breed investment platform, an in-house strategy team with access to outside experts, and an admitted fondness for the writings of Jim Gilmore and Joseph Pine, principals of Strategic Horizons, a business consultancy based in Aurora, Ohio.

Gilmore’s and Pine’s book The Experience Economy argues that the value of services have been debased by commoditization. In place of look-alike services, today’s sector leaders succeed by enlivening their offerings with consumer-oriented experiences. “Businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant,” write Gilmore and Pine. “To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience.”

SEI’s May likes the example of Starbucks as business with appeal to boomers. “It’s an experience in a cup of coffee,” he says. The dashboard flower-vase in the newish-look Volkswagen Beetle belongs in the same category, he adds.

SEI puts the experience part of its approach to wealth management up front. Most prospecting events for high-net-worth clients are PowerPoint presentations held in hotel event rooms, says May. When SEI hosts an event, it’s likely to be in a theater. “We write a play, hire professional actors, rent out a playhouse, print playbills and put on a show for advisors and clients,” he says. “We believe that an effective relationship with the client begins in the discovery phase.” And a “discovery phase” delivered in the guise of entertainment, May and his colleagues figure, is compelling to baby boomers.

By that token, the Institute for Private Investors (IPI), a New York-based education and networking resource for ultra wealthy families, may be on to something. Its Investor Education Collaborative gives advisors a choice of case studies to run through with client families. The goal is to use role-playing to help clients gain new insights into their basic attitudes about investing as well as a firmer understanding of the investing principals at work in their own portfolios. The Metropolitan Group, a Cresskill, N.J.-based consultancy for wealthy families, is another proponent of he case-study approach to educating high-net-worth families. And, in a closer analogy to SEI’s approach, Shaking the Tree, a New York- and Chicago-based theater company, puts on plays that examine how families succeed – or not – in managing their shared wealth.

Dick Ross of Chicago-area consultancy 50-Plus Communications says these players have adopted a sound approach to communicating with older clients. Like it or not, that’s a category boomers are falling into in rapidly increasing numbers. “As you age, you become more right-brained – less orderly in your thinking perhaps, which can make it harder to digest complex information, but you’re better able to discern patterns and appreciate subtleties,” he says. “That makes analogy especially powerful as a communication tool.”

But Selz of Marketing Matrix wonders if the kind of customization implied by that can be delivered down market from the ultra rich families that make up the IPI’s membership and the Metropolitan Group’s client roster. Mass affluent baby boomers are “better educated and more demanding” than their predecessors, says Selz, but their numbers mean that the level of service they enjoy – technology notwithstanding – isn’t likely to improve all that much. “Fee-based advisors are going to have to continue to differentiate the service they offer because they need to concentrate on the 20% of their clients who deliver 80% of their revenue.”

Even where it doesn’t make economic sense to invite clients or prospects to interactive education sessions, however, advisors can improve communications by speaking plainly, says Ross. “The more careful you are about how you explain things, the better response you get,” he says. “It’s the same in the medical community. It’s been shown that doctors who take more time to explain diagnoses and treatments meet with much greater compliance from their patients.”

Ross also thinks that a lot of the marketing material that advisors hand out is off the mark for an aging client base. Content aside, it’s infrequently made for eyes that rely on bifocal lenses. “A lot of this stuff is designed by 25 year olds for 25 year olds,” he says. These designers might make handsome brochures, but the color, size and weight of the typefaces they use aren’t right for older eyes. “That means some advisors are giving their clients what is essentially just a load of gibberish.”

Selz agrees. “How [advisors] communicate with older clients, verbally and in their support material, has to be clear and straightforward,” she says. But in her view that’s not simply because boomers are getting old; she sees clarity and, where possible, brevity in communication as a antidote to mistrust. “Maybe because of the Vietnam War, Watergate and other things, baby boomers are far more skeptical than the previous generation,” she says. “Just because you say something is true doesn’t mean they’re going to believe you.” –FWR