Sales enablement is the process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools that help sales people sell more effectively. The foundation of sales enablement is to provide sales people with what they need to successfully engage the buyer throughout the buying process. The above graph shows the interest in the term "sales enablement" over time - as you can see it's really on the rise the past 1-2 years. By helping to automate components of senior living sales and utilize sales enablement methods you can make your organization much more efficient and effective.
Lead Nurturing in The Senior Living Sales Cycle
The sales cycle in senior living is typically longer than your usual product or service. When you consider all the factors, both emotional and financial, that are involved it makes sense. Buyers, whether the senior themselves or the adult child of a senior, will want to do a lot of homework before into a senior living community. Part of the inbound sales and inbound marketing process is nurture prospects over time, so that when they are finally ready to buy your company is at the top of mind.
Since the buying cycle can be months or even years in the senior living industry it's important to keep in touch over time and send your prospects information that they find helpful. By doing this you stand out as a company that is trying to educate and help the prospect rather than just sell to them all the time. Inbound sales content is great to send to prospects throughout the lead nurturing process. At NextWave we've been perfecting the timeline and content that gets sent to the prospects at our senior living clients. Schedule a 15 minutes consultation and we can review some of the ways that we help your community to keep in touch with prospects over time and ultimately get them in for a community tour when they are ready.
"Companies that invest in marketing automation solutions see 70% faster sales cycle times, and 54% improvement in quota achievement."
(Bulldog Solutions)
Reduce Response Time with Automation Tools
Using technology to automate components of the sales process can be hugely effective. Imagine if somebody submitted a form on your website and your sales staff was away from their computer giving a community tour. Hours go by and this prospect also submits a lead form on a site like A Place for Mom. Because A Place for Mom was able to collect the lead information and register the lead they are now entitled to your prospects move-in fee should that prospect move-in to your community. Now imagine if the form was submitted and instantly your sales director received and automated email or even a text that they received a new lead and to follow up immediately. While they're reading about this new lead an automated email, sent from this sales director's email, was sent to the prospect letting them know they received their request and offers a link to a calendar where they can book a tour.
*Email and Sales automation tools will put you in the top 4% of response times. Talk about starting off the relationship on the right foot!
So now with these marketing automation tools in place, the prospect will know that your community received their form submission, they will have received a personalized email from your sales director, and they may have even taken the next step and booked a tour of your community. And all this can happen instantly without any additional effort from your sales staff. Now the lead can be claimed as completely your own, and it greatly decreases the chance that the prospect has continued looking online and contacted a competitor or third party referral service.
"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 24hr or longer."
-Harvard Business Review
This is just one example of a senior living sales automation scenario. When you use a tool that also connects a senior living CRM you can log these automated emails, see how the prospect arrived at your website, and have automatically created a new contact in your CRM to keep track of your follow up. Things that would have taken hours of manual data entry in years past can now be done automatically in the background while your sales staff is busy with other responsibilities.
*All serious sales organizations will have a CMR and/or a sales and marketing integrated CRM within the next few years. Make sure you stay on the curve and take a advantage of the different CRM options for senior living.
Learn More about Sales Enablement for Senior Living
Sales enablement services are changing the way that sales organizations work. Sales content, sales automation tools, and fully integrated senior living CRM, are all tools that forward thinking senior living communities are starting to adopt. Imagine trying to compete with consistent, automated technology if your competitors are using these tools and you are not? Schedule a free 15 minute consultation with our staff and we'll give you free recommendations on how to get started and setup with these tools for free.
