Tag: sales management

2022 is behind us, whew!

For many of us in senior living sales, 2022 marked a symbolic turning of a corner away from the pandemic upheaval of previous years. Our community doors opened again to prospective residents, masks were mostly put away, staff returned to the workplace, and the fears that senior living communities were a hotbed of infection were put to rest.

The start of 2023 is an opportunity to take a closer look at all we in senior living sales have been through since the quarantines first went into effect, and consider the lessons we’ve learned. It’s also an opportunity to improve our systems and processes and reinvigorate ourselves and our teams.

Takeaway #1: Consistency is key.

One of the go-to phrases we hear a lot when results are under benchmark is:

“The definition of insanity if doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

– Albert Einstein

(It’s just one of “13 Inspiring Einstein Quotes Never Actually Said by Einstein”, by the way.) It’s a valid concept, but when it’s used as the justification for making changes to sales systems, people, and processes we need to be careful. Why? Because of the temptation of solving the problem too soon, or before we know the primary cause.

To improve sales outcomes, consistency is key. Without consistency, it is impossible to accurately measure your current systems and processes, analyze the data, and devise ways to solve the shortcomings. Before taking a “let’s throw new ideas against the wall and see what sticks” approach to solving a problem, look to see if your sales systems and processes are being followed consistently.  In other words, WHAT is being done, how often and how well (or not.)  Doing the same thing over and over makes sense, IF the WHAT is defined and understood.

Takeaway #2: Sales continues to be a neglected silo.

We see this over and over: the sales department in senior living companies continues to be an under supported and underappreciated silo pushed to the fringes of the corporate structure. It seems like sales doesn’t get the respect it deserves because it is often misunderstood. Expectations don’t align with training, support, budget, compensation. As a result, when margins get tight and budgets are cut, sales suffers more than other departments.

Even though the sales department is the primary revenue source for senior living operators, its budget is among the first to get slashed. When sales departments are forced to cut back, they do away with training, support, and technology. Don’t squeeze out sales! Your NOI will thank you for it.

Takeaway #3: Selling senior living takes grit.

Success in senior living sales takes grit. The job requires a resilient mindset to survive. It’s a long game; the conventional wisdom that it takes 6-8 touches to make a sale is way off the mark in senior living. It’s more like 22-28 touches over 3 months to a year or more, depending on the level of care.

There is a lot of rejection. In sales there are more losses than wins. You’ve got to make dozens of call attempts to connect with the prospects in your database. Then they ghost you or tell you – after months of connecting with them – that they’re no longer interested, or they’re moving to a competitor.

Sales leaders: don’t forget grit. As you’re working with your sales teams, remember that it takes grit to succeed, so recognize it and acknowledge it when you see it. When you’re looking to hire new salespeople, look for grit as a key trait for success. Grit is going to yield results in senior living sales more often than just about anything else.

What are your takeaways from 2022 that you’re going to apply to 2023? Want to share how you’re planning to reinvigorate sales in your senior living company in 2023? We’d love to hear from you!

Ready to take your senior living sales success to a new level by elevating your sales leaders? Grow Your Occupancy provides the sales coaching, accountability coaching, and sales-skill coaching essential to fill that important role. Learn more about Grow Your Occupancy’s sales coaching and training here. Or book your free 30-minute consultation today.

Depending on who you ask, the U.S. is either heading into a recession or is already in one. According to a recent poll in The Wall Street Journal, economists think there is a 63% chance of a recession in 2023.

If a recession in 2023 really does pan out, what might that mean for senior living operators? You can bet we’ll see higher expenses in the form of increased costs of everything from financing to labor to food to supplies. As expenses increase, NOI is squeezed; when NOI takes a hit, budgets get tightened.

When budgets go under the microscope to reduce expenses, it’s tempting to cut sales and marketing. It’s often the first area to go when things get tight.

Maintaining your target NOI

As costs are expected to rise, revenue growth is more important than ever before to maintain a target NOI. Revenue growth in senior living can come from raising rates, or by growing occupancy. In an up economy, raising rates might be the tactic to take, but with recession fears weighing on everyone – especially seniors who might be seeing their retirement income suddenly not stretching as far – selling at a competitive market rate is going to be a competitive advantage for you.

