Marketing automation and sales automation seem to be popular industry buzzwords these days; and rightfully so. The technology that's available these days can use automation techniques to make your job easier; whether you're in sales or marketing. For senior living communities the sales directors time is often extremely limited. Between following up with prospects, booking community tours, reporting on occupancy numbers, and assisting residents in the move-in process there's little time as it is. Using sales automation for senior living you have the opportunity to make senior living sales process much more effective. Here's a few of the top benefits you can expect:
1) Instantly Following Up with Prospects
According to study from Harvard business Review "leads that were contacted within and hour were 7 times more likely to qualify the lead as those that tried just 1 hour later. And 60X more likely than companies that waited 24h or longer."
This stat alone should show you how powerful fast response times are when following up with prospects. My implementing sales automation tools you can instantly send an email to the prospect from your sales director letting them know you received their form submission and guide them on the next steps. In addition to notifying the prospect that you're on top of their request you can also send an instant email or text to your sales director letting them know that a prospect just submitted a form and needs to be followed up with.
2) Qualifying Prospects
A huge part of sales director's time in the senior living industry is qualifying the prospects that contact your community. Whether it's qualifying them financially, on their move-in timeline, or based on the type of care they need, there's certain questions that you need to ask prospects before you know if they're a good fit for your community. Sales enablement services and marketing automation can help with this. Instead of your sales directors asking the same scripted questions on every follow up call what if they could collect this information online straight from the prospect themselves? And then only be alerted of qualified prospect when they fit certain criteria? This would save your sales directors a huge amount of time right!?
Well with lead scoring, lead nurturing and customized form fields you can accomplish all of this. By asking the prospect certain qualifying questions throughout their online research phase you can gather this information and setup alerts when a prospect fits certain criteria. No longer will your sales directors have to chase down every non-qualified lead that crosses their desk. By setting up lead scores and alerts for qualified prospects your sales staff can focus more time on actual revenue-driving activity; such as hosting community tours and only talking with qualified prospects.
"22 percent of salespeople identified lead qualification as the most difficult part of their jobs." - Hubspot Study
3) Actually Booking Community Tours
Typically after qualifying a prospect over the phone the next step is to get them in for a community tour. The process of booking the tour is often not as simple as it sounds and can take up a significant amount of your sales staff's time and energy. Certain senior living CRM tools, like the "meetings" link featured in Hubspot, can be used to book community tours around your sales director's schedule. With the meeting link tool your sales director can input their available time slot over the coming month and simply send the prospect a link to book a time that works with their schedule. By setting up the meetings link in an automated email sequence your prospects can go from initial contact, to qualifying event, to booked tour, without necessarily even needing to speak directly with your sales director.
This capability may not be so important to smaller communities with only a couple communities and a low lead volume, but once you have multiple communities with hundreds or thousands of units this capability can make your sales process massively more efficient.
These are just a few ways that inbound sales tactics, CRM implementation, and senior living sales enablement services can positively impact the roles of your sales directors. Technology tools are there to make peoples lives easier and more efficient. Utilizing these tools will put your community and your sales staff far ahead of the competition. To learn more about setting up a CRM for senior living click the button below. Or schedule a consultation with our staff to discuss which solutions would best fit your community's needs.
