Anyone that views the senior living industry as stodgy or fearful of technology hasn’t spent much time in a senior community recently. Because the reality is much different, particularly coming out of a pandemic that taught communities and their staff many vital lessons, with the importance of using the right tools being toward the top of the list.
But old habits die hard, so it can be challenging to convince your people that the right technologies can benefit the community, your people, and, most importantly, your residents and prospects. Thankfully, just a couple of simple tips can help motivate your teams to adopt the new technologies that will drive NOI and occupancy for your community.
The whole point to your senior living sales and marketing message is to differentiate yourself from the competition and convey what makes your community the right choice for any given prospect. In other words, you’re trying to connect with your audience, build strong relationships, and use those relationships to increase move-ins.
Of course, you can rely on old stalwarts like emails and phone calls to form those connections but, with higher expectations from prospects and their families, old ways don’t necessarily cut it anymore. Simply put, technology is front-and-center in your audience’s life, so failing to leverage it can almost feel like you’re speaking a different language to them.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a prospect fielding messages from a number of different communities. To use our OneDay platform as an example, would you gravitate more toward a community sending you personalized video messages rather than a typical email or quick chat on the phone? Most prospects would answer with an emphatic yes.
That’s just an example of how technology can help your team form powerful, lasting connections with your prospects. And the same holds for your current residents where, again using OneDay as an example, personalized Resident Stories can keep families connected when in-person visits aren’t possible. My point is, technology can redefine how your team communicates with both prospective and current residents, and that’s a feather in everyone’s cap.
Speaking of communicating with your audience, technology can also make everyone on your team faster and more effective at converting leads into sales. To use another example, an advanced and comprehensive CRM is yet another tool that can dramatically improve nearly every facet of your sales and marketing operations.
Many communities are either still using an old workhorse of a CRM or no customer relationship management software of any sort. This is an area where upgrading to a more potent solution will let you automate many of the tedious but essential functions within your operations without sacrificing personality or spirit.
Let's say, for instance, a lead comes through your website on a Friday night. If you don't have a capable CRM – or none at all – that lead is most likely waiting till Monday morning to hear back from your community. Or at best, they’re receiving some sort of canned email response that's impersonal and ineffective.
Now let's combine an advanced CRM with a tool like OneDay, where that lead can automatically trigger a video introduction that shines a bright light on your passion for what you do and everything that makes your community special. That's a real difference-maker for your team, helping them meet their goals and drive occupancy.
In summary, technology can make your team members better at their jobs, freeing them from the time-consuming and arduous tasks that have previously taken up entire days. And there is no better way to motivate your people to embrace technology than to show them what it's capable of accomplishing for themselves, the community, and the residents you take such great pride in caring for.
Here OneDay, we relish being part of that equation, and want nothing more than to see our video solution help your community thrive.