As I talk to senior living providers around the country, occupancy is consistently a big deal.
As I talk to senior living providers around the country, occupancy is consistently a big deal.
On one hand, it’s no surprise because occupancy equals revenue and without revenue nothing happens. On the other hand, the industry is fond of pointing out that senior living occupancy hovers around 90%, incrementally climbing each month. This would suggest that while occupancy should naturally be on everyone’s radar, it shouldn’t be a particularly huge deal . . .
. . . And yet, when I talk to senior living providers across the country, occupancy continues to be an outsized concern. Hardly anyone has a waiting list and, if they do have a waiting list, it is almost always short and unstable. Mostly this is a function of the increasing age of those willing to moving into senior living and the accompanying higher levels of medical and non-medical assistance required. Another underlying sentiment is the subtle awareness that near-full occupancy is somewhat mysterious . . . providers don’t quite grasp what got them to it or how to maintain it, but they are happy while it lasts.
Networking For Success
Caring.com is a Senior Housing Forum Partner and over the past few months they have been doing a number of joint activities with DEI Central to help senior living communities very specifically understand and fully take advantage of on-line lead generation opportunities.
Several weeks ago Shannon Ingram of Caring.com did a mutual introduction between the DEI Central team and Senior Housing Forum thinking DEI could be a great addition to our supporting partners. We talked, and I am pleased to announce DEI as our newest partner.
Why DEI Central Might Be Important To You
DEI Central uses a very structured approach that they refer to as “Census Management”. The big idea is that the buck ultimately stops with the executive director, who more often than not is not a marketing and sales expert. This means that it takes a whole system geared to managing for a high census or occupancy rate all of the time. For all of its complexities, a senior housing community is led by an ED/Administrator whose job it is, ultimately, to manage operations, which consists of processes and relationships. That’s it. Get the person responsible to do the right job at the right time all of the time. It’s not easy. The sales process in most communities (and most industries) is the least structurally defined compared to meal planning, clinical administration, facilities management and even HR . . . and all other processes.
DEI’s system allows the ED to wear the sales manager hat and be consistently successful by enveloping them in a process and providing visual tools so they can see into the sales process. DEI customers express that a rather remarkable transformation takes place when management can quickly view, (5-10 seconds) comprehend, confirm, diagnose and coach against a sales pipeline that is showing forecast outcomes for this month and next.
The sales process DEI uses comes from Stephan Schiffman and his sales pipeline approach to growing a business. His system is being used with great success in many very large companies and he has sold well over a million books outlining his process.
If you are doing all the right stuff or most of the right stuff and still not satisfied with where you are, the process DEI uses might be worth a hard look.
And, DEI provides best practice approaches to targeted issues of the day. Here is a great example of how they are helping senior living providers:
Convert Internet Leads & Referrals into Move-ins: Everything you need to get the job done!
Over the next several months DEI Central and Caring.com will be holding a series of 14 day-long workshops across the country to help senior living communities really leverage their internet leads.
How many times have you heard this: “I’m not ready – just email me your rates.”
What if you could get those tire-kickers in the door, consistently and reliably, to experience your great community? Well guess what – you can!
You are invited by DEI to participate in a full day of practical, effective training that will help you and your team turn leads into residents.
The training is delivered via hands-on practice sessions so that participants will walk away with skills to successfully address these key sales challenges:
- Why Internet leads don’t engage with you — and simple techniques to turn this around.
- Practice phone messages that get return calls.
- Practice writing email messages that really work to engage the prospect.
- Why it is so important to schedule face-to-face meetings — and how you can improve your lead-to-tour metrics.
- Learn to effectively set appointments to get “face-to-face” with any new lead.
- Manage the questions that you get on the phone that derail the appointment-setting process.
- Gain control of the prospect interaction via phone or email in order to get the family to the door.
- Make sure they actually show up!
Are you effectively leveraging your relationship with third party partners to create the impact you are looking for?
- Understand the different types of third parties, leads vs. referrals.
- Learn practical tips for updating your community information and why it is so important to do so on a regular basis.
- Practice creating strong promotional listings that get great reviews! And why it is so important to do so!
- Get tips on how to manage your online reputation and the importance of doing so.
Pricing:
Single participant $425
Each add’l corporate participant(s) $325
Schedule
November 11, 2014 – Dallas Texas
November 13, 2015 – Houston, Texas
Additional Cities (dates still to be announced)
Northern California
Southern California
Seattle
Salt Lake City
Denver
Chicago
Minneapolis
Tampa
New York
Kansas City
Phoenix
We are looking forward to telling DEI success stories over the coming months.
Steve Moran
