10 Training Tips For Senior Living Sales People in 2013

10 Training Tips For Senior Living Sales People in 2013

How to Increase the Occupancy and Stay Full1)   Identify your sales team’s attitude toward the occupancy goals – do they believe they can hit the occupancy goal? – if not – check out my blog tip from last week – Sales Meeting Tips to Increase the Occupancy in 2013.

2)   Are they differentiating your senior living community from the competitor down the road?  Never say anything bad about the competition, but always highlight your retirement community’s strengths.

3)   Have you set a quota for a certain number of calls per week and is the director of marketing or executive director tracking it?  Sales people just want seniors to come in and put down a deposit.  A lot of sales are made with that quick follow up phone call to invite the senior back again for a 2nd or 3rd look.

4)   A “wow” tour, including painting a picture of the lifestyle, can make the monthly fee look like a bargain…

5)   Do you have exciting events that draw new faces into your community and inspire 2nd and 3rd looks to move forward?

6)   One negative word, like calling your community a facility, can cause a senior to back away from the move.  Who wants to leave their beautiful home and move into a facility?

7)   Have your focused on selling to personalities?  Some analytical drillers want every scrap of paper you have ever published on your community to make a decision and other seniors can walk away from information overload.  Tailor each tour to the personality of each customer…

8)   Focus on each senior’s hot buttons, like not being a burden to their kids…

9)   Are you asking for the deposit – every single time?

10)  Creating urgency to make a decision now is a must – it’s awesome when you have two different seniors considering the same apartment!

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 Twitter: @market2seniors Web: www.marketing2seniors.net Blog: http://marketing2seniors.net/blog/

5 Tips on How to Sell Senior Living During the Holidays

5 Tips on How to Sell Senior Living During the Holidays

  1. Call your senior living database now to increase occupancy for early 2013!   I elaborated on this in my last blog… Why this is the BEST TIME of the Year TO CALL Your Database!
  2. Suggest for a senior and their family to enjoy lunch at your retirement community!  Visiting family and the senior need to eat…why not have it be at your senior living community?  As they eat, maybe they can picture themselves living there.  Most boomer children will advocate for their senior parent to move into senior housing when they see how nice the quality of their life can be…
  3. Invite hot and warm prospective residents to join your residents for some live entertainment or when the local school kids come by to sing.
  4. Offer seniors, who don’t drive, either a ride to your community or go out and do a home visit.  This visit could be the tipping point to them moving into your community.
  5. When someone is visiting at your community, ask for the order.  First do the proper warm up, discovery, listen to their needs, learn their hot buttons, build value for your community and figure out how to solve their problem.   Then invite them to sit down again.  Look them in the eye and say, “I know you love your home of forty years!  And you have shared how difficult it is to manage stairs and your concern of falling down them when you do the laundry in the basement – right?  After everything you have seen today and the wonderful lunch we enjoyed, do you believe you would have a better quality of life living here at The Village (insert your community name here)?  If the answer is yes, just nod and let it digest with them.  He who speaks first loses.  They usually say, okay let’s do this and then start filling out the paperwork…

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/

Top 12 Traits Needed to Fill a Senior Living Community?

Top 12 Traits Needed to Fill a Senior Living Community?

Hiring in Senior LivingWhat is your recipe for hiring a successful senior living sales person at your retirement community?  There are so many qualified candidates, what are your must have personality traits?  When I interview, here are the qualities that I look for in no particular order:

1)   Phone Experience and Voice – The applicant needs a great phone voice to even qualify for a live interview with me!  What is their history of making calls?  Have they made 50 calls in at least one day of their career?  How many calls did they need to make in order to have one live customer?  Phone calling can be one third of the job to fill the building.  It is crucial to have ongoing phone contact with our leads to make cool leads – warm, warm leads – hot and hot leads turning into move-ins.

2)   Real Sales Experience – They need to be able to give examples of how to warm people up, find communality, do discovery and educate the customer on a wonderful service.  I need to be able to visualize them describing our Continuing Care Retirement Community or Assisted Living.  I don’t require a background in senior living sales.

3)   Closing Experience – What is their closing ratio?  How many live customers do they need in order to achieve one sale?  Did they close me?

4)   Listener – If they practice good listening skills with me, then they can do the same for the customer.  This is vital…

5)   Teachable – Are they willing to learn and grow?  Some people want to live in a rut.  I want someone who can morph themselves and strategize the sales presentation and closing techniques based on the current economy.  I want someone who is willing to be a student of this business.

6)   Genuine – Are they believable?  Will the customer embrace their passion?

