Senior Living Sales and Marketing Podcast

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing Podcast:

Hello, and welcome to the Senior Living Sales and Marketing podcast. I'm Roy. I just wanted to drop by for a minute and tell, let the listeners know, I'm going to be taking a hiatus from the show. I am going to leave it up. That way, if there's any episodes that you'd like or would like to share, they will be there. The last year or so, I haven't really been working in the senior living space that much. I've got a sister podcast, the Business Of Business podcast, which is thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com, or tbobp.com. It just allows me a lot more latitude to do other topics besides sales and marketing. I'm interested in employee retention systems and procedures, content, leadership, and leadership development. This just gives me a... It gives me a lot more room to talk about a lot of different subjects and reach a more wider audience of general businesses and professionals.

               I'd like to invite you to, check us out at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We are on all the major platforms, Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, Pandora. Please, go over, download it, check it out, and share with your friends. We're trying to build an audience over there. I really haven't done much of a promotion with it. We're going to start promoting it a little bit more and driving some traffic over there. Would love to have you come over. Like I said, I'm going to leave these episodes up for a while. I don't see any reason to take them down right this minute, but we'll see.

               Also, be on the lookout. We are starting another more age-related project. It's called Ageucational it's A-G-E-U-C-A-T-I-O-N-A-L, and it's ageucational.com. The website was recently went through an update and messed it up, but we are in the process of getting it rebuilt. We'll be launching a podcast hopefully shortly after the first of the year, maybe second, third, week of January. So be listening for that. That there's going to be wide range. That is myself and my partner, Terry, will be hosting that. We both are fortunate enough to have living parents that are getting up in age. And so, there's just a lot that goes on. Terry's actually part of the sandwich generation. She still as a younger adult daughter, but still there's things going on, on both ends.

               What we want to do is really talk about this aging. I know I've worked in the senior living space for probably the last 20 years, worked with a lot of operators, a lot of different communities, so seen a lot. And then, of course, just the trials that we go through every day with our parents, that it's not necessarily that they that they cause any trouble. They're all good and in good health, but just things like medication, driving, of course, COVID, all of these things. We know that there are a lot of other individuals out there that are touched by this.

               Terry's actually been through the process of finding senior living for her parents. We'll be able to talk about that. Her dad unfortunately has passed away a few years ago and went through... He had Alzheimer's. She, and her sisters, and mom went through that. I feel like we actually have a lot to talk about. We'll be doing some interviews, of course, with other professionals in the industry. And then, we'll just be having some shows of just us talking back and forth about some things that we may have gone through in the last week or so recently.

               So anyway, just be on the lookout for that. If you have show ideas for that, of course, you can reach out to me at Roy@ageucational, A-G-E-U-C-A-T-I-O-N-A-L, ageucational.com. Send me an email for show ideas, or if you're a professional in the industry would like to be on as a guest, we'd certainly love to entertain a show topic ideas. Again, thank you for the last few years of being faithful listeners. It's been a lot of fun doing this. I'm certainly excited about these other two projects and just feeling able to do a little bit more different topics to bring to more of a general audience. Again, thanks a lot. Until next time, this is Roy, please take care of each other.

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

www.tbobp.com

www.ageucational.com

 

Lead Generation with Roy Harmon

Roy Harmon is an experienced marketer with a demonstrated history of generating leads in the legal, political, automotive, higher education, software, and healthcare industries. His efforts have mobilized voters, enticed customers, and persuaded donors.

Advertoscope isn’t your typical lead generation company. Most of the time, business owners searching for lead generation services end up fighting for leads generated by third parties.

Those leads are sold to multiple competing businesses, and anyone buying them has to hope that:

1. the lead is qualified
2. their sales rep gets to the lead first
3. their sales rep closes the lead before the competition bombards them with other offers

You won’t have that problem with Advertoscope. We help businesses generate their own leads.

We’ll work with you to generate a detailed customer profile so you know the leads you receive are highly qualified and ready to close.

For more information, shoot Roy Harmon an email at [email protected].

www.advertoscope.com

www.seniorivingsalesandmarketing.com

Full Transcript Below 

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (00:03):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy. Yeah. This is the show where, you know, we try to focus our efforts on the senior living industry and specifically the sales and marketing. Uh, some things that we are seeing are things that may be able to help your community actually increase your occupancy or do it, uh, at a more reasonable rate, try to, you know, find cost-effective ma uh, lead generation devices. And so, uh, which brings us to our guests today, Roy Harmon, we're going to talk about lead generation and he's been in multiple industries. He's been in healthcare. Uh, he's been in the, uh, SAS law, politics, automotive and higher education as well. So, um, Roy, without further ado, we'll just bring you on and we'll get talking. How's your morning going

Roy Harmon (01:01):

One. Great. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (01:04):

Good, good. Yeah. Thanks for taking time out of your day. So yeah, lead generation, uh, you know, that's important an important part of, uh, the S uh, in senior living for sure, because, you know, when somebody moves out, hopefully we've got a waiting list, but as things go, sometimes the people at the top of the list aren't always ready to go. So we, you know, have to have an, uh, some way, not only to keep that wait list full, but also have, um, some method in place where we can constantly have leads coming in just to make it easier, you know, any, um, you know, a day with the, uh, with an empty room. We never recapture that revenue. So very important to, you know, cut that down as well. So first off, kind of, how did you get here? And I, I know that you've been in politics and I'm actually a lawyer as well. So kind of tell us a little bit about how you got here.

Roy Harmon (02:04):

Yeah, well, so I did, I graduated from law school, but I realized my mistake before I actually took the bar. So not actually not actually a lawyer, but, um, but I had the pay off the same student debt as the rest of them. So, um, yeah, I, uh, I started out in politics doing political marketing

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (02:27):

And

Roy Harmon (02:29):

Ma you know, a lot of grassroots stuff, mobilizing voters and things like that. And I really enjoyed that and I realized that that was easily applicable to anything else. So, you know, whether you're trying to get a donor to make a donation or a vote, or to show up for a, um, for a signed wave or to make a phone call any time that you're trying to get somebody to take action that's to the principals are going to be very similar. Right. And so I went from there to automotive and worked for an agency that did, um, did, did advertising for a tier three automotive dealerships. And from there just went to a number of different industries and, and found that I, my initial suspicion was correct. And these, these principles really do apply, uh, broadly across multiple industries. And, um, over that time, one of the areas where I found that it could really benefit from this kind of thinking is senior living, where a hundred percent occupancy is such a big, uh, important factor and the idea of having a full pipeline or having a, you know, having a waiting list, having these people who are familiar and ready to, to actually, uh, come on and become a, a resonant is something that's important because it's not a, it's not a short sales cycle on necessarily mean people are, there's a pretty big decision, right.

Roy Harmon (04:11):

And the longer the sales cycle, the longer the decision-making process, the more important it is to have these marketing efforts in place.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (04:22):

Yeah. Well, I'm just gonna needle you just a little bit about being, being out of politics before this cycle. That was probably a blessing in itself.

Roy Harmon (04:35):

I've, I've always, I've always done a pretty good job of, uh, of knowing when to move to the next area. And so I got out of that, I'd say just in time

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (04:46):

And that was it. Yeah. I was going, it doesn't matter what side you're on today. Uh, everybody pretty much took a beating. So yeah, no, I think the importance of what you're saying is, um, can't be stressed enough is that we've got to keep that pipeline full and, and I don't ever want to, um, I guess inbound and outbound are complimentary when we'd never say, Hey, we're not going to do, we're going to do inbound. We're not doing any outbound or we're not, we're going to do outbound, no inbounds whatsoever. I think there has to be a good combination because, you know, Indiana, we got to pick up the phone, we got to build relationships, talk to people, do things like that. But the, um, what I like about inbound is number one is I think the, um, it works for you 24 seven. So if an adult child, you know, we, uh, adult children are, you know, I'm blessed because my kids are older.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (05:46):

So I'm not that sandwich generation, but, you know, adult children, they got jobs. They're working all day. You know, they come home at night and maybe, you know, there's nobody at the community they're interested in at 10 o'clock at night when they're doing the research. So they're able to, you know, go on the internet, wherever websites, social media, to look around at the different places. But also, um, I think it's easily eat easily, uh, scalable too. So we can start out find something that works. We can ramp it up versus, uh, you know, having to add employees. So, um, let's just talk to those two points. First off, we can talk about it, you know, work in 24 hours for us working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Roy Harmon (06:35):

Yeah. Well, and the great thing about it is you can automate it so much of it can be automated as long as you're creating the content and creating the, putting the processes in place. Most of this can be automated and then it can serve your outbound efforts as well. So they, they, they tie together in a way that each one together is going to be better than it would be on its own. Um, but so, yeah, that's, that's a really great thing about it. And it doesn't even require necessarily the investment in some really expensive marketing automation platform. There's some fairly automated things you can do just with, within the Facebook ads platform or within Google displays ad platform. If you're, if you're creating content and you say, let's just say, you've got you, let's keep it simple and say, you've got two personas. Let's say, you've got, you want to find your people who are, um, who are actual the parents who would actually be moving in.

Roy Harmon (07:44):

And then you also have your people who are, uh, the, the caretakers, the, the children who are providing care for the apprentice. Uh, you know, you want to have different content for each person, right? And as they go through the, the buyers journey as HubSpot calls, that they're going to have different questions, different problems that they're dealing with. And, and you want to answer those questions with your content. Then on Facebook ads, you can set up your audiences and based on what content they've gone to, you can, you can know about where they're at in the process and tailor your messaging based on that.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (08:26):

Yeah, that, that's a good point if, uh, somebody's spending a lot of time on the care component or aspect, then, you know, that would be a good touch point to talk about, you know, the safety, the meals, whatever they're interested in, whatever their needs, but also, you know, if they're looking at the amenities activities, you know, if it's more of a independent, active community, then, uh, you know, we can target them with that because it's important, everybody. Um, I think it's a good distinction to make that everybody has their kind of their own unique need for wanting to make changes, not just in senior living, but in any company. I mean, excuse me, with any product it's like different motivations. So it's so important that, um, we be able to, I guess it makes us sound intelligent, but also it, uh, you know, we can, without having to grill people to ask a lot of questions, we can get right to the point to address whatever their needs are.

Roy Harmon (09:28):

You're providing more value to them. You're, uh, and you're also not hitting them with irrelevant information. Right. Um, and just one thing that, that you, you kind of touched on, uh, there briefly is that it really it's important when it comes to these buyer personas. You have to understand who you're marketing to. Uh, you know, I mean, if it's a memory care facility it's going to be, you know, the people who you're, you're looking at, it's going to be entirely different. You know, the, the amount of direct marketing you're going to do to, to a resident in that case may be very low, but maybe you're, uh, you know, there, but there's still going to be different factors that come into play, and you have to know who you're marketing to, uh, in order to do that effectively.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (10:19):

Yeah. And we've talked a lot about that, that it's, it's very good to sit down, especially at the beginning of a campaign or when you're retooling a little bit and give a lot of thought to, you know, who is our customer, what is the avatar, you know, back in the day, we, you say, create an avatar of that, that buyer persona. And the other thing another we've taught prior to this about, uh, sometimes that the person that we are sometimes the person that we may be, uh, need to message to may not be the buyer, you know, especially with kids, kids products, we, you know, we may get them hooked in the same thing with senior living. It's just like, you know, my mother, she is, um, you know, we're starting to talk about that, but she's going to be a very big part of that. So, you know, we need to reach her, communicate the message that she needs to hear, but then also, you know, as the adult children, me and my sister will be very heavily involved in that decision. And so, um, you know, we have to get our own messaging about the safety and things like, you know, she's worrying about playing cards and social activities and doing all that stuff where we're worrying about, you know, safety care

Roy Harmon (11:38):

And 10 that's where inbound marketing is, is really powerful because you have the opportunity, the opportunity to speak to people on that one to one level. Right. Whereas where, you know, when they actually show up for a tour, I mean, you know, you have things in place to try to kind of like maybe, uh, maybe you'd have an opportunity to do that a little bit, but it's never going to be as direct as when somebody is out there trying to find the answer to their problem. And you can be there anytime of the day and have the answer and have your name be associated with, um, with that moment where they, they found that information that either gave them comfort or, you know, settled their mind about something or, you know, whatever the case may be.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (12:27):

Right. Right. Yeah. So, um, you know, in handling these leads, that's another thing is, uh, when you set up these campaigns, you have to be ready. Cause sometimes we get surprised with the overwhelming response that we may have. And so if people are taking the time to respond in some manner, uh, us as the, the marketing sales and marketing team, we have to be able to respond to those in a timely manner because we never know really, if this is a needs driven or, you know, a lot of it is typically somewhat needs driven, but some of it more urgent than not. And so, you know, being sure that we can have a response to that. It's an important part of that equation as well, because we want to feel like, Hey, I've took the time to research this company. I've took the time to reach out.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (13:20):

And then, you know, for me personally, having somebody take a, a day or two, or I actually had one the other day where it's been like three or four months since I reached out to them and I got an email from the guy like, well, I've already bought it, moved on and maybe fixing to make another decision, but now, so right now we just have to be sure and take, you know, leads or leads or just like manna from heaven. And so when we get one, we have to be sure and take care of it and nourish it. And, um, which kind of gets us to the, uh, you know, we'll go with the aggregate aggregation, uh, model of, uh, plant, uh, you know, we so nourish or cultivate, and then we harvest. And so with any campaign, we may get lucky and get some bumps.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (14:08):

But I think that we need to take a long-term approach to this and realize that w we're not only looking for that low hanging fruit of today, but we're also trying to build that pipeline of, like you said, maybe, uh, maybe you don't really have, maybe you've begun to think about it for your parents or, uh, something happens like a thought in the back of your mind. So you're not ready today, but if, um, you know, kind of dripping on you and have these campaigns in six months from now, when things really change, I've been in front of you enough that you feel like you have some knowledge of my company, my community, our service. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, how we, the, you know, making sure that we not only have patients, but we think about the long game as well.

Roy Harmon (15:00):

Yeah. Really crucial element of it. Then the, the biggest value of the inbound. Well, well, I mean, there's so many, so many benefits, so, well, let's just say one of the big, one of the big benefits is that unlike with advertising or leads that you get from somebody else, some, you know, like maybe you buy a mailing list and you're only allowed, but they tell you, you can, you can send them, uh, you can send a mailer to this group one time or two times, or however much you pay for. But anytime you want to contact that mailing list, you have to pay again. Right. Um, if you have a remarketing list through, you know, Facebook or Google or any other platform, you can advertise it to that and remarketing lists, but you don't have any other access to it. So the great thing about inbound is that you bring these people in, you provide value, and you say, if you'd like further value, give me your email address and I'll, I'll send you this, uh, maybe it's a downloadable offer, or if there's the bottom of the funnel, or maybe it's having them come in for a tour or getting a phone call for more information, but then you have the ability now, depending on how much information you get, you can, at the very least you should be able to email them.

Roy Harmon (16:25):

You can potentially call them. You may have, uh, you may even have their mailing address and be able to send them as much mail as you want. And, and that's the lead nurturing process, you know, that's, once you, that you now have the ability to cost-effectively nurture those leads, instead of just hoping that the you're the one they remember when the time comes, you're actually proactively ensuring that that you're there, that you're top of mind, uh, when they're ready to make a decision.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (16:56):

Yeah. And our it's a, it's a high percentage play are higher percentage play as well because these, what you gather from your own inbound marketing through those, you know, lead gathering or what I would consider warm leads, because somebody has reached out to you versus that list that you've purchased. I mean, a lot of times we don't know where they are, you know, maybe, maybe that name was a good, uh, lead two years ago, but now you're, you know, they've already made a decision. And so you can spend a lot of time and effort, not really knowing the quality of what

Roy Harmon (17:33):

And third party data, for example. And I'm a big believer in third party data through programmatic advertising and things like that. But you have to look at the duration because some of those lists there, you know, can be, this person has been in market for this since six months ago. Yeah. And well, I mean, you know, that may be really effective for some, um, for some air, you know, industries, but if somebody is, for instance, really meaning to put their mother, for instance, in a memory care facility, they may not be able to wait around six months. And so you may be, you may be hitting a hit and a bunch of people who were like, Oh yeah, I actually already made a decision. And, uh, on another note, some of these companies where they'll, they'll give you leads or sell, you leads, there's some, a little bit of five people at one time, right?

Roy Harmon (18:35):

So first of all, you're not controlling the messaging from the start, right. Because they're coming in through somewhere somewhere else. And then you're fighting with, you know, three, four, five other people to get that business. And that's not to say you shouldn't, you, I I'm, I'm a, I'm a big believer in using everything that makes sense financially, if you're, if you get leads and they're, uh, you know, through some website and they're converting at a profitable rate, then I would say, continue to do that. Right. But you also want to keep an eye on, on your ROI and make sure that you're looking towards the future to have this pipeline in place that we've been talking about. Um, so that you're not fully reliant on, on somebody else on, you know, being able to out-compete these people, uh, when it comes to, you know, making these phone calls, which mean, you know, if you're buying leads like that, you need to be calling them back within five minutes. Um, so that's something to think about when you're, when you're making your decisions about how to allocate your marketing budget.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (19:47):

Yeah. It was kind of a funny story. We had a client, this has been a few years ago that they had actually got a lead. And as we were looking down through some of the names, it's like, they, it was a smaller market, so it wasn't a big city, but looking down through the names are like, Oh yeah, both of these people are Hardy residents here. So, you know, the it's not. And like you said, I think it needs to be a part. We just, if we can build this really good inbound marketing machine where we have control, uh, you know, I think our, I think we would see that the conversion rates are going to be much, much higher. Right.

Roy Harmon (20:23):

Well, and if you're paying somebody like the first month, if you're paying the first month rent or, you know, to somebody, um, you know, the, there may be a more profitable way to get those people in the door because that could be sometimes it's just a huge expense for those kind of weeds. Right, right.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (20:49):

Yeah. So what are, um, you know, there's so many different channels out there, but give us an example of, you know, maybe, uh, a strategy that somebody could put into play. Of course, content, I think it, it's gonna all pretty much start with good content. No matter if we're talking about our website, if we're talking about messaging on, uh, social media platforms, or even a snail mail, you know, whatever we choose to do, we really need to have good thoughtful content.

Roy Harmon (21:29):

Yeah. And so one thing that, um, that I think is pretty interesting way to go is direct mail retargeting. So based on what, where people go on your website, if they don't convert, you can send them a postcard. Right. Um, and if you are creating the content, like we've talked about where, you know, the kind of person who's going to be looking at it and where they're, if they're looking at a content X, they're probably at the top of the funnel, and they're probably this persona, so these, this is the kind of messaging we want to send them. And if you can do that for each stage of the funnel, and let's say you just divided in the three, uh, top, middle and bottom of funnel, you can not only be generating that, that SEO by answering people's questions, providing value in a way that will eventually rank, but you can also send traffic there through Facebook ads.

Roy Harmon (22:36):

Like we talked about earlier, creating those audiences, then you can add on the direct mail retargeting aspect to where not only did they see your Facebook ad and then look at your content that was relevant to them, but then they received a postcard with further information. And you can do that down the line throughout the funnel until you get to the point where maybe at the bottom of the funnel, you have some sort of an offer or something like that to get them to come in for a tour. And, um, you know, just really hit them, have a lot of touch points where your, your brand awareness is just topically, you know, really top of the charts at that point.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (23:24):

Yeah. And, you know, direct mail still works fairly well. I know, um, I was involved in the, uh, it's been a few years ago, but we had a smaller, uh, church congregation and, you know, we didn't do a lot of outreach, but one of our members was, you know, fussing one day. He's like, I get mail from this church up street, you know, all the times that I know more about what's going on in that church than I do, what's going on here. So, you know, uh, it's important to realize that everybody gets their, receives their information in so many different ways. There are people that love the mail. They wait by the door every day for the mailman to come. You know, some people are more email centric or a text or whatever. So, you know, we, we got to, I think we have to work to kind of, uh, spread that message out over a lot of different, um, channels, just to see what works best. I mean, you never know.

Roy Harmon (24:24):

Well, and something to note about direct mail re-targeting is it can be a lot more affordable. Uh, the company I use does, um, it's like 81 cents a postcard. Yeah. And they only charge you when a postcard is sent. So depending on your traffic, I mean, you may not be spending that much on it, but you're able to get that extra touch point for less than a dollar. Right. And, uh, you know, sort of be able to capitalize on the other things you've been doing.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (25:01):

Yeah. And our touch points too. You know, we kind of mentioned that earlier about the, um, you know, being sure that we cultivate our leads, that it can be, I've read anywhere between, you know, eight to 12 touches for a typical buying. And that's across a lot of industries. I know, but th unless it's somebody who is very, very needs driven, they have an immediate need today. You know, you need to expect to be able to touch people eight or 10 times at a minimum, which kind of leads us into not what, this is not what this conversation is really about, but I think that it amplifies the need, uh, for CRM. And I know that, um, there's a lot of pushback. People don't want to take the time, don't have the time, but I think it's just one of those tools that you have to live and die by when you, especially when you have these campaigns going, because you got to know, well, who's queued up for me to send something to what's my next touch point time. What was the last thing I said to them? Because if you are good about writing your conversations down, you may pick up other things that are good, uh, touchpoint items

Roy Harmon (26:20):

They're going to, yeah. You're going to have more ideas for things to content, to create. You're going to know more about, I mean, that the CRM, to me, that's a no brainer and a must have, because when they come in, you need to remember the things that they've said to you, you need to, they need to feel like, you know them and you need to have everything. Um, I think one thing that sort of turns people away from the CRM is that it can be difficult to, to implement, but, you know, you just, it's definitely worth it. Whether you have to find somebody who, who can set that up for you initially and let it pay dividends for forever, or whether you just sit down and say, I'm going to watch, HubSpot's free training on it and learn it.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (27:09):

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good point because I've tried four or five over time and, uh, some of them are beating, but, you know, hubs to me, I use HubSpot and it's very, user-friendly, you know, I can sit here while I'm having a conversation and type in notes. I think you bring up a good point too, that if, uh, I've talked to five people this week and they've all asked the same question, or, you know, the similar topic has come up with them, then that may be somewhere where we're short on our content, that we can create that piece of content that, uh, you know, may answer these questions. But, um, yeah, I think that don't want to overemphasize it, but I just feel like we have to, um, we have to utilize the CRMs that are available. And, you know, I guess kind of a note to management is that, you know, I think, uh, w w found a lot of times are found a group that, you know, they were manipulating their numbers because they were just getting beat up by management over their numbers.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (28:17):

And I don't, um, I think we need indices. We need to measure results. We need all that, but we've gotta be careful on the management side about not using our, um, our results measurements as a stick, to beat people up. I think we have to use those as a utilization tool. And especially when we have these campaigns, because if we, if we're putting our money in the wrong place, we may have a lot of phone calls, but, you know, if we're getting phone calls from 20 somethings that are, you know, looking for something else, or they thought it was something else, then we can conclude that. Obviously we have done not done something right. With our messaging. And we, you know, that that's the bad thing is in, and in my CRM, it looks like, wow, he handled, you know, a hundred leads this week and sold zero. Yeah. But if they were all, you know, teenagers or 20 somethings then, yeah.