Don’t give in to the temptation to offer discounts and concessions to fill your communities though; remember that the consumer equates lower prices with lower quality. How do you increase occupancy without giving away the profits then?

Your greatest asset right now

Your sales department’s output is your organization’s greatest asset. Motivated, results-oriented, and proven sales leaders are your secret weapon for achieving occupancy growth – right now and in the coming year. But like any other motivated, results-oriented professionals, they need training and coaching to stay in top form; think of your sales leaders as Olympic athletes and you won’t be too far off the mark.

Sales training and coaching

Adopt the mindset that your sales leaders are the best asset your organization has heading into a turbulent economy. Don’t forget that the best deserves the best in professional development, so don’t skimp on training and coaching. Senior living is a high-level sale that needs top talent to make the sales happen, so continue coaching up their skills.

Development and retention

Finally, place a priority on developing new talent and retaining the existing talent in your organization’s sales department. Invest in their professional development by providing them with ongoing training and support. Reassess your rewards structure, whether it’s bonuses, perks, or both, because employee retention increases when top producers are rewarded.

Ready to take your senior living sales success to a new level by elevating your sales leaders? Grow Your Occupancy provides the sales coaching, accountability coaching, and sales-skill coaching essential to fill that important role. Learn more about Grow Your Occupancy’s sales coaching and training here. Or book your free 30-minute consultation today.

I drive a nine-year-old car. I love my car. It’s incredibly reliable. It’s not fancy, but it gets me where I need to go. I want to drive it forever. It’s always started when I get in.

Except for this week.

I got into my car. It wouldn’t start. And my heart sank.

I don’t know anything about cars other than how to drive them, to get where I need to go. I called my husband. He said, well, maybe it’s the starter. Maybe the battery’s dead. He’s not a mechanic either. So of course, I call the expert, and the car’s taken to the mechanic. And before throwing out possible solutions, she asked some questions. How long has this happened? Has this happened before? What are you hearing? What other problems have you had? Is this working? Is that working? There’s probably a checklist they go through, before diagnosing the problem.

Another example: if you’re a parent, maybe your child doesn’t want to go to school one day. There could be many reasons for that. Maybe it’s an illness. Maybe there’s a test that day that they didn’t study for. Maybe they’re being teased. Maybe they have a crush on somebody who doesn’t like them back and it’s painful. Maybe it’s PE day. Before you decide if they can stay home from school, you drill down by asking questions to identify why they don’t want to go.

The senior living sales analogy to these scenarios is a hot lead who comes in for a tour but then doesn’t make a deposit to move in. In fact, it’s just the opposite – they seem to cool off very fast. When the regional sales manager, executive director, or corporate sales director questions the sales director about why this hot lead didn’t deposit, the sales director hems and haws or is outright defensive when asked about the sales process:

“Did you personalize the tour experience based on what you learned during the inquiry process?” “Was the prospect greeted by name at the front desk?” “Did you show them features and amenities relevant to their wants and needs?”

We work in an incredibly emotional business, and the day-to-day work in a senior living community is a whirlwind. And certainly, COVID brought that whirlwind to an even higher level of difficulty. Unless you’ve really been in it, it’s difficult to wrap your head around the challenge of being proactive instead of reactive within this whirlwind. It takes a lot of practice and commitment and discipline to work proactively.

In the stress of the whirlwind, established sales processes and procedures slide. Sales directors “throw things against the wall and hope something sticks.” And as managers, instead of responding logically and thinking through a root cause analysis, it’s natural for most to react emotionally. That often leads to solving the wrong problem or taking a wide swing at trying to figure it out versus a more precise aim. How often have you heard a regional director or corporate-level manager say one of these?

“We need more leads.”

“We need to do more outreach.”

“We need better leads.”

“We need to make more calls.”

“We need to do more home visits.”

“We have to have a sense of urgency.”

These are all examples of reacting emotionally and trying to solve the wrong problem.

About five years ago, I was given a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. In it, he talks about solving the problem too soon, or before we know the primary cause. Wickman’s concept of “IDS” really hit me over the head. The concept is simple, and it’s changed my life. I’d like to share it with you.

