15 CCRC Move-Ins in One Month?!!?

15 CCRC Move-Ins in One Month?!!?

CCRC Team SalesThen 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

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/