Roy Harmon (29:13):

Where are they? Good leads? Are they qualified where they all, you know, where they, you know, like stale, I bet all different kinds of theirs. Cause you know what I mean? Sometimes marketing just didn't do a good job. Or sometimes, I mean, there are times where, whether it's seasonality or something else, you know, varies by industry. But, um, I haven't seen where sometimes people are almost, you want everybody's incentives to be aligned so that everybody is working in the same direction and you don't want to, um, you know, you want to make sure you're being fair because a lot of times there's only so much the, you know, your sales team can do. Yeah.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (29:57):

And our marketing team needs to be sure. And this is where cohesiveness is so important because a lot of times those people are the same people, but it may be somebody at a corporate is doing the messaging. And that's where it's important for marketing to reach out to the frontline sales people to say, what are your results telling us, you know, are we, is this messaging good? Are we putting it in the right place? Have you had some traffic? Uh, you know, we have to ask those questions because we always want to be tweaking these campaigns as we go forward. Uh, you know, doesn't matter if it's a really good one. I think we can always make it a little bit better. So, uh, yeah, it was great to, uh, you know, kind of tie all this together every week. I don't know that we, we talk about things in kind of in silos a lot, but you know, this is really a team effort.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (30:50):

It starts at the very top and it runs to the receptionist. You know, they are one of the Mo more important individuals in, in the community, first voice on the phone. First person you see, when you come in. And so, you know, we all have to take all that into account and it's always good to, if we're running some kind of a special campaign to let everybody be on the same page, there's nothing more embarrassing than somebody walking in and mentioning this thing they saw on an ad and everybody at the community levels are, huh, wait, what are you talking about? We didn't even know anything about that. So good communication. It's always important to make our, you know, our marketing programs work as best as they can. Yeah. Well, Roy, thanks again for taking time out of your day to be here with us, uh, before we let you go, a couple of things first off, what is the tool that you use either in your professional life or personal life that you just couldn't live without?

Roy Harmon (31:55):

I really, these days. So I've started doing a daily newsletter and I've been using mailer Lite, just their free version. And I have I'd loved it. It has marketing automation that I would not expect to have available for free. And so I've really, I've been enjoying that and it's been fun to use. And, uh, so far people, um, once I moved to the daily newsletters, I was wondering, are people going to want to hear about lead generation every day? Um, and so far it seems that Mo the vast majority of people do so. Yeah, it's, that's good.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (32:40):

Good. All right. Well, tell everybody, uh, who's your customer, what you can do for them, and of course, how they can reach out and get ahold of you.

Roy Harmon (32:48):

Yeah. So I work with companies that are, you know, anybody who's got a, a longer sales cycle needs to do more, um, really has, uh, something where they need to educate people along the way, and really make sure they, they understand so that they they're increasing their sales velocity, their, their leads are qualified. They're getting the right people in their pipeline. And, uh, people can find me on LinkedIn, um, or at, at Virta scope.com where I write about lead generation and digital marketing, and a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about today.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (33:29):

All right. Awesome. Well, thanks again. And just to our listeners, thanks for listening. You can find [email protected]. Also we're on all the major platforms, iTunes, Google play, Stitcher, Spotify. Uh, so if we're not on the platform that you listened to send me an email and I'll be sure and get us submitted until next time, keep selling.

 

Storytelling In Sales a Winning Strategy with Mitch Waks

CEO, Author, and Consultant Mitch Waks exhibited the gift of entrepreneurship at a young age; elementary school to be exact. He realized the profit to be had in making is own cinnamon toothpicks and selling them to his classmates.

During his college years, Mitch quickly realized his side-gig in a band would not pay the bills, therefore he established a “party planning” business, using his sociable personality to his advantage. Mitch may be the only college student who did not eat ramen noodles during that time.

During his experience as a student-teacher, Mitch understood he made a grave mistake in career choices. Sticking with it until after graduation, Mitch went into sales instead of teaching. Mitch eventually et and married his first wife whose mother owned a home tutoring business with around 12 students. Mitch, during his time as an investment salesman discovered investing in senior care to be a lucrative move. Mitch spoke with his mother-in-law who agreed, and thus, Cooperative Home Care was born. Under Mitch’s leadership, Cooperative grew from a small tutoring business to a leader in the home healthcare and hospice industry with offices in two states.

After 35 years, Mitch expressed a desire to share his knowledge. He took a sabbatical, hid out in the woods, and wrote his soon-to-be best seller On Entrepreneurship. Mitch continues to share his business acumen through consulting start-ups and established businesses alike.

www.mitchwaks.com

314.368.9445

Home - Cooperative Home Care

www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (00:03):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy. Uh, today we have a fascinating guest with us, uh, Mitch wax. He is the owner of cooperative home care out of St. Louis, Missouri, and, uh, Mitch. First off, welcome to the show. Thanks for taking time out of your day to be here.

Mitch (00:23):

Well, thank you Roy so much for having me on your show and hoping I have some interesting knowledge to pass on to your listeners.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (00:31):

So you do, you've got such an interesting background and unfortunately we're not going to be able to cover it all because I'm sure that we could talk three or four hours, uh, you know, based on our previous conversations, but, uh, you know, a couple of things I think, uh, as we talked earlier, that really stand out is number one, you've been in business for 35 years. So, I mean, that says a lot for the way that you treat your customers, the way that you treat your employees, the way that you, your sales process. So communication communication with seniors, their families. And I think maybe more specifically, uh, we kind of agree on that storytelling aspect that telling our stories, our company stories, our personal stories, our values stories, those are all very important. So I think that'd be a great jumping off place.

Mitch (01:22):

Sure. Well, I think any sales person or marketing person in our industry has to be able to utilize storytelling in a different types of setting, because what we do is not selling a hard product like paint or ladders or cars. What we are doing is connecting with individuals and we need to connect with them at the heart level, right? And sales people can have a great advantage over many of their peers. If they just learn the art of telling a story often, that's a true story of why they're working for the company they're working for or how the company helps somebody through a great tragedy and was able to bring that family peace of mind, right. Or it can really be any story that connects. And the story obviously needs to fit the opportunity that you're talking to a presenting to, but the best salespeople I've ever seen in any industry are ones that can make a good heart connection with their prospects and get them to agree that the service is exactly what they need and they're willing to sign up. Um, yeah.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (02:47):

Yeah. And I think that's a great point that, um, you know, in this business, we it's, we're not, um, we need to connect at that level because we're not taking home can of paint. We're actually entrusting you to care for our loved ones. And I think you have to have such a deep, personal connection and build that trust with those, with, uh, you know, there, the trust needs to be between the sales person and the prospects that you can deliver on this care that you've told me you can for my loved one.

Mitch (03:21):

Yeah. Um, yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Roy. You understand it? And the story can be the company's story. And I would say, if you don't know your company's story, you need to go to the leadership or the owner, uh, or the CEO of the company and say, Hey, can you tell me your story of why you started this company? Why did you start this assisted living? Why did you open up this nursing home? Why did you decide to get into metal liquid medical equipment, uh, and learn their, their why story? And I believe for those listeners, uh, in your, uh, in your listening area and in your, who are listening to you, I think if they haven't, um, heard Simon cynics presentation is very famous. Now, Ted talk on why on starting with why they need to go, uh, to, uh, Ted talks or YouTube look up Simon Sinek. And, uh, it's about 15 minutes and it's one of the best sales tools that, uh, uh, and any sales or marketing person can learn and start to understand. Now, once they understand that, then even if they don't have their own story, but I'm going to tell you, everyone has a story. Right. But even if they don't know that they have a story, they can begin with the why story of their company and use that.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (04:46):

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, uh, uh, you know, we need to connect on that emotional level in this really goes for all products you need to get, because unless you're, uh, in a unique position that you have no competition, you've got, you're the only person that makes this product, or the only person that provides this service, which I think very few people are lucky enough to be in that position. We all have competition and we have to differentiate ourself from that competition. And sometimes that is reaching down to an emotional level. I can give you all the facts and figures about my industry, about my product, about how awesome of a salesperson I am. But, you know, at some point people begin to glaze over with all these facts and figures. Whereas if we, if we try to reach them on the emotional level, it has such, such a more impact. Sometimes it's because we're being vulnerable and putting our story out there. But I just feel like that is a must for most, any salesperson.

Mitch (05:52):

I love how you phrase that Roy, the idea of being vulnerable, most salespeople, I meet early in your career who want to consider themselves rock stars. They want to dress fancy. They want to sound fancy. They want to have all kinds of literature that talks about, as you said, the facts and figures that eventually people will begin to glaze over. Right? If I come to you and as a physician and say, we have the best assisted living in all of Texas, how much, how many times has that position heard that? Right. And do you really believe the position cares that you've just said those words or believes you, right. Right. But if you can, uh, communicate with that physician, a why story that connects with him or her and her patients, um, now you have a chance to grab their attention and you're absolutely right. It being vulnerable and open, uh, can often mean the difference between people trusting you and not try and thinking of you as just a slick salesperson. Right. Exactly. And we know slick salespeople that that method just doesn't work anymore. I mean, I don't know if it ever did, but it clearly doesn't work in healthcare.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (07:11):

Yeah. I think our consumers, uh, have become, become much more smarter than that. And then the, with the internet being so popular now, a lot of times our consumers have done more research on us and our competition. You, you try to slide something by them and they're going to call you out on it. It's not, it's not as easy as it was back in the, you know, in the stone age prior to the internet.

Mitch (07:35):

You're absolutely right. Our consumers are much more knowledgeable today. And I think part of the, uh, which story you're choosing to tell depends on who your audience is. I may tell a very different story, um, to an adult daughter of, uh, uh, one of our patients, um, then I will to a referral source, um, like a social worker. Um, and it also depends on the situation. So there's going to be situational stories. And over the years I have accumulated so many real life stories that pretty much any, any different type of person I'm presenting to or talking to, I can find the right kind of story to match their situation.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (08:21):

Well, you just led into my next, I just, uh, you know, I'm not being rude here. I'm actually writing notes down. And so you just led into something I just wrote down is listening. So prior to being a great storyteller, I think we have to be good listeners. And this is something that, you know, we have a canned presentation and sometimes salespeople just feel like I don't care what you, as the prospect have to say or what you look like, you know, I've got this, I've got this thing I've got to get through. And I've heard it on phone calls before where they, uh, the prospect throws up all the stop signs, but we just keep running through it because it's like, I've got, uh, all this to say. So sometimes, uh, listening is what listening is always good, because we want to hear what they have to say, but we have to know where to start. I mean, when somebody comes to you, why, why did you come here? Is, you know, that's the why, but then are we trying to meet a security issue, a health issue medication, you know, why, what is, what is the need? And then that way you can address your story to what the need for that specific prospect is.

Mitch (09:36):

Well, Roy, uh, when are you available to come train some of my sales staff, please? Because you really know your stuff. Uh, you're absolutely right. Um, in many of our new, or even sometimes our seasoned, um, in, uh, sales and marketing staff, they do what we refer to as show up and throw up. Right. You've heard that one. And it's like, just what you said. They, they want to get through as much data dumping as they possibly can. And that's the exact opposite. We try hard to train all of our sales and marketing people to do the opposite. Don't show up and throw up, it's sit down and shut up. Right. And then just begin by asking questions. Right, right. Uh, don't don't tell them anything yet because they don't care yet until they know that you care. Right. Right. So how do they know you care?

Mitch (10:31):

Unless you start asking real questions about them, about their family, about their fears, about their concerns about mom or dad being left alone, you have to understand why they need help, why they're out there looking what they hope to accomplish. And all of that takes questions. You need to understand the personality of the end-user, but you also need to understand the needs of the secondary party, which I, in our industry, it's usually the adult child, right? Who's who's making the phone call to me. It's not Mrs. Jones, the end client for us. It's the daughter of Mrs. Jones often, or the daughter in law who calls and says I'm having trouble with my mom. I'm concerned about mom. And so rather than tell her how wonderful my company is. Most of the stuff I will tell her will be irrelevant because there is so much to share until I know what they need exactly. And what their event. So if you're out there listening today and you're just getting started in sales and marketing, if there is one lesson, I would reiterate with an asterix, what Roy just tried to teach you. And that is, listen, listen, listen, ask questions and learn what they're about. Yeah.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (11:54):

Yeah. I hear the old saying all the time that that's why God gave us two ears and one mouth, we should be listening twice as much as we're talking. Uh, you know, and a lot of this depends on the need. You know, sometimes people come to us in emergency situations. They gotta make a decision immediately, but typically people start looking quite a while before they make a decision. And so we may have anywhere between, you know, eight to 10 touches before we finally get somebody signed up for our service. And so I think the other great part about if you're truly asking thoughtful questions and listening, you have a built in followup mechanism already. You don't have to, you know, because I sounded like a broken record on this show because one thing I can't stand is for, you know, me to reach out and say, Hey Mitch, remember this is Roy.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (12:50):

We talked the other day, are you ready to buy yet? It's like, Oh my gosh. Instead of like, uh, you know, Hey Mitch, you know, whatever is going on in your life at the time, you know, how's your mother doing? How's your father, uh, you know, whatever their situation to have that thoughtful conversation bef you know, we don't, Oh, we need to ask for the sale. And I'm not, I'm not discouraging that, but we need to know when to ask for the sale. And we need to know when to have that thoughtful conversation that shows that we really do care about your, you, your family, your prospect. We want to help you solve the problem. Not just, uh, I need to get another sale book today and moving on.

Mitch (13:33):

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I think a new even experienced sales and marketing people could learn from what you're talking about and the idea that we need to get away from. I think the label of being salespeople, even though we know that's kind of what we do, but what I teach all of our sales staff and marketing staff is you need to learn how to be a trusted advisor, right? And we reiterate that phrase over and over. You are a trusted advisor. People have to trust that you will give them advice that's in their best interest. So just those two words combined together are very powerful tool for marketing and sales people to keep in the back of their head. As a matter of fact, there's a wonderful book out there. I would recommend it's not mine, but it's a wonderful book. And it's called the trusted advisor.

Mitch (14:30):

And it goes into the concept of how do you begin by asking questions and then trying to solve people's problem. And often, and this is especially powerful, right? And you know this, if you can't solve their problem today, you have to be outrageously honest and you don't have to say, I can't solve this problem, but Hey, I know somebody who can write and I want to introduce you to a different company who is a much better fit for what you really need. Yes. And I'm going to actually reach out and make the connection. So you don't have to, cause I know you're stressed right now. I'm going to have this person call you today. And um, if you ever do need our services down the road, great. Or if you ever have questions down the road about senior care, don't hesitate to call me. Even if it's not about my company, I'm going to help you get what you need. Right. That's a true the trusted advisor. And if you get to that status, man, you have loyalty Roy.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (15:34):

Exactly. Yeah. And it it's, we shouldn't, um, it's not a bad thing that we can't serve. Everybody. We all have our niches that we try to fall into. And so being honest is much better to me then, uh, signing somebody up, not being able to meet their needs and then having an unhappy customer on our hands. Because you know, the numbers that I see on that as a happy customer tells one person, an unhappy customer tells eight people. So word of mouth, especially when you're not providing what you said you could or what they need. And that's another thing, uh, to kind of going back to the listening is we really have to listen and ask those questions to know what is the actual need. Because sometimes we feel like everybody just needs our service. You know, it's like they say, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but that's not always the case. Everybody has very specific needs.

Mitch (16:34):

Right? You can't show up with only a hammer. You have to show up with your whole tool balance. Right? Exactly. And, and then you need to measure if we're going to use this, uh, perpetrator analogy, right? You need to understand where the, uh, where the problem is and the construction you need to measure twice. And what I mean by that, you need to ask twice, ask lots of questions before you come up with a solution, right. And then decide which tool is best for that particular situation. Can I tell you one story certainly of being a trusted advisor and problem-solving certainly, so here's an example I'm going to share, um, that all of your, um, potential, uh, sales and marketing audience, um, uh, could use something like this. I believe we had a position who did a lot of referrals for home care, but we weren't getting any of them.

Mitch (17:26):

And we kept marketing to him. We kept visiting and he kept blowing us off and just, I don't have time and I'm too busy and we knew he'd been on his day offs. Uh, he could find time. So, uh, during one of the sales meetings, one of my sales marketing, people said, Mitch, I just can't get into this doctor. And, uh, he could a great referral source for us. So I said, okay, let me give it a shot. And I just dropped by. And instead of trying to give the physician a pitch, I said, Hey, uh, it seems like to me, you are really stressed and outrageously busy. What's going on with you. And it was that very simple question. What's going on with you, right? That, uh, without him the safety to open up and say, Mitch, I lost my billing person. Well, I fired my billing person, Mitch and the new person is clueless.

Mitch (18:23):

And I have not been able to bill Medicare, Medicaid insurances for three months. And I'm about to go bankrupt. Wow. And I can't fix this so immediately I knew he could care less about listening to one of my sales people right now. Right. Tell him how wonderful we are. Yes. He needed to fix his billing issue. So I said, Hey, I have the most experienced billing person in St. Louis, hands down. I'm tell you what, how about if I send her to your office and have her talk to your new billing person and teach her how to do what she needs to do and maiden, we can get your billing back on track. Now, is that a sales call? Yeah. Hell yes it is. Yeah. Excuse me. It's a sales call. Right. But what kind of sales call was that? That's called building trust, becoming a trusted advisor.

Mitch (19:24):

Right? I know how to fix your problem. Cause I'm the only one who bothered to ask. So what happened? I sent one of my employees. She spent a few days, um, and opened up, uh, the, the pathway for all the back billing to start flooding in right now. Uh, about 30 days later, I reached back out one. He took my call and immediately he was incredibly grateful. So thankful and said, when do you want to come by and start talking about referrals? I can give you like that anytime you want. Right. We ended up going out to dinner later. We cemented a relationship. And so for me, that was, um, well, two touches for me overall, you know, my billing person made a few touches. One of my original marketing people made some touches. So we're starting to get to your idea of 10, but, um, it was the right type of touch eventually. Right?

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (20:23):

And that's important that, uh, X and especially with referral sources is we can't always be a taker. And I think that's a great example of, we have to give, sometimes we get some reciprocation, then there's times we don't, but we can feel good about, you know, helping somebody else. But in the end, when you show people that you're willing to give it that's to me, an instant trust builder. And then all of a sudden, you may not be instantaneously. Like you said, it was a 30 days, but still you were able to start seeing how that comes back to you. So that's an awesome, awesome example. I love that.

Mitch (21:00):

Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that we teach our marketing salespeople, Roy is the following phrase, and then there's a whole kind of teaching lesson behind it. But the phrase does business moves at the speed of trust.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (21:15):

I love that. I'm going to actually write that one down.

Mitch (21:18):

Yeah. And in today's day and age, it's very easy for people, as you pointed out yourself earlier to do a little research and realize if you exaggerated some numbers or just made something up on the fly because they're more educated than ever. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So they have to trust you.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (21:36):

Yeah. And I think trust, uh, sometimes, well, like we talked about earlier, sometimes it's like, Hey, we can't really provide that service, but let me help you. But the other thing is that it's not a defeat. If you tell your prospect, you know what? I don't know the answer to that, but I will get back to you. I have much more respect for a sales person that will tell me that. Then you can see the eyes roll back in their head. Like they're really thinking of a good story that they think is going to reach out to you. But you know that it's probably probably may not be, uh, all, all truth.

Mitch (22:13):

Right? Well, another thing that we try to teach our salespeople, and I don't know if you have experience with this, but if they haven't taken a disc profile test for themselves, D I S C disc, it's a personality profile. That is very simple. It's similar to Myers-Briggs, but it's much simpler. Uh, there's only four categories. And, um, what you're going to do is learn two things. One, what is your, what is your disc profile? What drives you as a salesperson, right? And the other thing that you really need to take away from that training and this training is available all over online. Lots of people who can come into your agency and company and help you with it. The other thing you're going to learn is how do I identify the disc profile of your prospect? So if I am talking to a person, let's say I'm a CFO of a hospital.

Mitch (23:16):

They don't need the touchy feely stuff. Right. Often when do you identify what kind of personality they have, you have to adjust your approach to them. Right? And the biggest mistake I see of young sales and marketing people is they have a one approach they've memorized it. And it's like, it's one size fits all. And that just doesn't work unless you get lucky and you happen to find the match for which the, that, for that, uh, for that experience sharing. Right. Um, and that's one out of four maybe, right? So you're already cutting yourself off at the knees. Am I going to give the same presentation to a CFO as I do to a social worker? Well, you know the answer, Roy and I hope you're listening to the answers. No, you can't. Yeah. A social worker is a very different type of person. You know, they want to make sure that whoever the referring to you is, is cared for in a, in a nurturing and loving way.

Mitch (24:16):

They want to know that, Hey, you're gonna, you're going to take care of these people. A physician wants to know that, Hey, I don't want to get any late night phone calls from this patient complaining. I've got so much on my plate. Right? And so they have a different need. The CFO of that hospital, man. Don't tell me how wonderful your caregivers are. Uh, tell me, what's your percentage of readmissions, uh, after they get home care, right? So you have to know your audience and tailor your presentation, which is another reason you don't show up and throw up, you ask you observe, look at their office space. W you know, what kind of person are they, and then you need to tailor your, your, uh, problem solving to that individual style. Does that make sense?

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (25:03):

No, it makes a lot of sense because, well, in, uh, you know, it's like the, um, a lot of times you're the CEO executive types that they are fact-based whereas your social workers, very caring based. And so it's got to be a different message to, to reach the, I guess, the, the people that they are as well. And, you know, they kind of something I wrote down earlier was we market a lot to adult children, or we speak with adult children trying to help mom and dad make decisions. And so, but there is a gap there because if you're speaking to, um, one of the silent generation, maybe it's their partner that needs the help, or, um, they are more involved in the decision than say the adult child who is of the baby boomer generation. There's a lot of differences of messaging toward them. You know, the thing that I think about is, um, the silent generation, they were about things. You can give them a coffee cup, a pencil, a pad, they love that stuff. They love to collect stuff. We're baby boomers. We are more about the experience. I want to know what is the, if I sign up with your company, what is that experience going to be like for me?

Mitch (26:22):

Oh, that's a great point. And I think Roy, that your listeners, your followers need to understand that in when all of a sudden done, if we're talking about the decision maker, it's not just the adult child, it's 92 of the time. In my experience, according to everything that we track, we track numbers deliberate, gently 92% of the time, Roy it's the adult daughter or daughter-in-law right. You are talking to the female. That's in charge. Yes. Interestingly enough. Um, what happens in the dynamic is fascinating, the male of the party, but the son of let's say that the client will say, you know what, I'm going to deal with. Mom's finances. You deal with all the soft stuff. Right? Right. You deal with hiring the caregiver and the bad person. And, uh, let me just feel what the hand I'll pay her bills. And so we don't just get adult daughter it's we get adult daughter and was calling for their mother-in-law or their father-in-law because the son just can't handle that or wants to handle something different.

Mitch (27:29):

Right. So, so you need to practice your approach to that age of women, um, and how you're going to approach them and talk to them and what they're, what they want to know from you, which is different than if you're talking to the son. Yeah. And, and we know that, and we approach people there. And that's why, if you're, if your listeners in sales and marketing can really start to learn disk that whole training, again, that's not mine, I'm not pitching it, but, um, they need to learn it. And then quickly they will be able to identify what is that type I'm speaking to now I can approach, um, how I deliver the message. Right? Right. So the first part we talked about is how do you deliver the right message? Well, it's about understanding their problem and pain points. And then speaking to those, yeah. Now, how now, how do you deliver the message? Well, based on four personality types, you're going to have the same exact data to come back to them to solve their problem. But in four different ways, if they can master the combination, now they will see their sales numbers really start to increase.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (28:42):

Yeah. And that's something I'm thinking, my mother figured that out because she takes a lot better care of my girlfriend than she does me. She makes, cause she knows who's going to, she knows he is going to have to be making decisions for her at some point in time.

Speaker 3 (28:55):

There you go. She knows. She's right. Well, Mitch, uh, it's been great. Uh,

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (29:01):

I appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us, but before we let you go, so what is one tool, our ritual or habit, something that you do in your daily life, whether it's work or personal related that you just feel like you couldn't do without.

