Whether you’re the CEO of a senior housing operation or a developer of a senior living property, formulating and executing a solid strategy to fill your apartments is a challenging feat.
From zoning laws and soil tests to financing contracts and construction, meeting your deadlines makes it difficult to raise awareness for your community…
And all too easy to neglect senior living sales, marketing, and public relations.
Giving these activities the attention they deserve is even more challenging if your team has little expertise in these fields or if you’re an international investor new to the senior living market.
However, the key to getting your development off the ground is ensuring your community can effectively close deals before, during, and after your grand opening.
When time is short and expertise is limited, there is a solution—bringing in experts to provide full support for your senior living sales, marketing, and outreach activities.
Here are 5 reasons your new development should leverage this option to increase occupancy:
1. You Need a Strategy Sooner Rather Than Later
When it comes to senior living sales, you’ll need to be proactive. Increasing your census isn’t a haphazard endeavor, but requires strategy, forethought, and planning.
However, when you’re building a new development, this can be challenging without outside help. Between securing permits and overseeing construction, you may not begin planning until it’s too late.
The result can be a strategy that’s built on the fly and does little to turn prospects into residents.
2. Senior Living Sales Strategies Require In-Depth Analysis
In addition to creating a strategy early on, you’ll want a strategy that isn’t cursory. Ideally, your marketing and senior living sales plan should involve in-depth analysis of…
- How to position your brand against competitors.
- How to leverage your local environment to increase sales.
- How to present your community to your unique demographic.
- And more.
Each of these require time, effort, and analysis.
The reality is, you may lack the team members to conduct this research. You may also lack industry experience, especially if you’re a new operator or a developer entering the market from the multifamily niche or other housing industries.
3. You Can Raise Your Risk for Turnover
As you prepare to open your community, busy schedules, limited experience, and strained resources may create another problem—sales and marketing staff turnover.
At Bild & Company, we see a common problem among senior living communities: communities don’t vet sales and marketing team members before hiring.
And the likelihood of this problem can only increase if you’re handling your sales and marketing without support. As the deadline for your new development draws closer, your staff can scramble to fill positions, hiring team members without thoroughly assessing their skills.
Ultimately, unqualified team members can create turnover, resulting in a bad first impression for your community as well as revenue decline.
4. You May Experience Slow Revenue Growth
Even if your sales and marketing staff is competent enough to stay at your community, that doesn’t mean you’re maximizing your community’s revenue potential.
All too often, we see sales counselors, sales and marketing directors, and community outreach team members who are stunting their communities’ revenue growth. Their lack of training causes them to…
- Mismanage leads and inquiry calls.
- Conduct ineffective on-site community tours.
- Bypass effective follow-up techniques.
- Neglect important community events.
- Offer unnecessary discounts to drive sales.
More than likely, you’ll have little time to pinpoint these mistakes and provide effective training if you handle marketing and sales operations without outside help. In the end, you can shortchange your community of increased ROI.
5. It’s Difficult to Integrate Sales, Marketing, and PR
To maximize the effect of your senior living sales, marketing, and public relations, you should integrate all three together. The reason is simple: your community needs a clear and cohesive message.
The last thing you want is for your email campaign to communicate one thing, but your sales team to tell prospects another.
However, effective integration takes both time and expertise—a combination your team may be short on.
From haphazard strategies to turnover risks, the 5 challenges we’ve listed in this article face any new senior living development.
However, you can minimize these issues and create a smooth path to opening your community when you leverage the expertise of senior housing experts for your senior living sales, marketing, and PR.
Bild & Company’s Blue Sky services empower you to focus your attention on the other aspects of your new development while we ensure you have comprehensive support for your sales, public relations, and marketing.
Contact Bild & Company for more information, or click here to see what we provide in our Blue Sky package.
