by Diane Masson | Jul 7, 2013
- Focus on personal and team occupancy goals (visualize success).
- Expect the entire senior living sales team to have a good attitude.
- Treat every initial lead as hot until they cool off.
- Listen to prospective residents and solve their problems.
- Don’t listen when they say, “I am not ready yet.”
- Give a wow tour!
- Introduce prospective residents to multiple residents and staff.
- Always inquire about a senior’s timeline on making a move.
- Ask for the deposit – every time.
- Have fun.
- Represent a beautiful and clean retirement community.
- Call potential senior residents or their boomer children the next day after the tour.
- The sales team needs to believe and treat every walk-in or Internet lead as though they are ready to move in now!
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 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 | Apr 7, 2013
When you initially sit down with a senior prospective resident – what is their first impression of you? Are you like a detective on TV, asking care needs – one after another? Or are you the compassionate sales person who cares and wants to help the senior solve their problem?
When I do mystery shopping, I find that 80% of senior living sales people are interrogators. This is an extremely high statistic; this means that only 20% of sales people come across as kind and compassionate.
How can you know if you are an interrogator and don’t mean to be one?
1) Don’t get to the nitty gritty details too fast…
2) Do offer a beverage – especially when it’s hot outside– I have been touring on 90-degree days and was not offered a beverage – this really happens…
3) Invite guests to sit down – don’t tell them to sit here or just point to a chair…
4) Don’t shut a prospective resident in your office – this happened to me 80% of the time and causes people to keep their wall up and not relax with you.
5) Don’t sit across a desk from someone, give up your control and meet around a round table, in the lobby on comfy chairs or in the model apartment.
6) Find out about what is most important to the senior or the adult children…why did they come to your retirement community today?
7) Do ask how they are doing (what they are feeling) and take the time to listen!
Do you want to increase sales, move-ins and up the occupancy? Then stop interrogating people…it is a horrible experience for the senior and their family members!
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 10, 2013
Role Playing Can Improve Sales Performance
Some senior living sales people know it all! Do you have one of these? Others are like sponges and thrive learning a new technique or improving their sales performance.
Role-playing as a team can help standardize sales techniques. This could happen at a weekly sales meeting, but I think a retreat format can be more effective. It’s hard for a senior living sales person to switch off working and jump into role-playing. It’s better to set the stage in a comfortable atmosphere. Last week we talked about the importance of a sales and marketing retreat to rejuvenate and inspire the team.
Here are some great topics to role-play:
- The opening greeting and questions for a walk-in prospective resident
- Discovery questions – make sure seniors don’t feel interrogated
- Giving a “wow” tour
- How to prevent objections
- A variety of closes
- Asking for the deposit – multiple times
In a team environment, there are always stronger sales performers. Have them role-play first. It makes them feel valued and other sales people can learn from them. If no one on the team knows how to do the role-playing topic correctly or it’s a new technique, always teach by example first.
Everyone hates role-playing, but boy does it work. Watch the sales increase and your occupancy go up, up and up.
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 | Feb 24, 2013
What Is The Best Incentive You Have Ever Given In Senior Living?
Discounting can be the owner’s operational nightmare and the sales persons best friend. Incentives cost the company money and affect the bottom line. Just giving away one month of rent can cost $2000 – $6000 depending on the retirement community. Yet, empty apartments are losing revenue month-after-month. Should you or should you not use incentives?
I believe that incentives can permanently ruin some sales people. Some sales people can ONLY sell apartments with incentives. When the gravy train stops they don’t know how to just simply sell an apartment at regular price to a senior. Seriously?!? In my opinion, this is right up there with someone who is simply an order taker in senior living.
The benefit of incentives is bumping up the occupancy to get ahead of the move outs in a very short period of time. Every senior living community has to look at their financials and determine what is best for them. If you have more two-bedrooms than one-bedrooms, an incentive on two-bedrooms can create balance again in your inventory. It is a funny thing in our industry – how every five years the surplus of a certain size apartment switches. Right now everyone seems to want a one bedroom…
Here are some common assisted living and independent living incentives:
- One free month
- The fourth month free
- No move in fee or a discount on the community fee
- A free TV
- A moving or downsizing allowance
Continuing Care Retirement Communities can use the same or different incentives:
- 90 – 100% Returnable entrance fees
- A percentage off future healthcare
- Paying for the move completely
- Discounting apartments that are the farthest walk from the dining room
- A discount off the entrance fee if a prospect commits to moving in within a short period of time
Do you use incentives? Which ones? Which incentive in your career resulted in the biggest flurry of sales for your retirement community? My favorite incentive of all time was a 100% returnable entrance fee at a new community that I opened. It worked like a charm! Within months, 70% of the building was spoken for, so we could start construction.
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/
![Calling it – “The steak is the shoulder of a cow” – In Senior Living?]()
by Diane Masson | Nov 11, 2012
The first impressions of the dining experience at your senior living community can affect occupancy…or someone coming back…
Is your community twenty years old and does it look it? Can you add fresh flowers on each dining table to spruce it up? Are linen tablecloths and napkins a standard? Or have you cut these items from your operations budget? You may have a great chef, the best service and a beautiful dining room, but the wrong words can also leave a bad impression…
On a recent trip to Seattle, my family decided to go to McCormick and Schmicks – a nice dining restaurant on the water. The waiter greeted us and shared his steak and lobster special of the day. Hmm, I thought – that sounds good. We asked what type of steak it was. Then he said, “The steak is the shoulder of a cow.” He walked away from us, so we could contemplate the menu and we immediately started saying – what??? Why would someone talk about the steak as the shoulder of cow, which is not very appetizing? My sister-in-law said, I envision a cow with a hacked off shoulder.” We all started getting grossed out and laughing. When the waiter came back, we teased him and told him that the shoulder of a cow did not sound good. He apologized and said he forgot the proper term to say which was “Terrace Major.” We all agreed that was not appetizing either.
What descriptor words are on your retirement community’s menu? Is the dining staff trained to sell the food? We’ve all been to fine dining restaurants where they describe the desert in a magnificent way or they bring a tray to show the yummy deserts – then it is really hard to say no. Many senior living communities that I have visited – say, “Would you like desert?” That’s it!?!! They should say we have 10 deserts for you to select from, can I share the choices with you? (Most retirement communities have many ice creams to choose from, a sugar free desert, a baked desert, fresh fruit and canned fruit.)
Let’s make our residents feel special every day of the week! Dining should be a stimulating experience for them! What does your senior living community do to make the residents feel like they are experiencing fine dining?
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/