7)   Sincere love and compassion for seniors – Have they ever cared for a senior or helped find skilled nursing care for a relative or neighbor?  Do they have a history in working with seniors?

8)   Team Player – Is it all about them or do they enjoy and contribute to a team approach?  Operations definitely has a team approach in caring for the residents.  Marketing works best with a team approach as well!  I like to hear examples…

9)   Motivated by helping others improve their lives? – Does this rock their boat or is it all money, money, money?

10)   Education – If they had the dedication to complete their schooling, then they can have the dedication to fill the building.

11)    Professional Appearance – Great smile, well groomed and speaks well – These are all a must!

12)   Computer Literate? – Can they type at a decent speed, navigate through Word and Excel and learn a new database quickly?

Please share your top 12 favorite traits in hiring a senior housing sales person or feel free to add onto mine…

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/

Is Your Senior Living Team – Only Going for the Easy Sale?

Is Your Senior Living Team – Only Going for the Easy Sale?

Phone Calling Brings Sales in Senior LivingEvery senior living sales person loves the easy sale.  A senior walks into your community, his or her home has just sold quickly and now they HAVE TO MOVE in the next 30 days.  Or a family member’s parent is in the hospital and the doctor has stated they can’t return to their home, the senior must move to assisted living now.  Will these easy sales fill your retirement community?  No!!

The words patience, dedication and persistence come to mind – to reach out to the reluctant customers who can fill your senior living community.   When someone comes in to tour your community, first impressions are everything.  The sales person needs to take the time and compassion to find out what prompted their visit and show how their senior living community can be the answer.

When a senior or family member says they are “Not Ready Yet,” don’t blow them off!    It simply means they don’t have enough information to make a decision yet and they need to come back and see you again.  The prospect is scared!  It is a big decision to move out of a home they have lived in for 30 to 50 years.  Most seniors don’t make the decision to move in a one or two hour meeting with a senior living sales person.  Give them the compassion and care they so desperately need… Call them the next day and find a reason for them to visit again – maybe it’s a lunch, an exciting event or showing them one more apartment.  Turn their reluctance into excitement.

If they don’t answer, keep calling.  Senior living sales people are not making enough calls on average, it’s easier to go talk to a resident than hear rejections, no’s and hang ups on the phone.  Call two days in row…make the 2nd message on their recorder different from the first and then say, “Please give me a call back or I will try you back.”  If I were listening to my voicemail, I would think – “Oh, I better give them a call or they will keep calling.”

Then when they call you back, invite them to visit your senior living community again and the chance of selling them on a 2nd or 3rd tour are even higher!  At Continuing Care Retirement Communities in California, it is taking 5 or 6 visits to turn a reluctant customer into a sale…  How many visits on average are your prospects making to your retirement community, before they decide to move in? It would be fantastic to hear averages from all over the country…

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/

Which Internet Lead Referral Company Provides the Most Value?

Which Internet Lead Referral Company Provides the Most Value?

Value for the MoneyWhen all the smoke and thunder blows away, which company can provide me the best quality leads that will increase my occupancy immediately?  Keep reading for the answer.  I was shocked to find out in my research how many Internet leads a senior housing community has to go through in order to get two sales – the answer can be about 100!

This is my third article regarding researching senior housing Internet referral companies.  All the major players do a pretty good job of differentiating themselves from each other.   Some companies seem to do a better job of identifying and targeting qualified leads than others.   Some have great web sites, live care advisors, blogs or have fantastic placement on the Internet.  A majority of the legitimate leads tend to need some help with the activities of daily living.

Pay Per Move In – In talking with a lot of administrators, in a variety of senior housing options, they tend to shy away from paying an entire month of rent for a move-in.  It is a big chunk of change and I have personally experienced several bad outcomes with this choice.  One challenge was when we offered the 2nd month free to get move-ins.  The Internet company received one months rent, we gave the 2nd month away for free and the residents moved out at the end of the 2nd month.  Yes, it cost us money to have these people live at our assisted living community.

I have also had great results with pay-per-move-in in the past, including increasing sales by 10% per month with straight independent living or assisted living rental properties.  The key was working the leads immediately, because the Internet lead company would send the same lead to 5 or more of my competitors.  The retirement community who called the lead first won and he who followed up two or three times also won.

Monthly Subscription – Monthly subscription Internet leads are not as high quality, because no live person filters them.  About the only advantage I can see, is your community will be included in the paid search field at the top or side of a Google search (within that referral source).   This will run you about $150 or more a month for this benefit.

