by Diane Masson | Jun 14, 2015
UN-ENGAGED EMPLOYEES HAVE CRACKS THAT NEED REPAIR!
Is there a crack in your armor? Are you living on empty and have nothing left to give your family or job? Maybe you are a full-or part-time caregiver for an aging parent or a senior with dementia? Perhaps you are in a senior living sales slump?
You can’t help anyone else or be productive at work unless you take care of yourself first. Look for joy in the moments. You may be going through a dire time. Maybe your parent or one of your senior patients is dying. Perhaps your daughter or son has some kind of health or school trauma. Possibly you just learned that someone scheduled to move into your retirement community has changed his or her mind. It may have been the one you needed to hit your sales goal this month. Sigh…they are going to stay home and wait for a crisis. You start asking why over and over.
Don’t become jaded and harden yourself with a giant wall to protect your emotions. It’s mentally checking out and called un-engagement. Your family, senior prospective residents and coworkers can feel your wall.
If you work in senior living sales, we can’t help every senior. Only the ones who choose to plan ahead. Do you feel overwhelmed with what’s happening in your personal life? Is your lack of sales getting you down? Well it’s time to go find your rainbow. Are you wondering how to get started? Feed your mind with positive thoughts. Schedule time to heal yourself!
10 Recharging Tips:
- Go to a live concert, stand in your shower or drive down the road singing at the top of your lungs.
- Sit by the ocean and wiggle your toes in the sand.
- Fly down the road with the wind in your face on a bike or motorcycle.
- Hold a baby or play with small children.
- Take a Saturday to read a book.
- Hang out with your friends.
- Spend time in nature – amongst the trees, watching the river go by or gazing at a lake.
- Soak in a bubble bath surrounded by candles.
- Go to a sports game in person. Cheer on your favorite team.
- Build a fire and make s’mores!
Recharge today, so you can change your world one senior or family member at a time.
Let your family and job see your heart when you speak. They will be moved and feel your sincerity. Seniors can tell if you want what’s best for them. Suddenly seniors who were “not ready yet” become ready to move into your retirement community. Conviction in your voice can move a mountain.
Shake off the negative. Don’t focus on the junk. I created a spiritual foundation of faith that can sustain me when I have a tough day. You can too. We all have moments of weakness. Believe in your ability to change a senior’s or family member’s life today.
In every encounter with family or at work, we either give life or drain it.
Do you give life to those around you at work and at home? Are you so worn out from working that you have nothing left to give your family? It’s your choice to be a giver or taker to those around you. Have you taken time to recharge yourself recently?
Exciting news! Diane’s CCRC teams are breaking records and hitting aggressive occupancy goals this quarter. They all participate in a weekly book review led by Diane. The book review helps the teams stay on track, improve sales skills and build team camaraderie. They just completed learning the 12 keys in Senior Housing Marketing: How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full for senior living professionals. It was written by Diane Twohy Masson.
Credit to Gallop: Only 30.5% of employees are engaged at work.
Everyone of us knows at least one senior that needs to move now. Here is a resource to help you or them make an informed decision. Diane Twohy Masson’s new guide book for seniors, “Your Senior Housing Options,” is available on Amazon.com with a 5-star rating. It reveals a proactive approach to navigating the complex maze of senior housing options. It will help you understand the costs and consequences of planning ahead or waiting too long. Learn firsthand tips from someone who is currently advocating for two aging parents.
Among the thousands of seniors she and her teams have assisted in finding the right senior living community, the most difficult case has been helping her own parent. Masson spent two years exploring senior housing options with her mother before finding the ideal Continuing Care Retirement Community for her. After eight years in this independent living setting, she helped her mother transition into an assisted living community. Seven years later, even as a senior housing expert, Masson struggled with the decision to move her mother into a skilled nursing community.
More related articles by Diane can be found at Tips2Seniors.com or like Tips 2 Seniors on Facebook.
by Diane Masson | Jan 4, 2015
Are you ready for a high-occupancy New Year? Did you hit your sales and occupancy goals for 2014? Congratulations, if you did. If you did not, draw a line in the sand and start over for 2015.
Here are five goal-setting tips for you and your senior living sales team:
- Have a goal meeting with yourself and then with your boss.
- What is the budgeted occupancy?
- Do you have enough walk-in traffic and leads in your database to generate the sales you need?
- Should you create some events to bring in new faces?
- Are you proud of the first impressions of your senior living community?
- What is your competition doing? Have a plan to differentiate yourself from them. Remember, no negative…
- Determine your “A,” “B,” and “C” players (the definition of “A,” “B,” and “C” players is HERE) and what each of their sales goals will be.
- Meet individually with each of your sales people. “A” players will automatically believe they can hit the 2015 goal. “B” players will believe after you individually coach and believe in him or her. “C” players will usually whine or complain about the goals. (Your coaching may turn them around or you may need to let them go if they don’t want to WORK to hit the goals.)