IDS is also known as the Issues Solving Track. Wickman is all about simplifying processes, systems, messaging, and vision. He’s an expert in helping entrepreneurs build their business. The IDS in the Issue Solving Track is simply Identify, Discuss, Solve.

Start with identifying what problem we’re trying to solve. Many of us, myself included, often jump to solve the problem. With good intention, someone comes to us for advice, and we just give ’em some advice or really tell them what to do. We’re either in a hurry or we feel we know the answer, and maybe we do, but unless somebody takes that advice and implements it, we’re not going to know, is it the right advice or not?

Often, the time spent identifying is well worth the outcome. In other words, spending more time on the front end to get a better result at the end.

Let’s start with identify. What contributes to the result in senior living sales? It’s two components: action – what you do – and skill – how well you do it. The actions in our case are sales activities and outreach activities, and we’re concerned with the quantities: how many calls, tours, outreach appointments, lead source analysis, referrer analysis, conversion metrics, and so on. And the skill component is how well each of those are done.

To identify this problem, we need data – facts. Identify the problem based on facts, not emotion. Your senior living communities are hopefully using a CRM to log all their sales activity. (If they’re not, that’s your new problem to solve!) What is the data telling you? Establish some activity parameters.

For example, based on current sales conversions for the trailing 6 months and 12 months, how many tours or opportunities does it take to get a deposit? Very simply, if you’re converting at 25%, you’re going to need four opportunities, four tours, to get a deposit. Keep it simple.

Next is discuss. What are the contributing factors, how do they influence the outcomes, And then learn more: ask questions, investigate the answers, dig deeper, ask more questions, and discuss, discuss, discuss.

Only after identifying and discussing the problem can you begin to solve the problem. This also holds true for your sales directors working with prospects. Often, they jump to solve the prospect’s problem that moved them to consider senior living:

The prospect is no longer driving. Well, we have a van, we can drive you!

They’re not eating regularly and healthily? Oh, we have a chef-prepared meals!

They’re isolated and alone? Oh, well we have a great activity calendar!

Boom, boom, boom. Just solved all their problems. Why are they not moving in?

Identify. Discuss. Solve. We need to head back to identify what it is we’re really trying to solve. In this case, it’s what is really influencing the prospect’s decision that is influencing the sales performance outcomes.

As you begin this approach or elevate this approach in your world, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re in this together. Ready to take your senior living sales success to a new level by elevating your executive directors to community sales leaders?

Grow Your Occupancy provides the sales coaching, accountability coaching, and sales-skill coaching essential to fill that important role.

Learn more about Grow Your Occupancy’s sales coaching and training here. Or book your free 30-minute consultation today.

The doorbell rings unexpectedly. You peek out the window and see a familiar car in the driveway. It’s a surprise guest at your front door. The first thing on your mind: the house is a mess! On the way to answer the door, you frantically pick up things left lying around and throw them in the coat closet.

Just like at home, guests – both scheduled and drop ins – are welcome at our senior living communities every day of the year. In the case of a visit to your community, making a stellar first impression is crucial.

The importance of making a great first impression

One of the biggest challenges we all have is to look objectively at something or someone we know well. Even people whose job depends on being able to observe objectively –to figuratively “take a step back” and see from a fresh perspective – really have challenges. This is usually the case with highly creative people like artists, musicians, writers, and architects, but you may be surprised that salespeople can also benefit from observing objectively.

Why? Because you can’t have a first impression your senior living community without an objective perspective.

First impressions are lasting impressions

Think about some businesses you’ve been to once or twice but no longer frequent. Maybe it was a restaurant where you were kept waiting a long time before being acknowledged. Or a boutique where the staff weren’t helpful. Or a car service center where the waiting room was filthy. Whether those experiences are representative of the way those businesses operate all the time doesn’t matter; your first impression wasn’t a good one, and it became a lasting impression because you remember it and don’t go back to those places.

The way your senior living community looks and feels represents your values, expectations, customer experience. How your staff interacts demonstrates what it’s like to work, experience, live in your community. All that plays a big part in the first impression. Your prospects are asking themselves: “can I see myself living here” / “can I picture my mom living here”, and if the first impression isn’t a good one, the answer is going to be a firm “no.”

