Senior Living Leads: Myths vs Facts
It’s time to bust three common myths about senior living leads for good.
Myth #1: Sales-qualified leads are fully-qualified leads.
A sales-qualified lead (SQL) means the person has actively shown interest in the community by scheduling a tour, clicking to call, or requesting a callback from sales. The person has essentially raised their hand and indicated their sales-readiness. The goal is to get them face-to-face or voice-to-voice with the sales team.
Some sales teams think a sales-qualified lead automatically means “fully qualified” when, in reality, it’s the sales team’s responsibility to determine this.
Remember, fully qualified means financially qualified, health qualified, and emotionally/psychologically qualified (i.e., the prospect is willing and able to move into senior living).
For example, let’s say an adult daughter and her mom tour your community. The daughter is eager to get her mother into your community, but the mother isn’t. Sure, Mom might very well be qualified from a financial and health standpoint. But if she’s digging in her heels about leaving her home, she’s not emotionally qualified. At least, not yet.
Bottom line: Marketing delivers SQLs to sales, but the sales team is responsible for ensuring they are fully qualified.
Myth #2: Industry benchmark reports are the best way to measure your community’s lead-generation efforts.
Industry benchmark reports are a great starting point. They provide guidelines. But you shouldn’t consider them an absolute simply because so many variables come into play when it comes to senior living lead generation.
For example, your community’s levels of care, location, and even the number of people on your sales team can all affect your lead-gen efforts.
You can still review industry benchmark reports. Just don’t fixate on them. And don’t panic if your numbers don’t align perfectly. Always consider the big picture.
Better questions to ask:
- How’s the overall lead quality?
- Are your SQLs converting?
- Are conversions trending up over time?
Bottom line: Once you understand the big picture, you can figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and where you can improve.
Myth #3: Sales-qualified leads are more valuable than marketing-qualified leads.
Most senior living sales reps tend to say the same thing: “We need more sales-qualified leads.”
It’s easy to think urgent, high-intent sales-qualified leads make the difference—and that they’re the be-all and end-all of senior living lead generation.
Yet, as SLS’s Debbie Howard points out, marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) tend to have the longest length of stay.
“Just because somebody has intent and urgency and they’re ready to take that action, it doesn’t mean that they’ve gone through any kind of education or qualification,” Debbie explains. “It’s the early-stage leads that actually benefit from all of the education. I know the Aline 2023 Benchmarking Report showed that 53 percent of the move-outs that stayed less than a year came from the shortest sales cycle.”
Debbie says sales teams need to shift their mindsets and embrace the value of having a healthy pipeline of MQLs in addition to SQLs because the MQLs you invest in with education, time, and effort will become residents who stay longer, provide testimonials, and refer friends.
When you think about it, it makes sense, right?
The marketing-qualified leads who took their sweet time making a decision chose YOUR community out of all the others. They had options. They looked at other places. But they chose your community because they wanted to live there.
Those are the leads that are going to help grow your community. They’re going to show up on your social channels and testimonials. They’re going to be the welcome wagon when you lead a tour.
Bottom line: Don’t dismiss MQLS. They’re valuable, too.
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