Articles

Fair Sale

By: Angela Hickman Brady

When it comes to full disclosure and consumer protection, it’s critical all assisted living
marketers go the extra mile to ensure customer care, and practice what they preach. How can assisted living providers meet the spirit of the Senate Special committee on Aging’s concerns about these consumer issues while staying ahead of the competition in today’s tightening market?

Mystery Shopping As A Training Tool

by: William Nowell

The assisted-living industry can look to other industries to gain insight and ideas about
best business practices. One of the best practices involving training and motivation
employees is mystery shopping. Progressive companies have made commitment to
improve sales and customer-service skills at their facilities through effective use of
mystery shopping. Highly trained and motivated employees are essential to meeting and exceeding resident and family member needs. Mystery-shopping programs that foster ongoing training opportunities, real customer feedback and, ultimately, improve sales and service performance are a standard in most customer service-focused industries.

Mystery Shopping: Improving Your Customer Service

By: William J. Nowell

If used as part of a total management information system, a mystery shopping service can be instrumental in helping a company set and maintain excellent standards in customer service, sales presentation and follow up, employee morale, training effectiveness and competitor information. Obviously achieving excellence in these areas will add up to a more successful community, more money on the bottom line and more importantly, happier customers.

Perfecting Sales Skills is Key to Attracting
and Converting Baby Boomer Prospects Into Residents

By: William J. Nowell and Jennifer L. Jones
Published in Long Term Care News, October 2003

According to demographics, today’s 50- plus adults are more fit, better educated and more financially secure than previous generations of mature men and women. If anything is true about this large group -- 77 million Baby Boomers are approaching retirement -- of potential customers, it is that they are intelligent, savvy and diverse. They will expect to continue living the life they have earned and to which they have become accustomed.

Achieving Sales Success: Key Ratios and Best

Practices in Assisted Living Properties

by: William Nowell and Jeff Rexhausen, ServiceTRAC, LLC
***This is a digest of an article in the 2001 Seniors Housing and Care
Journal sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the National Investment
Conference.

The importance of sales performance is particularly acute today. Every assisted

living  firm needs to know its sales track record and where to make changes to

improve its sales operations and consequent financial performance. What are

the best companies doing to succeed and even excel in sales performance?

This article examines the sales and marketing efforts of a number of firms in order to identify  those “best practices” that are yielding exceptional results. Two factors that make a difference in sales success are the skills of a company’s sales people and

the systematic use of accurate and effective information systems. This has been a

standard but untested assumption within the senior living industry. This article

focuses on those two issues: the company’s information systems and the sales

skills of the individuals charged with  demonstrating effective sales  practices.

Measuring Quality: The Critical Role of Satisfaction

Research Exceeding Resident and Employee Expectations

By: William J. Nowell

Do you know what your customers and staff really think? Are you exceeding—

let alone meeting—your customers’ expectations? How does your community’s satisfaction ratings compare to the industry? There is no doubt satisfaction

research, when acted upon, creates positive results all around, but what about the costs? In these times, many see satisfaction research as an expensive tool, albeit valuable, and say they cannot justify the
costs with budget constraints.

Achieving Sales Success: Using Industry Research

to Identify Benchmarks and Best Practices

By: William Nowell & Jeff Rexhausen

In an era of financial and operational stress, the importance of sales performance is particularly acute. Every company and every firm in the industry needs to know its sales track record and know where it needs to make changes in order to improve its sales operations and the consequent financial performance. Due to our company's extensive experience in evaluating and training marketing and sales people in the senior living industry, last year several leaders in industry associations asked us to investigate what the best companies are doing to succeed and even excel in sales
performance. The challenge was to identify senior living industry best practices by sales

and marketing staffs that are yielding exceptional results.

Tips For Handling Internet Leads: Converting Your

Marketing Structure To Today's Internet Based Economy

By: William Nowell

Today the internet is playing a greater role than ever before in the marketing of Senior Housing. According to research, Internet shopping is now more popular than thumbing through the yellow pages. There are a variety of different web sites whose sole purpose is to attract those shopping for Senior Housing options. With the purpose of distributing the leads to Senior Housing communities, every Senior Housing company has its own website to educate the public about the company and invite them to inquire about their company. What separates your company’s website from your competitors? The bottom line is that leads from the internet are here to stay. The challenges of developing rapport

with a lead generated from the Internet are much more difficult than that phone call lead.

Contact us today to find out more1.800.951.6606