6 tips to keep your senior living community guest-ready

Guests and prospects visit your community at any time, and often unannounced. Be prepared to welcome guests, be tour-ready, and be always guest-ready with these tips.

1. View the community with a fresh set of eyes. Each day as you walk from your car and into your building, look around with a fresh set of eyes. Take note of details like trash, weeds, dead flowers, signs put on doors and walls with scotch tape, odors, stains on the carpet, scuffs on the walls, etc. Ask other staff members to do same – because a fresh set of eyes will see things you don’t, even as you’re trying to be objective. Pay close attention to the first impression your community presents upon entering the building: a welcome sign, fresh flowers, music playing, pleasant smells, and residents engaging in life in the front area should all be parts of the first impression whenever possible.
2. Make “clean” a priority. Clean bathrooms, surfaces, floors, windows, and even the air all make a powerful impression that clean is a priority at the community.
3. The concierge is first. The concierge or front desk manager is a powerful opportunity to make a good first impression. Set guidelines for greeting visitors that include standing when able, smiling, and greeting. If the concierge is on the phone, acknowledge the visitor. Greet scheduled guests at the front door and let them know they’re expected. Train, practice, and reinforce the first impression with the concierge.
4. Keep the model apartment in show-ready condition. Keep the lights on, the music playing, the temperature cool, the air smelling fresh, the décor tidy, and pillows plumped.
5. Set an “always guest-ready” expectation for the entire team. Visitors are a common and frequent occurrence in a senior living community and can include both scheduled and unexpected prospect tours, and visitors seeing a loved one. Communicate, train, and reinforce to all the staff the expectations when encountering a guest: acknowledge that there is a guest, make introductions when able, smile, make eye-contact, and be prepared to answer questions or defer to someone who can. Sales directors should know the team, know the residents, and acknowledge all by name.
6. Be a gracious host. The discovery area – the space where you sit with prospects and their loved ones – should be a welcoming and comfortable area that is kept clean and fresh. Supply it with beverages and snacks and offer both to all guests.

Assess your guest-readiness

Keep tabs on your community’s guest-readiness by making these 3 activities part of your sales procedures: 1) Request feedback from residents and staff via periodic surveys. 2) Keep close tabs on your online reputation by regularly reading reviews on Google, Facebook, and elsewhere. 3) Solicit a 3^rd party to mystery shop the community to evaluate first impressions and the customer experience.

Ready to take your senior living sales success to a new level by elevating your executive directors to community sales leaders? Grow Your Occupancy provides the sales coaching, accountability coaching, and sales-skill coaching essential to fill that important role. Learn more about Grow Your Occupancy’s sales coaching and training here. Or book your free 30-minute consultation today.

Sales leadership in senior living is much more than giving out “rah-rahs” to sales directors for their successes and calling them out with “gotchas” for their mistakes. Sales leadership is about ensuring the company’s sales culture and processes are in place to have a meaningful impact on the overall success of the organization. It’s also about inspiring sales teams to achieve greater success by delivering specific messaging, consistency, expectations, and communication.

Here are four (and a half) tips can help sales leaders be more effective in leading sales teams to success.

Tip 1: Review the CRM Reports Before You Go

We hear it all the time: a regional director of sales and marketing arrives at a senior living community to work with the sales director for the day, but they have no plan in place for what they hope to accomplish during their time there. The result is time and money wasted by having to uncover the challenges the community faces once they get onsite. Not just the regional’s time, but also the sales director’s time.

The irony is that the CRM has the all the data and reporting the regional director needs to identify challenges and opportunities in the community ahead of time. Use this data to build strategy and identify areas of focus.

Don’t wait until you get onsite.  Do your research in the CRM prior so your strategy is in place. To address the challenges, and build a plan of action.

Send the agenda a few days in advance. Are call out attempts low? Plan to spend the day making calls. Are professional outreach appointments not producing results? Plan on visiting referral sources and work on those skills. Are prospects not moving from tours to deposits? Plan on a morning of calling hot prospects and asking them for deposits.