Mitch (29:17):

Okay. So I am going to mention yet another person's book. Um, his name is Howe L rod and his book is called the morning miracle. How has written a great book? That's a very short, easy to read that talks about a method to start your day with a few separate principles that are very flexible and very easy to incorporate. And it's a great start to get yourself in the mindset of how to be a great person, but a great, but also good at sales and marketing and helping other people. Okay. So I will close with, uh, these four recommendations for people, right? The first one we talked about was go look up Simon Sinek and his Ted talk on why and learn that pick up, um, a copy of the morning, miracle by how Al Rob read that and learn that pick up a copy of the trusted advisor again on Amazon. Um, and, um, understand that approach to selling and marketing. And then, um, what was the fourth? Uh, it was, Oh, the disc, get yourself a disc assessment and then learn how to read the person you're standing in front of so that you can, uh, sell to them in the manner they want to be sold. So hopefully those are four and I think very solid takeaways.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (30:44):

Awesome advice, Mitch. Well, and also, why don't you tell people, uh, number one, if they're in the St Louis area or have a loved one in the St. Louis area that, um, that needs home care, uh, be sure. And let them know how, you know, the one thing we didn't get to, if we could just touch briefly on, I wanted to, you know, um, home care and senior living can be partners to success for everyone, because some people may be asking the unwise, the, you know, why are we having home care on a senior living, you know, focus show, but, well, number one, we reach out to the same audiences, but number two, um, working in concert with each other, you have proven, uh, that it, it can be a benefit to both companies. Can you just speak to that?

Mitch (31:36):

Sure. Um, well quickly it's never been my strong suit, but I'll try for you. Um, there's a couple of things to unpack there. One, uh, why are we talking to somebody in home care? Well, the answer to that is because the largest desire of any senior by a long shot, when you ask them where they want to age in place is at home, right? So all of your people, whether they are selling in a nursing home or an assisted living or independent living, or one of these new, wonderful senior communities, they need to understand how to incorporate home care into their package. Right. And they need to partner up with home care agencies, because if they can do that, they can sell more services or they can bridge the gap. When somebody says, boy, that's just not right for me. Right. So, um, that's the why you need your salespeople who are listening, need to get to know home care, other home care salespeople in their market.

Mitch (32:39):

Now, um, how do they go about, um, uh, uh, partnering? Well, I can give you some real life examples of what we do. We often will go in to senior living complexes with, uh, an arrangement where we will rent an office, um, in that assisted living we're in that independent living and re or even the nursing home. Don't remember, uh, uh, the senior living places, especially the, um, the early process ones is to keep those rooms filled, to keep the beds filled, to keep the census as high as possible. So if you're in charge of the census and if you're being judged by your own or your boss CEO, Hey, what's our census today. You want that to be as close to a hundred percent as possible? Is that marketing person right? Right. Well, one way to do it is to make sure that people, as they are aging in your institution, and let's say your assisted living, don't say, Oh my God, it's, my mom is too bad off.

Mitch (33:44):

Now she has progressed beyond the capabilities. I'm moving into a nursing home. Well, you don't want that to happen. Right. So what happens? Oh, so what you can do to prevent that and to lengthen the average stay of your residents is to partner with a home care agency and say, um, you're going to provide the care that we're not allowed to. So in an example, we're in a few independent living centers. Well, you know, that there's a certain threshold before they can't stay there any longer. Right. And they're going to be asked to leave, right? Well, that's another open apartment, another open bed that, that marketing person that's the EO doesn't want. Right. So, um, and they're not allowed and they don't have the license to provide skilled care. Well, they come and talk to me or any home care that has a licensed home care agency in their market.

Mitch (34:38):

And they say, Hey, I need you to keep these people here longer with your services. And that's what we can do. So we're going to go in and we're going to do the skilled nursing. We're going to do the skilled PT, the OT, the speech therapy, post a stroke, um, um, the range of motion we're going to do whatever it takes to keep them in there longer. So they don't have to exit that facility and then go to the next level up. Right, right. That puts a lot of dollars in that institution's pocket. And, um, it's, it's often just about, um, tweaking the numbers just a little bit here, a little bit there, squeezing that lemon just a little bit better to get the most juice out of it. Right. So if you can take your average length of stay from 18 months to 23 months, well, that's a win, that's a big win.

Mitch (35:31):

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So, uh, that's how and why you need to up with home care companies. And, um, and like I said, well, we do our arrangement. This we'll just pay rent. We'll, uh, to have a small little room there, we'll have one staff member there that goes around and continually looks at the, um, needs, the safety, uh, the med needs of all the residents. And if we find an opportunity to make a difference, we're gonna provide the staff to come in in there and do it. Okay. That also means less money spent by that, um, facility on another nurse to do rounds and do checks cause we're already doing it. Right. Right. So not only are there getting people to last longer, not only are they collecting some extra income from us from in rent now they're cutting some of their, um, overhead costs of labor, which is, you know, it's a pretty substantial costs, correct. Because we're providing some staff in there, right. That's a win, win, win, win for my company is home care when for the independent or assisted living and a win for the patient who gets to stay there a little bit longer because they don't want move. Right. Yeah. Who wants to keep moving? Yeah.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (36:51):

Yeah. Changes the, um, you know, the hardest thing for the elderly, for sure. And especially the more, um, you know, the sicker, they are, the harder it is on them. So anything we can do to extend the stay and provide a higher level of care. So, well, I appreciate you running through that. I, um, you know, that's something I wanted to get to earlier and we just got, uh, talking to, you know, the sales and marketing and storytelling. Like I said, before we started, I know we could talk three or four hours, but thank you for taking time to be with us today. And if you don't mind, if somebody wants to, like I said, if they have a loved one or maybe there's somebody that wants to partner with you in the St. Louis area, or just want to call and talk about sales, uh, how could they get ahold of you?

Mitch (37:36):

Sure. Well, in the unlikely event, your, uh, your viewership, uh, extends up to, uh, Missouri or Illinois because we have offices in both States. Um, they can reach us through, um, just going to our [email protected]. But if most of your listeners are actually in sales and marketing, uh, and they have some other questions on techniques or ideas, I would say, have them call my personal cell phone. And I, I love to teach people I'm happy to do it. There's no cost associated. There's no consulting fee. They can follow me at (314) 368-9445.

Roy with Senior Living Sales and Marketing (38:19):

All right. Great Mitch. Well, thank you so much. Uh, again, uh, this is Roy. Uh, we are the senior living sales and marketing. You can find us at www dot senior living sales and marketing, uh, Facebook, Instagram. And, uh, now we will be posting these, uh, uh, video recordings on YouTube as well. So until next time, thank you very much and take care of each other.

 

Corporate Branding with Valerie Forgeard

A strong brand is the centerpiece of successful and influential business and professional activity. Your brand is what you make of it. Our goal is to help you clarify the best route to build your brand and help you every step of the way.

Whether you're a corporation, small business, or trying to build/grow your network or change your career, your brand is the bridge between where you are now and where you want to be. It is all too easy to make mistakes while marketing online; even a slight misstep can undermine the personal brand you worked so hard to create. We are here to support you in crossing the bridge to success with ease while avoiding common branding pitfalls.

 

"Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room"— Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder)

Services | StunningBrand

Stunning Brand provides workshops, Media Training & Support, and Consultancy. 

www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy (00:02):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy. Uh, we've got, uh, a great guest with us today. We're going to talk about branding and, um, be the first to say I have very limited knowledge of it. So I am, uh, I'm happy that we have Valerie here with stunning brand to help us out. I'm not forgetting her last name. It's just very difficult to pronounce. So what I will do is I will get her after the introduction to, uh, she can say that for us. It sounds awesome when she says it. Not so much when I tried to say it, uh, but, um, Valerie and her team, uh, they bring 32 years of experience in broadcasting, social media, stakeholder engagement, community, building, public speaking, and negotiation to both the private not-for-profit and public sector. So serve a wide range of clients. And, um, I was why I was excited to have Valerie and she's taken time out of her, uh, late evening. She is in the UK. So we appreciate you taking time, Valerie. First off, before we go too much further, can you give us a pronunciation of your last name please?

Valerie (01:14):

Um, it's for French. Not expected.

Roy (01:19):

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. My French is terrible. I can barely speak English. Good English. So anyway, um, you know, what I want to do is, um, I just want to start at the beginning and this, uh, that what we're talking about today is going to be more geared toward corporations, big corporations, not necessarily, um, individuals are solo preneurs. There is a little bit of difference there. So just so everybody is kind of on board with that. We're going to talk to corporations. So let's just start at the beginning where you can tell the audience kind of what is branding. We, uh, typically some of us that are not knowledgeable, we think it's a logo, or we think it's a web page, but I know it's so much more encompassing, so let's just take it from the start. I, I have a corporation. I want to either develop my brand or, um, maybe rebrand in some manner. So I come to you and your team, uh, where do we start first? And secondly, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, but where do we start?

Valerie (02:26):

Uh, thanks for having me here. Um, so first I'd like to say that, uh, branding sounds like a complicated word, but we run every day right now. You're branding you to me and I'm granting yourself to you. And we're not even aware of it because branding is the representation of the brands. So it's the image that the brand represents and how people will talk about it. Um, the only difference with, uh, which is a big difference with the corporations is that in a corporations then could be 50,000 or a hundred thousand of different worries. Um, which means that, uh, it's a lot of people to represent the brand. So, so yes, a brand that has a logo has a website, uh, does its marketing companies do the marketing to, to impress the clients to gain more clients. Um, but it is also around, uh, the personality of the brand, but also around the people who represent the brands, uh, which is why, sorry, she wants to say something. Um, we, which is why, uh, the classic branding doesn't really work anymore because, uh, everyone nowadays has the perfect design has the same classic marketing. So if everyone does the same thing, uh, branding is not edge. Branding is not really unique. Uh, it's, it's just another flashy, perfect design

Speaker 3 (04:09):

And then another

Valerie (04:10):

Shouting on social media. And so, so how can you make a difference with your branding where first it comes? So if you come to me, I will ask you what is the story? So if you're a corporation, I presume that it's very likely that your design is already sorted out. You hire professionals to do it. Uh, your marketing is already up and running. So, so that that's not really the RA. Um, but I would ask you, what's the story, the history of your branding, how did it start? Why was the story behind your brand? Uh, usually there's always fantastic stories that come out. Sometimes I spoke with people who were not even aware that for example, Vagrant parents were already attached

Speaker 3 (05:04):

The company, um, in term of

Valerie (05:08):

How they influence. Um, but also it's, it's also about the leaders of the organization or the corporations. Uh, many times we don't think of the leaders, but the leaders, uh, some of the leaders may have some really good stories attached to the brand, um, to, to the story of the corporation. Um, there could be also, well, what is the interest for the next step? Uh, so some, some corporations now adopt, uh, corporate social responsibility, uh, to make a, an impression to make more impact and to get their brand, uh, and the great thing with social responsibilities because, um, it's like a marriage with a big NGO, for example. So, so both gain, uh, the NGO can raise awareness to the clients of the brand or the, of the corporation. The corporation can also raise the awareness about their brand, um, to the NGO supporters. Um, so, so that's a big, uh, thing that is being done now. Um, so, so, so these will be the questions first, uh, I would ask is, is after the story is about, uh, which impact, uh, do you want to make, um, apart from just, uh, showing how successful you are, and we would look at these different areas. Yeah.

Roy (06:42):

I'm not being rude, I'm actually taking, actually taking notes. This is very interesting. So, uh, yeah, I want to talk about the story for just a minute, because a, a lot of time in business, we, we try not to be personal or we try not to tell those stories. We try to be very sterile, but you know, one thing I talk a lot about is not only telling the company story, but the individual story, that's how we, uh, I think that's how we connect with other individuals is when we could connect on a personal level and not be a sterile, non, um, you know, non feeling company.

Valerie (07:23):

Yes. Um, well, I think to, to tell a story, a physical story has to be a really aligned with the brand, but it also has to be aligned with you. Um, I agree with the fact that if you don't feel comfortable of telling a personal story and not everyone is ready for that, um, it doesn't have to be, I mean, some companies use, uh, other people's stories that connect to them, um, to create an emotion, uh, because beyond the physical branding, uh, what really matters is the emotion. So it doesn't have to be your story, but it can be someone else's story. Uh, so for example, corporations who are associating themselves with, um, um, um, and then you, uh, could have, for example, a guest, uh, so for example, let's say it's an NGO that helps refugees could have a refugee coming and talk at the event and show that, uh, the corporation is supporting these schools. So, so that can be an example, for example, so that, that would touch, uh, the clients, uh, providing that it's, but usually a corporation will choose, uh, an area where it's safe. Um, and also, um, the corporation the same time does something good. So it's good karma.

Roy (08:54):

Yeah, I think, uh, you know, the story goes a long way in conveying our brand, um, unless you're very lucky and have a very unique product or service, there's somebody else that sells the same product or service out in the market. So the other thing that I've, uh, talk about a lot and feel that we have to do is we have to create the value. Why do you want to deal with me either for my service or my product? Again, I think that's where stories can go a long way in helping us show where that value is to the people that we're trying to reach.

Valerie (09:31):

Yeah. I mean, these days for corporations, uh, it's very data driven, so they will know what their customers, uh, what kind of topics that customers are interested in there will be surveys, but would be so, so it's not like, um, there, there would suddenly dive in supporting another organization and it doesn't have to be an organization. I mean, some, some, some corporations use emotion in very complex companies, for example, cook at the company in about happiness, um, to, to uncle, to encourage people, to, to figure about happiness when they did this look and choose happiness, or you have also, uh, for example, children of the world, which is a non-profit organizations. I like to give the example of nonprofit organizations because they're fantastic when it comes to creating emotions, um, because uh, corporations tells a product usually, which people want, um, otherwise they con crew, but a non-profit organization says something that people don't especially want and lesbian raised awareness, right. So the emotion has to be created, uh, strongly. Um,

Roy (10:53):

Yeah, and I think that's important even for products I, you know, in sales, that's one thing they always try to tell you is that you have to tell a story that creates that emotion in order to, you know, interest people. So I, I did notice that, uh, you know, when some of your collateral, that's something that you talk a lot about is creating that emotion. It's some kind of an emotional response.

Valerie (11:17):

Yeah. Yeah. Now there is, there can be downsides about this, uh, which is why some people are when you consent to tell your story, um, which is connected with brand damage. So sometimes the story or, or values are being promoted, but within the company it's not being respected. And then you will have, you will hear about an employee. You will start to Sue the corporation, but harassment, that people will say, well, you've been promoting this and your values and, and, and that, and so, so would say, um, well, when we speak about pushing further the branding, we also have to look at the downside, right? The potential risks. That's a con that the company might run, uh, by, by branding, by running new campaigns or associating themselves with, with specific organizations.

Roy (12:19):

So I kind of have a question that's basically back at the beginning. Um, I guess it's branding one Oh one. So it's a two-fold question. First off is how important is our name? And I love the name of your company, stunning brand, because you say exactly what you do in there is some thoughts around the concept that you really don't have to be a service product specific in your name. And, you know, the fine example of that is Google. I mean, nobody knew what a Google was, you know, 20 years ago. And now all of a sudden, it's not only a noun, but it's a verb. So can you kind of elaborate on, um, how important is naming and trying to focus on our product or service, or is it really not that important anymore?

Valerie (13:14):

It's a debate there and I haven't chosen my, my say that that's fair, that's fair. It's a difficult

Roy (13:25):

Question. And, you know, looking at naming and things and you always want to be in that space, but sometimes it's like, well, all the good ones are already taken. So you kind of have to look outside of that. So I won't press you on that then. And that, because it is a debate, there's a lot of, uh, argument. There's a lot of, um, data, you know, that kind of goes both ways on that. So the other question about naming is, um, how hard is it? If you're a corporation that's been in business in the same space for, I don't know, 25, 30 years, and now you decide that you want to change your name to something, uh, you know, maybe you've grown and evolved in something more representative. How hard is that to, uh, have a name change with a well-established company?

Valerie (14:19):

Uh, you're, you're talking about for branding. Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's very hard that I don't really search this area. And then we find you have, uh, clients who are interested in this. I kind of recommend people who have the top companies will do branding. Um, but from what they told me, uh, it's often a struggle because they, they want to rebrand, but then when they get to the stage of rebranding, they kind of attach it's like your children go. Right.

Roy (14:53):

Exactly. Exactly. So a lot of times that change, um, somebody wants to make a change because of a brand damage. Maybe I've got a brand, something went wrong with my product, my service, bad publicity, bad press. And so if you can't get out from under it, sometimes people think the best thing to do is make a change. So do you ever do any brand damage work?

Valerie (15:23):

Yeah, um, it would be more like refreshing the brand. Okay. Um, so some, my advice would be take, take positive action that will make good publicity. Um, I S I see a grand, like a person in a way. And, you know, when someone made a mistake, uh, the person has the choice to either keep justifying and try to make things better, according to the first mistake, or they can ignore it and keep doing, um, good, try to keep doing good things, uh, to actually help, um, the reputation to, to, to do better. So I would say, I would say don't get stuck with the bad reputation, uh, but think of what is the next thing you can do. And, and very often what I would advice is either to go with, um, some social responsibility, corporate responsibility to, to, well, firstly it will help the brand to do better.

Valerie (16:26):

Uh, and also it will ensure the clients that, um, Verizon improvement, very something. Now, if it's to do with, uh, employees who have to been, for example, badly treated and clients found out and it looks, it looks really bad. Uh, I would advise to take action, um, and make it public. We have changed our modified our policy. And, um, if it's to do with the projects, uh that's what about produce then? Uh, when I don't sell them anymore maybe, or show the improvements that has been done and should the process of, uh, of the improvement. I mean, the thing is there's no corporation who was perfect. It's, it's, uh, it's, it's hard work to run already a small company, but when you're running a huge corporation, um, mistakes are going to happen all the time. Uh, the wrong projects are going to come out every now and then.

Valerie (17:30):

Um, but how to deal with it, I would say is the same way we deal with our personal life, our personal life. We can choose to get, to stay stuck with what's not working, uh, or we can find a way forward and how to, to refresh, uh, the image, uh, by, by being completely honest. And sometimes it's to admit, um, that yes, this, I mean, this was wrong and people are not blind. And, uh, and this is the thing there's, there's a lot of leaders who have, um, a lot of pride and we don't want to, to, to tell, uh, there's been an issue, but there's a way, I mean, you don't have to be on your knees and apologize. There's, there's ways of saying things and there's ways of, um, making things look better. I mean, if, if it's, if it's a really big scandal or if it's a very big area, then, um, I would give it to that, for example, with, uh, someone who has worked fighting here and has been working with people who have a very big international reputations. So, so that would get into the area of reputation management. So it's really, I would assess what the damage is and, and see, um, who is the best person to take it off.

Roy (18:56):

Okay. Yeah. And I think, um, you know, transparency is the best way out of trouble is, you know, sometimes we have to admit it and then we lay out our course of action of, you know, how we're trying to fix it, how we won't repeat that, because like you said, nobody's perfect. We're all gonna make mistakes. Uh, especially when you have large corporations with a lot of people, uh, we can't be with them at every minute of every day, so things happen. And so that kind of leads into another, um, kind of area with social media, with each employee, having their social media account. There is, I guess there's a lot of room for that to be damaging, but there's also a lot of room for your employees to be advocates of your brand.

Valerie (19:49):

It's a, it's a big opportunity to, to spread the word as well. I mean, if I example a corporation or has, uh, 50,000, um, employees, uh, could run, uh, for example, Earl was I do it with my nonprofit, uh, where it's not a nonprofit community. Um, uh, they could give, uh, was for example, for the employees who promoted best, uh, the corporation and they could give them training is where, because the, the fear very often of cooperation to, to bring brand advocacy among the staff, uh, they're worried that someone is going to mess up or say the wrong thing or misrepresented the Brown, but there are trainings for this that can be given, uh, it's possible to educate, uh, the employees educate them also about their personal brand, because sometimes the person or the brand of the employee quits, uh, damage a little bit, the reputation of the corporation, the way they post on social media, for example, and, and it's to raise awareness more about how, uh, the social media world works. Um, and, and also there are, I mean, lots of the corporation now integrating diversity is very big word these days. Um, and also internet integrating like mindfulness, we're trying to get, uh, the employees welfare for their wellbeing, but we saw it is branding was so the corporation, because, uh, I see all the time on LinkedIn employees speaking about the corporation where they work and say, Oh, I've been to this great mindfulness training. So it's great publicity for exactly the operation.

Roy (21:48):

Yeah. And kind of the flip side of that is, uh, with the big brands, they need to be mindful of monitoring, uh, traffic negative, w let's talk in the negative for a minute, but, uh, you know, disgruntled customers, maybe even, uh, competition, trying to pull a fast one and posting bad, uh, experiences about your product or service. So in order to keep your brand reputation, it's important to monitor, uh, you know, what's going on out there on social media platforms with your brand.

Valerie (22:24):

Well, it's lucky in life very often. Uh, the issue will come from the inner second. And what many times corporations are, are not aware and nonprofits organizations as well. I mean, once, uh, in a big nonprofit international organization, uh, which is promoting, uh, all the good to do in the world, um, th the, the, the main line manager was, uh, introducing himself as a tumble of cider. I mean, what, but, you know, if someone photographed him, uh, not photographed him, but made the video these days, it's very easy to record, uh, people, uh, that that could have been a huge scandal because, uh, you you're talking about a humanitarian and social issues. Uh, so, you know, bringing, uh, like heavy alcohol in, in, in conversations when you're supposed to work, um, it's not really the place. Um, personal life is one thing, but, um, what, what many people are not aware is when we're within the company, their branding, the corporation, uh, for their eight or nine hours a day.

Valerie (23:46):

Yeah. They're spending their, everything. They say everything they do is, is part of the branding. And tomorrow someone might just pass or work there for one day and recalled, and then it was in the press. And, and you've got this big scandal about, uh, uh, you know, like sexual harassment and all the things we're hearing. Um, but the thing is when you have 50,000, a hundred thousand employees, you can count one that you can train them. You can educate them about the values and why it is important to have a certain code of behavior. So, so I know most corporations and organizations have their, their big flats. And, but very often nobody reads it. It's, I mean, people who start a job, they're just eager to start the job. They're not reading every document that the receiver sign it, they're not reading every, every single thing. So, so training is very important and the future will be more and more about this because the millennials are paying lots of attention. Right. And if a brand is not ethical that we know.

Roy (25:00):

Yeah. And I think you make a good point there that when, uh, when you come onto a company, you're onboarded, you sign the documents, you go through it. That really shouldn't be the end. There should always be a refreshers. Uh, again, it goes back to employee engagement. We need to keep employees engaged enough where we can reach out and talk to them about how we expect them to act and represent us. Because like you said, even in their personal life, if things could go really bad for them, it can, uh, uh, it can make the brand look bad and be very damaging as well.

Valerie (25:35):

Yeah. No super supporting, uh, employees wellbeing and, and supporting, you know, the education about the values, I think is very important. And many incorporation don't think it's important until we have to.

Roy (25:52):

Exactly. Exactly. So one more thing, um, the consistency of branding, because again, there's so many platforms out there that, uh, we need to be, even though we may message different on different platforms, the branding, um, how do we keep that consistent?

Valerie (26:16):

What do you mean? For example, because it was lots of consistency area,

Roy (26:20):

Well, like, uh, you know, across Instagram, Twitter, uh, Facebook, you know, they all reach a little bit different audience, and I know we can tweak our, uh, tweak our messaging, but our branding still needs to be very consistent, no matter what channels that we put that out on.

