Senior Living Pricing Techniques Archives - Diane Masson | Author, Speaker, Blogger & Senior Housing Expert

How Many Sales Are Sitting in Your Senior Living Database?

by Diane Masson | Jun 17, 2012

First, you need to have a database! Second, after each inquiry calls in or walks in, the contact information (senior and/or baby boomer adult children) needs to be captured in your database. Most retirement communities have a database of 1,500 to 15,000 names (please note that real leads are somewhere in the department of 3,000 names or less).

I recommend that your leads be sorted into hot, warm and cool. Hot leads will move into the community in the next two months, warm leads will move in about six months and cool leads are beyond a six-month move-in. Hot leads should be touched weekly. Warm leads should be touched bi-monthly depending on their situation. Cool leads should be touched quarterly.

Typically, most senior housing organizations also have a large group of people who are not interested now and just want to be on the mailing list. These need to be organized too! Even when someone says, just put me on the mailing list and don’t call – I still schedule a call once a year with him or her. Some of you may say, “No way – I will go by their wishes to never call!” Well, what the senior is really saying is don’t bug me all the time, but I am interested in staying in touch. NO one has ever been bothered by a yearly call from anyone on my teams!

Almost every lead in your database should be touched on a quarterly basis by telephone and by mail. If the senior living sales person is making a minimum of 15 calls per day, that becomes 75 calls a week or 300 phone calls a month. Three sales people can easily generate 900 calls a month or 2,700 calls on a quarterly basis. Now with this amount of calls, it WILL GENERATE TOURS to your community. Tours can turn into sales and sales will become move-ins.

If your community made all these calls for three months, it should generate 5 – 10 move-ins – just from your database. It really works.

So why aren’t the sales people doing this now? They need to be coached and directed! Maybe the number of calls they are making needs to be added to their job description? They need to be held accountable. It is much easier to shoot the breeze with a resident and not make calls. Calls can equal lots of rejections and no’s.

My book, “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” teaches senior living sales people how to overcome this fear and be persistent. One little trick I share is counting your calls with hash marks on a piece of paper. By the time someone talks to 20 people they should have scheduled 2 tours. It may be the 19^th and 20^th calls – so don’t give up. Good luck and start watching your occupancy increase!

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/

What Type of Price Sheet Do You Use for CCRC and Senior Living Sales? (Part 1)

by Diane Masson | May 28, 2012

Just curious how many CCRC and senior living marketers present a price sheet to the prospective resident (with the price of every single apartment visible) or do you use a price sheet with one-bedrooms starting from… etc.? What have you found to be most effective and why? Plus how many write in the individual prices of each apartment, for the client, as they show them?

1) If you use a price sheet (with the price of every single CCRC or retirement apartment visible) – are all the apartments in a certain style the same price? For example: Are all of your two-bedroom – Dakota Style – the exact same price?

2) If you don’t use an itemized price sheet – are all your CCRC or retirement community apartments individually priced? (Individually priced apartment homes would mean that the entrance fee or price for every single apartment home is different and the actual price is based on size, location in the community and view.)

3) Or are you using a combination approach? The price sheet is in the brochure and you write down the individual price on the floor plan of the apartment as they experience it live. If you use the combination approach are your apartments individually priced?

Stay tuned next week: Diane Twohy Masson will give pricing recommendations and share what pricing techniques the majority of CCRC and senior living sales people use in Part 2.