Spring Training for Senior Living Sales Pros

All of the prospects who didn’t want to move in over the holidays or wanted to wait until spring to put their house on the market are coming out of hibernation. The urgent winter move-ins may decrease, so it’s time to get back in the game of driving occupancy.

Here are some ideas to improve your senior living sales B-A-T-ting Average:

Behavior. What do you need to do consistently every day to advance sales? Professional baseball players stretch, take batting practice, and do fielding drills before the game starts.

For senior living sales, we need to focus on the key behaviors that improve conversions and advance and close sales. Focus on spending time in the highest value behaviors, such as…

Participating in face-to-face and voice-to-voice interactions with prospects and referral sources so that you can build relationships. Tours, home visits, sales calls, and purposeful follow-ups are a few key areas.
Planning advances and strategizing with your top 10 prospects based on where they are in their decision-making journey and what they need next to feel comfortable to advance to the next step.
Doing creative follow-up to provide personal touch points that are meaningful to each individual prospect based on their likes, interests, histories, and motivators.

Attitude. What kind of mindset do you need to be successful? Every professional baseball player believes that he is going to win when he steps out on the field, despite the challenges. You need the same attitude towards senior living sales.

Acknowledge the challenges ahead, but always maintain a winning mindset. Yes, it’s competitive, and prospects have many choices, including competitor communities, home care, and doing nothing. There are family dynamics (drama!), sticker shock, various objections (e.g. “I’m not ready!”) to overcome. Focus on what you can impact:

Shift your mindset from “always be closing” to “always be advancing.” Not every prospect is ready to deposit or schedule a lease agreement, so always plan a couple of appropriate “advances” to keep them engaged and moving forward. Having lunch, attending an event, scheduling an assessment, and visiting with the prospect in their home are just a few ideas.
Increase your confidence in your community’s value by mystery shopping and understanding the competition so you can articulate the value of choosing your community. Never speak negatively about another option, but be able to help prospects sort through the pros and cons of each solution.
Have resources at hand to overcome your most common objections. Partner with financial solutions companies that can help families access benefits and unlock assets, such as life insurance policy conversion, long-term care insurance approval, and veteran benefits. Develop relationships with geriatric care managers, real estate agents, movers, elder law attorneys, and downsizing specialists.
Be open to learning. We are all either growing or dying professionally. If you think that you are standing still, you are wrong because the market is moving forward and those that do not change and adopt will not be successful.

Training. What do you know, what don’t you know, and how can you always be learning? Even Hall of Fame baseball players are always in training. They go to spring training for a month, get to the park early to practice before every game, and practice during the off-season. They have trainers and coaches working with them every day.

The same is true for us: As sales professionals, we are never “trained”; we are always “in training.” Here are some ways to keep your training sharp:

Sit in on webinars. Senior Living SMART offers webinars-on-demand to allow our members to stay current with the latest industry trends.
Attend industry conferences.
Get on LinkedIn. There are many webinars and other goodies offered through this network.
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So get your bats ready, step up to the plate, and bring home some occupancy this season!