by Diane Masson | Jan 27, 2013
Momentum in Senior Living
Are you losing senior residents faster than gaining new ones at your retirement community? Welcome to 2013, where older and frailer new residents don’t spend much time at your senior living community before moving onto a higher level of care or meeting their maker…
If you have more move-outs than move-ins year after year, your occupancy has slowly dropped. It’s time to get the big “MO” back – that’s right momentum!
Are your owners only looking at the bottom line and demanding for the occupancy numbers to increase? Or, are your owners willing to strategize with sales and marketing to look outside the sales box and figure out how to make the building more attractive to younger seniors? The later is the key…it can be a one-year process of improvements and upgrades. (Hint: Younger seniors live at your retirement community longer!)
The results can be phenomenal! A community I work with in Southern California just had 7 CCRC entrance fee sales in 8 days! Yes, some younger residents, including couples are moving in too. The CCRC community looks fantastic now after extensive renovations! The sale team is excited and all the scheduled move-ins generate urgency for other prospective residents to move-in now, because the apartment home inventory is dwindling.
What are you doing to attract younger seniors and build momentum for occupancy?
Please comment to join the conversation and interact with other senior living professionals on what is currently being effective to increase occupancy on a nationwide basis.
Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available for sale at Amazon.com. Masson’s book will be required reading at George Mason University in the Fall as part of the marketing curriculum. She is currently consulting with Seniors For Living and two debt-free Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Southern California – Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. Connection and partnership opportunities: Email: diane@marketing2seniors.net
![Marketing a Twenty-Year-Old Senior Living Property?]()
by Diane Masson | Nov 26, 2012
Is this you? Then you are in one of two situations – either your owners have renovated in the last 5 or 10 years or everything in your senior living property is original…
1) A Renovated Twenty-Year-Old Senior Living Community?
If your retirement community owners have renovated – thank your lucky stars! It is awesome to be able to tell prospective seniors that a great sign of a quality organization is how well the building is kept up. Tout the age of your building and make it a plus for future senior residents.
Yes, you may have limited community space or smaller apartments than your newer senior living competition, but competition could have insurmountable debt from financing in the last 5 years. I am finding that older communities have more flexible payment plans for seniors who are considering an entrance fee for a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC).
2) Original Furnishings and Tired Looking Senior Living Community?
Do you need to avoid the PUMPKIN carpet that has multiple stains in the dining room? Are the couches covered with throws, because of the discoloration? Is the carpet threadbare in spots? This is a sales person nightmare. What can you do?
Well, there are many in our industry who face this daunting sales task everyday!
You have two hopes in my opinion. First, let’s hope that your quality of care is amazing and secondly that the operations team has done everything in their power to have a clean, fresh smelling building. The best defense is often a strong offense. You can say, “You can go down the street to live in a newer building, but no one can come close to us on the quality of our care. So you have a choice. You need to decide if the cosmetic appearance of a community is most important to you or if it is more vital to you in how your loved one will be treated and cared for in the coming months and years.” Wow! This is a powerful statement to make!
What would you pick if you were comparing two assisted living communities? Remember to think like the customer! Boomers want their parents to live in a nice community. Surface people will only consider appearances. Educate the boomer children to determine that care is most important and they will look past the frayed furniture.
If your retirement community has lousy care and looks old, just quit… or there has to be some redeeming quality that you can highlight. Become a senior living expert in your area, know your competition and accentuate your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.
Please share your marketing success or struggle story, if your retirement community is twenty years or older…
Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available for sale at Amazon.com. If your curiosity is piqued to inquire on Diane’s availability to speak at a senior housing conference (CCRC, independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care) – please call: 206-853-6655 or email diane@marketing2seniors.net. Diane is currently consulting in Southern California for Freedom Management Company, the proud debt-free owners of Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. For more information: Twitter: @market2seniors Web: www.marketing2seniors.net Blog: http://marketing2seniors.net/blog/
![Does Your Senior Living Sales Team Need Sales Training?]()
by Diane Masson | Oct 15, 2012
My new senior living sales teams went from selling need driven independent living rentals (which is a piece of cake) to successfully selling CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community) entrance fees. The organization completely transformed. Do you want this for your team or do you just want to improve occupancy? Start investing into some type of training through a sales training or book review. Watch your team grow and start getting excited about selling again…this is a fun and rewarding business…
Do you have an experienced sales team at your retirement community and the sales are just not happening like they used to? Or do you have some brand new team players that need to learn everything?
