Reducing Gen Z’s cognitive load is the secret to easier sales.
Hi y’all,
Gen Z clients aren’t being difficult when they show up with AI-generated mood boards and a million specific questions. They’re just anxious.
This generation has grown up completely inundated with information. Their brains are going in a million different directions all the time, and your job isn’t to fight that — it’s to channel their focus.
Gen Z knows what they want. That bride who walked into the venue with an AI image of floating florals? She wasn’t being unrealistic — she was showing you exactly what she wanted, even if physics hadn’t caught up yet.
Here’s what’s going on behind the scenes: They want to see your portfolio before they call you. They want to know what’s happening on your sales call before they book it. They’re not picking up the phone to “ask a dumb question” because they’ve already done their homework.
My hot take? Gen Z presenting this way will make your job easier, not harder. Clients who know what they want are infinitely easier to work with than those who have no idea what they want.
Instead of getting defensive, try this: “Thank you so much for doing this research. It’s going to help us shape the direction we want to go.”
But this goes a step further (and here’s where I see so many event pros dropping the ball). These clients need to know exactly what comes next in your process. Not just the next step, but what to expect from that step. Because if you don’t tell them what to focus on, their anxiety will kick into overdrive and backfire.
Best case for them: the first person they meet with on your team is the same person who executes their event day with them. But if that’s not possible, prove you have a solid handoff process in place. Send them a video of both people on a call together. Show them you’re not going to make them repeat themselves. That’s something we’re trying to introduce more into our sales process at Goodshuffle.
The companies that figure out how to work with their Gen Z clients — and reduce their clients’ cognitive load in the process — are going to absolutely crush it. The rest are going to keep complaining about how their clients are know-it-alls.
Your move: What’s one thing you can do this week to make your process more transparent?
See you next Monday,
Mallory Mullen
Goodshuffle
