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/
Diane,
Thank you for posting the tips. I completely agree that we need to break down our larger goal into managable pieces and celebrate our milestones along the way. The pipeline can breakdown at any point and it is important to track each step and create a team culture that believes they can acheive the goals set forth. We ended the year with 54 CCRC move-ins – surpassing our budget projections. Build the momentum and keep it going strong!
Nicole, Congrats on exceeding the goal with 54 CCRC move-ins! Your community is lucky to have you on the team!
LinkedIn Group Discussion: Linkage Marketing Senior Living
Great advice by Diane on how to make the annual sales goals more managable and measurable! Having weekly measurable goals allows one to montior progress before lack of success gets too far out of hand.
By Steve Wittman
Group Discussion: Elder Care Professionals
Diane, marketing is always a current issue – then and now. Thanks for the tips and the reminders. Operating homes for over 20 years always kept me on the watch for new trends for marketing for times have changed and the clientele’s personalities have changed. Let’s keep marketing an issue open for discussion and sharing. Certainly a sales meeting (even a one person-review of issues) is a must do for our business.
By Daisy Lopoz
From Group Discussion: CCRC’s – Continuing Care Retirement Communities
Nothing as frustrating as having nobody to share your pipeline with. Great points!
By Oliver Hazan
From Group Discussion: Senior Living Executives
Very good content and very important! It reminds me of “How do you eat an elephant? Answer: one bite at a time! Design and work the system, holding each member of the team accountable for the end results, team work et al. Contact and throughput volume are always important. Census results are not accidental!
By Michael Coler