Is It Time for Sales Training? Hopefully you have someone in your organization that can take a half-day or a whole day to build some team camaraderie and put the sales team back on track.
Here are 5 reasons to invest in Sales Training as soon as possible:
- Your team(s) may just be burnt out or could be in a rut…
- What if there are 10 basic things to warm up a customer and they are just leaving one out? A refresher course on the basics could help…
- How to steer the customer through the sales process…
- Are they focused on listening to the customer or have they progressed to just giving a tour and being an order taker?
- Do the sales people realize that if the prospective resident gives the same objection at the end of every tour, adding some key stories into the presentation can cure it?
What if your budget can’t afford sales training and no one in the organization has the know-how or the experience to be the trainer? Start a book review…one chapter a week. Pick the right book, there are so many to choose from. My teams just completed an entire book called Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full. (This is a book I wrote to help experienced and brand new sales and marketing people improve quickly.)
CCRC entrance fee sales are on the upswing now…the economy is improving… Is it time to kick-start your senior living sales team?
Please share your stories of success, so we can all benefit!
Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available for sale at Amazon.com. If your curiosity is piqued to inquire on Diane’s availability to speak at a senior housing conference (CCRC, independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care) – please call: 206-853-6655 or email diane@marketing2seniors.net. Diane is currently consulting in Southern California for Freedom Management Company, the proud debt-free owners of Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. For more information: Twitter: @market2seniors Web: www.marketing2seniors.net Blog: http://marketing2seniors.net/blog/
![Choosing Rental Versus Entrance Fees in Senior Housing]()
by Diane Masson | Aug 19, 2012
Many seniors or adult boomer children looking for housing struggle to understand the difference between selecting a month-to-month rental choice vs. selecting an entrance fee at a Continuing Care Retirement Community. I have seen people create excel spreadsheets in order to understand what may have better financial implications in the long run for their family member.
A couple of key question to ask yourself in your search for senior housing are:
- How long do you plan to live? (I know it’s a tough question, but are you living a healthy lifestyle now? The age of parents at death can be a small factor, but how you treat your body with exercise and eating healthy is considered a key to aging well now.)
- Do you have long-term care insurance? (Having it can be considered an asset, but it comes with an expensive monthly fee and some policies have limits of two or three years of maximum care in a skilled nursing center. Older policies do not include in-home care or assisted living, so check your policy.)
- Can your savings and assets survive, if you and/or your spouse needed assisted living or skilled nursing care for 5 or more years?
The average cost of Skilled Nursing Care on a national basis runs between $6,500 and month and $9,500 a month according to a national Metlife survey. Why is this cost important? Because this is a cost that can quickly wipe out your savings account.
Month-to-month retirement community rentals offer no protection for the future…what if you live there for eleven years and run out of assets? If you can’t make your monthly fee – you would be asked to leave period. There is no long-term contract with you. We have all read articles in the newspaper talking about someone spending $300,000 plus at a rental community over the years and then being turned away because they ran out of assets. You might be asking yourself – could this really happen to someone?
Well, my own mother ran out of her resources after living in a Continuing Care Retirement Community for eleven years. She had not anticipated living in a higher level of care for three plus years. It was horrible when her annuity and assets shrank and she was unable to pay the full monthly payment at her Assisted Living. The great news is that she was not asked to leave. Her Continuing Care Retirement Community in Seattle had never asked anyone to leave because of financial reasons. What a relief for my mom and my family…
Many Continuing Care Retirement Communities offer a guarantee of care for the rest of your life, if you outlive your resources. What incredible peace of mind this provides for residents and their family members. Yes, this guarantee comes with the price of an entrance fee and those vary nationally. I represent a Continuing Care Retirement community in California, whose entrance fees start at $55,000. What a reasonable price, it’s less than the cost of one year of Skilled Nursing Care… Plus, when a resident pays an entrance fee, the monthly fees at Continuing Care Retirement Communities tend to be much lower than month-to-month rentals.
What are your thoughts on rentals versus entrance fees?
Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available for sale at Amazon.com. If your curiosity is piqued to inquire on Diane’s availability to speak at a senior housing conference (CCRC, independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care) – please call: 206-853-6655 or email diane@marketing2seniors.net. Diane is currently consulting in Southern California for Freedom Management Company, the proud debt-free owners of Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. For more information: Twitter: @market2seniors Web: www.marketing2seniors.net Blog: http://marketing2seniors.net/blog/