Tip 2: Set Specific Benchmarks and Expectations

Not knowing what to expect is the number one cause of job dissatisfaction.

All too often, a regional director rolls into the community to work with the sales director, presents them with a set of targets and goals, and then exits at the end of the day without having given guidance on how to meet the objectives. This type of sales leadership can not only cause action paralysis, it can also conflict with standard processes and past training.

Don’t leave your sales director hanging without direction. Offer clear steps to success and skill building support and keep it all aligned with the framework of your sales process. Set a cadence for following up after your visit to ensure the time, effort, and energy spent translates to the results you expect.

Tip 3: Set Goals That Are Measurable and Incremental, and Collaborate to Gain Buy-In

The “I have all the answers, I’m an expert” leadership style isn’t effective in managing sales teams. Sales directors in senior living communities need a regional director who can clear the path to success, create energy and opportunity, and course correct as needed. These skills and traits build confidence in the sales teams that if they follow the plan, good results will happen.

Everyone wants to have a voice. Take input from the team and promote their ownership of the strategies you put in place. Include the other relevant staff and departments beyond the sales team as well to support and strengthen buy in.

Tip 4: Set – and Stick to – a Regular Coaching Session Schedule

Sales coaching is like dieting or any other habit intended to create a positive change: it’s easy to set out the steps and processes but not so easy to stick to them! As with many things in business, having an established routine and sticking to it creates efficiencies, and sales coaching is no different. Here are 4 parts that all of your coaching sessions should have that are worth sticking to:

1. Set an agenda – in writing – and follow it.
2. Send the agenda a day or more prior to the coaching session.
3. Assign homework with the expectation that it will be done.
4. Ask these ‘Five Sales Coaching Questions’ every time, with the expectation that each will be answered:
   • What challenges and roadblocks do you need help with?
   • What have you been focused on improving?
   • What is holding you back?
   • What have you been doing that has been working well?
   • How can I help support you?

BONUS TIP 4.5: Be Consistent

Sales leadership and coaching need to be ongoing, repetitive, and reinforced to be effective. Leading and coaching only when there is a crisis is not an effective leadership style. In fact, crisis leadership and coaching may actually be contributing factors to the crisis itself!

At Grow Your Occupancy, we’re experts in senior living sales management and we’re here to help you manage and coach your sales teams. Ready to find out how Grow Your Occupancy can help you? Book your complimentary 30-minute strategy session here.

Learning from our own missteps is a sign of maturity. Learning from the missteps of others and applying those lessons when working with those you manage is a key trait of a successful manager. In the senior living industry, there are some sales management missteps that are all too common. Here are the top 4, and the fix for each of them.

#1 Not managing expectations.

It usually goes something like this: One of your senior living sales directors, who up to now has produced results, begins to slip in their performance. Upon close inspection, you find that they’re not hitting their sales activity benchmarks, or utilizing the CRM, or following the sales system. When you ask them about it, they respond with, “Well you never told me to do that!” And you know what? They’re right, and you didn’t.

The fix: Formalize your company’s specific expectations and benchmarks in writing. Review it with them upon their hiring and have them sign off on it. Review the expectations and benchmarks regularly as part of your scheduled performance reviews.

#2 Lack of consistency in coaching.

Coaching yourself to sales success is just plain difficult. Why? Coaching requires objectivity, honesty, and accountability, three things most of us have trouble turning inward on ourselves. Professionals who are expected to perform at a certain level benefit greatly from having a coach. If the coaching is not consistent or too infrequent, though, the results are a loss of motivation, a decline in skills, and missing performance goals.

The fix: Schedule frequent coaching sessions with your sales directors to work on sharpening sales skills. Aim for a 30 minute session twice a month. Block it out on the calendar, send out invitations, and set an agenda so it doesn’t get “into the weeds” with other details that are not related to coaching.

#3 Infrequent feedback – or none at all.

This one is along the same lines as managing expectations. Maybe you’re reviewing your senior living sales director’s inquiry call recordings, and you find that they aren’t asking open-ended questions during inquiry calls, or getting contact details, or regularly suggesting a tour. Maybe they’re hitting their benchmarks so you don’t give them feedback about it, but it’s kind of bugging you because they’re not following the sales system! And all the while they’re probably thinking, “I must be doing alright, because no one is telling me any different.”

