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Diane Masson's Tips & Articles
Too busy for Senior Living Sales Training? Think Again…
We are all going a million miles a minute in senior housing sales and marketing. The phone is ringing, walk-ins show up unannounced, preparing and managing monthly events, helping our move-ins get settled, getting new sales, hand-holding upcoming move-ins, weekly meetings, reports and the list goes on and on. Many sales people eat lunch with prospects and work way past 5:00 PM. These are the exact reasons that you do need a sales training. Call it a marketing retreat. Take a moment to get off the work treadmill and breathe. Rejuvenate and refresh the team. Remember why you love serving seniors and connect with some like-minded colleagues. Pick a few topics that need improvement or clarity. Have a sales and marketing consultant or regional manager organize the retreat format. Make it fun…with prizes and a nice lunch to pamper them. Have it be all about improving their performance, so they can become more successful. Depending on the size of your senior living company, some make the sales retreat experience a half-day, a whole or several days. It’s best to bring all the communities together at one time or break it down by state or region. The marketing retreat goal should be – creating an opportunity for each senior living sales person to gain new knowledge and feel inspired. The sales people need to feel supported and appreciated by corporate and know that each of them are valued as individuals to the company. Next week, I am going to talk about how role playing can help senior living sale people. Please comment to join the conversation and interact with other...
Deciding To Use Incentives Or Not In Senior Living?
What Is The Best Incentive You Have Ever Given In Senior Living? Discounting can be the owner’s operational nightmare and the sales persons best friend. Incentives cost the company money and affect the bottom line. Just giving away one month of rent can cost $2000 – $6000 depending on the retirement community. Yet, empty apartments are losing revenue month-after-month. Should you or should you not use incentives? I believe that incentives can permanently ruin some sales people. Some sales people can ONLY sell apartments with incentives. When the gravy train stops they don’t know how to just simply sell an apartment at regular price to a senior. Seriously?!? In my opinion, this is right up there with someone who is simply an order taker in senior living. The benefit of incentives is bumping up the occupancy to get ahead of the move outs in a very short period of time. Every senior living community has to look at their financials and determine what is best for them. If you have more two-bedrooms than one-bedrooms, an incentive on two-bedrooms can create balance again in your inventory. It is a funny thing in our industry – how every five years the surplus of a certain size apartment switches. Right now everyone seems to want a one bedroom… Here are some common assisted living and independent living incentives: One free month The fourth month free No move in fee or a discount on the community fee A free TV A moving or downsizing allowance Continuing Care Retirement Communities can use the same or different incentives: 90 – 100% Returnable entrance fees A...
6 Reasons Why You Should Take Your Senior Housing Co-workers To Lunch
Are you so busy selling at work, that you thank a co-worker for their help as you race down the hall to your next appointment? Sales and marketing in senior housing cannot exist without operational support. To pull off a fantastic event, it takes great dining services, housekeeping and maintenance teams. Often the activity department is helping out too. When moving residents into an apartment, it’s a collaborative effort between sales, maintenance and housekeeping. Once the resident moves into their new home at your retirement community, it takes the integration of the dining and activities team to help the senior feel settled. Take a moment to slow down and invite a few key department heads to lunch this week. 6 Tips when you take your senior housing co-workers to lunch: Appreciate how each department wants the senior residents to have a great life. Ultimately, all the department heads love the residents and want to do a great job serving them. Explain how sales and marketing appreciates the other departments. Share a few stories of how residents have shared with sales and marketing about how they have been helped by maintenance staff, housekeeping or had an incredible dining experience… Develop a deeper working relationship. Your lunch will create a shared experience. Ask – what are their biggest challenges now? Share what marketing challenges have happened recently and how many calls or appointments you do on weekly or monthly basis. (They may think you just sit in your office and chat with people on the phone or in person. How hard can that be?) Solve an on-going challenge without being in...
