How many prospects does your retirement community have right now? Today. Can you find all their information in one spot? Can you go get the total number now? (It’s okay; we’ll wait.)
If you can get that number, here’s a subsequent, related question: do you know their names, email address and phone number (at minimum)? Do you know where they are in their journey to becoming a resident with you? That is, have they just become aware you exist? Or have they visited your community for a tour? Or did they download a free report you provided them and you know they did so six months ago and yet they still haven’t made an appointment for a tour? Do you know if/when you actually invited them for a tour?
Chances are you don’t have that type of detailed information at your fingertips. And that’s why you need a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. ASAP!
Your CRM: Engaging with Your Prospects
At its core, a CRM allows you to manage the leads you have who haven’t yet become a resident of your community as well as people who already are residents of your community. What’s more, a great CRM lets you do more than just manage these contacts (such as looking them all up in an instant just to count how many you have). Instead, it lets you actively engage with the individuals listed in your software. Engaging with your leads definitely is something you want to do because doing so actually helps them become one of your residents.
Here’s how and why:
People looking to uproot their entire lives (or that of their parents’) are in the process of making a huge decision. It’s an important decision and they are going to think about it and read and research all the pros and cons of it for at least a few months.
Your job is to provide them with the information they are looking for as they research their options: should they even move to a retirement community? What are the reasons why moving would be a good idea for them (or not)? What does it cost? How can they afford it? What if they need assistance with daily living? What about special health needs? And so on.
So you’ll be writing blog posts that answer these questions/concerns. You’ll offer free eBooks in exchange for an email address so that you can send prospects links to more blog posts/eBooks that answer these questions. You’ll invite them for a tour. You’ll tell them about the free Silver Sneakers classes in your community room that’s open to the public, and so on.
Engage, Track, AND Reach Out
All that engaging you’re doing is great. Really! It helps position your retirement/assisted living community as being exceeding knowledgeable and on the ball. Providing prospects/leads with the answers to their questions and concerns shows them you care about their welfare.
But all that great information you’re sending them may not be enough. They need an actual human touch – as in having one of your community’s representative reach out in real life.
And that’s where your CRM really shows its muscle: you’ll be able to track and monitor how well your team members are doing with their in-person/IRL follow-up with your leads.
In a nutshell: using a CRM in your retirement community marketing and sales means that leads no longer will fall through the cracks!
What’s more, it improves your lead nurturing and sales process because your sales team members will know exactly where each lead is in their journey with you.
Imagine it: no more embarrassing emails or phone calls mentioning that you sent Mrs. Stesen an email inviting her to a healthy living “lunch and learn” when you actually didn’t. Or, if someone calls and wants to make an appointment for a tour, your sales folks will know that she took a tour three months ago and brought her adult son with her. If someone calls asking for more information, anyone who answers the phone will know exactly what information should be placed in a new record within the CRM.
Most importantly: your retirement community’s CRM lets all of your marketing/sales staff not only follow up appropriately with a lead depending on where she is in her buyer’s journey, it also helps ensure they understand the circumstances in which the individual has engaged with your community over time.
Our CRM of Choice; Yours as Well?
Here at ClearPivot, we use the HubSpot CRM because we find it to be extremely intuitive and easy to learn. It also integrates well into other software, as well as your website’s platform and analytics tools.
However, not everyone wants to – or can – set up and use HubSpot’s CRM to its best capacity. You can ask the folks at HubSpot to help you (for a fee). You also can tap into our digital marketing expertise to not only set up a CRM for your retirement/assisted living community but also show you specific strategies to put it to best use. In fact, we can even create a full marketing strategy for your community, one that attracts prospects to you and helps them see that your community should become their community. Drop us a line/call us to learn more about how we can help your community find – and close – highly targeted potential residents!
