Are you juggling these 10 things all at the same time in your assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing care or Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC)?
- The phone is ringing with a new inquiry
- There is a new walk-in in the lobby
- Scheduled tours are arriving
- Going to a meeting requested by your Executive Director or Director of Marketing
- Working with maintenance to make sure the apartment is renovated properly
- Finishing the paperwork for a new move-in
- Calling the doctor to have them send back a medical report for a new move in
- Touring a family member of an upcoming move-in
- Residents coming in the office to ask questions
- Preparing for the next event
What is not on this list? What about calling or following-up with anyone in your database? I know…you don’t have time. But you do have time…
Did you know it takes 25 to 40 percent longer to get a job done when you are multitasking? Yes!! So how do you become more efficient? Work on one task at a time. Shut the door to your office for one hour and just make calls in the morning. If you do this everyday, you can make about 15 calls a day.
Two things will happen if you take the time to increase your calls:
- Your sales will increase, because you will be proactively marketing versus reactively waiting for every customer to call you back.
- Your occupancy will rise, because the percentage of senior prospects who select an apartment on the first tour are low. The average person touring assisted living needs to see it three times and CCRC sales can take three to six visits.
Focus on one task at a time and become more effective and efficient – EVERYTIME.
Please share your success, failures or comment below to join the conversation and interact with other senior living professionals on what is currently being effective to increase occupancy on a nationwide basis.
Diane Twohy Masson is the best-selling author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available at Amazon.com with a 5-star rating. The book is required reading at George Mason University as a part of its marketing curriculum. Within this book, the author developed a sales & marketing method with 12 keys to help senior living providers increase their occupancy. Masson developed this expertise as a marketing consultant, sought-after blogger for senior housing and a regional marketing director of continuing care retirement communities in several markets. She has also been a corporate director of sales and a mystery shopper for independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled care nursing communities in multiple states. Most recently Masson was recruited to consult for two debt-free Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Southern California – Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. Interestingly, this career started when she was looking for a place for her own mom and helped her loved one transition through three levels of care.
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I’ve been working in senior living sales for 20 years and am STILL amazed at the power of the phone call. Just as we are busy with the multitude of activities outlined in your article, our seniors and their families are busy juggling all the responsibilities in their lives, so by us reaching out to them with a friendly phone call makes it easier for them to buy our product.
And by blocking out that dedicated call time on our calendar each day, we become more focused to reach as many families as possible to indeed increase the number of move ins.
Good advice, as always! Keep the good tips coming
By Libby Lauer, MS