How To Do Senior Living Social Media In 15 Minutes A Day
It only takes 15 minutes or less per day to engage in social media! Has your retirement community entered the twenty first century with social media yet? Some of the larger senior housing organizations have wonderful social media programs. Sunrise Senior Living posts great blog content multiple times a week. Emeritus sends out engaging monthly email blasts. Other organizations with a nationwide presence have a staff who are dedicated to social media. What do you do if you are a stand along retirement community or only have a handful of senior living communities in your portfolio? You can still do social media for 15 minutes a day. Seriously – I am doing it at two Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) in Southern California. First, you can either set up some social media yourself or have it professionally done for about $1000 per community. I had mine set up professionally. Then I trained one person at each CCRC to add content. At first it took them some time to get into the swing of it, but now they can create three or four posts at time and then schedule one post to be released online at a time – one per day using Hootsuite. We post – fun stuff the residents are going to do, show pictures of what the residents or employees have done and repost interesting articles that seniors would like. The 15 minutes timeframe per day includes taking pictures of some of the resident activities, a plate of food or searching for a image on line to share. And yes, we have signed photo releases… Post your...
Have You Hired a Closer or Order Taker In Senior Living?
Did you hire a closer or an order taker for your senior living community? Both can be good listeners, but there is a huge difference. One can increase the occupancy and the other will complain that people “ARE NOT READY YET!” Many seniors desire to move now – do you want them to move into your senior living community or a competitor? The first order of business is hiring a fantastic senior living sales person that fits with your current staff and has the ability to talk to your prospective residents like you would yourself. Be patient and don’t hire the first person that “might” work. An order taker lets the customer take the lead through the tour. For example a senior says, “I don’t have a lot of time and want to see a two bedroom.” The order taker would take them to the two-bedroom and then wonder why no one buys from them. A closer will listen to what the senior or boomer children demand to see. Then the closer can suggest to the family to have a quick sit-down, to determine exactly what is most important for them to see during the visit. Then they can tell the prospective resident(s) that a tailored tour for what is most important to them will save them a ton of time. People eat these comments up like candy and love that you want to save them time. The closer introduces the pricing of a studio and one-bedroom before the tour begins, because that two-bedroom price could be too rich for the senior’s blood (this strategy alone can increase sales...
How to Get Momentum Again in Senior Living Sales
Are you losing senior residents faster than gaining new ones at your retirement community? Welcome to 2013, where older and frailer new residents don’t spend much time at your senior living community before moving onto a higher level of care or meeting their maker… If you have more move-outs than move-ins year after year, your occupancy has slowly dropped. It’s time to get the big “MO” back – that’s right momentum! Are your owners only looking at the bottom line and demanding for the occupancy numbers to increase? Or, are your owners willing to strategize with sales and marketing to look outside the sales box and figure out how to make the building more attractive to younger seniors? The later is the key…it can be a one-year process of improvements and upgrades. (Hint: Younger seniors live at your retirement community longer!) The results can be phenomenal! A community I work with in Southern California just had 7 CCRC entrance fee sales in 8 days! Yes, some younger residents, including couples are moving in too. The CCRC community looks fantastic now after extensive renovations! The sale team is excited and all the scheduled move-ins generate urgency for other prospective residents to move-in now, because the apartment home inventory is dwindling. What are you doing to attract younger seniors and build momentum for occupancy? Please comment 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 for sale at...