The fix: Allowing too much time to go by without feedback – or not giving it at all – can cause frustration and resentment in the long run. Address your concerns in a timely manner and in a constructive fashion so they are teaching opportunities instead of confrontations.

#4 Tolerating poor performance for too long.

A senior living sales director is just not meeting their sales benchmarks month after month, despite all your efforts to work with them to improve. But we like them because they’re nice or they’re funny or they’re so good with the residents and the staff loves them, so we overlook the fact that they’re not moving in new residents.

The fix: The fix for this one is not easy an easy one for the simple reason that it can be emotional. It’s hard sometimes to take emotion out of accountability, but cutting loose a poor performer is sometimes what is required.

Many figures in history from Eleanor Roosevelt to Groucho Marx have said, “Learn from the mistakes of others, because you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself,” and the same is true in business – there are lessons to be learned from the missteps of others when it comes to managing others to success. At Grow Your Occupancy, we’re experts in senior living sales management and we’re here to help you manage and coach your sales teams. Ready to find out how Grow Your Occupancy can help you? Book your complimentary 30-minute strategy session here.

“We need more leads!”

How often have we heard this from our senior living sales directors? How often have we said this ourselves? Saying it is almost a reflex when the question of “why is occupancy down?” comes up. After all, new leads are the top of the sales pipeline for all sales, so more leads in = more move-ins, right?

So we crank up our lead generation machine. We optimize our website and refine our marketing automation and implement our paid social ads strategy. We get lots of potential residents finding us in Google searches, and filling out forms on our websites, and clicking our ads  – and as a result, we get more leads into the top of the pipeline. But what happens in many cases? The occupancy needle doesn’t move.

Why?

Keeping the funnel topped off with new leads is important, but a lack of leads is not necessarily the problem in most occupancy bottleneck situations. The problem is a lack of selling.

Most of us who work in sales have heard the rule of 7 of sales and marketing a million times. It’s the average number of times we need to interact with a customer before they decide to buy, or in the case of senior living sales, decide to move in. But if we’re not following our systems and actually interacting with our potential residents (i.e. responding to their initial inquiry, following up, inviting them for a tour, following up, asking for the deposit, following up – you get the idea), we’re not keeping them interested and engaged, and not moving them forward in the pipeline toward moving in.

What do you have to gain by using our sales systems?

I’ve heard it said anecdotally in recent years that the sales pipeline in our industry converts leads to move-ins at a rate of approximately 10-12% across all senior living categories. I estimate that just 1 in 5 sales directors working at a senior living community where a sales process and a sales culture are in place are actually adhering to their process. So just imagine the results if it was more like 2 in 5 (or 3 in 5, or 4 in 5) who are diligently selling. Hypothetically, if we converted at 20% – just 8-10 basis points more than where we are now – the industry would quite literally run out of beds!

4 keys to increasing occupancy

The secret to growing occupancy in senior living communities comes down to doing 4 things:

Hire great sales directors. Hire for attributes like coachability, positive attitude, and a willingness to adhere to a tried-and-true sales system.

Foster a great sales culture. The best sales director, if forced to work in a vacuum or an unsupportive environment, will not be nearly as successful as one who works in an environment where sales is appreciated and supported at all levels.

Focus on selling. It wasn’t all that long ago when sales directors in senior living communities needed to wear a lot of different hats including generating leads and marketing their community. Today, thanks to strong SEO, marketing automation, and social media advertising, leads come to your community, and your online presence does most of the marketing for you. That leaves the sales directors to focus on what they do best – and what is most productive – selling.

Use the sales system. It really doesn’t matter which system is you’re using, as long as you’re using it consistently. Sure, some are better than others, but none will produce results if they’re not used by the sales directors.

Converting senior living leads to move-ins isn’t an unsolvable puzzle as long as the pieces are there. Take a close look at your communities and see if the keys to occupancy growth are there – great sales directors, in a great sales culture, focused on selling, using a sales system. If a piece is missing, give us a call, we’re experts at solving the occupancy puzzle, and we’ll help you grow your occupancy.

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