Valerie (26:40):

Yeah. Um, well usually it's the communications departments job. Uh, what I've seen in, I mean, cop, uh, PRI in the private sector, usually it tends to be more, more consistent. Uh, the big non-profits organizations tend to be consistent. Um, but I have seen in some large organizations I should be, which are international, um, where it's not consistent. People who don't really see it because, uh, the bigger news are stay consistent and it's stronger. Um, but I think as, um, people, as AI is coming in, people are gonna pay attention also on more and more details. Uh, so eventually I think consistency, the lack of consistency in some places, wouldn't be it. I mean, because I've got the background in fashion uh it's it was in my own career or represented like, um, uh NVMH and, uh, so as, as you said, as negotiator, but what I've learned there is perfect perfection is in, and I can tell you a consistency, even when you sleep, you

Roy (27:57):

Dream about. Right.

Valerie (27:59):

Um, so I, I tend to spot details that a lot of people don't spot. Um, but the thing is like everything, you know, when you start to go outside the line, that you can cross it more and more, and then mistakes can be done very easily. Um, but if there's a lack of consistency, I mean, many times it doesn't damage too much to brand, but it, it just, uh, reduce the strength of the branding, right. Because people just don't recognize that that is, that was picking about the same thing. Um, and, and, and Brown's also, um, uh, corporations also have Brandon Sue Brown. So for example, if a certain product that we brand a little bit differently, um, that's again, when it comes to, um, on per years, for example, promoting it. Yes. I think education is important. Someone majors say something that has nothing to do with what they're trying to promote.

Roy (29:01):

Right. Right. Well, Valerie, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us about corporate branding. Um, before I let you go, uh, first off, is there a tool or a habit or, um, that you use in your daily life, either your business or your personal life that you just couldn't do without Your phone? Right. Okay.

Valerie (29:30):

Do you mean, uh, like, yeah,

Roy (29:32):

Yeah. If it's, uh, if it's the phone, an app, um, could be, uh, I hear a lot of, uh, practicing gratefulness, you know, people go out for take walks when they get stressed. So just anything that you do, you know, in your life that you just couldn't do without,

Valerie (29:52):

Uh, I meditate actually every morning and every evening, uh, that helps concentrating for, for the rest of the day and in the evening helps me sleep well.

Roy (30:04):

Okay. No, that's good. That's good to know.

Valerie (30:06):

And I find it very helpful in some of, for cues, um, term of a physical tool then yes, I couldn't live with also my computer because they work on lane that's would be dramatic. Right.

Roy (30:20):

All right. Well, Valerie, thanks again. Uh, tell everybody, uh, number one, who is your customer, uh, what you do for them and how they can reach out and get ahold of you?

Valerie (30:32):

Yes. So, um, I, I can advise from corporations to personal branding or sometimes personal branding in corporations as well. Um, at the moment amongst a ring on a sentence, uh, woman is program. Um, but I've also worked with, uh, tech companies, um, um, very open. I mean, for me, branding is branding. Doesn't really matter in which sector, uh, what matters is, is what you want to achieve. And, and if, if you're open to speak about, um, the history of your brand, it's like with lawyers, if you don't tell everything that's important, something may be missed out. So, so, so I would say with unsure clients, just be aware that, um, I will not come in, uh, as a tourist and pick up the money because clients or so represent my brands. So I don't want to work with clients where I know something might go wrong and I will do a full assessment before making sure that a bit before confirming that we can work together so that the assessment is free.

Valerie (31:44):

Um, so you, you can reach me at hello, uh, outstanding brand.com and one group would reply. And, um, and we do a free assessment of one hour to see what is needed and, and what has been done before. And what is the step forward? You have a questionnaire to fill. It's not long, it's very short span, 10 questions. Um, and, uh, and then, uh, we can assess, um, how we, how we proceed and if we proceed, if you're happy. So with, with what I'm suggesting. Okay. So there's no, um, obligation that I always think if the client is happy and then it's great for my brands. So, so I, I prefer to do an assessment first. Uh, some people will take the service streets aware, but I have some friends for whom it's went wrong and then reputation goes with it. So that's all right, you're your

Roy (32:40):

Brand. So you can protect, you got to protect your brand. Exactly. Exactly. Now I understand that. All right, well, shout out to Valerie and, um, let her, you know, give you the assessment, see what she can do to help you either strengthen or change your brand, whatever you need done. She'll be glad to help you out. Um, again, thanks for taking time out of your day. My name is Roy. Uh, this is the senior living sales and marketing podcast. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google, play, and Spotify. Please be sure and share with your friends. You can also find [email protected]. And, um, if you have any questions, please reach out to me or reach out to Valerie until next time. Thank you very much.

 

dbaileygroup, llc is a full-service marketing and public relations firm offering clients a wide range of solutions to ensure their needs and objectives are met.

Whether your needs are to identify and secure new clients, deepen your current client relationships, or your need to stand-out from your competition, we will listen to you and partner with you to define your needs and objectives, then strive to develop solutions that don’t just reach these goals, but exceed them. Our experience in marketing research, traditional and digital marketing, public relations and graphic design solutions will be the foundation for your success. Because the true measure of our success lies not in the recognition and awards we receive, but in the effectiveness of our solutions for your specific needs and, your continued satisfaction.

“Professionals today need to define their target audience and present an enhanced presence and detailed strategy - and they need it done in a timely, cost-effective way. That’s where I come in. Whether my clients need support for their existing marketing departments or an entirely “off-site” marketing team; I’m here to bring a wide range of resources and years of expertise to the table. Ours is a customized - not an off-the-shelf - marketing strategy that never fails to exceed expectations.”

Denice Bailey, Principal and Senior Account Executive, has over 30 years of extensive marketing and public relations experience. Prior to founding dbaileygroup, she worked as manager/director in marketing for a number of different companies including Zachry Associates, the Abilene Reporter-News, The Business Press of Fort Worth, and Morren+Barkin. Her previous client list has included such names as Aviall, Inc., The Associates Financial Services, Fort Worth Symphony, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Physicians Reliance Network. Denice is involved in many civic and community organizations and activities.

www.dbaileygroup.com

www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy (00:03):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy. Uh, we're going to have with us today as a guest, Denise Bailey with the D Bailey group, we're going to be talking about a few different topics, uh, kind of on the sales side, more sales than marketing, but it's going to be all, uh, kind of all encompassing. So Denise, how are you doing today?

Denice (00:27):

And then I

Roy (00:28):

Am good. Good. Got the dogs stowed away. So I'm getting much better now. Anyway. Well, let's just jump right into it. Um, you know, the first thing that we talked about is that the sales process, especially at the community level is such a team effort. And, um, you know, as you visit communities, you realize that the receptionist is generally the very first impression that you get. If you didn't, you know, if you haven't called ahead, if you just are walk-in, so it's important to get them, um, especially, but also the, um, all the staff on board learning how to greet visitors and just, um, you know, kind of learning those different techniques of, I guess, how we need to act in front of somebody that's in our community for the first time.

Denice (01:26):

You know, I agree, Roy, I can't echo your sentiment enough. And part of that I believe, and I think you might agree with me as well, but I believe that is a culture and it comes down from the top and if the top assures that their entire team, and it doesn't matter who on the team within the organization or within the home does not feel empowered or part of the team. And they need to understand and respect and realize how their actions in their interactions could make a huge difference for the home.

Roy (02:05):

Exactly. Yeah. And, and, you know, I fault us as managers because we, we don't, um, in our orientation, in our own boarding, we don't really go into how key that certain positions are because of that. And, you know, I've, I've mystery shopped a lot of communities and come in and find somebody reading a book that, you know, it's like their heads in a book and they just pop their eyes over. They really can't even take the time to give you the attention to find out why you've even walked into their community that day. So,

Denice (02:40):

Oh, you know, you, you have shared with me a fabulous example and I've obviously I remembered it because I'm going to bring it up again about how our community, how our community there wasn't, you know, the marketing manager wasn't there, the administrator wasn't there and it ended up being someone in the kitchen that gave the tour and it was a fabulous tour. Didn't you share that with me? Yeah.

Roy (03:07):

Yes, I did. I was, uh, I was out of town traveling and went, you know, went to a community. And like you said, well, first off marketing manager was busy. They didn't have a receptionist. The, uh, executive director was out of pocket and they had a businessman. I don't know. There was like a business manager, the head nurse. I mean, we got like five or six deep, but the kitchen manager came out of the kitchen, all smiles and said, Hey, you know what? Everybody's tied up. I'd be glad to walk you around. And it was a fabulous tour. I mean, it was very personable. The young man knew the community left and right. Which, you know, somebody had to give him some direction to know that he didn't just walk in knowing that, which I thought was fabulous because I've been on the other side of the coin to walk in and then say, sorry, there's nobody here that can help you. Maybe it can come back and, you know, and, and in any business

Roy (04:13):

Exactly. Now that's, that's what it is. Like, you know, it's manna from heaven when somebody walks into your business, no matter what kind of business it is, you have to have a plan. I mean, you have to have an, a, B, C, and D plan to make sure that they are taken care of when they walk in. So yeah, it was a, it was something else. And then just the behavior. Cause the other thing that I've encountered is walk in and receptionist is, uh, you know, grap into their coworker about how somebody took too long for lunch or didn't do this. And the last thing I want to do, if I'm going to put my loved one into, uh, your community is, you know, that we're already, uh, you know, the infighting and griping and things like that. And not saying it doesn't happen, but it doesn't need to take place right out where everybody can see,

Denice (04:59):

No, it doesn't need to be, it doesn't need to be broadcast. It's like family business, you know, it needs to stay within the organization.

Roy (05:08):

Exactly. Yeah. That or you call in and the receptionist, you know, they think that they're doing the right thing by eating, uh, you know, being on their desk and eat. And, but they answer the phone with a big bite in her mouth. And you know, you can't understand them from chewing food, just little things like that, that, uh, something else, Oh, go ahead.

Denice (05:28):

One of my big gripes and it's not just within communities like this, I think it happens across all industries right now. Not just right now, but it seems kind of prevalent right now is me answer the phone and the person you're supposed to talk to, not the receptionist, but someone whose responsibility is to take care. Maybe it's billing, whatever. And it sounds like I woke him up and I have found myself saying, have I woken you from a Naprosyn today? No. And I said, well, maybe we could, like, you know, and I want to say, then why don't you put yourself in the best presentation that your company would appreciate. Right. You don't sound like I just woke you up from a nap,

Roy (06:14):

Little enthusiasm. If you're going to be on the phone, never hurts. Well, I was going to say kind of along that same lines is that if, uh, you know, if you have a spat with your spouse or if somebody upsets you sometimes it's okay just to say, you know what I need to be. I need to step away from this prospect facing for just a little bit while I gather myself up. And I think people, I think the leaders of the company would much rather see that than you, uh, you know, taking that out on them. And that's one thing I asked the lady that cuts my hair. And when I walk in and she's got some scissors up around my ears, I always ask her if she got a fight with their spouse or kids made her mad. Cause I sure don't want to lose an ear because of that. So yeah. You know, it's, it's a good thing too. Uh, but you know, here again, I think this is where we fail as managers, as we really don't set, take the time to sit down and explain all of these things to people. And uh, just how important that they

Denice (07:13):

Really are every single time.

Roy (07:15):

Right, exactly. Uh, yeah. You know, the other thing we had on our list is, um, I think it's a great ideal to use professionals to bring them in, to speak not only to your residents, but take that as an opportunity to invite prospects back in. I mean, if somebody, even if they've not come in, but if they've come in, they've toured, you kind of gave them a little bit of a sales nudge and they still haven't made a decision, um, inviting them calm in a non threatening manner to come back is an awesome idea.

Denice (07:56):

Oh, I agree. And it's it. The rewards are, are tenfold on how that can happen, you know? And oftentimes you find you're professionals, be it the attorney or the estate planner or whomever, it might be oftentimes I've seen that them, that they, the attorney or the estate planner or whomever say, listen, I have a few customers or a few clients that would like to hear this. Do you mind if I invited them? So I think it would be well-served for the community who is that who's hosting the professional, say, listen, Roy, if you have any customers that you feel would be beneficial to hear this, I'd welcome them to come and join us when you're here on Tuesday or whatever. Right.

Roy (08:48):

That yeah. Asking for that referral, especially in a group like a group kind of rate to get multiple people from the professional. We, you know, and I fall guilty. I fall, um, take blame or fall be guilty of this a lot. Is that just don't think about asking some people for that referral and referrals are such a cheap source to acquire a new customer of any kind, but especially, you know, in the senior living.

Denice (09:20):

Well, I, you know, I prefer the term cost-efficient than cheap, but referrals are very cost-efficient and a lot of times that referral is a hot that's the hottest lead you can get, right? You can't spot it, those hot, you can't even, even if you had the money or what would want to pay for it, you still can't buy those hot leads like that

Roy (09:47):

In, uh, you know, talking about referrals, the lawyers, the CPAs, the, uh, doctors, um, all those professionals are great sources because they are all authority figures to either the, uh, prospects or their family members who are helping them. And so they trust them a lot with their recommendations or, uh, any suggestions, but also, I think you enable that professional. If you've asked them to come out and share their wisdom, you know, people like to come out and some, sometimes they like to come out and help. Sometimes they like to come out and hear themselves talk, I guess it really doesn't matter if they can deliver some good information, then, you know, we want them, uh, that will kind of, uh, encourage them. Let's say that that would encourage them to make those referrals, even if they're not coming out to speak, you know, just, um, you know, maybe they come out once a quarter put on some kind of a, uh, seminar for everybody, but we kind of keep them engaged from visit to visit, to keep referring their clients as well.

Denice (11:00):

Yeah. I mean, you're stroking their ego. That's the best way to explain it.

Roy (11:04):

Exactly, exactly. So, um,

Denice (11:08):

You know what, I don't fault. I don't fault them. We all like to have, you know, we all like to be complimented either directly or indirectly like that on our expertise. So anytime any of us have the opportunity to showcase or feature our wisdom, we're all for it. Right. I'm a little guilty right now.

Roy (11:30):

Right? Exactly. No, we all are. And uh, but also it gives them an opportunity to pick up clients because then you may be introducing them to one of your residents or to another prospect. So it's, uh, it's reciprocal. And I think, you know, that is something I look for when people reach out to me and they want to, um, you know, see how we can help each. My experience is generally they want to reach out and see how I can help them. And so we have to, uh, really have a mindset of reciprocation. If we're going to ask somebody to do something for us, how can we help them out in return?

Denice (12:09):

It needs to be mutually beneficial. Exactly. Yeah.

Roy (12:14):

So let's talk about, um, phone calls converting to tours. You know, that's important. That's the bottom line is we want to, um, you know, get the family, get the prospect, whoever is going to be a decision maker. We want to reach out and get them into the community. For sure. And, um, I know I've listened to a lot of phone calls where we have a script that we feel like we've got to get through and we blow through some, um, what I'd call some, you know, maybe not buying cues, but some cues to say, let's just schedule this and move on. So have you got some tips on what can we do to position ourselves with phone calls, to, you know, turn them into tours more often?

Denice (13:05):

Well, I think you hit on it a little bit already right there. Roy is, and I think human nature is, and I read an article the other day on this is we are not, we like to think we are listeners, but human nature is we're not listening as we should be. Right too. We're too eager to we're listening enough just to respond. Right. And sometimes that's, that's an opportunity. Or let me rephrase that. Sometimes the disadvantage of that is we are missing opportunities because we're too focused on, Oh, I need to say this. I need to say this. And we don't hear that next thing. So I think we all, and I'm guilty of it too. Roy. I think we all have to just take a deep breath and listen and listen within and not listen to respond. Yeah,

Roy (13:56):

Yeah, no, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Denice (14:00):

You interrupted. But I think if we listen with intent and not listen to respond, you can take notes, you know, and you can listen, listen. And part of that, you have discovered opportunities. And so when somebody says something, as you listen, you can go back to that and say, you know, a minute ago, when I was listening to you talk about X, Y, and Z, you mentioned dining and how your loved one has not had a good dining experience. Roy, I'd like to have you out at dinner. I'd like for you to be my guest here for dinner one night and come see how our, our dining experience for our community is unparalleled to others that you may be considering this time.

Roy (14:52):

Yeah. That's an awesome idea. And that's what I was going to say is that, uh, a lot of times in the conversation, it's okay to say, can I take notes? Do you mind if I take notes, it helps me to be a better listener. Instead of trying to remember, you've said four things already that I would like to respond to or tell you more about. Now I've got to, I've got to try to hold onto these until you get through talking. And then I haven't really heard anything else because I'm so focused on remembering these things. So ask it. It's, uh, it's not a sign of weakness that you have to write something.

Denice (15:27):

I didn't ask that. I did it anyway. I didn't ask that I did it anyway. Right. I'm sorry. I didn't never, I should have asked.

Roy (15:35):

Yeah. When I'm in, when I, uh, on the phone, I do it. But you know, like if I'm in person, you know, I always like to put them at ease. I'm not taking secret notes on them or something like that, that this is just, you know, to help me remember what I want to talk about. And, you know, there's that old saying that, um, that's why God gave us, uh, two years and only one mouth, because maybe we're supposed to be listening twice as much as we're talking, which that's always good advice.

Denice (16:05):

You know what I have to do sometimes Roy. Yeah. If I'm on the phone at my office, in my office and I need to, I need to listen with intent and not listen to respond. I have some post-it notes. I don't have them here in front of me, but I have a post-it note. Each of them are this size and they spell out the word, listen, and I put them on my monitor. So every time I go to look up, I see it right there. Or even single L helps because again, that's human nature. I don't think any of us are, are born superior listeners. I think we all. And again, I'm talking to, I'm preaching to myself on this. I think we all have tremendous room for improvement with listening. And when you listen and can take notes, then you uncover tremendous opportunities. Right?

Roy (17:03):

The other thing that we're always doing too, I think when you take notes and when we listen, intently is, um, we are building in awesome follow up opportunities because, um, I don't know what the numbers are today, but typically it's what, between eight to 12 touches before you close somebody. So, um, you know, so if we're sitting down with somebody on that first, you know, where we're just fact finding, gathering information, unless their need is very, very high, we're probably not going to close them immediately. So instead of, um, you know, in three days from now, instead of just calling and saying, Hey, are you ready to buy yet? Are you ready to move in yet? You know, we can have that. Um, what I call thoughtful followup. If we learned that, that they like to paint, then we can, you know, call and say, Hey, you know, we're having a painting class or talk about painting, gardening, whatever their, um, whatever their hobbies are, whatever their interests are. It creates a good followup that we can start a conversation and they don't feel like that. They're just getting beat up every time they see you, your name come up on the phone, like, Oh, that guy's going to ask me if I'm ready again. I know he is.

Denice (18:22):

I love that idea. I love that idea. And I think, again, everyone wants to be invited. Everyone likes to be invited. And like you said, be a painting class, or maybe it's a wine tasting class or whatever the case may be to take those notes and listen with intent and then use that as part of your followup is, you know, you don't get a better opportunity to have a good touch if you will, right in the sales cycle then saying, listen, you know, you shared with me, your father enjoys painting. And you know, we have a guest artists coming in Thursday to do a painting class. Why don't you bring, why don't you come see, or if your father feels like he'd like to come see, be our guest, come join the class. Even as a non-resident, you can come join our class.

Roy (19:15):

And while we're on the soap box, you know, follow up is definitely on my soap box because, um, you know, I think it's not just this industry. It's all over. We are. So, um, we want instant gratification, a lot that, you know, we reach out and if you don't buy, then I'm off to the next person. Instead of taking that time to drip, you know, in, in, in farm. And it's the, you know, we so cultivate and then we reap, we don't go from sewing to, uh, you know, reaping the harvest in that one step. And so trying to develop those opportunities. And another great question is how do you want me to follow up with you? People are pretty smart and intuitive. They know you're going to reach out to them one way or the other. Let's at least try to ask them what is their preferred method of contact?

Roy (20:05):

Just God forbid, somebody would text my mother. She might see it in a month from now, but that is not the best way to follow up with her. And, uh, you know, my, and my kids following up with them, uh, through voicemail, um, you can't even leave a voicemail because it's full. They just don't check them. And so, you know, trying to find out what everybody's a preferred method, it's, it's a must ask and it's not bad. I mean, it's not a surprise. Like, Oh my God, you mean you're going to follow up with me. Like, no, they knew they know you're going to stay after them.

Denice (20:38):

I agree. Yeah. And that's, I think that's a courtesy to anyone, the customer or prospective customer a colleague is, what is your preferred? How would you prefer me to, you know, keep in touch with you? You know, I just, um, there's and again, you know, we can talk about this at ad nauseum, but there are so many missed opportunities, you know, I have had even myself, I, um, via the, um, the professional social media platform, you know, I've received, you know, we do this, we do that. Would you be interested? And I say, yeah, let's schedule a demo. And I bet I could get on there and identify six people that they were, they had, they had me going to the next stage of the buying cycle and it was crickets crickets. Right?

Roy (21:34):

No, that's and that's me too, like, especially on the followup phone call, there's some times that somebody reached out, I'm like, yeah. And it's not a blow off, but it's like, something was going on. Right. That minute. I was like, yeah, if you could just get back with me, you know, when a couple of days when I have some time to think about it and talk about it, and then you just never hear from him again. So, but, um, I think sometimes we can take away from that too, is that how we're going to be treated? You know, if we were to become a customer. And so, you know, it's, again, it gets back to a company culture type thing is we need to, again, it starts at the top, but we need to express to our sales representatives. How do we want to be represented in the community? And it's, as a caring, loving, nurturing environment is usually what we want to be.

Denice (22:26):

I agree. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say that, um, there are too many, too many businesses vying for the same customer, and I'm not saying all those businesses are doing it well, but just like what you said, you know, think about how you want to be treated right in and try to recip or try to replicate that. I had a sales manager once very early in my career said, if you go to McDonald's and you order a cheeseburger with no onions, just meat, cheese only, and you get that burger and it comes and it's loaded with everything onions and all, what's the first thing that you do. And I said, well, I take it back. No, I paid for it. I want it. Right. Well, you know, that's how we need to think about how we want our customers to feel. Not that they're getting a cheeseburger with onions when we asked for no onions and that cheeseburger, again, I'm showing my age here at McDonald's was probably only a buck 19 at the time, but it doesn't matter if it's a dollar 19 or a thousand or 19,000. You still want it. The, you still want to get what you're paying for and I'm not really talking more. So in terms of the price element of a process, I'm talking about taking care of it and assuring that their product is handwrite, right?

Roy (23:57):

Yeah. There's a great saying now that, uh, you know, we used to call it in the olden days, the golden rule treat people the way you want to be treated, but somebody finally figured out, it's like, well, why don't we treat people the way that they want to be treated, because we're all different in some respects. So again, asking those questions, it helps us uncover clues about what's important to people and how that they expect to be treated as we go through this process, because it is a process, unless you're just extremely lucky. And I've had a few of those where, um, you know, it's a, one-call close, but typically it is a process and we're just starting on the journey and we need to make that, you know, get it right in our minds that this is just the beginning. And so how do we, um, you know, how do we get through this?

Denice (24:46):

Yep. Yep.

Roy (24:48):

One more thing that we talked about or want to talk about is speaking to groups, um, kind of goes along with the, uh, I guess it's kind of goes along with a little bit of opposite of the professional referral and, and that would be us as the marketing or sales professionals getting out and talking to, um, you know, whoever your audience is, wherever your audience goes, but I'm thinking more like [inaudible], uh, you know, professional organizations, chambers of commerce, again, another chance to get your name out, I'm sorry,

Denice (25:23):

The rubber chicken circuit. Exactly. So

Roy (25:28):

What kind of tips can you give us on, you know, seeking out groups, talking to groups, I know you do a lot of that. So, um,

Denice (25:38):

Well, you know, I always tell my clients that, you know, they can do it one of two ways they can develop a database if you will, of those civic organizations, you know, and the best place to start with I find is going to your local chamber of commerce. And just asking if they have a, a civic organization list and most chamber of commerce is have that available. And what I suggest is to get that, obtain that list and then just go in and make sure it's up to date, you know, make sure you have the current president, the current program chair, all the relevant information. And when it's time, you know, when you find that you need to start again getting on that circuit and making those presentations just call. And it's as simple as, you know, I would be honored to come and speak to your members at your next lunch, or if you have, if you need to fill in, you know, holler, if you have someone canceled the last minute, if it works for my schedule, I'll be right there. Yeah.

