Cam Marston
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Cam Marston is the leading expert on the impact of generational characteristics and differences on the workplace and the marketplace.As an author, columnist, blogger, and lecturer, he imparts a clear understanding of how generational demographics are changing the landscape of business. Marston and his firm, Generational Insights, have provided research and consultation on generational issues to hundreds of companies and professional groups, ranging from small businesses to multinational corporations, as well as major professional associations, for over 20 years.
Marston’s books, articles, columns, and blog describe and analyze the major generations of our time: Matures (born before 1946), Baby Boomers, (born 1946-64), Generation X (born 1965-79), Millennials (born 1980-2000), and iGen (born 2000+). He explains how their generational workplace and marketplace preferences affect every aspect of business, including recruiting and retention, management and motivation, and sales and marketing.
His first book, Motivating The “What’s In It For Me?” Workforce (2005), explores the characteristics and motivations that each generation brings to the workforce and suggests management tactics applicable to any business setting. His next book, Generational Insights (2010) is a guide to the best practices in managing generational issues. Generational Selling Tactics That Work (2011) is the first book-length study of generational approaches to sales and marketing. His short book The Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor (updated in 2017) is a must-read in the financial services industry.
Marston’s half-day training program, “Leading Multi-Generational Teams,” features the Gen-Flex® process which teaches leaders how to be flexible in their generational workplace preferences to get the best performance out of their teams. His short, online micro-videos for sales, recruiting, and management are designed to help managers and leaders understand the reason such generational disparities exist and how to overcome them through specific sales and workforce tactics.
In 2018 Marston launched a regional radio show (also available as a podcast) called What’s Working with Cam Marstonwith expert guests offering insights and opinions on the trends that are shaping today’s workplace and workforce.
Marston’s expertise has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Chicago Tribune, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Money, FastCompany, and Forbes, as well as on Good Morning America, CNN International, and the BBC. He writes a column for Investment Advisor, and has been a featured columnist in many trade journals. His blog at GenerationalInsights.com tracks the latest changes and developments in generational issues and demographics.
As a consultant, Marston has provided insight and advice to leadership at the nation’s most prominent corporations as well as multinational corporations including American Express, Fidelity, BASF, Nestle, Schlumberger, Merrill Lynch, Coca-Cola, Macy’s, Warner Brothers, ESPN, Qualcomm, RE/MAX and Eli Lilly. He has also offered presentations and consultations for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Army, as well as for major professional associations such as the American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the Million Dollar Roundtable.
Marston’s presentations are informative, engaging, and humorous. He offers concrete demographic research that is tailored to his audience and he enlivens the data with anecdotes, tales from the real business world, attention-grabbing visuals, and quips that make the message memorable. Marston’s clients consistently report that his research makes his programs relevant and his presentation style makes them interesting and fun.
Marston’s insights and expertise are the products of over 20 years of research and consultation across a wide range of industries as well as his own early-career background in corporate sales and research. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Tulane University and is a native and resident of Mobile, Alabama.
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The Re-Architecting of Business: Spotlight on Financial Services
The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the job category of Financial Managers will have significant growth between today and 2026. At the same time, predictions for that job suggest that much of the job’s daily tedium will be given over to machine intelligence, big data, robotics and natural language processing. This begs the questions: What will the financial services professionals of the future do? What will their days look like? How will they serve clients?
To further complicate matters, how will customer demands change in the future? Will they want more or less of their financial services professional’s time? Will they expect financial management to be automated? If so, what services will they expect from their financial professional? What will clients be willing to pay for?
Learn where Cam’s research and findings indicate that it’s all leading and how you can prepare so that you’ll be ahead of the changes and ready for your customer of the future.
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Leadership in a Distracted World
Our world today is loud, cluttered, and busy. There are countless attempts made each day to get our attention and distract us from our goals. What must leaders do to gain the attention and respect of those around us? What must leaders do to maintain their own focus and their team’s focus. Learn how our society has formed generations whose communication styles and priorities vary greatly and how leaders must work differently with each group to keep them focused on their goals. -
The Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor
For decades, financial services professionals have focused on demographic groups that are now moving into and past retirement. The Matures (born 1945 and prior) and the Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1964) are the generations that the financial services industry grew up with and their client relationships were defined by traditional business models. Now, new generations who have different economic and cultural experiences are moving into age ranges that make them prime markets for investments, retirement planning, insurance, and other financial products.