To All the Senior Living Professionals Who Follow My Blog
To All the Senior Living Professionals Who Follow My Blog I appreciate all the great comments over the years and respectively ask for your vote in the Seniorhomes.com – “Best Senior Living Awards!” Diane Twohy Masson’s Blog has been nominated as one of “2013 Best Industry Resources.” Click on the picture link below and vote twice by clicking once for Facebook and once for Google Plus. I thank you advance! Vote for Marketing 2 Seniors Join the Conversation on How to Market 2 Seniors Please continue to comment on my blog posts 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 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:...10 Training Tips For Senior Living Sales People in 2013
1) Identify your sales team’s attitude toward the occupancy goals – do they believe they can hit the occupancy goal? – if not – check out my blog tip from last week – Sales Meeting Tips to Increase the Occupancy in 2013. 2) Are they differentiating your senior living community from the competitor down the road? Never say anything bad about the competition, but always highlight your retirement community’s strengths. 3) Have you set a quota for a certain number of calls per week and is the director of marketing or executive director tracking it? Sales people just want seniors to come in and put down a deposit. A lot of sales are made with that quick follow up phone call to invite the senior back again for a 2nd or 3rd look. 4) A “wow” tour, including painting a picture of the lifestyle, can make the monthly fee look like a bargain… 5) Do you have exciting events that draw new faces into your community and inspire 2nd and 3rd looks to move forward? 6) One negative word, like calling your community a facility, can cause a senior to back away from the move. Who wants to leave their beautiful home and move into a facility? 7) Have your focused on selling to personalities? Some analytical drillers want every scrap of paper you have ever published on your community to make a decision and other seniors can walk away from information overload. Tailor each tour to the personality of each customer… 8) Focus on each senior’s hot buttons, like not being a burden to their kids… 9) Are you...Sales Meeting TIPS to Increase the Occupancy in 2013!
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...A Short Fun Senior Living Sales New Year’s Poem
Is it time to grow your retirement community’s census, Or just entertain the residents and be festive? It takes sales stamina and focus, To accept some sales no’s with no fuss. Give your determination a sense of finality, To rise above “the get by” mentality. Keep calling the database, Don’t pause on the hot lead chase. Because seniors just need some education, To deter each and every objection. Ultimately, your senior living community will win, Because making a great sales commission is not a sin! It’s your choice to be a senior housing hero! Let the competition end up with a big fat zero! Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available for sale at Amazon.com. If your curiosity is piqued to inquire on Diane’s availability to speak at a senior housing conference (CCRC, independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care) – please call: 206-853-6655 or email diane@marketing2seniors.net. Diane is currently consulting in Southern California for Freedom Management Company, the proud debt-free owners of Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. For more information: Twitter: @market2seniors Web: www.marketing2seniors.net...Give Your Residents a Hug Today – Happy Holidays!
The smiles and tears were so joyful to see! My entire senior living marketing staff presented a small beautifully wrapped Christmas tin (with chocolate inside) to each resident ambassador who helped marketing in the last year! Maybe they gave a tour on a weekend, had lunch with a prospective resident, helped new residents feel welcome, spoke at a marketing event or allowed marketing to show their home. As we gave each gift, we EACH said thank you and gave them a hug! The residents loved it and were just blown away! They each had five hugs! It is not too late for your senior living community to do this! Show your appreciation to your resident ambassadors this week with a New Year’s gift…it only cost $3.00 per resident. Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available for sale at Amazon.com. If your curiosity is piqued to inquire on Diane’s availability to speak at a senior housing conference (CCRC, independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing or memory care) – please call: 206-853-6655 or email diane@marketing2seniors.net. Diane is currently consulting in Southern California for Freedom Management Company, the proud debt-free owners of Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California. For more information: Twitter: @market2seniors Web: www.marketing2seniors.net...5 Tips on How to Sell Senior Living During the Holidays
Call your senior living database now to increase occupancy for early 2013! I elaborated on this in my last blog… Why this is the BEST TIME of the Year TO CALL Your Database! Suggest for a senior and their family to enjoy lunch at your retirement community! Visiting family and the senior need to eat…why not have it be at your senior living community? As they eat, maybe they can picture themselves living there. Most boomer children will advocate for their senior parent to move into senior housing when they see how nice the quality of their life can be… Invite hot and warm prospective residents to join your residents for some live entertainment or when the local school kids come by to sing. Offer seniors, who don’t drive, either a ride to your community or go out and do a home visit. This visit could be the tipping point to them moving into your community. When someone is visiting at your community, ask for the order. First do the proper warm up, discovery, listen to their needs, learn their hot buttons, build value for your community and figure out how to solve their problem. Then invite them to sit down again. Look them in the eye and say, “I know you love your home of forty years! And you have shared how difficult it is to manage stairs and your concern of falling down them when you do the laundry in the basement – right? After everything you have seen today and the wonderful lunch we enjoyed, do you believe you would have a better quality of...Learn More About Senior Housing
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