Every single one of us has had a personal family crisis, health emergency or had a dear friend that it going through a major calamity. Too much drama in our lives can be overwhelming. Then we drive to work at our retirement community and try to leave it all at home…Are you successful? It’s hard….
Some of us have personalities that envision the glass as half full and others see it half empty. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Is your self-talk telling you everything will be all right in the long run or are you only seeing the worst-case scenario? How is this affecting your work?
A senior living sales person can get frazzled with numerous sales, move-ins, calls, scheduled tours and reports the administrator or their boss expects them to do. Suddenly a walk-in tour arrives. Do you share your troubles with the prospective resident or keep them to yourself?
It is always shocking to me when a stressed senior living sales person shares their personal challenges with a prospective resident. What do they hope to accomplish? The senior came into the retirement community to explore their senior housing options. Now, his or her focus is taken off making a move to your retirement community and it lands on the senior living sales person’s troubles.
A senior living sales person can actually sabotage his or her potential sales. This is turn affects occupancy. Is your senior living community’s occupancy down, because of stressed and over-sharing sales people? Have you experienced it? What tips can you share with the rest of us?
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 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.
I can’s say for sure what a business person is thinking when he ditches all his woes on a potential client, but I have a guess. The business person might want the client to know how hard he/she will work for that person. The business person might be trying to get sympathy and then the client. The business person might need to vent to someone (although the client is the last one that should be vented at). The business person might not realize that this is not appropriate behavior.
Just a few ideas. I know there are plenty more.
Good article.