Roy (26:39):

Always good to have something to take along with your name, something you can hand out, actually put, you know, in somebody's hand for them to walk out of the meeting with, because, um, you know, I've done that before. It's like, uh, somebody who's talking to me and it's not registering, don't really know anybody that I can't use. The service don't know anybody lo and behold, you walk out and get back to the office or next time you're at a friend's house. It's like th th you know, now I know who could use that. And so if I've got something on my desk or something, I took away from it, I can go back and find the contact information that it's, to me it's very important to, you know, be prepared, have not only business cards, but if you have like a one-sheeter about your community, your service things that you do, um, very helpful.

Denice (27:30):

And I like to take that a step further, Roy and I like to provide, you know, tips like tips on, you know, in this instance, what are the top 10 questions you must ask when visiting communities for a loved one and have some backs on there. So they, you know, again, your name and contact information may not be relevant immediately, like what you said, but these tips could be very relevant at the time, or someone else may find them relevant. And then at the bottom of it, again, is your contact information. So, you know, when some people use recipes, you know, I've seen them use, you know, family favorite recipes and, you know, they put it in the recipe box or stick it on the refrigerator. So there's, I think, again, I take it a step further, but I'm weird like that. I think there's some great, um, opportunities to assure that it doesn't get lost in the clutter or thrown away.

Roy (28:25):

Yeah. And that brings up a great point about the, um, um, the recipes. So here's a great story about followup is this has been about six years ago when I sold my house before I moved out to the Lake, the, um, uh, talked to five or six different real estate agents. And, uh, you know, I, I hadn't bought or sold a house in about 15 or 20 years. So I was like, I'm going to go over these. And I picked the younger, uh, she was an, she was my age of a woman, but she was new in the business. So she was, uh, she was excited. She had a lot of energy and I thought, well, this is going to do me the best, uh, the service for me to help me get the best press she was taking pictures and doing all this stuff.

Roy (29:14):

So then as we go through the process, all of a sudden, you know, she became the buyer's agent, not, not intentionally, but unintentionally about, well, you know, we need to do this and you should do this. And I'm like, Hey, you know, you, you need to remember you're on my side on this. You need to sell this property to them highlighting all the good stuff, not the bad stuff or me it, because if I'm gonna rebuild it, I'll probably end up staying here. Anyway, if I have to put a of money in it. So, uh, you know, after about five or six months, we finally parted ways. There was another one, another agent that I had originally interviewed every month, every month, like clockwork. She sent me a recipe in the mail, and this was hard in the snail mail, the old fashioned way. She sent me a recipe that was written out by hand, as well as the comps for my neighborhood, as well as just some other real estate related stuff.

Roy (30:16):

And, you know, she dripped on me for, you know, this five or six month period. And so, uh, after, after I partied with the initial one, I called her hired. Or if you can believe it, she sold the property for above what I was asking for it within a month. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was simple in this, this wasn't in this frenzy buying and selling likes going on now, it was a much quieter time, but I think the lesson for me was that if this lady was willing to continue to market to me and to reach out and follow up, I knew that she was probably doing that with buyers as well. So anyway, we just can't underestimate that staying in touch because, uh, you know, sometimes even if a person moves into another community, maybe they're unhappy or something, but if we are continually reaching out, then we would be the first person that they think about if they need to make a change or want to make a change.

Denice (31:22):

Yeah. I love drip campaigns and I, um, I have used them myself and continue to, and encourage anyone that's in a sales role to find what they would be most comfortable with in terms of keeping their name top of mind. Yeah. You know, recipes are a great example. They're fabulous example cook, but,

Roy (31:50):

Well, and that's, that's the important thing is keeping top of mind, because I like me, I remember who I've talked to last. And so if I haven't talked to you or heard from you, if I need your service may not be that I don't like you, or don't like your service. It may be that there's somebody else that's just fresher on my mind. And so that's the importance of, I think that drip campaign is just to stay out there and stay fresh. And there's so many tools. I mean, like this lady, she did it, the old fashioned way. She did it, pencil paper, put it in the mailbox, but there are a lot of tools to help automate that, to make it easier, to get our message out timely monthly and to, you know, a mass audience. So take advantage of that for sure. Yeah. But I think, you

Denice (32:40):

Know, I think the old fashioned snail snail mail way has tremendous value still from Linda's side. And you know, it's not the cheapest way to do it anymore. Certainly not the cheapest, but I think it, in some respects it can be more impactful.

Roy (32:58):

Yeah, no, you're right in there. I don't have them in front of me, but there, there were some studies that showed that, especially for senior living that snail mail was still one of the highest return rates because we're putting something in somebody's hand put, maybe they put it on the kitchen refrigerator. Uh, and a lot of people aren't doing it. So our mail is not as a cluttered. My mailbox is not nearly as cluttered as what it probably was five or six years ago.

Denice (33:26):

Well, I'm not saying that this is a good option for, uh, your senior community, um, audience, but look at this great, um, piece that I got in the mail. It's UPenn, yada, and it has candy in it. And there's the mailing label.

Roy (33:43):

Oh my gosh. That's awesome.

Denice (33:46):

Isn't it though. And I'll read it to you real quick. Roy says you shouldn't take candy from strangers. I guess that means if you want to eat what's inside of this pinata, we should get to know each other. Let's hop on a quick call.

Roy (34:00):

It was awesome. Yeah, it is. And it doesn't even have to be that intricate, but the message, the messaging in that is so creative and, you know, that's what we need to do is think outside the box and develop those creative methods. So

Denice (34:16):

That's what I'm here for a plug.

Roy (34:20):

Um, I guess we'll go ahead and wrap it up. Denise. Thanks. You know, one thing I want to do need to plan on is we need to have just one episode where we talk about nothing but tools that sales and marketers can use. There's so many out there and I get that question all the time, you know, what do you use for this or that? So, you know, anything from CRMs to the, uh, uh, newsletter, emailers, any, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. So we'll need to do that.

Denice (34:51):

Well, I want to offer your listeners something and again, you know, no commitment, no strings attached, but for your listeners who email you directly, I'd like to offer them the top 10 things to consider when looking at retirement communities for, for them to possibly hand out as another touch. Okay, great. And then they can brand it themselves. Okay.

Roy (35:17):

Yeah. And just send that email [email protected]. If you send that, I will pass it to Denise and we will get that in your hand.

Denice (35:26):

Yeah. I'd be honored to send that to your listeners.

Roy (35:30):

Well, tell everybody if they want to reach out to you directly, why don't you tell them how they can get ahold of you? Um, thanks

Denice (35:38):

Roy. Denise and it's D E N I C E Bailey B a I L E Y with D Bailey group it's deep Bailey group.com. And I can be reached at D as in Denise, B as in Bailey, at D Bailey group.com as well.

Roy (35:55):

Well, thanks again for taking time out of your day and joining us. Uh, it was a good talk. We cover a lot of subjects. If somebody wants to reach out to either one of us, we'd be glad to continue that conversation and, uh, be glad to help you out wherever we can. So until next time again, this is Roy at, uh, with senior living sales and marketing, and you can find [email protected]. We're on iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, and Spotify, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter until next time. Thank you.

 

Engage Prospects Through Content Marketing with Tim Sprinkle

Tim Sprinkle is the founder of Layup Content, a thought leadership agency in Denver, CO that helps financial services companies tell better stories in order to connect with their customers on a deeper level. A journalist for 20+ years, his work has appeared in Wired, Entrepreneur, Outside and many other publications, and he is the author of Screw the Valley: A Coast to Coast Tour of America’s New Tech Startup Landscape. More information is available at www.LayupContent.com.

 

www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy (00:02):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy. Uh, today we have a guest that's gonna talk to us about, um, content and content as, um, especially Darren tougher times. And, uh, you know, as this industry progresses and grows and gets to be more competition, I think that the, um, the opportunity or the gonna have to be able to tell the story of, um, the senior living community, not from a bricks and sticks, uh, type of aspect, but more from the, the lifestyle aspect. And if you've listened to me before, you know, um, that's one of my things that I try to talk about all the time is that, you know, we have to, to, uh, kind of build the dream, what is life gonna be like? And so, uh, Tim sprinkle is with us today. He is with layup content.

Roy (00:58):

Uh, they are a thought leadership agency out of Denver, Colorado. They help, uh, small to midsize, small to midsize businesses, tell their stories in order to connect with their customers on a deeper level. Uh, he was a journalist for 20 plus years and has appeared in wired entrepreneur outside and many other publications. He has also authored a screw the Valley, a coast to coast tour of America's new tech startup landscape. Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Roy. Hey, it's great to talk to you again. And, uh, you know, we talked a little bit in the pre-show about this, but, uh, this audience that we're talking to today is the senior living based, which can run the gamut from, uh, assist, uh, from, um, independent living assisted living, uh, nursing or Alzheimer's care and, or some combination of everything in between there. So, uh, you know, we, I think we, um, we're getting better, but a lot of times we're in a habit of telling the story, like, you know, we have an apartment where you live and this is where we go eat. And, you know, I think our consumer not only have they become an they're smarter, the, um, you know, this, this generation is very much research based and research focused, but we've got the internet and with the internet, they do a lot of research before they even make that phone call or come onsite to visit. And so, you know, that's why I feel that content is not only content is King, but it is it's going to be the master of driving traffic to the, uh, communities

Tim (02:47):

That's right. I mean, really what it comes down to is that everyone right now is living online. I mean, would it without a digital president's presence, you don't, um, do you have exist? And I think, uh, what a lot of, you know, senior living being just one of them are kind of realizing kind of waking up to you right now is that, you know, it's not necessarily enough to, you know, put your best foot forward and engage with kind of your customers online and on social media. That might be their only impression of you. They may not necessarily even meet you or talk to you on the phone until they're ready to buy. And that really kind of put really high bar for kind of the quality that you're putting out. And it's not just about, you know, just attracting inbound traffic and SEO and putting out content and all that, all those kind of buzzwords, it really is like telling, telling a true story that engages with someone who may only know about you from an Instagram story or, you know, whatever platform they're on, um, really kind of building those connection, that it, it's the kind of thing that we do as human beings in person all the time.

Tim (03:49):

It's not difficult when you're talking face to face with someone, but when they're just on their phone or on their computer, it's a whole different ball game and you really need to kind of step up kind of what you're doing to, to really resonate with them.

Roy (03:59):

Yeah. And I'm not sure what the metric is anymore, but it used to be, you got like about six seconds to capture somebody's attention. And so while we've, you know, got a lot of pretty pictures, uh, you know, the story that goes behind that is important. I think people have learned to, um, realize that B businesses post the best pictures that they possibly have up there. So we know what is the story behind that, you know, what is life going to be like in one of these communities? And, you know, that's where we talk about, you know, building the dream. And the examples that I typically use are that, um, you know, somebody is not going to have to chase a lawnmower in a hundred degree heat, or they're not going to have to actually, you know, be behind a snowblower. So, you know, there's that physical aspect and the work aspect, but then also, you know, I think is this, uh, you know, we have to tell the story, is this a lively community, a lot of seniors, they're not looking for a place to go sit in a rocking chair and not do anything else.

Roy (05:04):

They still want to live an active and a very social life. So I think that the opportunities to tell that story are just endless.

Tim (05:14):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, really at the end of the day, differentiating between a couple of different places you need beyond location, let's say that it just, it might seem like they're all dime a dozen. And obviously there are many differences that people can point to, but if you're not talking about those differences, you're not highlighting kind of what you're really putting the person who is looking for a place to live into the, into that story. Uh, they don't really feel any connection to you. It's the same as, you know, another Philadelphia, Philadelphia on the block. Yeah. There's really no differentiator.

Roy (05:45):

Right. Right. Yeah. And the, you know, the other thing about, uh, that's a little difficult too about this business is sometimes we're not only reaching the person that's going to live there. You know, we may be reaching, uh, a spouse of somebody that needs to move in, or we could even be trying to reach out to a, um, an adult child or, uh, you know, somebody else that is going to help be involved in that decision. So it's, um, it's good in a way, because it gives us a broad range of messages to put out, but on the other hand, you know, it can get complex and trying to manage that. And then, uh, you know, we want to have an, and I would assume that what we want to try to do is build kind of a, a longer vertical with all the different topics that it may be activities, safety, you know, the meals that, but then, uh, make it where you can go very deep into it to get a lot more information than what we'd call the superficial information that you just see on a webpage

Tim (06:54):

That's right. I mean, you really are talking to such a wide audience, you know, the folks who are retired and it could be moving into their, their kids or their grandkids. I mean, the age range is really staggeringly large. And it's between the generations, that the ways that they communicate are all very different and, you know, to speak to all of them kind of in the same way, the same voice, but, you know, kind of the brand and the whole, you know, all of the stories that you're telling them, the content you're creating, it all feels universal and United, even though you're going after a different way is it's, it's, it's, it's a bigger problem than I think a lot of people actually appreciate it. And it takes a lot of kind of forethought and planning to make it work.

Roy (07:33):

Right. Right. Yeah. And, you know, and I guess what I was kind of, um, I wasn't very clear, but, uh, I kind of allude to the fact that, you know, we've got that short little time to get their attention. And so while we want to have, um, you know, like I like to have bigger blocks that try to have the keywords or catch words that may, uh, you know, on a single page, we may have, uh, you know, image four or five images that will capture their attention. Then they're able to click on that. If it's security that they're interested, then they click on it. You know, it takes them a little bit deeper. So just want to make sure that I clarify that, um, I, you know, when I look at things I'm all about, you know, finding the need that I have to try to build that value, you know, before I go deeper.

Roy (08:23):

And, uh, you know, it's, it's difficult on, uh, on a flat web page, piece of paper, you know, to try to capture a lot of information and everybody's needs, but, uh, that's where we get back to the, you know, a lot of nice visuals, a lot of nice titles in order to take us deeper into the subject. And then, like, you're saying, tell that story, you know, what is the story? What, you know, what story do you have to tell? And, um, I think that's where we can really add value and try to capture those eyes for the first time and try to get somebody to pick up the phone, make a phone call, or even come out and take a tour is just that, um, we're going to add value to their life or to their loved one's life in some way.

Tim (09:13):

Yeah, that's right. And then, like you and I are  earlier, Roy, I mean, incorporating visual than, you know, videos and, you know, different ways that everyone really wants to kind of interact with with companies and websites, even in their own way. I'm personally not a huge video person, but I know that millions, many, many millions of other people really will, are video first and they'll pick up their phone and watch a video a hundred times out of a hundred before they read up a sales sheet or anything on a website. And just kind of, you know, keeping that in mind and just having as many different options as you can for people to interact with you. Uh, it's kind of an important step in this process.

Roy (09:50):

Yeah. And people want to see people that, that they can relate to. So that's a, you know, another important thing, let me just say, I'll get your opinion on this. What I think is important is to, you know, you stay away from stock images. Uh, it's gotten a lot of these stock images they're used all over the place, so it's pretty easy to spot right off. So, uh, you know, you know, there's a lot that you have to jump through with releases and all that, but when you can get either, uh, you know, your own residence or, you know, if you have, uh, an acting group or a club that's closed, get somebody to come, um, you know, play that part. And that way, you know, people that are looking at it can really identify

Tim (10:35):

Well exactly right. Yeah. You can spot the stock images a mile away. So it's the same people are involved, but, you know, if anything that makes me feel a consumer that I I'm in this, you know, I can be there and it looks like kind of where I would feel comfortable. Uh that's that's important. And it definitely involving real people is key, I think. Yeah, because that's the real differentiator, right?

Roy (10:56):

Yeah. And not only residents, but staff, I mean, they want to, uh, you know, when they come in and see somebody, they, it it's really nice when you walk into a business and you see the guy that you saw, RCA person that you saw on the website teaser, there's, you know, there's so much to wrap around, um, that concept to, you know, gotta catch them quickly, get their eyes and capture their attention and then drive them, you know, deeper into your site to actually, uh, you know, get the, get more detailed information on whatever you're trying to say. And, uh, I think another thing that is really good to use as blogs and, uh, get your opinion on this that, you know, I feel like a lot of times we put a blog out there and then we don't do anything for two or three years. And that's one thing I generally look at when I go to a blog is, um, when was the last, you know, when was it posted? When was the last post? Is it something that's regular? So I think the, uh, you know, that consistency to get in your ma you know, getting the blogs out there, if you're going to choose to do that and, um, being very consistent with that messaging.

Tim (12:09):

Yeah, no, I very much agree. And I think that really comes down to kind of being honest with yourself when you start, I started blogging, if you can really only conceivably post maybe once or twice a month, you know, don't over commit yourself to doing it every day or because you're right. Like when you show up on a website and there's a blog that hasn't been updated a year and a half, and then, you know, just kind of a scattershot approach, right. Not only does that not serve the purpose of, you know, the blog for SEO reasons, but it also, it just kind of looks like they're not as engaged as maybe they, you know, they could be. Right. And so it might be kind of working against you. But the big thing I would say with blogs is like, you don't have anything to say, don't feel like you need to force it. No, I mean, less frequency of, you know, deeper, more interesting content is always a good thing. I mean, just to kind of thinking about what's your, what do you want your blog to achieve if it's purely an SEO thing that, you know, frequency is important for that. Um, but if it's going to be more of a telling residents stories and sharing some insights and kind of giving people a glimpse of what life is like, uh, that can be done on a less frequent basis, it really depends on kind of what your goals are.

Roy (13:15):

Right. And, and, uh, you know, I think that's the other thing is the, um, the message that we, the messages that we have to get out, you know, telling resident stories, uh, how tos, you know, that's another great, I think anybody that goes to, um, I guess probably YouTube is the platform, but Mo I think they say that a large number of those searches over there start with how to, so, you know, we kind of have to think about in context of what are people that you want to attract, what are they going to be out there searching for

Tim (13:50):

That's right, right. Yeah. It's a really kind of a holistic process of determining who you want to go after, who you think your target market is, and then kind of digging into what that person does online. And there are an endless number of tools that you can use to research that type of thing, but it really comes down to kind of just knowing your customer and really having a good idea of who you really need to talk to.

Roy (14:10):

Right. And also, are you a fan on blogs? You know, you can, now we can do audio video, you can embed them. Is that another good use of, uh, videos and audio to embed them in your blogs?

Tim (14:26):

Absolutely. Anything that keeps, uh, keeps them on, on the page and engaged longer. It is like, is a good thing. And I often will do the audio or video and I'll transcribe it and then have like a video at the time of the page and the transcription for someone who doesn't want to walk the video and just kind of presenting it a bunch of different ways. And that's, it all comes down to making sure that someone who shows up on your website is getting the information that they're looking for and things that are interesting to them. And, you know, if they're reading a blog and there's an embedded the podcast episode, for example, about something related, they're like, Oh, this might be interesting. And that takes them down further down the funnel and further down the channel to learn more about what you're doing and anything you can do to kind of cross pollinate like that is, is very valuable.

Roy (15:08):

Yeah. And the nice thing, like you mentioned too, is the SEO value that all this does, you know, because that, uh, before anybody can even read about you, they got to find you first. And so we, we don't talk about that a lot, but, uh, you know, it, it's important to, and it changes. So maybe today you're at the top of the heat, but you never know about tomorrow or the next day. So you gotta stay on top of that. And, uh, you know, what I've heard in the past is that, you know, a blog is like, uh, leaving a breadcrumb, uh, for your prospects to follow you back to your web page. And that if you use a video on there, then that is like leaving chocolate covered breadcrumbs that lead back to your website.

Tim (15:55):

Exactly. Right. And I will say also for, like, for blog traffic, if you're promoting your blog on social media or Facebook, for example, oftentimes those platforms, I know for a fact PayPal does it, they prioritize posts that have videos in them. You're going to get more impressions on your posts will get more traffic off of that, just because you're using a video, they click once to encourage people to do that. And little tricks like that, to kind of, you know, reach people the right way and kind of play the platform game. The way the platform is wants to be played can really help and kind of drive traffic in new or different ways.

Roy (16:29):

Yeah. And that's another great thing. Like, uh, you know, if you do a blog with a video audio, the other thing you can do is pull clips out of that. So you have, um, you know, you don't, if you're going to be out posting on social media, if you got four or five platforms that you need to post on, you know, once, twice, three times a week, wherever you are in that, you don't have to recreate, uh, content every for every different post, you can actually repurpose, uh, portions of this blog with the video audio text even, and, uh, push those out there on your channels. You know, one thing that I do is, uh, you know, I'll put a paragraph or snippet of what we're talking about with, uh, you know, a more button to try to drive that traffic back to the website from a social media platform.

Roy (17:24):

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And there's so many simple editors now, um, that simple editing devices or software that, you know, it's easy to chop up a video into, you know, four or five different pieces, if it's a longer one and be able to push it out there. But so, um, like topics, do you feel like that, um, you know, we want to explain our, our, uh, the community and what we've got going on there, but do you think that the trying to get that community message out is as, as important as maybe, you know, using some resident stories, talking about your staff, that's another thing that's always forgotten is, you know, it's a great place to highlight staff. It makes them feel like superstars to see that their, um, picture that there's a little write up on the webpage about them.

Tim (18:21):

Oh, absolutely. I think that those, the beauty of content and all of this is that you can, you can do it any different direction you want to with it and really kind of highlight what you want to talk about. And I, I agree that, you know, talking about personal stories about resident staff or those are goals, and I think that the more you can do that, the better because everybody, everyone wins. And I think that the, the folks who were profiled also enjoy it. So there's a lot to be said for that, but there's also one thing that I always like to talk about is, um, kind of the idea of being a connector, being kind of the center of your own little universe and the people who see social media, as an example here who were kind of looking around for information about different, you know, different centers, they don't necessarily know what's going on in the industry.

Tim (19:02):

They don't know the questions asked. They didn't know who they should talk to. Then mr knows what they're getting into, and you can be the guide. If you can kind of be the person who said, who could point them to the broader conversations and kind of is their source of information about what, you know, what to look for, that they will think more highly of you than your competition. It just really comes down to, and a lot of the blog posts and the social stuff that I do is around, you know, sharing information about industry trends, sharing, you know, commentary about the X number of things that are happening across different facilities in, uh, like locations. A lot of my clients will be like in a certain location with like local it, local stories happening kind of events are going on. They want to see you engaged in a broader community that than just yourself. And so they, they can feel part of that community. And by pulling in some of that type of content, and you can really demonstrate that you have that, you know, the deeper connections and you are kind of the guide who can help them. And that's really what people are looking for. Right.

Roy (20:01):

Right. Yeah. And that's, that's great content to create because, um, you know, kind of as a saying, or a while ago, you know, if you do a simple video on how to choose a senior living community, based on whatever, you know, if it's independent, assisted, whatever, the level of care, but you put out a how to video and put that up on YouTube as well. And, you know, probably draw a lot of traffic with people, just, uh, you know, wanting to find out, you know, what, what do they, what are the questions that they need to ask?

