The 5½ Senior Living Sales Metrics to Master

Sales people are like Olympic athletes – they train, practice, and are coached to perform at high levels. And like athletes, their performance is measured. Just think about a sprinter that trains to run the 100-meter dash, only they never paid any attention to their time. They have no way of knowing if they are improving, or if they are in the running to compete against other sprinters. That would be silly, wouldn’t it? The same is true for sales professionals – it would be silly to not measure sales performance. We call measuring performance metrics.

In senior living sales, there are 5 metrics every sales professional needs to know and measure regularly. We’ve also thrown in an extra half metric for good measure!

Metric #1: Overall Lead-to-Connect Ratio

Of all your new leads, how many have you contacted?

A connection happens when a) you pick up the phone, b) the prospect answers, and c) you have an initial conversation – a connection. Keeping track of call outs and connections is easy. If your CRM doesn’t track this for you, a low-tech way of tracking it is keeping a sticky note by the phone. Make a checkmark every time the phone is picked up. If the call is answered, circle the checkmark.

Metric #2: Prospect-to-Tour Ratio

Of all your new prospects – meaning new leads you’ve spoken with – what percentage of those come in for a tour?

Since 70%+ of senior living leads are coming from the Internet, the challenge of first connecting with a new lead is greater than ever before. We need to connect with a lead first, do discovery and then schedule a tour or home visit. Strong discovery and emotional connection at this stage will increase the conversion to tour ratio.

Metric #3: Tour-to-Sale Ratio

A.K.A. Tour-to-Deposit. Of tours held, in any given time, what percentage close to the sale?

A sale is simply collecting the check, taking a deposit. If your Tour-to-Sale ratio is 10%, the question to ask is, what decision did the other 90% make? Did they choose another community? Did they choose to stay in their home? How can you build more value with your prospects to increase this ratio? Knowing this conversion helps determine how many tours are needed to get to the number of sales needed.

Metric #4: Deposit-to-Move-In Ratio

Of all your deposits, what percentage move in?

Why is this metric important? There are reasons within our control and beyond our control why a prospect who made a deposit doesn’t move in. The reasons beyond our control are death and acuity higher than your community can provide care for. The reasons over and above that – the ones within our control – are the ones that may be an issue that warrants a closer look by sales management.

 

Metric #5: Outreach Appointment-to-Professional Referral Received Ratio

Of all your professional outreach appointments held, what percentage resulted in a referral received?

Simply put, it’s the number of referrals received from a professional in a given time period compared to the number of outreach appointments completed. For example, a Sales Director completes 20 face-to-face outreach appointments this month, and during this same month the community received 4 professional referrals. The appointment-to-referral ratio is 20%. For every 5 appointments completed, a referral was received. A second example: 10 appointments, 1 referral received. 10 to 1, 10% appointment-to-referral ratio.

We place high importance on this metric because referrals from professionals in your community convert to prospects at a significantly higher rate than referrals from paid referral sources – often 5 times more often.

 

And the ½ Metric: The In-Out Grid

Occupancy growth requires that a community have more move-ins than move-outs over a time frame like a month, quarter, or year. We call it netting up when there are more move-ins than move-outs, and netting down when opposite. There’s an easy way for sales professionals to keep track of their move-ins and move-outs to arrive at their net occupancy change: the In-Out Grid. It looks like this:

Move-Ins Move-Outs
1/5 Henry 1/1 Johnson
1/10 Smith 1/22 Rivers
1/14 Jones
1/31 James
Total Ins: 4 Total Outs: 2

In this example, in January there were four move-ins and 2 move-outs. The result of the 4 ins and 2 outs is net of +2, or they netted up 2.

Measuring sales performance with metrics and paying close attention to them on a regular basis is vital to knowing where the weaknesses and gaps are in your systems and processes. By keeping on top of a handful of key metrics like the ones above, it makes the task of improving sales skills much easier for the sales professional and managers.

Need a best-in-class sales playbook for your senior living company’s sales department? Grow Your Occupancy is here to help! Book your free 30-minute consultation to find out how!

Senior Living Regional Directors – An Underappreciated Resource

The Regional Director of Sales and Marketing is a role that is pivotal to a senior living operator’s success; they can make a tremendous impact on occupancy levels, the health of the community sales teams, and most importantly the revenue of the company. But the challenges senior living Regional Directors of Sales and Marketing face today in leading the sales teams in senior living communities to occupancy growth are many:

  • Competition among senior living communities is fierce, not only in the choice of physical community, but also in lifestyle, amenities, and monthly rates.
  • Families are taking longer to make a decision. Greater access to information online is lengthening the decision-making process.
  • Sales teams require more support, better support, expert guidance, and accountability to achieve the desired results.
  • Sales team turnover remains high for a variety of reasons both internal and external.
  • The characteristics of our customers’ personas are ever evolving, requiring constant tweaking of sales and marketing strategies.
  • The digital marketing landscape seems to change before our eyes. New tools, technologies, ways of communicating, and social media platforms come and go on a regular basis.

Despite these challenges, the fundamentals of relationship-based selling have stayed the same. Fact: sales systems and processes work. Even the most naturally gifted salesperson will produce more when using a system. But success with a sales system requires mastery, and mastery requires practice. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it is required to master senior living selling skills.

The Regional Director of Sales and Marketing supports it all. It is a challenging job; one that often goes undervalued and underappreciated by leadership above and sales teams below. A regional director wears many hats and carries a heavy load. The highest expectations are at the regional level, and the responsibilities are many and the pressure is high. Yet, there is often a lack of specific expectation, training, and guidance. All too often, they lack the structural foundations – such as a playbook, training, expectations, coaching, and ongoing support – necessary for success. This causes stress, which leads to burnout and turnover, which in turn stops the forward momentum of sales success.


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The biggest gap in supporting this pivotal position is caused by a lack of tools, training, and guidance. We ask the regional directors to manage multiple communities, hold others accountable, identify problems, and create solutions. We require success yet fail to provide a roadmap to achieving it.

The lack of established regional director fundamental training may be because the job is so multi-faceted. Many corporate sales executives do not know where to start. Many do not have a roadmap. Often, a highly successful community sales director is elevated into a regional manager role, a role in which they lack the needed experience and skills in planning, training, mentoring, and accountability.

Three ways to support and strengthen your regional director sales team:

  • Provide a playbook. Also known as a sales manual, this is a written guide to your company’s sales policies, procedures, measurables, and exercises.
  • Set and support expectations. Outline your company’s specific expectations for sales success and provide your regional directors with the tools to support and achieve the expectations.
  • Provide leadership coaching. Being an effective leader is not an innate talent, it’s a skill that needs to be developed, practiced, and refined. Provide your regional directors with a leadership coach who understands both sales and leading others to success.

Despite the many challenges faced by senior living providers today, sales management is one area where investing in the people can have a measurable impact. Giving your Regional Directors of Sales and Marketing the tools and support they need to be successful pays off in a healthy sales team, occupancy growth, and increased revenue.

Ready to find out how Grow Your Occupancy can help you? Book your complimentary 30-minute strategy session here.