![A Short Fun Senior Living Sales New Year’s Poem]()
by Diane Masson | Dec 30, 2012
Is it time to grow your retirement community’s census,
Or just entertain the residents and be festive?
It takes sales stamina and focus,
To accept some sales no’s with no fuss.
Give your determination a sense of finality,
To rise above “the get by” mentality.
Keep calling the database,
Don’t pause on the hot lead chase.
Because seniors just need some education,
To deter each and every objection.
Ultimately, your senior living community will win,
Because making a great sales commission is not a sin!
It’s your choice to be a senior housing hero!
Let the competition end up with a big fat zero!
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/
![5 Tips on How to Sell Senior Living During the Holidays]()
by Diane Masson | Dec 21, 2012
- Call your senior living database now to increase occupancy for early 2013! I elaborated on this in my last blog… Why this is the BEST TIME of the Year TO CALL Your Database!
- Suggest for a senior and their family to enjoy lunch at your retirement community! Visiting family and the senior need to eat…why not have it be at your senior living community? As they eat, maybe they can picture themselves living there. Most boomer children will advocate for their senior parent to move into senior housing when they see how nice the quality of their life can be…
- Invite hot and warm prospective residents to join your residents for some live entertainment or when the local school kids come by to sing.
- Offer seniors, who don’t drive, either a ride to your community or go out and do a home visit. This visit could be the tipping point to them moving into your community.
- When someone is visiting at your community, ask for the order. First do the proper warm up, discovery, listen to their needs, learn their hot buttons, build value for your community and figure out how to solve their problem. Then invite them to sit down again. Look them in the eye and say, “I know you love your home of forty years! And you have shared how difficult it is to manage stairs and your concern of falling down them when you do the laundry in the basement – right? After everything you have seen today and the wonderful lunch we enjoyed, do you believe you would have a better quality of life living here at The Village (insert your community name here)? If the answer is yes, just nod and let it digest with them. He who speaks first loses. They usually say, okay let’s do this and then start filling out the paperwork…
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/
![8 Keys to Create Compelling Events that Drive Sales in Senior Living]()
by Diane Masson | Nov 18, 2012
Do you have 50 plus prospective residents at every event? If not, why not? Here are just eight keys to keep in mind when planning great events that can fill your building.
1) Pick a theme that would compel a senior to leave the comfort of their home, spend $4.00 a gallon on gas to drive to your retirement community and want to invite a friend to enjoy the experience with them.
2) Organize your event, so every first impression is excellent. Have someone out front directing parking, greet them at the door with a registration table, train tour guides, your community should be spotless, have an exciting program and maybe most important – present excellent food and beverages for their enjoyment.
3) The goal is fill your building! If you are going to have live entertainment, there must still be a 10 to 15 minute program with a resident testimonial. Or maybe you are going to have a Power Point of your benefits and what differentiates you from other senior living communities? Don’t be boring…
4) You only have the senior’s attention for about 1½ hours maximum, so if you spend the time feeding and entertaining them, they will be too tired to tour your community. Strategize out every minute they are going to be in the building.
5) Invite them to come back and spend more time, so they can get a better feel of your retirement community. It’s hard for people to decide in 1½ hours where they are going to spend the next chapter of their life.
6) There should be at least 1/3 new faces at your event.
7) Some senior living communities draw new prospective seniors best by advertising with direct mail, others with newspaper and still others work best with a combo.
8) After spending all the time, money and staff resources on a great event, don’t forget to call them the next day. Invite them back…
I had two events this week for Continuing Care Retirement Communities; one drew 85 seniors to RSVP in a rural area and the other had over 100 seniors RSVP in a metropolitan area. This traffic will help fill the building for the next two months.
Do you want more information on how to put on a great event? Chapter 6 of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” offers a step-by-step approach to successful events and many ideas for compelling themes. Good luck and please share your success…
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/
![Does Your Senior Living Sales Team Need Sales Training?]()
by Diane Masson | Oct 15, 2012
My new senior living sales teams went from selling need driven independent living rentals (which is a piece of cake) to successfully selling CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community) entrance fees. The organization completely transformed. Do you want this for your team or do you just want to improve occupancy? Start investing into some type of training through a sales training or book review. Watch your team grow and start getting excited about selling again…this is a fun and rewarding business…
Do you have an experienced sales team at your retirement community and the sales are just not happening like they used to? Or do you have some brand new team players that need to learn everything?
Is It Time for Sales Training? Hopefully you have someone in your organization that can take a half-day or a whole day to build some team camaraderie and put the sales team back on track.
Here are 5 reasons to invest in Sales Training as soon as possible:
- Your team(s) may just be burnt out or could be in a rut…
- What if there are 10 basic things to warm up a customer and they are just leaving one out? A refresher course on the basics could help…
- How to steer the customer through the sales process…
- Are they focused on listening to the customer or have they progressed to just giving a tour and being an order taker?