- Have a kick off meeting for the New Year or a marketing retreat. Acknowledge ALL good and great sales performance from 2014. Your “A” people will love the recognition. “B” people will be proud of their accomplishments. Everyone will thrive in this format and feel supported in achieving their personal and team sales goals for 2015.
- Implement a weekly and monthly tracking system to determine if your team members are on track or need additional coaching support.
Good luck and have a great 2015!
Photo credit: www.stylipics.com
Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available at Amazon.com with a 5-star rating. The book is required reading at George Mason University as a part of its marketing curriculum. Within this book, the author developed a sales & marketing method with 12 keys to help senior living providers increase their occupancy. Masson developed this expertise as a marketing consultant, sought-after blogger for senior housing and a regional marketing director of continuing care retirement communities in several markets. She has also been a corporate director of sales and a mystery shopper for independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled care nursing communities in multiple states. Currently, Masson is setting move-in records as the regional marketing director of two debt-free Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Southern California – Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. Interestingly, this career started when she was looking for a place for her own mom and helped her loved one transition through three levels of care.
© Marketing 2 Seniors| Diane Twohy Masson 2014 All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog post may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials. You may share this website and or it’s content by any of the following means: 1. Using any of the share icons at the bottom of each page. 2. Providing a back-link or the URL of the content you wish to disseminate. 3. You may quote extracts from the website with attribution to Diane Masson CASP and link https://www.marketing2seniors.net For any other mode of sharing, please contact the author Diane Masson.
by Diane Masson | Sep 15, 2013
Every organization approaches goals a little differently. Some senior living communities set sales and occupancy goals that are never achieved. Each month and year the occupancy dips a little lower with constant resident attrition. How do you get ahead of the curve?
Well, someone needs to create a sales and marketing strategic plan for your individual independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing care or Continuing Care Retirement Community. The plan needs to be implemented and every sales person and operational team member needs to be on board. The focus should be on the simultaneous goals of serving the existing residents and increasing the occupancy with new move-ins.
There are twelve keys that I have developed to increase the occupancy of all types of senior housing. Some keys can be implemented immediately for quick results and other keys are a process that can take some time to develop and execute. The bottom line is these twelve keys work and it is my joy to reach 100% occupancy. Here are the keys in a nutshell; the details are contained in my book called Senior Housing Marketing – How To Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full:
Key 1 – Attitude toward Occupancy – Turn Your Change into Dollars
- Occupancy-driven Marketing Reports that will Wow Your CFO
Key 2 – Quit Blabbing! Control the Flow of Information
- Tip: Five Steps to Controlling the Flow of Information
- Decreasing Apartment Availability
- Create Urgency for the Wait List
Key 3 – Dare to Differentiate Yourself from Your Competition
- Keep the Waiting List FULL through Branding
Key 4 – Do You Have Proactive or Reactive Marketing?
- Effective Follow-Up Inquiry Goals
- The Typical Behavior of the Average Prospective Resident
- Follow Up – When and How Much?
Key 5 – Building Value for Your Community – Giving a Wow Experience!
- “How much does an apartment cost?”
- Let them push up the price point
Key 6 – Great Events can fill Your Building
- What is the timing of an effective program?
- Step-By-Step Event Planner Guidelines
Key 7 – Never Say to the Customer…
- Use health services words that add value and differentiate you from the competition!
Key 8 – Selling to Personalities
- Are you selling to their personality type—or yours?
Key 9 – Hard or Soft Closing?
- Hot Buttons
- Objections
- Recognizing Buying Questions
- Types of Closes
- Make Urgency!
Key 10 – Internal Customers – no need to worry about them, right? Wrong!
Key 11 – Join the Twenty-first Century with your Website, E-mail Blasts, and Social Media
- How can you save money building a website?
- “I just don’t have time to be responsible for social media…”
Key 12 – Media Buying, Public Relations, and Community Relations with a Skinny Piggy Bank
- Keeping the costs affordable in the marketing plan
- The magic three to build attendance at an event
Please share your success, failures or comment below 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 at Amazon.com with a 5-star rating. The book is required reading at George Mason University as a part of its marketing curriculum. Within this book, the author developed a sales & marketing method with 12 keys to help senior living providers increase their occupancy. Masson developed this expertise as a marketing consultant, sought-after blogger for senior housing and a regional marketing director of continuing care retirement communities in several markets. She has also been a corporate director of sales and a mystery shopper for independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled care nursing communities in multiple states. Most recently Masson was recruited to consult for two debt-free Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Southern California – Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. Interestingly, this career started when she was looking for a place for her own mom and helped her loved one transition through three levels of care.
© Marketing 2 Seniors| Diane Twohy Masson 2013 All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog post may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials. You may share this website and or it’s content by any of the following means: 1. Using any of the share icons at the bottom of each page. 2. Providing a back-link or the URL of the content you wish to disseminate. 3. You may quote extracts from the website with attribution to Diane Masson CASP and link https://www.marketing2seniors.net For any other mode of sharing, please contact the author Diane Masson.
