As senior living prospects become more digitally oriented, they are more educated than ever about life plan communities and their benefits, but sales teams aren’t seeing increased move-ins or shorter sales cycles, according to a panel of experts speaking Thursday.
A Love & Co. webinar on Thursday looked at why today’s digital-first customers are not more likely to move into a senior living community, and what sales and marketing professionals can do to move the needle.
Over the past 15 to 20 years, senior living sales were simple — new leads led to events, personal appointments, deposits and move-ins, the panelists said. Today, the customer journey is complicated and starts with older adults conducting online research, maybe attending an event and then disappearing for a year or two. All the while, they still are “awash in information” from community blogs and newsletters,” according to Nate O’Keefe, founder and CEO of senior living survey developer Roobrik.
So why doesn’t that lead to a higher closing rate? Love & Co. President and CEO Rob Love said data show that although average monthly inquiries have increased, move-in conversions, inquiry to tour conversions and tour to move-in conversions all have declined. The average sales cycle length for a life plan community today is 782 days, he added.
The mere accumulation of information can be counterproductive to the sales process, according to Joan Kelly-Kincade, a Love & Co. strategic sales adviser. Most prospects are obtaining information about communities on their personal devices.
“That means they can get information at their fingertips whenever they please,” Kelly-Kincade said. “It creates more stress, more noise, more condensed information at a cadence that is crazy for some folks. They don’t necessarily understand more; they just think they know more.”
The flurry of data creates a “backward” experience for today’s senior living consumers, she said. Prospects don’t start out excited about their journey and about making the decision to move into senior living. Rather, Kelly-KIncade said, they are starting by gathering facts, which leads to being overwhelmed and not connecting with sales teams in the same way.
“They are not excited — they lack context and a sense of direction,” she said. “It becomes how we can shift back into the customer journey we know creates an emotional experience.”
O’Keefe called it “paralysis by analysis — information overload leading to inaction.”
The senior living exploration process is a complicated one, with consumers accessing a “firehose of information” without establishing their motivation behind a move, he said. Previous research showed that the vast majority of senior living prospects find the decision to move into a community tough, and they lack confidence about financing, timing, and impact on loved ones, O’Keefe said.
In response, he added, senior living sales and marketing teams need to provide decision support through education and making an emotional connection to create a trusted partnership to inform decision making.
It’s imperative to simplify the “paradox of choice” and have that level of understanding and empathy around the decisions those prospective residents and their families are making when they visit a community, said Hoyle Koontz, a partner with senior living sales platform YourTour by The Vectre.
What moves the process forward, O’Keefe said, is not more glossy pictures or marketing language, but an online experience that builds trust and validates a prospective resident’s uncertainty about the process. Pricing transparency also is important in the decision-making process.
Although a community’s objective may be full occupancy, how it reaches that goal should be through connecting with people.
“We’re already working with people that have a lot of facts, especially digitally informed people,” Kelly-Kincade said, adding that it’s a big shift for sales staff. ”We’re doing this with someone who was a stranger a week ago. We’re asking to partner with them in one of the most critical decisions they are ever going to make. We have to earn the right to do that.”
Sales staff must stop being transactional out of the gate, she said, and start connecting with potential residents by using emotional intelligence to understand what matters to them.
Koontz said that sales teams need to use all of the tools in their toolbox, and they need to become just as tech-savvy as their prospects. Rather than selling features, benefits and lifestyle, focus on showcasing the vision of what’s to come, he advised.
