by Diane Masson | Jun 23, 2013
Are hot leads attitude or reality? I say attitude! Some senior living sales people expect a prospective resident to walk in and say, “I have my house on the market and I’m ready to move into your retirement community.” How often does this happen? It could happen 20% of the time. This means 80% of the time, a sales person needs to build a relationship, document it in the database and do the dreaded follow up phone calls. Oh yeah, it’s called work. If it was easy selling senior living, retirement counselors would be paid minimum wage.
With proper nurturing, over time, a cool lead can become warm and a warm lead can become hot!
Too many senior living sales people say they don’t have any hot leads. Yet, if you were a little mouse on their shoulder, while they met with a senior…. This is what you might hear the prospective senior resident say, “I’m not ready yet (NRY).”
In sales they say, don’t listen to the first no. Well I say, don’t listen to the first 10 NRY! The senior can still be a hot lead (ready to move in a few months)!
NRY simply translated means I am scared. It’s hard for a senior to give up their home of 30, 40 or 50 years and move. It’s a lot of work. The more time they spend at your retirement community the better. They will fall in love with your residents. Then the senior can decide they will gain more by moving into your retirement community, than what they are giving up.
The mindset of the sales person dictates how many hot leads they have. Believe – truly believe the seniors are ready to move in sooner than what the prospective resident actually says to you. Typically just cut the time frame a senior says in half.
Please share your success, failures or 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
by Diane Masson | Jun 16, 2013
Then add another 17 Continuing Care Retirement Community move-ins scheduled for these two California CCRC’s in the next 3 months…This has been the result of a good work ethic for the previous 3 months.
- 300 calls per month per sales person
- 20 tours per month per sales person
The sales will come when the work ethic is in place – trust me – it works.
Break the monthly goal down to a daily goal of 15 calls and one tour per day. A new senior living sales person can easily do it. A director of marketing with sales responsibilities can do it too.
In order for the two senior living sales teams to have this much success – they need to be backed by amazing operational teams that support marketing 100%:
- First, you need to have enough leads walking in the door and coming to events. Hopefully your corporation supports marketing with an adequate advertising budget.
- Do you enjoy a great reputation of serving excellent food? Our chef is a tremendous support to my teams and makes events and tours memorable.
- How is your health care reputation? Do the local hospitals and doctors recommend your assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care? If they don’t – fix it now!
- Guests need to drive up and see beautiful landscaping, a well cared for building and an ultra clean retirement community. It may be time to remodel if it’s been 10 years or looks tired.
- Friendly residents and smiling staff – these two can make or break sales and my communities have both!
- Can prospective senior residents SEE your residents having fun with an amazing calendar of events including regular live entertainment, exciting outings and themed meals? Seniors won’t move to a boring retirement community.
- Transportation can even increase sales by their willingness to pick up prospective residents and bring them in for a tour or an event.
So set a monthly sales goal for your retirement community and have everyone participate in achieving it. When the sales come, it is not for the glory of marketing, it’s an entire retirement community’s achievement. Everyone wins and the residents love having new vibrant seniors to connect with at dinner and activities.
Please share your success, failures or 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
by Diane Masson | May 19, 2013
Diane and her Mother
Well, it is a complicated process moving a parent from an assisted living to skilled nursing. Add 1000 miles into the equation and prepare for asking a tremendous amount of favors and help with no physical eyes on the situation. This is my story…
My mom has lived in a Continuing Care Retirement Community in Seattle, WA for 15 years. For the past 7 years, she has lived in Assisted Living. Her ailments have progressed to diabetes, severe vascular dementia, incontinence and now all symptoms indicate breast cancer. Short-term memory loss and 90 years of age does not equate to any invasive procedures or surgeries. When I visit her one-day, she has no memory of my visit the next day.
I could not stomach her completely alone (no children in the same state) and moving to the next level of care or a hospice community. So my husband and I decided to quickly move her to Southern, CA, before she could not travel anymore.
All professionals who know my mom and I have been very supportive of this move. Here are some of things that had to be put in place for this transition: Coordinating with the assisted living team where she lives, a nurse consultant to assess her and be our eyes in another state, her doctor, a home healthcare agency to take her to the doctor, the social worker at the HMO, the skilled nursing community that she was moving to, the federal government regarding her medical insurance and a Medicare representative.
The paperwork and logistics included filling out 27 pages of a Medi-Cal application, finding 22 additional documents for Medi-Cal, providing all the information that the new skilled nursing required, buying plane tickets, combining all our plane seats into one row, having someone drive my mom and us to the airport in Seattle and having Freedom Village Skilled Nursing pick us up at the airport when we arrive in California – whew!!!!
My mom does not know that she is going to move, because she cannot mentally process anything beyond 30 seconds in the short term and it would create anxiety for her – not understanding.
I am going to continue sharing my story as this moves takes place over the next few days. Prayers and patience are needed to survive this. I am excited for my mom to be located by our family in California and terrified of travel day. I am her protector and don’t want her to suffer in anyway emotionally or physically. It’s thrilling that my company in California is welcoming my mom with open arms – thank you Freedom Village.
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
by Diane Masson | Feb 9, 2013
It only takes 15 minutes or less per day to engage in social media! Has your retirement community entered the twenty first century with social media yet?
Some of the larger senior housing organizations have wonderful social media programs. Sunrise Senior Living posts great blog content multiple times a week. Emeritus sends out engaging monthly email blasts. Other organizations with a nationwide presence have a staff who are dedicated to social media.
What do you do if you are a stand along retirement community or only have a handful of senior living communities in your portfolio? You can still do social media for 15 minutes a day. Seriously – I am doing it at two Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) in Southern California.
First, you can either set up some social media yourself or have it professionally done for about $1000 per community. I had mine set up professionally. Then I trained one person at each CCRC to add content. At first it took them some time to get into the swing of it, but now they can create three or four posts at time and then schedule one post to be released online at a time – one per day using Hootsuite.
We post – fun stuff the residents are going to do, show pictures of what the residents or employees have done and repost interesting articles that seniors would like. The 15 minutes timeframe per day includes taking pictures of some of the resident activities, a plate of food or searching for a image on line to share. And yes, we have signed photo releases… Post your upcoming marketing events and engage with prospective residents.
You can pay extra money for followers, but we have let it grow organically. Employees, residents and family members are getting engaged and we even do the Fan of the Week on Facebook. Freedom Village and The Village each have Facebook accounts, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest.
As local seniors pick one of our CCRCs, the Boomer children that live out of state can see and connect with their parent’s selection through social media – this has had a positive impact on sales. Our most popular posts are residents and employees pictures that go viral.
How is your social media going and has it created or confirmed any move-ins for you yet?
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