Pay Per Lead – The companies that provide pay-per-lead have a wide variety of outcomes depending on their level of filtering the leads.  You will pay $35 to $50 per lead with results ranging from 2% to 8% turning into move-ins.  This means that every 50 leads your company calls will turn into a sale in the worse case scenario.  The average for one company was about 4% or one sale in every 25 leads.  One company claimed that the best quality sales people could produce one sale out of every 12 leads.  Why the discrepancy?   They said that lead results were better for those sales forces that proactively used quick follow up when the lead was received and then continued with multiple attempts of connecting with the prospective resident.  I have found this to be 100% true with those I coach.

So the bottom line is the better the sales people, the lower the cost per lead.  Internet leads come in, then sales people are supposed to turn them into tours, so they can become sales and finally become a move-in.  What can you do if your sales people don’t manage leads effectively and you need to increase your occupancy now? A couple ideas would be to hire a sales coach or have stricter monitoring and management of metrics to set goals in your sales lead tracking system, both of which would help to increase existing performance on all your leads.

Pay Per Tour – There’s a new model that I’ve recently come across, pay per tour, which seems to address the efficiency and ROI challenges of all the existing models. This model addresses the lead efficiency issue that I’ve seen with some companies managing Internet leads while getting a reasonable effective cost per move-in.

It’s a new program being launched by Seniors for Living and based on their preliminary data they show an average of a move-in for every 4 to 7 tours (depending on the community).

The cost is around $400 per tour, so if my sales people provided great tours, an Internet move-in would only cost me around $2000.  This would save me the hardest and most time-consuming part of the sale process which is following up the lead and qualification to get to the tour.  I have spent 14 years in senior housing and have trained hundreds of sales people on how to turn inquiries on the telephone into great senior living tours so I know what it takes to get to a tour.

This pay per tour sounds like it will be the best approach, particularly for those retirement communities with sales teams already spread thin from their other sales activities. As part of my researching for this blog series and speaking with Seniors for Living I have begun working with them on their advisor training to help them refine their process to generate a better tour and the best overall experience for prospects and communities. Since this is a new approach I’m eager to see how this works with wider use by more senior living communities.

I look forward to hearing your feedback on all these models. What’s your experience?

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/

I’m Not Ready Yet!!!!

I’m Not Ready Yet!!!!

When you hear a senior prospect or family member say these words – what runs through your mind first?  How do you respond?  Do you believe them?  At every encounter with a prospective resident, someone always buys the popcorn – either the sales person or the senior!

Recently, I was going through some retirement community’s databases and lead after lead after lead had a “NRY” as the number one response in the notes.  I had to ask, “What is “NRY”?”  The retirement counselors in unison said, “Not ready yet.”  I thought quietly to myself, “Why the heck would anyone put such a negative assertion in his or her database?”  The next time they look at the lead, they are going to immediately think that it’s a crappy lead.

I believe that every lead is great!  If someone hangs up on me, the prospective resident is just having a bad day.  I have actually called these back again and they have been receptive, come in for a tour and eventually moved in.

When someone says they are not ready yet, do you blow the person off like I see some sales people do?  Are you just looking for a quick sale on a silver platter or a 30-day move-in?  Well then you are missing a ton of sales and this is why the occupancy is down at your retirement community.  Real sales people know that persistence pays off.  I have called people every month for one year and then they turned into a sale!  Those can be the most gratifying sales!

Do you have a Negative Nellie working your precious (expensive) senior housing leads that could be potential move-ins?  Believing Betty understands that each lead could be worth thousands of dollars and calls with enthusiasm and passion.  The customer needs to hear us smiling through the phone and feel our energy and excitement when they arrive in person.  We need to believe in our leads and keep calling them back…

When someone says they are not ready yet, they are one fall or one diagnosis away from suddenly wanting to move immediately.  Don’t schedule the next call for one year away, because it’s not the golden goose quick sale.  Understand the frailty of the senior customer and schedule to call them on a quarterly basis or your competition will get this move-in instead of you!

So when a senior tells me that they are not ready yet…this is great…they are interested for the future. The first thought that runs through my mind is: I need to educate them more about the lifestyle!  The second thought I have is: What did I miss saying?  Did I build enough value for health services?  After I learned about them through discovery, did I tailor the tour to their needs?  I need to fill the retirement community today, one year from now and 5 years from now!  So if someone wants to wait a year or two, no problem… my positive contact with them can speed up their decision.  Then when they suddenly want to move in, whom will they think of first?  Well, the nice lady on the phone who was never pushy and always had their best interests at heart…of course!

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/