Senior Living Marketing Perspectives

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives: The Secret Sauce for Successful Live Chat

Topics Discussed and Key Points:

• SiteStaff Chat’s edge over other conversion services
• The two types of prospects that chat support representatives typically engage with
• How SiteStaff’s engagement specialists conduct conversations with prospects
• The importance of earning the right to ask for a prospect’s personal information
• Why Bill is passionate about empathy and culture

 

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with SiteStaff Chat Founder Bill Jennings on how prospects for senior living facilities engage with Chat’s online support staff. Bill founded his company as a response to the many other support services that have the unfortunate tendency to offer generic, information-laden responses to website visitors. Instead, SiteStaff Chat’s approach is that of “an emotional selling process; making people feel comfortable.” This approach turned out to be the perfect fit for the senior living industry, of which the emotional component is naturally higher among prospects.

SiteStaff Chat typically sees two types of customers. The first type are family members looking for a place for their aging parents, but have little to no idea what to expect from or how to go about the process of moving them into a senior living facility. The second type are those looking to move themselves into a facility simply because they are looking for community and, of course, assistance. In both of these cases, support staff need to be both empathetic and understanding as they work to dispel prospects’ common fears while guiding them towards a decision.

Chat’s engagement specialists are looking to provide real answers to prospect queries, as opposed to canned ones. Bill laments the “copy-paste” tactics of traditional services, where answers are scripted and superficial. Chat aims to qualify the prospect, not by attempting to methodically close them, but by “humanizing the experience”, first by establishing whether there’s even a fit for them in the first place, followed by diving into specifics around the prospect’s particular circumstances and goals.

Today, Chat’s representatives spend an average of eight and a half minutes chatting with prospects. These eight and a half minutes are not spent giving an elevator pitch, but on having real, human-to-human conversations that aim to earn the right to ask the prospect if they are ready for the next step of the transaction.

When much of the modern marketing world focuses on vanity metrics such as views, impressions, clicks, or website traffic, it is crucial for a company (and refreshing for prospects) to create personal experiences that give visitors real value. After all, senior living communities deal with high-intent prospects. By empowering these prospects to make informed decisions through meaningful conversations, any business can achieve more of the metric that truly matters: conversions.

 

Try SiteStaff Chat for 30 Days Free of Charge by visiting https://www.sitestaffchat.com/ or give Bill a call at (303) 349-4282

Senior LIving Marketing Perspectives with Mike Miller

Topics Discussed and Key Points:

• The importance of creating an effective sales culture
• How to develop a sales training process
• Practical advice on empathetic selling to maximize your existing database when COVID-19 has slowed down the flow of new leads
• Lessons learned by Mike after having done over 150,000 mystery shops

 

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with Mike Miller, President and CEO of Primo Solutions, LLC, and the author of Selling at Combat Speed (2008) and Stop Selling & Start Caring (2011). They discuss the core message of Mike’s newest book which, while always relevant, is many times more so today amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The inspiration behind Stop Selling & Start Caring came when a colleague discussed the uncomfortable experience of looking for a senior living community for his mother. After visiting several communities, his colleague found that none of them even bothered to ask him how he, as the adult child, was feeling about the process. Instead, it seemed like all these communities cared about was making the transaction.

Many institutions lack a clearly-defined sales training process which, by extension, results in a lack of a cohesive sales culture. Debbie and Mike agree that it is key to have a great sales trainer that regularly conducts sessions to help instill and maintain this culture. But more importantly, the company has to have leadership in place that, once training is done, can efficiently and effectively delegate in order to ensure the healthy growth of its culture.

“You can have a great strategy,” says Mike.  “But if you do not have the culture in place and the buy-in where people really believe in the process and what they are doing, then it is not going to work.”

COVID-19 has forced many businesses to focus on their existing database as the pandemic has led to fewer new leads coming in. Mike believes that senior living communities tend to spend too much money on incoming leads, and that many can actually fill their communities by investing in their current database. Additionally, the problem with a constant stream of leads is that communities will eventually have a difficult time to work with and nurture those leads already in the CRM.

With regards to the current situation, Mike says that we have no choice but to “make a difference on the phone.” Even today, it is possible to increase your conversion rate via deliberate, creative, and empathetic selling. It starts with reducing your marketing spend and putting more focus on training your staff to work with existing leads.

 

Ask Mike for a free PDF of Stop Selling & Start Caring at mike.miller@primosolutionsllc.com

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives with Dan Hutson

Topics Discussed and Key Points:

• What direction should marketing and communications take amid COVID-19?
• The power of “sharing, not selling” as a long-term approach to business development
• Why your organization should shift from crisis communication to resource communication
• How to get people comfortable about potentially moving into a senior living community during a pandemic
• What can we learn from this situation, marketing and communications-wise, to become better prepared should another crisis hit?

 

Episode Summary:

In today’s episode, Debbie speaks with Dan Hutson, Marketing Strategy and Communications consultant. The pair discuss best practices around marketing and communication strategy used by various industries amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these practices can be implemented by the senior housing industry.

Today, organizations have to choose between quietly waiting out the crisis, and looking for opportunities to innovate. Much of the senior living world has chosen the former strategy. Worse than that, some even chose to do “tone-deaf” marketing that completely ignores the new normal. Consumers and clients are more forgiving towards vulnerability and more “raw” messaging, as long as the company can assure them, with a level head, that they are willing and able to consistently follow through in spite of current challenges.

“This situation has freed up your time from doing a lot of the business-as-usual marketing work,” says Dan. “Take this time to really think about interesting ways of connecting with your audience—communicating and creating ongoing conversations with them.” If more organizations adopt this paradigm, there may endure, long after the end of this crisis, a “sharing, not selling” approach to business.

It helps greatly to put yourself in the shoes of those you’re trying to serve. Imagine what a typical member of your target audience is thinking, feeling, and doing at this very moment. One thing’s for sure: there’s so much uncertainty in the world today that people in general are just looking for leaders to help make their struggles more bearable. This, says Dan, becomes the perfect opportunity to serve as your customer’s go-between—to position your company as an incredible resource which provides useful services outside the usual scope of your business.

At a time when social distancing is the norm, ask yourself how you’re adopting technology to support your sales and marketing effort. If you want more people to become comfortable with the idea of potentially moving into a senior living community, particularly during this pandemic, digital and inbound marketing should be your priorities. Many people are uninformed about the different types of available communities, not to mention their concerns about sanitation in these spaces.

If relevance is what you’re after, there’s no better time than this moment to put out regular content that tells your customers exactly what services they should be expecting from your organization. This content should illustrate the reality of your senior living space as a “living, breathing community of people who are engaged in interesting, purposeful lives.”

Senior Marketing Perspectives with Julie Podewitz

Julie Podewitz - Chief Sales Officer at Vitality Living: Vitality Living has found great success using new marketing, sales and communication channels during the COVID pandemic.  Their brand reach has quadrupled and their teams are successfully adopting new technologies to attract, nurture and close sales.  Julie shares their best practices and results.  Get ready to be inspired!

Senior Living Marketing Perspectives with Carlene Motto

The senior living industry has weathered hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and fires. But COVID-19 is requiring a whole new playbook.  Join us for the inaugural podcast as we discuss lessons learned during COVID-19 and making the most of this unique situation.