Give Your Retirement or Assisted Living Community the Competitive Edge

With today’s seniors finding it difficult to sell their homes at a profit—or at all—many have postponed the decision to move into a retirement or assisted living community. Yet there hasn’t been a corresponding reduction in retirement living options. When supply outpaces demand, prospective residents and their families can be choosier.

Anemic housing market fuels competition

With so much competition, every retirement and assisted living community must have energetic, enthusiastic, highly skilled, and well trained “sales” staff who can communicate carefully crafted messages about their facilities. They must also leave no stone unturned when prospecting, presenting, handling objections, and closing.

Chances are, you’ve spent considerable time implementing policies and procedures for hiring and training staff to do all of this and more. But once you’ve done your job, how can you be sure that your sales team is doing their job? Even with periodic or regular mystery shopping, you may not be aware of a serious sales or marketing problem until months go by and your sales staff miss their numbers. By that time you may have already have lost a significant number of prospects to your competition.

Taking the Mystery Out of Medical Mystery Shopping

Since my firm first started marketing its “mystery shopping” service 22 years ago — first to long-term care facilities and retirement communities and then to hospitals and clinics across the country — we’ve discovered that it often inspires one of two strong reactions: immediate interest or on-the-spot suspicion.

Whether you love or hate the concept, mystery shopping has grown in popularity, and it’s important to understand what it can (and can’t) do for your organization. For example, it’s not a quick-fix way to identify an organization’s sales or customer service woes. Nor is it, as some employees fear, a cleverly covert way for managers to achieve their hidden agenda.