by Diane Masson | Sep 29, 2013
Every single one of us has had a personal family crisis, health emergency or had a dear friend that it going through a major calamity. Too much drama in our lives can be overwhelming. Then we drive to work at our retirement community and try to leave it all at home…Are you successful? It’s hard….
Some of us have personalities that envision the glass as half full and others see it half empty. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Is your self-talk telling you everything will be all right in the long run or are you only seeing the worst-case scenario? How is this affecting your work?
A senior living sales person can get frazzled with numerous sales, move-ins, calls, scheduled tours and reports the administrator or their boss expects them to do. Suddenly a walk-in tour arrives. Do you share your troubles with the prospective resident or keep them to yourself?
It is always shocking to me when a stressed senior living sales person shares their personal challenges with a prospective resident. What do they hope to accomplish? The senior came into the retirement community to explore their senior housing options. Now, his or her focus is taken off making a move to your retirement community and it lands on the senior living sales person’s troubles.
A senior living sales person can actually sabotage his or her potential sales. This is turn affects occupancy. Is your senior living community’s occupancy down, because of stressed and over-sharing sales people? Have you experienced it? What tips can you share with the rest of us?
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.
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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 | Jun 2, 2013
Are you strategizing out your next move with warm and hot senior housing leads on a daily or weekly basis? A senior living sales person should always take time to reflect after an appointment with a prospective resident. Immediately input notes into your lead database system (like REPS). If you wait until the end of the day or don’t use a database system, this could be negatively affecting your occupancy. Jot down some key situational information:
- Where are they living now? Home value?
- What prompted his or hers visit?
- Is anyone helping them now?
- What is their greatest concern?
- Are they lonely?
- Health issues?
- Pets?
- What is most important to them in a future home?
- Which apartments did you show them and which one did they like best?
- Assets? Monthly income?
- What did they like best about your retirement community?
- Could they see themselves living in your community?
- Timeframe for moving in?
As a senior living sales person reflects on the above situation, a strategy for the next step in the sales process can start to formulate. It is extremely beneficial to run this by a sales collogue, your director of marketing or your executive director. I don’t care how many years that you have worked in this business; two heads can strategize better than one. I discuss hot leads with my teams every week. Team members contribute excellent suggestions to help a warm lead become hot or help turn a hot lead into a move-in.
Strategizing leads can be the spice of life to help increase your occupancy! It works!!!
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 | 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
![How to Help a Struggling Senior Living Sales Person?]()
by Diane Masson | Oct 28, 2012
Occupancy is down, the pressure is up and your retirement counselor or marketing director is not performing like they used to… The economy and the presidential election are just excuses for low occupancy.
The first thing is to check the sales person attitude. Do they smile as they exit their office on the way to meet a walk-in tour? Can you observe their enthusiasm as they show a prospective resident the retirement community? When you walk by their office, can you hear animation and passion in their voice as they explain the community and invite someone to come visit?
If the answer is no to any of the above, I suggest that you actually accompany them on a real tour. Find out exactly what is going on… During the tour be a silent rock and don’t interject at all. Even if you see or hear mistakes, just take notes… If you interrupt, the sales person will lose their flow, become more nervous and you won’t get a true picture of a tour from start to finish. The opening of a conversation is just as important as the close at the completion.
Did they steer the customer toward making a decision? Were they listening more than they talked? Did they find out what prompted the visit to your community? How was the warm up and discovery? Could you say it was conversational? At what point did they ask the prospective resident or family member how they felt about their current situation or being at the community? Ultimately, did the prospect open up?
Was the tour tailored to the customer’s desire or needs? When pricing and costs came up, did they build value for the senior living community first? Did the sales person introduce the guests to department heads, other staff and residents?
At the end, did the sales person steer them into sitting down one more time to answer any remaining questions? Did they solve the customer’s problem? Is your community a better choice than living in his or her own home? The most important question to ask is – what their time frame is for wanting to make a move! If the time frame was less than three months, did they ask for the deposit for that “one of a kind” apartment they really liked? If you are a Continuing Care Retirement Community, did they build urgency for the wait list? Was a plan made for them to come back again to have another meal, bring another family member or attend an event?
After the customer goes home, walk through your observations with the sales person. Remember to share something positive first, then any negatives and always end on a positive note. If it was a great tour, maybe you just don’t have enough walk-ins and leads in your database. If the tour was terrible, maybe you need to let them go. If the tour was mediocre, maybe you want to invest in some sales training or mandate that they start reading a senior living book that can help them improve in all areas of the sales process.
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/