Tim (20:34):

Oh, absolutely. And I can't imagine there's much competition right now for that. I think this hasn't really been, you know, done too much across the industry. So, you know, the first folks who do that are in good shape to, uh, get a lot of, get a lot of interest in a lot of traffic. Right. So when we

Roy (20:48):

Talk about, uh, content, you know, LinkedIn is always questioned. Uh, let's start with the written word. Um, if you're going to do some blog posts, w kind of what is that word target that, that you're looking for?

Tim (21:02):

It kind of varies. It, it's not so much the Google one rank you at a certain length. It's just that people are more likely to engage at a certain link. And the target that I tend to tend to shoot for is about, uh, 1100 words or so, a thousand to 1100 shorter than that, you're getting less time on the page and people are just kind of dropping in and out. You don't get quite as much engagement Google's measuring the engagement and the Taiwan paid as part of your ranking. So you want them to kind of stick around for a long time and spend some more time reading. Um, usually it, it kinda depends on what you're doing if you're doing kind of a, how to type of a post that goes into the great detail that can be longer. I mean, two, 3000 words are very fair for a SEO post the day that even people do a lot of it, but you kind of mix it up. You want some short things, you want some medium T pieces. You want some longer visas to give again, get people who are interested in certain types, uh, what they're looking for.

Roy (21:55):

Okay. So what about videos? Is there a good sweet spot for the length of a video that if we're going to put one up,

Tim (22:03):

I, for me, and I'm the video analytics are still a little hazy, so it's kind of a newer area. The choices are essentially two to five minutes or an hour. Okay. I think, you know, kind of in the middle range, people are either, they were either one quick information and a kind of a quick little bite, or they want the slow deep dive, but it can really get a lot out of, you know, whatever you're talking about. And I, there is nothing wrong with an hour or two, an hour and a half long video. People will watch the, uh, if it's interesting enough. And if it's, you know, you really kind of captured their interest. Uh, but particularly for social media, like you can take a long video to slice and dice it. You have to have those little two, three minute clips and share those. And that, that's the kind of thing you can use as a teaser if you're going to get someone's attention and get them into for the longer video.

Roy (22:50):

Okay. Yeah. So, uh, you know, it hasn't been that long ago that we, you know, we picked out our key words and we wanted to insert those in every paragraph, you know, and we're writing a 25 30 paragraph blog, you know, we want to be sure and had these keywords stuffed everywhere. And so if I'm not mistaken, I think Google has changed their, uh, the way that they look at that a little bit more. And, um, probably I think, you know, you can actually probably go to Google jail if, if you overdo that, is that pretty much correct?

Tim (23:29):

That's absolutely correct. Yeah. They will penalize you if you go too far and depending on the length of your content, it's usually about a 10 to 15%, uh, a paragraph, um, is the max. So yeah. You really, you, you can't keyword, you really shouldn't keyword stuff anymore. Yeah.

Roy (23:46):

Yeah. And I think the best advice is if you, um, you know, if you do your research and really write a thoughtful article or blog on the topic that you want, typically like the key words and the SEO will basically take care of itself.

Tim (24:04):

That's right. Yeah. You can't focus entirely on that because yeah. The way Google wants us to think about this is that yeah. Creating good, good work, engaging with people, having people share it around a district is doing a really good job is what they want to do. And so, you know, you can fold it all the technical SEO, little factors, like making sure you have keywords and making sure you have your photos tagged and things like that. But once that's done, it really is. It's not a game game to be played. It's really a chance to then, okay. So that's a really good stuff and people will like it, and Google will notice that your ranking is over on it.

Roy (24:38):

So if you're, if, uh, you know, if I was going to task you with writing an article for me, uh, for, uh, us non-rider type writers and he, and he kind of go through the, uh, you know, the thought process, because I'm going to be real honest with you and say that, you know, there was a time when I started riding and it'd be like, okay, I thought of a great topic set down, blow out 25 30 words, and then kind of hit the wall. And, you know, I used to get very frustrated that, you know, it just couldn't set down and flow. And so, you know, I kind of had to take a step back and kind of analyze that process, but why don't you tell us like, uh, uh, the, uh, kind of the accepted way or a good way for a non-rider rider to sit down and be able to, you know, put out some good content?

Tim (25:32):

Sure. I can give you totally honest with you. It doesn't, it never just, you can't sit down and it'll flow in my experience. It never works. Um, but what I like to do, and there's a couple of different little tricks that I've kind of used over the years, and I I'll start with an interesting topic, you know, something, let's say how to choose a senior living center at the topic we want to go after, you know, you have just kind of sit down and say, okay, what is the reader going to be looking for in this? And kind of think about it from their side and just think about what would, if you were just coming in cold, what would appeal to you as someone who would maybe, maybe reading about that and, and just kind of figure out, okay, what do we need to make sure we include in this article that they'll kind of walk away and say, okay, this is actually what I was looking for.

Tim (26:13):

I liked it. Um, and typically for me, like that kind of flipping the table process goes on throughout the entire entire writing of the piece. Like you've got to, does it sound right coming on on the reader side? Does it feel like the pace of, you know, if the length is okay on how long they're going to, will you sit there and read it, all of that stuff, you have to kind of consider what your reader, so would you also, like you need an outline to kind of get to point a to point B, you know, kinda need to know where you're going. Um, if we're doing a, how to, if you feel like that pretty straightforward, we talk about, you know, what the different, let's say different trends in the industry, different challenges you might face. If you're coming in cold and looking for something to, uh, help out your family member, you just have to kind of put together a list where it's like, okay, we need to make sure we talk about X, Y, and Z.

Tim (27:00):

And that'll get us to our goal of the end of this piece. And it's boring and English classes that sound like just having a roadmap or an outline like that. Over time you develop kind of a standard tablet I have on my computer right now, I've got probably 10 or 12 different templates or blog posts that are just depending on the topic, depending on the story, we're trying to tell, depending on the audience, we tweak things, but the format is the same. It's the introductory paragraph. It's a, you know, a paragraph about tying it back to them and you really get that detailed. And what do you do that you kind of get a feel for it, and you can kind of take one of those templates off the shelf every time you went to the blog post and in plug in your story and kind of do it that way. It's very, it's not formulaic, but it's structured. Right?

Roy (27:47):

Yeah. And one thing I've learned is not only, you know, the outline to sit down and think about that in the beginning, but also once I ride it, you know, I try to put it away for a day or so if possible, and then revisit it because sometimes we get, or sometimes I get lost in the, you know, can't see the forest for all the trees around me, but being away from it and not thinking about it for some period of time, it seemed like I can come back and have much more clarity and find maybe other ways to say the same thing, because that's the other thing is I think in any industry, we don't want to get bogged down in a bunch of, uh, industry acronyms and industry, uh, you know, the processes and I guess very heavy industry terms that other normal readers may not understand unless they've been in the business or been researching this for a while.

Tim (28:47):

Oh, that's right. And to totally amazing. I did the same thing. I put things away for a day or two, and every time you pick it back up again, you, the problems with it just jumped out at you. You didn't explain this topic deep enough, or, you know, it kind of got to do, you went too far in this one direction and you can spot the problems immediately.

Roy (29:03):

Right. Right. So, uh, another thing, um, I know this is more, it's kinda more SEO related, but it's also content related is that if you write a really good article, it is, um, if you reach out to other people and try to get them to link back to that, or especially if you mention somebody else or another company, um, another service provider, if you reach out to them, get them to link back to that content that even starts building. Um, and I don't, to be honest, I don't know all the requirements, but I just know that, you know, trying to write good content and get that back link. Or a lot of times I've even heard of, um, uh, one company writing the article and having another company put it up on their website because it's content that's valuable to them. But then the links all point back to, you know, company a that actually wrote the article.

Tim (30:07):

That's right. Yeah. And that's one of the ways that Google tries to kind of suss out whether or not your, your article is good or not. And just like other people saying, Hey, you got to check this out. And here's the link back to the original, that's just kind of way that they use it as like a social proof tool. And there are ways to kind of game that. But like you said, like you can kind of guest posting on someone else's blog, for example, is a good way to kind of build them back links. I use a lot of sharing on social is about backlinks. So there's obviously ways to kind of build that up. There are good ways to do it and bad ways to do it right. And Google cannot like, like everything can tell when you're like stuffing your links into random blogs. And, you know, if some people will, will go into comment section of this random blog and whatever topic and add in a comment where they, you know, they link back to their, their posts. And I'm sure you see that kind of when you go to some blogs and just kind of random comments about that are related to the topic. That's not the Google notice and it'll put you in Google jail, but doing it the right way that you're kind of building that network. You're building that community and the that's what Google is looking for.

Roy (31:11):

Yeah. And I think the, I think the bigger overarching message is that if you take the time to really sit down and create thoughtful content, there are so many ways to exploited and to use it to your advantage, that you really have to think about it in, you know, do some research on, you know, how else can we purpose this? Because you know, it, it does take a lot of time to whether it's a video, a podcast or an audio or the written word, it takes a lot of time and effort to get it right. And so when you get it right, and do the right thing, you want to try to figure out as many ways that you can, um, use that as totally possible.

Tim (31:57):

That's right. Yep.

Roy (31:59):

So, um, anything else that you want to, uh, you wanted to talk about or bring up with on a, you know, content related before we wrap things up?

Tim (32:10):

I mean, aside, aside from the kind of the quality argument that I was at the drum beat that I, I stick with on that, but I mean, really, I think this is a really good time for any industry really, but, you know, senior living is in particularly good shape for the, to just take advantage of kind of the opportunities that are out there and to really lean in on the kind of the storytelling aspect and take advantage of kind of what, what you have to work with. I think that any business where you're dealing with people, it's, it's a very personal connection business and you need to, you know, share those stories, go out and find, you know, interesting things that are happening and just take advantage of kind of what you have. I think that this industry in particular has a wealth of resources that they could use for this. And, um, it's just a matter of deciding to go ahead and do it and putting together a plan and executing on that plan.

Roy (32:56):

Yeah. And that's a good point is, uh, you know, also we talked about it a little bit earlier, but if, if you highlight community events or other things in the community, you can actually pull, you know, professionals re groups, you can pull a lot of referrals in from that as well. So, you know, don't, I guess the other thing is kind of, we touched on, but didn't really come right out and say, is that it doesn't always have to be about you and sometimes it's even better in your content to shine that light on somebody else.

Tim (33:33):

That's right.

Roy (33:35):

Yeah. Cause that's, you know, like with the professionals, lawyers, doctors, lawyers, uh, you know, the other community groups that are out there such a great referral source that, uh, you know, we can't overlook referrals are usually one of the cheapest forms of, uh, acquiring new customers or new residents. So always look around to see how we can do that and not always be, you know, focused on just the, what we had for dinner last night or that, you know, we've got carpet in our rooms or whatever that message, you know, has been in the past. We want to focus on building that dream. You know, what is the what's, what's it going to be like for me, if I actually move in and live there? Exactly. Well, Tim, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to come and talk to us about content. Um, so what is one tool that you use in your either business or daily life, either tool, habit, ritual that you just feel like you couldn't do without,

Tim (34:40):

This is going to sound about the most low-tech thing we've talked about so far, Roy, I started every day with a checklist and there are a million different ways that you can kind of project manage your, your own time and your, your company's time. But like for me also put together a list of my priorities for the day, kind of what we're, what we're going after. And I just worked my way down to the list that for me has been a practice I've at this point probably done 25 years. Um, and it really has been about the most low tech solution I can come up with and kinda keep myself on track, make sure everything's getting done on time, make sure all the deadlines are getting met and that we're continuing to moving forward.

Roy (35:17):

Yeah, that's awesome. I I'm the same way I still do. So do you use a pencil and paper or do you use a, some kind of electronic form of to-do?

Tim (35:26):

I have, uh, an app on my computer. That's essentially nothing more than like a note taking app. And I just have a little, little lot note pad that I scroll through each day has its own checklist. Yeah. You know, I kind of go

Roy (35:38):

Back and forth. I've got the, um, I've got the to-do list on the computer, but I, I, I find myself reverting back to pencil and paper sometimes post-it notes. I hate to say, but also another good idea that I've used before is three by five cards. You know, I just try to jot down the things that, you know, the bigger items, not the smaller things, but try to jot down those bigger items for the day, just so I can keep them in front of me. That's unfortunately that is the trick is keeping it top of mind.

Tim (36:10):

Exactly. It really is hard to go wrong with paper and pencil sometimes.

Roy (36:13):

Right? Exactly. Well, Tim, tell everybody, you know, kind of what you can do for them and of course, how they can reach out and get ahold of you.

Tim (36:23):

Great. So for us, you lay of content is we call ourselves the thought leadership agency. And we do that primarily because we work in content. We write blog posts, we write white papers, we help with copywriting for websites, all the blocking and tackling that goes into kind of creating a functional message. But a big thing for us is, you know, really digging into the story aspect, really spending time with our clients and then finding ways to dig out the interesting nuggets of information and turning those into interesting and great engaging content. They were all former journalists. Our job as journalists was primarily to, to find interesting stories and tell them. And, um, that's a kind of a weird twist on the whole content marketing thing. It's a different kind of skillset. Uh, but for us it works because it allows us to kind of like I said, dig in and really find the stories that kind of help elevate a client or a brand beyond the competition beyond just the, the internet right now is flooded with just noise. And a lot of people are screaming and, you know, into the nothing that's pretty much. And it, it matters a lot to stand out from that kind of crowd and make a real statement. And we do that through a story. We do that through a lot of the different techniques I mentioned, but that's kind of what we exist for is to kind of help, help people really dig in on kind of what they do and what they love and then share that with the world. Okay,

Roy (37:40):

Great. And, uh, what is the best way for them to get ahold of you?

Tim (37:44):

The best easiest way is to visit our [email protected] L a Y U P uh, just like in basketball. Um, and there's a contact us form on there and that will, uh, it'll get him started.

Roy (37:55):

All right. Awesome. And I'll be sure and include that in the show notes as well as I'll put that on the webpage. Uh, Tim, as always, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. And again, thanks for taking the time to stop by. You can find [email protected]. We are also on all the major podcast providers, iTunes, Google play, Stitcher and Spotify. Be sure and share with your friends, if you have a, um, if you have a, uh, an issue or a story idea that you'd like to, like for me to either find a, an expert to come on and talk about, or if you'd like to come on and share your message, please reach out to [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you until next time. Thanks a lot.

 

Tommy is the Co-Founder of The RoundTrip Group (RTG), a marketing, advertising, media and sales consultancy firm based in the New York City area. RTG's goal is to help marketers better sell to their customers, agencies better sell to clients, and vendors better sell to agencies. By quickly and clearly identifying simple solutions to today's complex business challenges, RTG helps businesses in the industry "sell-in" and "sell-through" more effectively, thus driving profitability. Additionally, Tommy is also a Strategic Advisor to Glewed.TV, a privately-owned ad-support video on demand platform that is revolutionizing the streaming space.

Prior to founding The RoundTrip Group, Tommy spent 24 years in the media industry driving business growth via communication solutions for some of the world’s most well-known brands.  Throughout his career, Tommy has been known as strategic, innovative, transformation expert who has a knack for quickly identifying and simplifying business challenges and coming up with innovative communications solutions that are laser focused on driving positive business outcomes for his clients.

Tommy began his career in 1995 in the media department at the Grey Global Group (prior to acquisition of the group by WPP) in New York.  During his first 3 years at Grey, Tommy helped develop and modernize communications plans that propelled Procter & Gamble’s Pantene to the #1 hair care brand in the United States.  During his time with Grey he also managed the ConAgra portfolio of food products helping to successfully launch the well know Marie Callender’s frozen food line.

In 1999, Tommy helped start up a youth and entertainment company, GWHIZ Entertainment, funded by Grey Global Group.  During his tenure there, he helped grow the agency from 1 client to over 15 in a 5-year span working with clients such as Dairy Queen, W Hotels, Topp’s Confection, D-Lish Fragrances, Konami Video Games and US Cellular.  He was part of a team that created the first in-game advertising experience in the industry via a partnership with Reebok and Konami and he also developed and executed the industry-first “wireless scavenger hunt” using SMS for US Cellular. 

In 2004, Tommy was recruited by Publicis’s Starcom Mediavest Group to transform their unprofitable operation in Puerto Rico. As the VP, Managing Director of our Puerto Rico office, he helped to not only establish SMG as the first stand-alone media agency in the marketplace, but also helped transform the profitability of the operation by securing new business, diversifying their service offering and restructuring marketplace deals.  During his tenure, Tommy helped to elevate the talent and product across some of our most well-known global brands in the world including P&G, Kraft, Kellogg’s and Visa.  Under Tommy’s leadership the media team won a Cuspide, Puerto Rico’s most celebrated industry award.

In 2007, Tommy relocated to Mexico to take on the challenge of recapturing the Coke business in their largest market in the world.  For three years Tommy transformed and led a team that won back the business in unprecedented fashion – in less than 3 years and without a pitch.  The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta cited this as a “first-ever” in their organization.  During his time running the Coca-Cola business he helped grow market share across the beverage portfolio to over 80% and more importantly grew Coca-Cola’s water brand, Ciel, and won the monthly share game against Danone’s long established Bonafont brand.  His team also won silver at the Circulo Oro Festival for Media Innovation for work done on behalf of Coca-Cola’s energy drink, Gladiator.

During his last two years in Mexico, Tommy led business development discipline in LATAM for SMG as part of the Global Growth Team.  In 2010, he helped lead the Mexico office to an incredible 9 wins during that year picking up clients such as Banamex, Burger King, Subway, Expedia and Cadbury to name a few.  In 2011, he continued helping the region grow landing a big regional win in Mead Johnson and expanding the Subway business to include 6 additional markets.  Tommy was also instrumental in helping establish both a Content and Data & Analytics discipline within Latin America for SMG.

In 2012, Tommy returned to the United States to run Mediavest’s business development practice.  During his time in this role, Mediavest experience unprecedented growth winning over $2.5B dollars in billings by winning clients such as Honda, Converse, Travelers, Brown Forman, Bloomin’ Brands, and Keurig Green Mountain.  In 2013, Mediavest won Adweek’s Agency of the Year as a result of its massive growth.

In 2014, Tommy returned to the world of day-to-day business management where he oversaw the global businesses for Mondelez and Brown Forman and the domestic business for Sprint.  As an SVP, Global Managing Director, Tommy was responsible for the operations, talent and product for Mondelez across 40+ countries in the regions of North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.  For Brown Forman he oversaw the communications, which included both above the line media and below the line events.  Tommy led the Sprint business during a transformational time when they were looking to prepare themselves for a sale and/or merger, thus there was a massive focus on communications that could be measured and attributed to sales.  Sprint eventually merged with T-Mobile.

In 2017, OMD tapped Tommy to take over and transform the Nissan business in North America.  He quickly shifted the team’s hub from Los Angeles to New York in order to have better connectivity with the clients.  Tommy helped assemble a new team of cross-athletes who were fluent in offline and online channel planning.  With this newly built team they transformed how they approached business, building a unique communications framework that was grounded in building brand over time and driving sales over night.  The use of 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data was essential in driving both targeting and messaging decisions.  Lastly, and most importantly, Tommy’s team regained the confidence of the Nissan clients so much so that Nissan renewed its contract with OMD for another three years.

Tommy is originally from Charleston, SC and attended the University of Florida in Gainesville where he graduated with High Honors with a Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising.  He’s been married to his wife, Meredith, for over 15 years and they have a thirteen-year-old son, Gaven.  Tommy’s passions include scuba diving, traveling, music and gardening. 

www.theroundtripgroup.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy (00:01):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm rolling. Uh, we are very fortunate enough today. We have an awesome guest, uh, Tommy Nolen. He is the seat, uh, the co founder and the chief marketing officer of the roundtrip group. They are a marketing advertising media and sales consultancy firm based out of New York city. So I'm not going to waste any more time. I want to get straight to Tommy. He's got a lot of great things to talk to us today about marketing, uh, to the, uh, senior, to the baby boomer population and some great advice on how we could put that to work, to help us in the senior living space. So, Tommy, I'm going to turn it over to you, if you would tell us just a little bit, you know, kind of about your background and how you got here and a little bit about what y'all do.

Tommy (00:58):

Great Roy, uh, well, uh, first off, thanks for having me on, I'm happy to be here this morning and, uh, hopefully, uh, in part, a little bit of wisdom and a little bit of what we've learned at the roundtrip group, uh, you know, in, in terms of, uh, marketing to seniors and really kind of the future generation of, of your customer base. Um, just to quick, quick bit on, on how I got here, you know, as you said, I'm the cofounder of a marketing consultancy and, you know, our focus is on helping people sell better. Uh, we say we like to help marketers better sell to their customers, agencies, better selves and their clients and, uh, vendors better sell to agencies. And, um, you know, we, we look at ourselves as a, as a collaborator, not a competitor, um, in the industry. Uh, and we started at about a year and a half ago.

Tommy (01:53):

Um, prior to that, uh, I spent about 25 years in the advertising business partner. Uh, Barbara Martinez spent about 30 years in the business. And, um, you know, uh, during that time I worked with some of the largest, uh, I would say most sophisticated marketers in the world. Um, people like Proctor and gamble, uh, Nissan Coca Cola, the up, you know, well known brands that you've, uh, you've heard of. Um, and, you know, I would say, uh, you know, each with a different approach to talking to consumers, but, um, uh, also allowing you to learn different things along the way. Um, you know, during my 25 years, uh, I worked in big agencies. I ran agencies, uh, ran business domestically, regionally, globally, uh, lived in Latin America for eight years. So, um, you know, my, my entire career, um, has been selling in, in some way shape or form, and the most effective way to do that is to really, uh, understand your customer. And, and, um, as you, we recently just finished a project where, uh, we had a lot of focus on kind of the baby boomers understanding them and, uh, and what that means for marketing.

Roy (03:12):

Yeah, no, I'm going to just give you some kudos. You're doing a good job. I drive a Nissan and I do drink a lot of Coke, so whatever, whatever you did to help them is work. And so, yeah, I'm not going to let you off the hook too. You know, we, uh, we had a talk last week a little bit, and so I'm still jealous. I talk every day about, um, you took, you had an opportunity to take a gap six months and, um, I guess this was when you were a little younger, but you were able to travel around, um, uh, what were you in Europe when you were traveling?

Tommy (03:48):

Uh, no, I actually, and you know, the, the ironic thing is my business partner at the time was my boss and she was the one that, uh, allowed me, uh, take a six month leave of absence. And I traveled, uh, across Asia, uh, Australia and, um, a couple of parts of Africa and, you know, uh, I always say to people, um, it was, uh, something that I'll never look back on and, or Brett, um, I, you know, never wanted to be somebody who said, I wish I would have, uh, and, you know, uh, while a lot of people, I think, uh, thought I may have been making a mistake in my career. Um, I think it was the exact opposite whenever I, uh, you know, had my resume out there and would talk to people. Uh, they actually didn't want to talk about my job experience.

Tommy (04:38):

I wanted to talk about my, my travel and, you know, their, their, their comment was always wish I had to get to that. Um, it was, uh, it was a great experience, um, enables you to understand, uh, that, you know, in the end, uh, consumers around the world or are a lot more similar, uh, than they are different. Um, and, uh, it was a, you know, a trip I'll never forget, uh, had some amazing experiences, uh, hiked, Kilimanjaro, um, you know, Trek, the great wall of China. Uh, I was a scuba diving and the great barrier reef. So, uh, it was a triple the lifetime. And, uh, one that I would recommend anyone who, uh, maybe has the opportunity to do it, take it.

