Sales Turnover: The Hidden Financial Drain on Senior Living Operators

Sales turnover is one of the most pressing senior living challenges facing operators today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the turnover rate in senior living can reach as high as 50%, a number that far surpasses most other service industries. Sales teams in senior living are especially affected, with the average sales director lasting just 10 months before leaving. This high senior living turnover wreaks havoc on financial performance, disrupts sales pipelines, and adds unnecessary strain to operations.

In this blog, we’ll explore the root causes of this sales turnover crisis, its financial toll, and how senior living operators can mitigate these costs by embracing innovative solutions like BILDX Sales Technology.

Why is Sales Turnover So High in Senior Living?

The reasons for such a high sales turnover rate in senior living are multi-faceted:

1. Challenging Work Environment: Senior living sales roles are emotionally and physically demanding. According to Workstream and Senior Living Foresight, salespeople are tasked with meeting high occupancy and revenue targets while managing the needs of prospective residents and their families. Many new hires are unprepared for the emotional labor involved, which contributes to early burnout.
2. Low Pay and Lack of Career Growth: Despite the critical role they play in keeping communities full and profitable, many sales professionals feel underpaid. Compensation often doesn’t match the pressure and responsibility of the role, leading to dissatisfaction. Additionally, limited opportunities for career growth make it difficult to retain talented individuals, further fueling sales turnover.
3. Burnout and Stress: With sales professionals constantly working to fill vacancies, they often deal with unrealistic expectations and inadequate resources. Juggling lead management, community tours, outreach, and follow-up without adequate support takes a toll, leading many to exit the industry within months.

The Financial Impact of Sales Turnover in Senior Living:

Sales turnover has both direct and indirect financial costs that can erode profitability and destabilize operations. Let’s break it down for a senior living operator with 15 communities:

Direct Costs: Recruitment and Onboarding:

• Recruitment: With senior living turnover rates at 50%, operators need to replace half of their sales team annually. The cost of recruiting a single new hire averages $3,500-$5,000 (including job postings, recruiter fees, background checks, and other hiring expenses).
  For 15 communities, the cost to replace even half of your sales staff could exceed $100,000 annually.
• Training and Onboarding: New hires require extensive training, often costing between $2,000-$5,000 per employee. With high turnover, these costs accumulate quickly as operators must repeatedly train new hires, contributing to the overall financial strain.

Indirect Costs: Disruption to Sales and Operations:

• Lost Productivity: Sales professionals take time to ramp up. During this period, your sales pipeline weakens, lead follow-up suffers, and conversion rates drop. This can easily lead to $200,000 or more in lost revenue annually for operators managing 15 communities.
• Broken Relationships: Sales teams build trust and rapport with prospective residents and families. When sales turnover occurs, those relationships are severed, leading to lower conversion rates, missed move-ins, and diminished occupancy.

Total Cost of Turnover for a 15-Community Operator:

Between recruitment, training, and lost productivity, the total annual cost of sales turnover for an operator with 15 communities can exceed $300,000. This figure doesn’t even account for the intangible costs, such as reduced employee morale and damage to your community’s reputation among prospects.

The Ripple Effect on Sales Pipelines

Beyond the immediate financial impact, sales turnover causes massive disruption to the sales pipeline:

• Lead Management: New hires must take time to familiarize themselves with existing leads. During this transition, potential residents may be neglected, causing interest to wane.
• Inconsistent Follow-Up: Sales professionals ideally should follow up within 24 hours, but high senior living turnover rates lead to inconsistent communication, frustrating prospects and damaging your community’s reputation.
• Lower Conversion Rates: Fewer tours, missed follow-ups, and weakened trust with prospects ultimately result in fewer move-ins, hurting occupancy and revenue.

The Solution: Stabilizing Sales with BILDX

While the senior living challenges of turnover are significant, operators have the power to reverse these trends by implementing solutions like BILDX, which combines the reliability of human expertise with the efficiency of technology to stabilize sales teams and ensure consistent results.

How BILDX Works:

• Consistent Lead Engagement: BILDX handles lead capture, follow-up, and nurturing 7 days a week, even during nights and weekends. This ensures that no lead falls through the cracks and every prospect gets the attention they need when they need it.
• Relieving the Sales Burden: BILDX allows your full-time salespeople to focus on high-impact tasks like community tours and relationship-building, while the tech-enabled system takes care of administrative tasks and lead follow-up.
• Improved Conversion Rates: By delivering a superior buyer experience and eliminating gaps in the sales process, BILDX helps boost lead-to-tour and tour-to-move-in conversion rates.

Example: Senior Living Operator Cost Savings with BILDX

By reducing sales turnover and stabilizing your pipeline, BILDX can deliver significant cost savings. Consider this: Instead of hiring and losing sales professionals every few months, you implement BILDX alongside one full-time salesperson per community.

• Recruitment Costs Cut by 50%: With lower turnover, recruitment expenses drop significantly.
• Increased Revenue: With more consistent lead follow-up and better conversion rates, your communities can see a marked increase in occupancy, leading to higher NOI.
• Projected Savings: For a 15-community operator, the combination of reduced turnover and better lead conversion can result in up to $150,000 in savings annually.

Conclusion: Now is the Time to Pivot

Sales turnover is draining your resources, destabilizing your operations, and costing you far more than you realize. The solution isn’t just hiring more people—it’s about rethinking your sales infrastructure. BILDX offers a proven, tech-enabled solution to stabilize your sales team, improve your buyer experience, and save you hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

Take action now and schedule a call to see how BILDX can transform your sales department and eliminate the financial strain of sales turnover. Call 1-800-640-088 and ask for Jennifer Saxman or Ben Rizzo or email Revenue@BildandCo.com for a complimentary sample of up to five mystery shops to gauge your buyer experience and to understand how to drastically improve it within 10 business days!

FAQ

Q: What causes such high sales turnover in senior living?
A: High sales turnover is driven by the emotional demands of the job, burnout, low pay, and limited career growth opportunities, causing many sales professionals to leave within a year.

Q: How can BILDX help reduce turnover and improve sales performance?
A: BILDX provides consistent, tech-enabled support that stabilizes your sales process, reduces administrative burden, and ensures consistent lead follow-up, all while improving conversion rates.

Q: How does high sales turnover impact the resident experience in senior living?
A: High sales turnover negatively impacts the resident experience by disrupting the relationships built during the sales process. Prospective residents and their families expect continuity and trust from their first interaction to move-in day. Constant turnover leads to broken relationships, inconsistent follow-up, and lost trust, which can delay or prevent conversions from leads to residents.

Q: What steps can operators take to reduce sales turnover?
A: Operators can reduce sales turnover by improving compensation packages, offering career growth opportunities, providing adequate training and support, and implementing technology solutions like BILDX to alleviate the administrative burden on sales professionals. A balanced workload, clear paths for advancement, and tech-enabled support systems are critical to retaining talented sales staff.

About Bild & Co
Bild & Co is a leading strategic consulting firm specializing in senior living sales, marketing, and operational performance. For over two decades, Bild & Co has partnered with senior living operators to help drive occupancy, grow revenue, and create sustainable sales turnover and marketing systems. Through innovative solutions like BILDX, we empower operators to stabilize their sales departments, optimize lead conversion, and improve the overall resident experience. Our mission is to help senior living communities achieve long-term success by combining cutting-edge technology with human expertise.
For more information, visit Bild & Co.