My hope is that one of the reasons you have decided to read this article is because of the title, Selling in Senior Housing, not Marketing in Senior Housing. Selling in the senior housing industry has historically been a dirty word and even though we have now progressed to at least broaching this subject, very little actual selling is being done.

Even when true sales calls are being made, more often than not, the salesperson says they are ”marketing” their community. Our industry desperately needs a reality check to fully understand that to survive and thrive, we must become better sales people and not necessarily better marketers. First, let’s discuss the difference between selling and marketing.

First, there are as many answers to this question as there are salespeople. Most Assisted Living sales professionals do agree that selling can be divided into two types; internal and external selling. Internal selling occurs when a prospect visits your community seeking information about a potential move to your community. An external sales call is when we are out of the community developing relationships with professionals who can send us referrals.
This article will focus on effective sales techniques for the external customer although most of the information presented also applies to the internal client just as well.

The term marketing defines the activities that allow us access to our internal customers (potential residents and their family members) and external customers (professionals). Activities such as public relations, advertising, direct mail, etc., can all be categorized as marketing activities. Or another way to look at it, marketing activities often illicit interest from an external or internal customer with whom we then make a sales call. For example, if you conducted a direct mailing to a specific zip coded age and income qualified customer list and three prospects called to schedule a visit and a tour, the marketing activity would be the mailing and the tour would be the sales call during your client’s visit to your community. Another example is if a professional observed an advertisement in the local newspaper and called to express interest in referring to your community, the advertisement would be the marketing aspect of the equation and the subsequent meeting in his or her office would be the sales call.

There are myriad advantages to selling
Assisted Living services versus marketing.

The first and by far most important advantage is that selling is a much more cost efficient and a more effective means to increase occupancy and revenue. Those two advantages alone should be enough to make you want to re-examine your focus on selling! Depending on the data source, the number of move-ins that can be directly attributed to professional referrals in the Assisted Living industry is between 40% and 75% of all referrals. Conversely, the number of move-ins directly attributable to advertising is less than 5%. This is a statistic that would seem to indicate that there should be more resources devoted to the selling aspects of our business but for most companies, advertising and related marketing activities continue to be the second largest expenditure in the sales and marketing department, second only to salaries.

Another critical advantage selling delivers is the visibility it sheds on our industry. If you were to go out on the streets of your hometown and ask a passerby, “What is assisted living?” The answers would probably range from ”I have no idea.” to “Some sort of a nursing home, isn’t it?” We as an industry continue to struggle to bring a meaningful definition of our niche service to the masses. In fact, once upon bringing a group of fourteen, newly hired call center employees into an assisted living community for training, I asked each of them to write down what kind of business they thought they were in. Thirteen used the term “nursing home” in their descriptions and none used the term Assisted Living. Through our active selling campaigns, we will not only bring in more business cheaper and faster, we will also educate the public about the differences between our industry and our colleagues in the nursing home industry as well as other senior housing options.

A third advantage of selling versus marketing is the time savings for your sales teams. Oftentimes, an advertisement brings in little or no activity to your community and is largely seen as a waste of time and money. Even when an advertising campaign is “successful” and potential clients do contact your community, many of these inquirers are often not qualified to live at your community, either for health or reasons. But the follow uptakes almost as much time with an unqualified inquirer as it does with a qualified inquirer! A great deal of time can be saved, by educating your referral sources so that they can help you by pre-qualifying their referrals. As an example, once a member of the clergy has a clear understanding of your costs and the services you can (and cannot) provide, they will typically send you only potential residents who meet this criteria. The bottom line is that advertisements that do work often bring in unqualified inquirers while well-educated professionals can help you save time by pre-qualifying your inquirers.

The last advantage that I see with selling is that anytime you are dealing with a professional referral source, they will often give you feedback on how you are perceived in your marketplace. This is especially true if they are familiar with Assisted Living and even more so if they have referred to you in the past. They can also give you ideas on areas of improvement, again, especially if they have referred to you previously. This is the least expensive and most effective form of market research I have ever experienced.

Each of your residents has a story to tell. The problem is that many times we are too busy running our communities and growing our occupancy to listen. However, these stores are often rich with details on who influenced their decision to live at your community. They will also tell you about professionals who possibly attempted to dissuade them from making this decision. In both cases, we want to make sure to target these identified professionals to establish a relationship with them that encourages them to continue to recommend our community or to find out the reasons why they would not refer to us.
Even if a resident did move into your community based on some reason other than a professional referral, obtaining a list of the professionals they know and utilize can be very beneficial. In other words, if you surveyed your residents and found that a large number of them listed Dr. Jones as their primary physician, we need to develop a relationship with Dr. Jones. The fact that you have so many of her residents in house already is a wonderful reason to make that call to schedule an appointment and your chances of spending some time with Dr. Jones and her staff is immeasurably increased! Taking pictures of your residents (with their permission, of course) involved in an activity is a great way to keep the doctor informed as to their progress and gives you reasons for repeat visits. Once you have reviewed their patient(s) with Dr. Jones, make sure to ask for additional referrals!

Other ways to kick start your selling efforts are to also solicit names from your employees. How many of your employees worked for other organizations in your marketplace prior to working at your community? Probably the vast majority of them and they can give you names and valuable insight on people to contact. They may even be willing to introduce you if they have a close relationship.

By combining the names generated from your current residents and employees, you will have enough professional contacts to last for months, if not years. Once you develop relationships with these individuals, ask them for names of other professionals with whom you may also be able to partner. Since you are providing valuable education to them to allow them to better serve their clients (and quite possibly increase the success of their business), they will often be more than happy to share additional names with you.