![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/
![Is Your Senior Living Team – Only Going for the Easy Sale?]()
by Diane Masson | Oct 21, 2012
Every senior living sales person loves the easy sale. A senior walks into your community, his or her home has just sold quickly and now they HAVE TO MOVE in the next 30 days. Or a family member’s parent is in the hospital and the doctor has stated they can’t return to their home, the senior must move to assisted living now. Will these easy sales fill your retirement community? No!!
The words patience, dedication and persistence come to mind – to reach out to the reluctant customers who can fill your senior living community. When someone comes in to tour your community, first impressions are everything. The sales person needs to take the time and compassion to find out what prompted their visit and show how their senior living community can be the answer.
When a senior or family member says they are “Not Ready Yet,” don’t blow them off! It simply means they don’t have enough information to make a decision yet and they need to come back and see you again. The prospect is scared! It is a big decision to move out of a home they have lived in for 30 to 50 years. Most seniors don’t make the decision to move in a one or two hour meeting with a senior living sales person. Give them the compassion and care they so desperately need… Call them the next day and find a reason for them to visit again – maybe it’s a lunch, an exciting event or showing them one more apartment. Turn their reluctance into excitement.
If they don’t answer, keep calling. Senior living sales people are not making enough calls on average, it’s easier to go talk to a resident than hear rejections, no’s and hang ups on the phone. Call two days in row…make the 2nd message on their recorder different from the first and then say, “Please give me a call back or I will try you back.” If I were listening to my voicemail, I would think – “Oh, I better give them a call or they will keep calling.”
Then when they call you back, invite them to visit your senior living community again and the chance of selling them on a 2nd or 3rd tour are even higher! At Continuing Care Retirement Communities in California, it is taking 5 or 6 visits to turn a reluctant customer into a sale… How many visits on average are your prospects making to your retirement community, before they decide to move in? It would be fantastic to hear averages from all over the country…
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/
