Staffing and sales are worlds apart in business – they couldn’t be any farther apart, right?
If you’re thinking that the pain points you’re feeling when trying to fill positions in your senior living company can’t be solved with sales solutions, we’re here to tell you it’s just not the case!
Pain Points
At first glance, the pain points of filling positions and increasing occupancy might not seem to have much in common, but when you think about it, they’re not that dissimilar:
The Sales Pain Point: Increasing Occupancy
The sales department within your senior living has the heavy burden of driving revenue and NOI, and the way to do that is by increasing occupancy so that it exceeds census losses.
The Staffing Pain Point: Filling Positions
Similarly, your senior living company’s HR department has the heavy burden of filling positions in a highly staff-dependent business. In a care-based business, filling caregiver, operational, hospitality, business, and sales positions is vital to the survival of the business.
The Solution
This is a case of not needing to reinvent the wheel. The solution to applying a tried-and-true sales strategy to your staffing challenges only requires understanding a process that works well in one part of the business, some creativity to tweak it so it works in another, and willingness to do what it takes to make it work. The key components of this solution are: systems & processes, and metrics.
Systems & Processes
Systems and processes serve some very important functions in business: they maintain a high level of organization, consistency, accountability, and production. If you already work in an HR capacity, you almost certainly have systems and processes in place to keep you organized and in compliance when onboarding new staff. But what you most likely lack is strong systems and processes for attracting and engaging with top talent prior to an offer of employment. Here’s where applying sales systems and processes really shine.
Technology really is your best friend here. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software really revolutionized sales in the 1980s when it began to displace the Rolodex, account card files, and spreadsheets as a way to keep track of the customer relationship. CRMs have evolved since then into a highly effective, intuitive, and automated system for moving sales prospects through a journey we like to call the sales funnel (think of a funnel where lots of sales prospects go in the top, and out of the bottom comes sales). Without going off on a tangent of all the incredible things modern CRMs do (like automatically sending out emails and texts, prompting the sales person with activity to-dos, and so much more), it’s safe to say that using sales technology to manage job applicants is a no-brainer.
Metrics
Metrics are relatively simple data analytics that are very valuable and easy to understand. In the case of senior living sales, a key metric is inquiries-to-tours, which is the percentage of people inquiring about a senior living community who then – as a result of contact with the sales person – come in for a tour. So, if you get 10 inquiries, and 5 come in for a tour, the inquiry-to-tour metric is 50%. In the case of staffing, some valuable metrics to track are:
- Job posting views-to-applications received – How many applications do you receive in relation to the number of views an online job posting received.
- Speed-to-lead – How quickly do you respond to the receipt of an application? This one is so important – we can’t stress it enough that treating applicants like highly sought-after prospective clients makes a big difference in attracting top talent. More about speed-to-lead below.
- Applications received-to-interviews offered – How many interviews did you offer compared to the total applications received?
- Interviews offered-to-interviews conducted – How many applicants actually followed through on your interview offer?
- Interviews-to-job offers – How many job offers did you extend compared to interviews conducted?
- Offers-to-acceptance – How many offers of employment were accepted?
- Acceptance-to-hires – How many accepted offers of employment were actually hired?
The Whys of Metrics
Why track metrics for staffing in the same way we do for sales? Because it’s really challenging to know where the weaknesses and gaps are in your systems and processes. Without data, you’re just making educated guesses and basing often costly decisions on them. For example, if your offers-to-acceptance metric is low, you may want to look at the competitiveness of your compensation package. It’s worth noting that metrics and benchmarking go hand-in-hand. The more you know about your metrics month by month and year by year, the better you can set goals – benchmarks – to enforce accountability of your systems and processes.
Speed-to-Lead
As we stated above, the quicker you can respond to an applicant, the better the impression your company is going to make on them, and the more likely they are going to consider your company as a place they want to work. What does effective speed-to-lead look like?
- Within 10 minutes: An automated response – email, text, or phone call – thanking them for their interest in your company.
- Within 4 hours: A personal call with a short, quick, and meaningful dialogue to learn more about them and let them know you care about them.
Recruiting top talent is often a pain point for senior living providers, but it doesn’t need to be! A systems and procedures approach based on a proven prospect management system like the one your sales department uses might be just what you need to turn around the challenges your HR department faces. Need creative recruiting thinking for your senior living company’s HR department? Grow Your Occupancy is here to help! Book your free 30-minute consultation to find out how!