- Do the sales people realize that if the prospective resident gives the same objection at the end of every tour, adding some key stories into the presentation can cure it?
What if your budget can’t afford sales training and no one in the organization has the know-how or the experience to be the trainer? Start a book review…one chapter a week. Pick the right book, there are so many to choose from. My teams just completed an entire book called Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full. (This is a book I wrote to help experienced and brand new sales and marketing people improve quickly.)
CCRC entrance fee sales are on the upswing now…the economy is improving… Is it time to kick-start your senior living sales team?
Please share your stories of success, so we can all benefit!
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 Can Make Your Senior Living Community Extraordinary?]()
by Diane Masson | Oct 7, 2012
Every senior living community struggles to differentiate themselves from their competitors. How can you do it? When a customer walks in the door – how can they feel an immediate difference with your community? Let’s take a moment to compare restaurants – which can be so alike too…
My husband and I decided to treat our selves to Sunday brunch at Laguna Beach. We didn’t want to go to the expensive tourist choice on the bluff. Hmm, where to go? We picked a place that looked good, but was not on the ocean side of the street. The wait for a table outside (it was 80 degrees) was 2 hours. We decided to eat inside and we had a small view of the ocean.
Five extraordinary experiences happened at this restaurant that blew us away. Our waiter was wonderfully attentive, the overall service was outstanding and the food was incredible – none of these made it extraordinary. Here are the five things that did:
- The waiter welcomed us the moment we sat down, asked if we had been there before (we said no) and then he assured us that we were going to have the most incredible brunch (Wow!).
- When my husband asked where the restroom was (after he tried to find it himself) a server did not just point in the right direction, they actually escorted him (Wow!).
- Then my husband returned to the table, a staff member anticipated his arrival, picked up his napkin and as he sat, put it on his lap (Wow!).
- The plates were removed within 20 seconds of each of us finishing our food (Wow!).
- Now listen to this one, they quietly wiped the water up that had sweated from the ice water glasses, so our table was perfectly clean again (Wow!).
In my opinion, this dining experience, at the Sapphire in Laguna Beach, was comparable to the finest service that I have ever received at Canlis – the most famous and expensive restaurant in Seattle, Washington that serves Presidents and Kings (I was lucky enough to go once on a “big” birthday.)
If your retirement community, assisted living or Continuing Care Retirement Community only did #1 – with every guest – what would happen to your occupancy? I am a big advocate of speaking positive into existence! Do you actually tell people when they arrive at your community that they will be in for a treat and that you are excited to show them around and introduce them to some staff and residents?
I would love for you to share something you or your staff does to make your senior living community extraordinary for people visiting your campus for the very first time? Who’s first?
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/
![Burnt Pizza Can Be Like Senior Housing – Does this describe your Community?]()
by Diane Masson | Sep 17, 2012
At the Seattle airport, Wolfgang Puck had some beautiful pizzas in the display window. I ordered one and mine was well done – almost burnt. Should I have taken it back? I ate it. It was good enough…then when I walked by the display window again…I had to look…the display had a burnt pizza. Why would anyone showcase burnt anything? If you make pizzas, how hard is it to make them perfect (I was in the pizza business for 3 years early in my career)?
How are you showcasing your retirement community? How is your phone being answered? Is it answered within one or two rings? When guests arrive at your community how are they greeted? Does the receptionist stand to greet them? Are guests offered water on hot days and coffee on cold days?
Are first impressions a priority for your organization? Or is everything good enough? Is your 85% to 90% occupancy good enough? What would it take to go to 95% or 100%? How are you differentiating yourself from your competitors? Is everyone in the neighborhood, just getting by and just good enough? Why not stand out from the senior housing pack and go above and beyond? How about exceeding expectations? What about giving a WOW experience?
What does it take to give a WOW experience? Sometimes it is only a 5% to 10% difference, but it takes a team approach! Some communities are making changes and watching the occupancy grow! What is making the difference?
1) Pull in the driveway of your community with the eyes of a customer on a regular basis.
2) Have someone mystery shop your community to find out how guests are greeted by telephone and in person.
3) Offer refreshments to guests.
4) Find out what the prospect’s needs are and why they came today.
5) Listen!!
6) Ask open ended questions to discovery their needs, wants and desires.
7) Listen!!
8) Invite them on a tour tailored to their needs.
9) Every staff they encounter needs to be smiling and welcoming to them.
10) Introduce prospective residents to key staff.
11) Check in with them to see if what you are showing them addresses their needs and if they can picture themselves or their family member living at your senior living community.
12) Ask for the deposit and determine next steps…don’t be pushy…it is in their best interest to have a plan for his or her future, so the children will not have to put them some place in a crisis situation.
Your senior living community has a choice to be the best you can be with first impressions or just be good enough – an almost burnt pizza…
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/