Roy (05:30):

Yeah. I was going to say, we don't offer too much employment advice here, but if you're, if you're a younger person listening to this, if you have the opportunity, uh, fake it, you won't regret it. That's for sure. Well, let's get back to, um, you know, our consumer, our, I guess our approach in this industry has changed a lot from, you know, back in the day where people didn't really understand what senior living. So when they came in, we were able to explain it, basically, this is where you live, this is where you eat. And now we've kind of evolved into, you know, our consumers are very, very smart, do a lot of research and, um, you know, they know our product inside and out. So we kind of have to change our approach to start where they are. And, um, you know, instead of selling, uh, basically selling the structure, you know, to sell that dream. And so anyway, I wanted to talk to you about, uh, you were, your client was actually more of a, um, a medical, they had more of a medical model than what we do in senior living. But I think after we talked a lot of the lessons that y'all learned about the consumer for this, uh, really apply to the senior living space.

Tommy (06:52):

Yeah, that's right. We were, um, we're working, doing a little work, uh, on behalf of a healthcare provider, uh, in South Florida. And, you know, there, uh, I would say primarily a, a treatment facility, um, you know, really focused on accepting Medicare and Medicaid, um, and has built a great business, uh, you know, uh, amazing business. But I think, uh, one of the things that, you know, they're recognizing is that, uh, um, you know, the, the world is changing and, uh, you know, um, their core consumer today is really, what's known as the silent generation, that generation, uh, born between 1928 and 1945, but a generation that kinda drew grew up in, uh, the industrial age. Um, and what is happening is that they realized in the next 10 years, uh, you know, the silver tsunami, if you will, is going to be crashing down upon them, um, there will be a 40% increase in the number of people, uh, starting to, uh, age in if you will, to their services.

Tommy (08:03):

And these people are the baby boomers, uh, you know, generation that we've, we've heard about, uh, for, for decades. Um, you know, the size of them, uh, is, is enormous. And the reality is, is the baby boomers are completely different from the silent generation, right. Um, and, and, and that's a, that's a result of their life experiences. And, you know, what worked to attract, uh, you know, your current customer, if you will, the silent generation, I think this is very applicable to the senior living community, um, is not necessarily what's going to work to attract if you will, your future consumer, which is the baby boomer generation.

Roy (08:47):

Yeah. I think that was the most, um, poignant thing that you said in our previous conversation was that, you know, whatever we don't want to misquote you, you said it very good, but it was some basically is like, whatever we've done to get to this point, if we expect to get to 20 more years, we are going to have to change our focus and our, the way that we market to our consumers.

Tommy (09:12):

That's right. And, um, you know, I'll talk a little bit about just, just some of the experiences that shaped boomers, um, and, and, and again, how they're very different from the silent generation, right? If you think about silent generation, again, they kind of grew up in that industrial age. Um, and when we think about the baby boomers, right, they grew up in, in really, what's now known as the digital age. Um, and, you know, they are first and foremost, a generation of learners. Um, you know, according to a Pew research study in 2005, uh, the baby boomers are the most educated group to ever, um, move into retirement age. Um, you know, uh, a high school education was, was not, if you will, kind of the, the goal for the baby boomer generation, right. Uh, higher education became the norm, um, you know, going to college and, you know, always with the idea of being better than your parents.

Tommy (10:14):

And, and, uh, you know, again, the parents kind of got the high school education. Um, you know, they either worked in a factory, managed the factory, you know, they were in that industrial age and, and, you know, the world was baby boomers was, was quite different. And, you know, in addition to just going out and attaining, you know, college education, um, they didn't stop there. Uh, you know, uh, their careers started, uh, like I said, in the early days of the digital revolution and, and, you know, we're in multiple waves of that now. So continuing education was critical for them, um, you know, really to kind of keep up and, and, and keep up with where the world was moving. So, you know, that became kind of the secondary piece of their education, right? So it was first off, they go to college. Now they're doing continuing education courses, um, as part of their careers.

Tommy (11:07):

Um, and then, you know, if you look at, uh, you know, the, the learning, um, that they've embarked on in their life, it hasn't stopped. Uh, according to USA today in 2009, there were over 400,000 students above the age of 50 enrolled in community colleges. Right? So again, these are people taking courses for, um, you know, maybe a second career, uh, maybe just a topic that they're very interested in, but these, these, uh, these people who are coming into retirement age, um, they are highly educated. They are learners. Um, they thrive on, uh, you know, knowledge. Um, and I think that was the first that's first experience that, that you have to think about, um, that, that kind of shapes them. Uh, now a second,

Roy (12:01):

Sorry. I was just gonna say, before we move on that I, you know, I can identify with that because of, you know, I've been a lifelong learner. I was kind of slow to do my undergrad and did it at night for many years, and then graduate at night. But, um, you know, you, people don't think about the learning that we do on the job. Like when I first started working, I mean, you know, we basically had a big chief tablet and a number two pencil, and now we've got computers, we've got zoom and, uh, you know, teams and all this electronic, um, all these electronic tools at our disposal and also my partner, she is a writer. And so, you know, she's always in seminars and conferences to, uh, you know, keep up with what the latest trends are, you know, whether it's digital or print, whatever. So definitely can, uh, identify with that for sure.

Tommy (12:59):

Yeah. And that's a, that's a great, great point, Roy, and that leads me to my, my sort of second, um, experience, if you will, that shape boomers. And, you know, I think that, um, you know, unfortunately stereotypes are real right. And, uh, I think a lot of times people have a perception that, um, the older generation is not necessarily, um, open to change, uh, you know, and not necessarily media savvy. Um, and it couldn't be further from the truth. Right. Um, really, when you think about it, the baby boomers were the pioneers of media expansion. Um, you know, they were the drivers of, uh, cable TV, uh, the drivers of, you know, the internet mobile. Um, you know, if you think about it, two of the most well-known tech pioneers, um, you know, in the world, Steve jobs and bill Gates, they're boomers. Right. Um, and so one of the things that you see is that, you know, um, boomers are, are, have always embraced, learned, and incorporated, um, you know, kind of new technology and media into their life.

Tommy (14:15):

Um, it's really second nature to them. Um, if you think about, you know, in their very, very early, early years as a kid, you know, it was radio, right? And, and now you think to where we are now, um, the, the proliferation, um, and, and just quite frankly, the sophistication of media has changed tremendously. Um, and they've been along that journey the entire time. Um, and really, you know, they've used this media and this technology to actually create a life that, you know, is really works for them. And it's a life of personalization. Um, it's a life of convenience. Um, you know, if you look at, uh, you know, gate out there today around the baby boomer, boomer generation, 75% of these boomers use social networks to keep in touch with their friends and family, um, they're actually heavier users and spend more time on social networks than the younger generation do.

Tommy (15:17):

Um, it's, it's been a great tool for them, right? It's a, it's a way to keep up with family all across the country or across the world, friends, you know, from, you know, that you've reconnected with that, that were childhood friends all the way up to, you know, your, your friends that you made throughout your work life. So, um, and these guys aren't afraid to, to, um, use the tools, um, online they're online consumers, you know, 84% of them plan trips, 64% of them, you know, buy flights online, a heavy percentage, actually do grocery shopping. Um, and I think, you know, one of the things that's very interesting and, uh, I think it's something important to consider, particularly in the senior living world, they have the greatest adoptation of voice devices, things like an Amazon echo, um, more so than the younger generation as well. So, you know, media expansion and, and, and learning, and, you know, embracing new media and new technology is second nature to them.

Roy (16:20):

Yeah, not again, I can just speak from my personal experience that, you know, I'm kind of at the, uh, the last, uh, at the, I guess the last of the baby boomers and my mother happens to be kind of in that first class, you know, the first group of M and a, as she is on Facebook, you know, she has friends that they have kept up since high school. Some of her work friends that, you know, she was with 40, 50 years ago and they, um, you know, they chat weekly for sure. And then just, uh, you know, going through this pandemic, the, the next step for her is she's actually started ordering a lot more groceries online. So yeah, it's, it's amazing. I never would have thought she would do that, but she has adapted to it very well. They don't always know how to use it. And sometimes the, uh, remote and I have to go back over there and like, I can't get this DV thing to work with. They, they have such a complicated setup that, uh, you know, you have to have, uh, an associate degree in engineering just to get the TV and the cable thing to come along.

Tommy (17:29):

Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it is, uh, you know, and even something like pandemic rice has kind of accelerated that, right. Um, with a lot of, uh, of the older folks, um, being very cautious about going out, Hey, they, you know, shopping online and, and getting your groceries delivered to you. Right. It's, um, it's, in some cases may have forced the behavior. Um, but, but again, I still think a high percentage of them were already doing it. Um, and, and the pandemic might've just, you know, put a few more of them over the edge, but, you know, they, they are, um, very, very comfortable with new media and technology. And I think that's a, that's a, uh, a perception or stereotype if you will, that, um, you know, that they're not, uh, sophisticated in that sense, that that's really important, particularly for, um, folks in your space to understand. Um, because I think the tendency is to want to use kind of the, the traditional channels and the traditional means to connect with them. Yeah.

Roy (18:31):

And I think it's also good to realize that they're savvy enough, that they're doing a lot of research online, you know, about the different community services and things like that. So it's kind of, double-edged, you know, we have to remember that to reach out to them, but we also have to remember that, that, you know, when they walk into one of our communities, that they are armed with a lot of information about not only our particular community, but the competitors in the area as well.

Tommy (19:01):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and, and, you know, when I, uh, you know, I I'll say towards the end of our conversation, when I, I want to kind of lay out some of the, you know, tips, if you will, for, for the, the, the audience out there on how to, to think about leveraging this knowledge and their marketing. Um, that's certainly a place that we're going to go because, uh, research is key for them, again, goes back to being a lifelong learner. Right. Um, you know, I think another important, um, experience that, uh, the senior living, uh, marketing community needs to think about, and, and not only the market community, quite frankly, that the operational community of these senior living facilities is that, um, this is a generation that believes they will be middle-aged forever. Um, you know, uh, the silent generation, right. Uh, the, I'll say, you know, story of retirement was, you know, finish up your, your, your job.

Tommy (20:05):

That's been a hard job, right. You know, potentially again, and in, you know, manual labor, um, you know, finish that up and go sit on the front porch in a rocking chair, um, you know, at your, your home that you've lived in for 30 years and, and just, you know, spend the rest of your, your, your years sipping lemonade and, and, you know, watching the birds fly around. Right. Um, that's not the boomer generation of all that, that was kind of the ideal for the silent generation, but the boomer generation, you know, um, they, again, feel like they're going to be middle age. Uh, you know, when you think about it, it's the first generation that's really been to a degree, I'll say obsessed with health proactively, um, thinking about their health, uh, you know, they, they grew up in the age of, you know, chain fond that Richard Ronan, Olivia Newton, John, right.

Tommy (20:59):

Exercising, you know, exercising, uh, you know, not just, Oh, I'm, I'm walking somewhere, but like making a point of here's my exercise routine. Um, and you, you know, watching their diet, uh, you know, watching what they eat. Um, you know, if you look at the information out there today, 40% of maybe more members plan to work until they die, uh, you know, um, they're, uh, they're a group that oftentimes they retire and they're 66% more likely than the previous generation to retire and then decide this isn't for me and return to work. Um, and so, you know, I, I think when you think about, um, you know, who these people are, they're, they're active, they're proactive quite frankly. And, um, you know, for them, it is, you know, how do I, how do I, um, you know, stay, uh, and keep my lifestyle is as normal as possible. Um, and, uh, you know, being active is what makes them happy. Uh, you know, this isn't a generation that's ever kind of been lazy and sat around. So, um, I think it's very important when you think about the offerings and your, your, your facilities, that you have a lens of who these people are and what they're seeking. Um, and I think that's very important because, you know, if it's just a community where we're going to just sit around, it might not be for them. Right.

Roy (22:39):

Yeah. And I think that need to stay busy and, you know, feel useful. Everybody wants to feel useful. I think, you know, just kind of thinking, as you're talking that the silent generation, you know, they were good with that it's retirement setting in the chair. And, you know, they, most of them had had physical jobs that probably took a toll on their bodies too. So they were, you know, tired and worn out when it was time to retire. Whereas with this baby boomer generation, lot of us, you know, office jobs. And so I think it, um, we're not ready to sit in a rocking chair and just give it all up. I mean, we want to remain useful, remain relevant, even, you know, through the later years of our life. And so many people are, I mean, you know, my stepfather, he worked probably, I think until he was 85 years old and, you know, got up every day and did the same thing. He slowed down a lot after that. But, uh, up until that point, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't pry him away from you, what he was doing.

Tommy (23:49):

Yeah. It's, um, it's almost like a, you know, they had the reverse in terms of careers, you know, the silent generation was, as you said, labor hard work, uh, versus the boomer generation was kind of sedentary in the office, sitting behind a desk and, you know, they're looking for the exact opposite experience in retirement. Um, so yeah, it's a great, it's a great point. Uh, you know, but again, it's one of the things that, uh, you have to think about when you're attracting this future customer. Right, right. Um, you know, one other thing that I, I think is, you know, I know you're based in the, in the Dallas area in Texas. Um, and I think, you know, uh, uh, parallel, but I'll draw to, you know, the project that we're working on this, this, this client was based in South Florida. Uh, and I think one of the things that, um, you have in both of those, uh, areas or regions is a huge Hispanic population, which quite frankly, is a, uh, an extremely important, um, you know, group consumer group in America now, uh, they, they're about 20% of the population, I think, over 60 million.

Tommy (25:10):

And, uh, you know, I think there's some learning that, that we have to think about here as well. And one of those is that, you know, this is a, uh, when we think about boomer generation, right. Um, in terms of language, oftentimes, um, they are second or third generation now, the Hispanic consumers. Um, and I think early on in our marketing, we thought, well, if it's a Hispanic consumer, we must speak in language to them, but, uh, meaning in Spanish and our messaging needs to be in Spanish and all of that. Um, but I think one of the things is important to understand is the boomers, uh, the Hispanic population, um, within the boomer generation. A lot of these are second and third generation. I kind of say English is not a secondary language. It's just a second language and they use it. They're completely comfortable with it. Um, often times they've used it, uh, you know, throughout their working career. So I think it's just a very important, um, element to think about and marketing, because, you know, the message you deliver in the language that a true delivered in is very important. Um, and you can't ignore the Hispanic consumers, um, any longer, just the sheer size of them, uh, and, uh, you know, their, their growth in the United States. Uh, and I think they will be a future consumer, uh, in, in senior living facilities, uh, as well for a long time

Roy (26:44):

Rent. Yeah. I think especially the, you know, California and through the, the Southern Southwestern and Southern States for sure.

Tommy (26:56):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um,

Speaker 3 (26:59):

So, so, you know, there's, yeah,

Tommy (27:02):

All these real, I'll say learnings and or experiences that we've been talking about. And, you know, what I kind of say to people is, you know, when you're marketing and you're targeting people, um, it's about understanding who they are. And oftentimes we get caught up in understanding who they are at a point in time. Um, but I think with this generation, it's kind of very important to understand, um, what made them, who they are at this point in time and it's those experiences. And I think we can look at how these past experiences have shaped them and anticipate kind of their future expectations in terms of meaningful engagement and marketing and what their expectation is. And I think that's kind of a really important thing for us to consider and, you know, really, I have five takeaways if you will, for, you know, marketers out there, um, thinking about the, the older community and things that they need to keep in mind when I'm there, they're trying to connect with them, they're trying to sell their products and services.

Tommy (28:18):

Okay. And, and I would say, number one, you have to embrace technology and digital, right. Um, don't, don't be scared of it. Don't get caught up in the, the stereotypes. Um, because, you know, as we discussed earlier, um, this generation, they're not afraid of, of, uh, technology, they've adapted to it their entire life, uh, and, and that's where they are. Um, and I know that, you know, oftentimes, you know, maybe we'll think about, well, you know, they prefer to talk to somebody that's not always the case. You know, maybe they want to inquire about information or set up an appointment, you know, via text or email versus calling a number. Right. And I think that's something important to think about. And when you're doing outreach, you know, it may not be necessarily, uh, a traditional way of doing it, whether it's, you know, direct mail, um, you know, or something like that, uh, or, or in, in print and in magazines, you might need to think about, you know, more digital, uh, communication with them.

Tommy (29:26):

So I think, you know, first and foremost, you need to embrace technology in your facilities. Um, but also in your communication, like I kinda was thinking the other day. Right. And, and again, one of the reasons that voice technology is so popular with this generation is you think about, uh, what you can do with voice, right. I don't have to pick up a newspaper or I don't have to, you know, kind of go on my phone and, you know, and, um, I hate to admit it, but my eyesight's going, it's much easier for me to ask, you know, Alexa, what's the weather, um, or you've gotten a lot of appointments set up, right. I can set up an, a reminder, uh, you know, right then and there. So, you know, it's interesting, you know, I think about a facility where, Hey, maybe every room has an Amazon echo in it.

Tommy (30:18):

Right. Keeping people on track appointments, social events, whatever. Um, but it's really easy. So I think in the end, you guys have to embrace technology and embrace digital when you're thinking about the senior living, uh, you know, community these days. For sure. Um, you know, the other thing that embracing on of digital does is it unlocks personalization. And one of the things that you start to learn when you're studying the baby boomers is that they often feel, um, I will sort of say left out by marketers. Um, you know, they don't feel like marketers cater to them. They don't feel like marketers are, um, delivering personalized messages to them. Um, and quite frankly, it's a little bit frustrating to them, right. Uh, and so they do like personalization. And the one thing that, you know, um, you know, digital does, is it unlocks personalization, right?

Tommy (31:34):

Um, you know, you may prefer a facility for one reason, or maybe investigating a facility for one reason, but somebody else may have a completely different reason for, or rationale for doing it. And, you know, there's a lot of data out there and it enables me to deliver a different message to try and attract one consumer to my facility versus somebody else. So I'm highlighting different features. So it's not a one size fits all message. So, you know, again, if you go back to starting to embrace digital and technology, it unlocked personalization, which is one more way that you connect with consumers and I'm sure you see it all the time. You know, if you're on a phone call with somebody you're trying to understand what their hook is or why they're interested in the facility, and then you go deeper on that.

Roy (32:26):

Right. Yeah. And I was just going to kind of extrapolate that to the digital that, you know, and I'm not an expert by any means, but I do know that, you know, we can tailor our messages to key words that are, or, you know, even with some online platforms, if you look up, uh, if you look up something, it will send you a related message based on, you know, kind of what you're interested in. I get those all the time. And so I, you know, like you said, if we're looking for security or maybe, you know, more help, whatever the consumer is looking for, we can tailor a message exactly to that.

Tommy (33:07):

Yeah. And, and the bottom line is everyone, not just boomers, everyone responds to a message that's relevant to them, right. Or is more likely to respond to a message that's relevant to them. I, you know, the, the easiest analogy, um, is, Hey, if I just had a car accident and my car has been totaled, that's what I'm paying a lot more attention to all the car ads that are out there. But if I just bought a new car, you know, and you're showing me car ads, I'm not paying attention to it. So, you know, having something that's relevant to somebody certainly, uh, makes them stand up, take notice. Um, and, and, uh, you know, and quite frankly want to research, which leads me to my next point or next really kind of key thing, which is give them information, do not hold back. Uh, I think that oftentimes, and, and I know this, you know, from my, my automotive experience, right.

Tommy (34:06):

You know, uh, dealers, you should just say, Hey, get them, get them to the, just figure out a way to get them to the lot and I'll take care of it. Right. And you know, what we had to kind of explain to them is, Hey, it's a different ball game now, guys, um, there's so much data and information out there by the time somebody gets to a lot, they already know what car they want. They know what price there is fair, and they're willing to pay for it. Um, and you know, they want the experience to be fast and simple, right? They're not there to get any more information from the dealer because all of that information is available out there, uh, you know, online and, you know, again, being a generation of learners, they're used to investigating learning, reading. Um, and so I think you have to think about that in your communication.

Tommy (35:00):

Um, and particularly on something like, uh, you know, your website, uh, you know, I actually believe that, you know, in this situation, and, and it's not often that I say this, you know, I'm usually, I usually subscribe to the less is more, but I think for something like this, providing them more information is better. Um, you know, and I kind of say to people, um, a lack of information in their mind would either equate to, you know, um, would either frustrate them or, uh, equal you're hiding something, some sort of mistrust. So put it all out there, make sure that your, your website and, and, and all of your, you know, communication about your facilities is very, very detailed. Give them the opportunity to go deep. Um, you know, I think that's so important for this generation. Uh, you know, don't, don't, don't just be surface level.

Roy (35:58):

Yeah. And that's important. I mean, even in my life, I will, uh, you know, when I'm making a decision and I'm doing my research, I may pick up on something, a feature service that one company has that I see on their website or in their ads that, um, the competitor didn't show. And then, you know, you'll get the phone call after the sale. And it's like, uh, you know, I bought with somebody else and they're like, Oh, well, could you tell me why? And when you explain it, then they say like, Oh, well, we do that too. And I'm like, well, but I didn't know that because all the research that I did, it never really came out and said it, but your competitor was very upfront about all the services that they had.

Tommy (36:40):

Yeah. And it doesn't mean, you know, you're going to have, you know, everybody's going to get the complete answer that they want, and they're not going to have questions. Right. But, you know, again, the reality is these are people that figured it out. Right. And they, they, they, they want to be, they want to have as much information as possible in making a decision. And quite frankly, they'd rather sit with the information, be able to digest it on their own terms at their own pace. Right. Versus having to call somebody, you know, you're getting it verbally, you know, versus I can see it. Right. It's okay. I can see it, I can make my notes. So, so, you know, I, I just think it's a really important thing to, to think about. Um, probably hasn't been a traditional practice. Um, but I think he got a, you gotta be willing to go really deep, um, uh, with the information you're providing them.

Tommy (37:29):

Right. Um, you know, I think one other thing that's really important for, um, facilities probably to think about as well. Um, and, and mind you, the research that we were doing was, was for, uh, you know, a treatment facility for, for lack of a better term. And I know that senior living facilities aren't necessarily the same, but I think that it's very important given that these guys believe they're going to be middle-aged for life. Right. And they're very proactive that, you know, these facilities think about, you know, uh, I, I would say both, I kind of say reactive care, getting, promoting reactive caregiving, but also, you know, proactive kind of activities that keep your residents happy, healthy, you know, and social, right. Again, just, just knowing how active these, these, these baby boomers and want to be and anticipate being, um, I think you have to, you know, when you're marketing yourself, you have to quite frankly, create an create and communicate a vibrant community, not a quiet sort of sedentary community, uh, for lack of a better term, because it is a completely different generation, right. They want to be active. They want to know all the things that there are to do. Um, socializing is very important to them. Uh, and so I think that's an important thing and may not be how, um, senior living facilities have always, you know, marketed themselves.

Roy (39:18):

Right. Yeah. That's, that's important to be sure and highlight, you know, a, a lot of these, you know, communities that I deal with, they have a lot of great stuff, a lot of activities, but sometimes in our messaging that becomes very secondary and a lot of the consumers, adult children, you know, they just don't realize how robust the, um, the life can be. If, if the resident she used to make ma chooses to make it that way.

Tommy (39:49):

Yeah. I mean, you know, I, uh, I have a 95 year old grandmother that's, um, in a, in a, in a facility and she's been there for years, but, you know, whenever I go visit or I talked to her, you know, she's always talking about, you know, the card games with her friends, you know, uh, you know, unfortunately right now, in, in, in the pandemic, you know, one of the biggest things she just is, is being able to go, uh, you know, to dinner with her friends, you know, because they're kind of serving them in their, in their apartments. But, um, you know, the social aspect is really important. Um, and I think that's what keeps, keeps them going and, and, you know, uh, it's what they seek out. And I don't think, as you say, it should be a secondary thought in, in your marketing. Um, I think you need to bring that to the forefront, uh, quite frankly. Um, so I think that's a really important thing for, um, you know, and a difference between, into the silent generation and the boomer generation. I mean, just think about the names, right? Silent generation, boomer generation, right. Silent, quiet. I just want to be quiet and, you know, boomers like I'm here. Notice me, so, you know, it's in the name.

