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 | Mar 24, 2013
When a brand new sales person starts, what is most important to teach first? My definition of “green” is that they have never worked in senior housing before. “Part-green” means they have some background in senior housing like working in the homecare industry. I love coaching “green” and “part-green” senior living sales people.
So what do you teach a “green” sales person in the first couple of weeks?
Is it shadowing an existing sales person? You may or may not be lucky enough to have a quality person they can shadow. It can be very helpful, but it can also get a little boring for the trainee. If this is your whole training program, then you are missing the boat of opportunity.
Do you just throw them in to sink or swim immediately? This might not be the brightest idea. They don’t understand the business and what you offer yet. Leads are money, so are you willing to just blow off some potentially hot leads, because a “green” person does not know how they should be managed properly? Some smaller retirement communities have no choice, because they only have one marketer.
Or do you send them out to study the competition? This can be very important in the first couple weeks of training and allows them to compare senior housing communities like the prospects would. They can start to articulate the strengths and weaknesses of their own community versus the retirement community down the street.
How about a dedicated all day training? You could spend a whole day with an interactive program that explains how the prospect really thinks, what to do when the prospect arrives at your community, how to ask discovery questions without interrogating someone, the steps on giving a “wow” tour, helping the prospect connect that your community is the answer to their problem and how to complete the interaction at the end — with determining the next step(s). This is how I started a “green” person two weeks ago.
What has worked and not worked for you – training “green” sales people? Next week I will share what techniques I use training “green” sales people and why…
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
![Sales Meeting TIPS to Increase the Occupancy in 2013!]()
by Diane Masson | Jan 6, 2013
It’s time to grow your senior living occupancy in 2013! Let’s motivate the sales team on how to achieve your senior housing community’s goal. I assume you already have a budget of how many projected move-ins are required and the projected amount of move outs for your retirement community (The number of move outs seem to get higher every year – doesn’t it?)?
For those of you in smaller communities you may be having a sales meeting with yourself or one other person. The rest of you probably have a team of 2 to 4 sales people to motivate. Some sales people get very overwhelmed with the yearly goal. When they hear that 50 CCRC entrance fee move-ins or 120 assisted living move-ins are budgeted, you can look for the squirming in the seat and eye rolling. This means they don’t believe.
Well, it’s your job to believe the occupancy goal and encourage your people to believe.
Here are some tips to turn them into believers. Break down the yearly occupancy goal into monthly goals.
- How many sales are needed per month?
- What is each person’s monthly sales goal?
For a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) with three sales people and a goal of 50 move-ins – that’s 4 sales a month and about 1.3 sales per person per month. Calculate how many tours are needed per person and how many calls on average will draw in the tours per month.
For the same CCRC example it ends up being:
- 60 tours a month and 1,200 team phone calls per month or
- 20 tours and 300 calls per month for each sales person or
- 5 tours a week and 75 calls in a week for each team player
How easy is it for one person to do 1 tour and 15 calls in a day? This is how the 50 move-in yearly goal breaks down. It’s very easy to hit the yearly goal with a great team, a good organization, planned advertising to draw in new faces, excellent quality of programming, superb food and a first-class reputation of caring for the residents. It can be so simple to hit the goal for 2013. Just break it down for your team, BELIEVE and then your team will BELIEVE too!
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/
![Top 12 Traits Needed to Fill a Senior Living Community?]()
by Diane Masson | Dec 3, 2012
What 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/
![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/
