Can anyone help me position the importance of text messaging and medianet to older customers? Like age 40+.?

Question

I work for AT&T and I'm a sales consultant. I basically sell the wireless products like pc cards and cell phones along with the features like: text messaging, media net, etc. i get paid major commission on features especially unlimited text, but the problem is that most of my customers which are older people reject the notion of even selling them on text messages or internet on cell phones. I can easily get younger people 18-35 to get those features, but the older customers are much more of a challenge and our market has alot of them compared to younger ones.

Answer 1

A good way to go about this would to put a focus an emphasis on the available applications with such services more than just the service itself.

With the Internet they are able to get map directions when lost, find a good restaurant in the area when on the go, emergency news updates posted to their phones of their general interest including stocks, etc.

Texting in my experience has been a great way to communicate when in bad reception areas, so that could be a selling point.

Basically focus on the needs of that particular demographic then dissect the Internet/texting services to find parts that satisfy the need. It is obvious they are wanting their phone for utility, so integrate the utilities those services provide. Hope I didn't go into too many circles with that.

This is a prime example of how marketing, sales, and product development need to closely integrate and communicate.