Cam Marston understands the attitudes and expectations of the upcoming generations and what they expect from financial services providers. He knows how they buy, how they value different types of information, what their definition of “expert” is, how they apply it to financial professionals and what they want financial professionals to teach them. He understands their preferred methods of communications, which sales tools to use and how to use them
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Recruiting and Retention
We hear it all the time: “Our people are our greatest asset.” But finding good talent is hard to find and even harder to keep. How do you build your people assets? What do today’s employees want? In today’s multigenerational workforce, Millennials want meaning and freedom, Generation X wants openness and flexibility, Boomers want recognition and authority. Matures like rules and respect. What about the iGen, the generation following the Millennials? Much remains unknown but early indications suggest they want even more freedom and lots of attention. Each generation has something to offer so every business needs to offer something to each generation.
Retaining employees is far more cost-effective than recruiting and training new ones. This presentation profiles each generation of employee – what will get them on the clock and what will keep them ticking. Cam Marston will help you adapt your recruiting and retention program to suit the ambitions and goals of each generation, choose from the best that each has to offer and realize the full return on investment in your workforce.
Recruiting, training, experience, and institutional memory make your employees your most valuable assets. Effective multi-generational hiring and retention efforts will help ensure that those assets keep working for you and not for someone else.
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Five Generations In The Workplace
For the first time in history, five distinct generations — Matures, Boomers, Xers, Millennials and iGen— are employed side by side in the workplace. With differing values and seemingly incompatible views on leadership, these generations have stirred up unprecedented conflict in the business world. Effective management of this generational divide is vital to longevity and success. In fact, it is the most important demand your company can make of its leaders.
In this engaging presentation, Cam Marston teaches how each generation developed its core values, how that manifests in the workplace today, and why they can all not only operate alongside each other, but do so with extraordinary success. This program provides the generational insight, concrete examples and specific approaches to help frustrated managers build the individual connections needed to boost employee performance and retention.
As you will learn, the only common ground is the intensity with which each generation holds fast to its value systems. Understanding and respecting those generational biases are critical to bringing out the best in every employee.
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Selling Across the Generations
The first rule of selling remains steadfast: Know your customer. With five distinct generations playing active roles in the buying decisions of companies worldwide, that tenet is increasingly difficult to fulfill. It is no longer enough to be personable and knowledgeable about your product. Changing dynamics require changing strategies. To succeed in today’s business climate, you need to approach each buyer with an informed generational perspective — recognizing the underlying biases, values and expectations that pave the way to “Yes.”
In this presentation, Cam Marston shows you how to create a fast and genuine connection with new customers, sell to your customer’s expectations, build trust between generations, and avoid communication pitfalls.
Throughout the presentation you will learn how companies are effectively engaging generational marketing techniques to appeal to the unique decision-making traits of each generation and how to develop a solid sales process based on generational biases and business preferences.
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Zoom In / Zoom Out - A Strategic Planning Process for the Near and Long Term
Imagine your profession in ten years:
• What will technology, the client experience, talent demands, and regulation do to the industry in that time?
• What qualities will your organization need to exhibit to be thriving?
• What will people be willing to pay you to do?
• What two or three activities can be undertaken and accomplished in the next six to eight months that will get you incrementally towards this future?
Zoom In / Zoom Out is a strategic planning process created by the tech industry to get people out of their comfort zones by asking them to think what their business / industry / profession will look like in the future. This workshop will challenge participants as they try to forecast a time ten years distant (Zoom Out). And it will then get them to initiate immediate, manageable changes that matter (Zoom In) and that will move them in the direction of their predicted future. Discussion points include client trends, technological advances, new services to offer, what current services should be eliminated, types of staff to hire, and markets to explore. Cam provides research, data, and “thought starter” ideas to get minds racing and then shepherds thoughts into the future.
After more than twenty years presenting and facilitating, Cam Marston is a seasoned professional. His customized preparation for each workshop includes interviewing workplace, association or group leaders to understand current business practices, as well as conducting research into trends shaping the client’s industry. Cam knows how to keep the conversation moving with thought stimulating comments and has proven methods for pulling the implications of shifting marketplace and workplace trends out of workshop participants. His goal is to make participants feel a bit uncomfortable with the vagaries of the future of their business, prompting them to make changes within the next six months or sooner that will put them on a trajectory to be thriving ten years down the road.
