By Steve Moran
Senior living prospects are afraid of becoming prisoners in their own home, making senior living much less appealing.
So what: It simply makes senior living less attractive. The truth of the matter is that government regulations created a prison-like environment for senior living residents. While residents were amazingly resilient, in fact they looked around and saw their age peers outside senior living living a much freer life at a lower cost.
Unpacking: While this is another sales barrier to overcome, it also has the advantage of forcing the senior living industry to get better at sales. My friend Russell Rush, creator of the R3R1 sales system, says that while senior living sales people are pretty good at relating to prospects and resolving questions (the first and third R’s), they are really terrible at the middle R, reasoning.
Reasoning is another word for convincing.
The salesperson’s primary job and biggest opportunity is to convince a prospect that their life will be better if they live in a senior living community than if they stay at home. The first challenge is this:
- Do you believe it is true?
- Do your sales and leadership teams believe it is true?
If you believe it is true then all you need to do is figure out how to tell the story of how and why your prospects will be better off in senior living than at home. Even if another pandemic hits … which seems unlikely.
This article was inspired by a conversation with Camille Burke when she recounted a recent conversation she had with her parents.