Roy (41:05):

Yeah. That's a good analogy. I like that.

Tommy (41:10):

Um, you know, I think the other, the final piece right. Is, and again, it doesn't apply to all facilities, but just be mindful of language. Right. Mindful of, uh, you know, um, uh, I would say in your, um, in your collateral, in your, you know, channels, things like that, um, you know, do you need to have, uh, you know, language that, that caters to bilingual people, um, and, you know, you probably want to have, uh, Hispanic versions of that, if that is something that somebody prefers that language, but also I'll take it, you know, beyond just language, Spanish, English, something like that, but also the words that you use. Right. Um, you know, I'll say one of the things that we were, uh, you would often see, probably not as, as common in the senior living, but what we're seeing with this, this, uh, you know, kind of, uh, medical, um, facility, we were working with, everything was patient patient patient, and that has a very kind of negative connotation.

Tommy (42:23):

And we were like, you know, the, the, these people are members of your community, right? They're, they're not, everything is not doom. And gloom patients just has kind of the connotation of being sick and being reactive. Um, and so I think it's important that the, the language that you use, right. Um, know we always, you know, kind of have a thing in, in the marketing world, everything communicates right. And language is important and words matter. Um, so I think it really has to do go through your, your copy with a fine tooth comb. Um, you need to train your staff right on how to communicate, because let's face it. If, if somebody's coming to visit a facility to, to check it out, um, your staff, you know, who's taking them around, they're, they're the frontline of marketing for you, right. And the language that they use, um, the, the, the positivity, the energy, all of that stuff communicate.

Tommy (43:23):

Um, and, and I think that's very important sometimes it's, you know, uh, you know, overlooked, but, you know, I'll kinda kind of go to what I think is just a phenomenal story and marketing. Um, and, and the consistency that they've built, and it is company chick filet, right. You don't go to a chick filet without somebody saying, it's my pleasure. Right. They have trained their staff so well, right. To communicate, to have smile, you know, the positivity. Um, I think that's, you know, and, and I'm, and I'm shocked, right? That, that more companies don't focus on that because your frontline workers are really one of your biggest forms of marketing and communication.

Roy (44:15):

Yeah. And we do, uh, you know, we do miss the point on that a lot that, you know, I talked to him, you know, my customers, a lot about the receptionist being one of the most important contacts in this whole marketing process, because they're going to be the person that you talk to when you call to set up an appointment to go in, or they're going to be the first person that you see when you walk in. So really, um, letting you know, messaging to all the employees about how important it is to have that positive, upbeat, because I do a lot of mystery shopping, a lot of in person. And when you are touring a community, the energy and the, like you said, the positivity of the person that's taking you on this tour, it's very important. I mean, it can change the dynamics because I've been in the same community with somebody who wasn't as good and the community tended to be Bleaker. And, um, then with somebody who was really positive, upbeat, it just, it changes the whole dynamics of what, how you perceive things.

Tommy (45:25):

Yeah. And I think, you know, um, you're right. And I think the point here is everything communicates. Um, I used to have, uh, one of my old CEOs who said that constantly everything communicate. And I think oftentimes we think a marketing is, you know, the ad I put out right. Or, um, you know, my website, but it's so much more than that. Um, and all of the touch points that the consumer engages with, from, you know, a website, uh, uh, quite frankly, even a, uh, another resident, right. You know, word of mouth, you know, it's one of the most powerful, um, you know, forms of marketing, but everything that, uh, is a touch point with your, you know, facility is, is a point of marketing is a point of communication and, and has the opportunity to either, you know, have a customer think very positively about you and, and, and, and the, the messages you're trying to send, or it can be very negative. So I just think it's a huge thing that often just gets overlooked. And, uh, and I think when you're talking about senior living facilities, the people are so important. Um, the people are what bring me energy. Um, the people are what bring the positivity. Um, and, you know, I can't stress that enough. Right,

Roy (46:58):

Right now it's a very important part. Well, Tommy, I do appreciate you coming on and sharing this insight. Um, you know, about the marketing to the baby boomers, it's going to be important, you know, for us to stay on point and be sure that we change our messaging, you know, for this group versus the silent generation. So, uh, before I let you tell everybody how they can get ahold of you, if you don't mind it, is there a tool or kind of a, or something that you do every day that you just don't think you could do without?

Tommy (47:36):

Um, yeah. I, you know, this may not be the traditional answer, but, um, uh, music is extremely important in my life. Uh, it's, it's been something that since I was, uh, you know, a young teenager, um, I've always, I've always listened to music, loved music, uh, you know, explored different varieties of music. And, um, I don't know that I could live without Spotify. And so every morning when I, when I get set up in my office, the first thing that I do is, you know, I, I get my computer open. Um, I get Spotify on and I, you know, depending on if I'm, you know, trying to be focused on something, if I'm researching something, you know, the music that I put on my, my Barry, but, uh, you know, that's a, that's a critical app for my, uh, productivity, if you will, um, on a daily basis. Yeah.

Roy (48:35):

Oh, no, I agree. I could not live without my music every day. And it's something about it. Just even if you're a little bit sluggish, if you get some good music on a good song comes on and no matter the genre just seems to pick you up, lift your spirit positive outlook. So that is awesome. Well, uh, if you wouldn't mind just tell everybody, uh, first off, who is your customer, what you can do for them, and then also just a, you know, how they could reach out and get ahold of you.

Tommy (49:06):

Yeah. We work with, um, we work with a wide variety of, uh, I'll say customers, right. Um, and, and we are truly collaborators, not competitors in the industry, but, you know, we work with, with, uh, any type of marketer who's looking to sell better. Um, and you know, we do work all the way from, you know, branding work and helping them position themselves in the marketplace and finding kind of a white space to, um, Hey, you just need, you need help actually. Uh, where, where should I be placing this message, you know, given who my consumer is. And, and, you know, so, you know, we work with, we work with actually agencies. We work with media vendors. Um, we also work with clients direct. So, uh, you know, we have a broad customer base, um, in terms of, you know, where, where you can find us.

Tommy (49:59):

Um, you know, probably the easiest thing to do is go to our website, which is www.theroundtripgroup.com. And there, it talks about who we are talks about our services, um, is all the information on how to contact, you know, uh, all of us in the organization. And so, you know, I would encourage any of the listeners out there if, uh, you know, you to need, or you just want to have a conversation and see if, if we might be right for you and can help you, uh, go to the website and don't hesitate to reach out to any of them.

Roy (50:36):

All right. Well, again, I want to thank Tommy Nolen with the round trip group, be sure and reach out to him and, uh, you know, see how they can help you. Uh, you can also find us www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com, also Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Uh, you can also reach out to [email protected]. It's been a pleasure Tommy, and until next time everybody take care. Thanks a lot.

 

 

Marty Ramseck

Talent Optimization Advisor

Marty has cultivated 30 years of experience in hands-on sales management and double-digit growth in every one of his ventures. He has worked for companies such as Vintage Senior Living, LivHOME, Sunrise Senior Living, CORT, and Cigna.

An expert, who helps organizations intentionally design and implement a people strategy, building powerful teams and cultures to match their business strategies.  He helps employees become more engaged, productive and satisfied by facilitating self-awareness and an understanding of an individual’s motivations and natural behaviors through the talent optimization discipline and Predictive Index® methodology.

Marty’s primary focus is on partnering with Senior Leaders to build a talent strategy that maps to their business goals. In 2016 Marty joined PI Midlantic as a Talent Optimization Advisor to help companies and professionals to reach exceptional results.

Marty earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Dayton. He lives in Southern California with his wife Nancy of 36 years.

https://www.pimidlantic.com

Full Transcript Below

Roy (00:01):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy, you can find [email protected]. You can also download the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, and Spotify. We are on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as well. Hey, today we've got a great guest. Uh, this gentleman not only has a great product that I truly believe in, but he also, uh, has a wealth of experience in the sales and marketing, um, portion of senior living. So couldn't find a better guest we've talked before, but I did want to catch up with them again, just to kind of see what some changes are, uh, kind of what's new coming down the pike with the product. So let's give a warm welcome to Marty Ramsey. He is with PI Midlantic and, um, it, the PI is predictive index. And so what it is it's basically, um, and Marty, I'll let you jump in.

Roy (01:04):

It's basically an evaluation of a person's behaviors, I guess, you know, we want to clarify and I'll let you clarify. There's a difference between skillsets and behaviors. You explain it much more eloquently than I do, but, um, this is going to be something that we can use for a pre hires. And it's also something that can be used within the organization for making sure we got people in the right place, making sure if we are, uh, promoting that the temperament, the individual's temperament is a match for our position, but anyway, I'm gonna turn it over to you, Marty. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much for coming back and, um, I'll let you talk a little bit about the product.

Marty (01:52):

Okay, great. Thanks for, thanks for having me. And, um, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Um, let's see, does is if you think about your employees, there's kind of three buckets that you're, that you look at, right? The first bucket is kind of what gets them in the door for, uh, for the interview, it's their skillsets, uh, their education, their knowledge, their experience, and that's what's on the resume that that's what gets them in for the interview. The tougher part is the second thing that you're looking for, I'm sure is their value system. Do they have the right values for your organization? Uh, are they, uh, uh, hardworking, integrity, honesty. And I was a VP of sales for 15 years in the senior, in the senior space. The one of the things I always look for myself, people will have passion for seniors and people that have that I thought customers could see right through them.

Marty (02:45):

So those are two things you think about why we choose those in life. We choose our skills. We choose our education. We choose our knowledge and we choose the values. You choose to work hard. You choose to treat people respectfully, she's have honesty. Your and the third thing that you look for every job has the behaviors you have to do to be successful. And with PI does, is looks at your behaviors to see is you have the right behaviors in that role to be successful. And unfortunately we don't choose our behaviors. Our behaviors kind of choose up. I tend to compare to your height, right? So those who have not met me, I stand five to 10. I was five to 10 at 18 I'm five to 10 today, 20 years from now, I'll probably be five foot eight, five to nine shrank. But no matter what I do, I can read every self help book on Amazon, my wife's and me.

Marty (03:36):

I'll never be six foot five. So PII helps you determine what behaviors that person brings to the, to the, to your organization. And with that, if you think about people who have not been successful in your, in your communities, in your organization, it's usually not. It's usually not what was on the resume that got them in trouble. It's usually what's what is on their behaviors. So he was in trouble. They didn't have good followup or they didn't communicate well. One of the teammate behaviors is what really gets you in trouble from that standpoint. So how does PCI work behavioral and you all have drives rides, great a need, uh, our behavior, our actual behavior is a response to those drivers. And those needs, for example, couldn't later in the day when we're doing this podcast and I'm sure Laura and I are gonna have in a few hours and a drive for hunger that will create a need for us to eat.

Marty (04:32):

And our behavior is a response to that drive and that need of eating dinner, eating dinner is a response to that. Drive that knee. If I only see the behavior, for example, I see somebody drinking coffee at a coffee house. I don't know why they're there, what's driving them there. What they could be there. She was in coffee because they got to get caffeine and energy for the day, or they could be there for socialization needs or they're there to meet a friend, or they can be there because they have a two year old screaming at home. So we could see the behavior, but we don't know what to strive with PCI. We're able to predict what that drive is. And from that from a PI, I can determine what type of needs that employees when have hasn't work and what, uh, how they're going to behave at work, but understanding their predictive index.

Roy (05:20):

Yeah. And I think that behavior is so important, especially when we move to the sales side. And, you know, I think that, um, you know, correct me if I'm wrong here, but this would, this will kind of separate those that are made for sales made for that, you know, human contact, those that are kind of, uh, you know, driven for the outreach versus, you know, more of an analyst type, somebody that wants to set out a desk, maybe look at spreadsheets and not that there's a right and a wrong, everybody wants to be comfortable in what they're doing. It's just the fact of it takes a very special type of an individual to be on the sales side of anything. But, you know, I think senior living sales is a, it's a much more tricky because we're not, it's not like I'm, you're taking an inanimate object and give it to somebody. I mean, the we're trying to convince maybe an adult child or a spouse that we are the rat people to take care of their loved one. And that's, that's a, to me it's an important distinction between an inanimate object taking your car in to get some service. Yeah. We want that to go fine, but it's really not a life or death situation versus, uh, you know, if it's our loved one, we really want to be convinced that the community is right and that the personnel is right to actually, uh, take good care of them.

Marty (06:51):

Yeah. And I think, you know, especially in sales with senior living, um, you know, we couldn't predict again what that behavior is. And I think, you know, senior living sales, which I have 20 clients alone that are either a assisted living, kind of like harmony Commonwealth and pestle and, uh, uh, senior care companies like home care assistance in, uh, a model to name a couple, um, they, um, you know, you can look at what they need and that sales all be successful. And one thing that I can tell by looking at a pie is how much a person is going to control the sales process. I think selling is a lot about control and controlling the next steps and getting people to, you know, recommend next steps. You know, saying things like what we need to do is get mom in for, uh, for launch.

Marty (07:39):

What we need to do is get you to sell the house. Here's how we're going to do it is controlling that next step. The second thing we can help determine a pie is I think is towards point is senior living is such an emotional sale, right? And you want somebody who naturally what their behaviors is going to connect to that emotion of that family, of connecting emotionally to this very, very emotional sales saying things like, you know, can you picture your mom sitting by this window on a fall afternoon as a lease change, watching reading her favorite James Patterson book versus having someone come in and say, you know, the room is 648 feet. It has a frigerator, a shower, and you're selling back and no, no emotion tied to that. Also by looking at a predictive index, I continue to tell that sales person's going to be resolved, focus, all active activity focus.

Marty (08:29):

But what I mean by that is at the end of the day, you asked that person, uh, how did your day go? The person results focused. They're going to say, I got three checks today, or I got to move today, or I got three lunch tours today. They're going to talk to you in terms of results or another type of behavior. You'll have a sales people is they'll talk to you. In terms of activity. I made a hundred calls. I sent out a hundred emails. So obviously you want that sales person to have that high drive, the need for results. And the last thing you could tell based upon a PIs, how a sales person would close. Some people see no as one step closer to getting a yes, some sales people will not go for the next step unless they totally feel in their mind. They got the next steps, uh, secured by, by looking at a pie. I can tell you how that person's going to close a sale. They can close more often or they're closed more appropriately, or they're going to wait, wait, wait until they feel they've got that next step very much to find.

Roy (09:26):

Yeah. And that's a great distinction. And, you know, I just have a little personal anecdote about that. We, um, you know, when I was a little younger, I worked for a brokerage house and, you know, when new representatives came in, that was kind of the first step for the first couple months is they just went into a, what we call the bullpen, sat down with the phone and back in this day, a phone book or a list that they had created. And, you know, they just pounded the phone all day. And to the, you know, to the point about whether it's results or activity, you know, we had a guy after about a month that hasn't, hadn't made any sales really hadn't didn't have anything in the pipeline, but he was proud that he was making a hundred calls a day every day. So back then we had a machine that we could actually see the numbers he was dialing. And so for, um, for his hundred calls every day, some are to his mother, some were to the seven 11 down the street. And, you know, some were to numbers that he knew that they weren't going to answer. And he just called them over and over because it showed up on the tally sheet that he got his hundred calls in. And so it's a huge distinction between the activity and the results.

Marty (10:45):

Yeah. It's they also that, you know, that, look it up here. I can say that person is going to hold you hostage on the activity. While you told me to make the a hundred calls, I did a hundred calls, but at the end of the day, I'm sure if you're a sales leader out there or ed or operations, you know, your health to obviously resolve you're the want somebody to know they're coming in every day, thinking results, thinking results, thinking results.

Roy (11:07):

Right. Right. Yeah. And you know, the reason that, uh, I guess our relationship got started years ago is I feel like this is an important part of, uh, you know, the retention process. Not only do we want to, you know, hire somebody that's going to come in and be a producer, but also if we don't hire that person, eventually either they're going to get discouraged and leave, or we're going to have to ask them to leave, which is a whole nother set of circumstances. So I feel like that, you know, the more work that we can do on the front end of the hiring process for sure. And then, uh, you know, I don't want to be so hyper focused on hiring process that we forget about if we're moving somebody within, uh, within the company from department to department or promotion, that it's also good to use the PI to make sure that that's going to be a good fit, but it can save us so much heartache and, um, uh, you know, having to deal with employee issues if we make the right hire to begin with.

Marty (12:15):

Yeah. I mean your people, especially, I think senior living, it's your biggest competitive advantage. Right? Right. And yeah. So Roy, to your point, obviously you want to make the right hire and you know, no one's ever tested the way to success. Right. You know, you want to get the right skill sets, education and knowledge. You want to get the right values. Of course. And then you want to get the behavior, right? You get all three, right. It doesn't hit out a park, but as important as out of hiring tool, if a full leadership tool is not a trait of that person on board, I've got to motivate them the way they want to be. One, when we've worked with that PI we don't believe in the golden rule, treat others like, you know, we go to be treated, we treat others the way they want to be treated. So if I, if I don't fire you effectively, they're going to leave anyway. So I want to make sure that I'm working with them the way they want to be worked with they're coming into work. What did you do? Great things every day. And I'm so more gasoline on that fire.

Roy (13:05):

Right. Right. So what is the time, um, let's just say from, uh, from phone call to you, I'll call you up. Hey, Marty, I'm interested in PI, uh, what is the process between me making the phone calling kind of getting this process up and running? You know, how long til I can actually use the, uh, the, um, evaluation in my organization.

Marty (13:31):

That's a great question. Um, you know, if you're familiar with PCI or, you know, you just changed companies and you know, the product, he said, Marty, I want to go with your, want to go with the PI program. You know, we send you out a DocuSign, you sign it and you will get access to the software within an hour of, uh, signing up, uh, with PI. And you'll be able to start sending and receiving ECI within an hour. Uh, we are in the knowledge transfer business, and we want people to be experts in FPI in your organization. Cause we want you to use it as a leadership tool, not just a hiring tool. So we do have a training program. All of our training programs are virtually virtual now, and it's a five, uh, to our sessions. As soon as we can get your key managers up and running, you'll be up and running with PI.

Marty (14:15):

And you could probably be up and running full fledged within a, within a week. If you're not familiar PI how the process generally works is, you know, you call me up, I'll tell you a little bit about the program. I'll have you do a PI I'll then you out a PI to do, to make sure you still accurately fucks your behaviors. Then I'll say this to a couple of people on your team to see if it accurately reflects their behaviors. And I'll do a presentation after when does the pie usually four or five other people. And then at that point, it's kind of, you know, you don't want to go with it or not. And that's how that's really his decision. So as long as we get, you know, we can get people up and running and totally new the pie within a, you know, a couple of days of them doing the pie and I'm revealing the results and leading our team members results. So it's a really quick process, a math mess ever. This is not a slow process at all, but again, the key is you have to look at this product as a leadership tool, not as a hiring tool. You want, you, you want people train, you want experts in the organization that are speaking the language, live in the language and using it from a full leadership, a leadership potential of what PIs.

Roy (15:21):

Yeah, I think that's an important part. A important, important point that you're making too is, uh, you know, we can give somebody the best tool that there is in the business, but if they don't use it or don't use it correctly, not going to have much of an impact on the business. And then I think the great thing about, about you, Marty is with, um, with your experience in the industry, from actually being on that sales and marketing side, I think you could probably help your clients, uh, refine the behaviors that they really need to be looking for. Maybe they may have a little bit different idea, but since you've been in the space and been doing this for a long time, you could really help them focus on what are the skills that are going to help you hire a successful individual.

Marty (16:10):

Yeah. And part of that is, yeah, I do have a lot of knowledge in the industry at PI. We have a couple of different assessments. One is what we were talking about, which is individual behavioral assessment. And the other thing that makes us unique, we're one of a few of the assessment companies that is validated for hiring. And we have another tool called a job assessment. And what that is is it's a group of three to five people who have skin in the game to make that hire. They go in and they fill out statements of what are you wanting in this particular role? Do we need somebody who is quick to connect with somebody or leading somebody with strong followup? And that group goes in, fills that out. And then once they're done, I helped them agree on what behavioral pattern, what behaviors you're looking for in that particular role, just like you would agree on what educational requirements you need, what skill requirements, what experience requirements, what's your value requirements that you have now we disagree on this is what we want a real behaviourally for that particular role. And you think about in that sales role in your buildings, you know, every one of those roles has behaviors that happen to be successful, or we getting the behavioral life for them to be successful in the world in that role. And again, I'll reiterate, I can give you skills. I even give you knowledge. I can't change your behavior. It's like I say, you say, I can do that. Well, make me six foot, five minutes. I would love the day of the basketball.

Roy (17:34):

So, um, and less focus on the hiring for just a minute. So, um, where do we want to, to use PI in the hiring process? Do we want to like narrow down to the top one or two candidates that we may have for the job and, uh, give them the evaluation or do we want to, uh, send it out to anybody that applies? What's the advice on that?

Marty (18:02):

A way we work is that we believe in better, better work, better work, right? If you're happier work, they'll be more engaged at home, more tuned to your family. So we want people to use our products. I Dan, part of how our agreements work is, uh, when you sign up with us, you'd get an unlimited number of PIs that you could send out, whether you just 30 or 300,000 and the price remains the same cause we want you to use it. So I recommend all my clients is you want to use PI earliest in the interview process as possible. So I not, you know, I got the resume. I, after skills, I got the knowledge, got their education in writing and the interview process in the interview process that I'm going to confirm that they have those. And then in the interview process, the harder part is, you know, my digging out and getting the right values.

Marty (18:49):

But then behaviorally, I want to know sooner than later, do they have the behaviors that I'm looking for, right? And if they do, they have those behaviors, I'm going to ask behavioral interview questions to confirm that if they don't, it's not a knockout, I'm knock out punch, but I want to see if they can be able to close the gap between the behaviors I need in that role to the behaviors are actually bringing, bring it to the company. And I'm going to do that sooner or later for two weeks, one, but my time management in terms of me, I spent time with the candidates that I feel is gonna be successful, but it's also fair to them. They don't have the right behaviors for that role and they're good chance they're gonna fail. You know, don't put them to several interviews. They're not going to be right. Let them, you know, you can find out right off the base right off the bat and they go look for other opportunities that behave really there, hopefully be more successful from that standpoint. So we want you to use it. It's like you're getting information on what resumes or calls we want to look at PEI in terms of, yes, everyone gets an opportunity to interview once they do the PI, but making sure by asking behavioral interview questions, that they have the behaviors to be successful in that role.

Roy (19:55):

Yeah. And, uh, you know, applicants can tweak, um, applicants can tweak resumes for positions, for companies, for jobs and, you know, kind of maybe look a little bit better on paper than what they may be. How hard is it to get over, uh, taken the PI evaluation if, uh, if, if, um, let's just, you know, focus on the sales end, if I'm, if I'm more analytical and want to read spreadsheets, but I'm applying for a sales job, am I going to be able to, uh, you know, fool the test or is it going to catch me?

Marty (20:35):

Yeah. So that's, that's um, that's a good question. Uh, you know, we've been validated over 350 times and we've got about 30 million assessments that we've done over our 65 years. So we didn't make the stuff in our basement, in our basement last year. It wasn't around for law, so wrong for a long, long time. So we have a group of scientists that, uh, scrubbed the data to make sure what we say we measure. We actually actually measure. So to your question, why number one is what a person comes in. They don't know what, um, what behaviors we're looking for in that particular one. So they don't know what pattern we're looking for in the role and part of the science and the PA in the pattern, how it chooses is really called free choice assessment, where you go in and you see a word, you say, I'm that word.

Marty (21:26):

If you don't, if you see a word, you say, I'm not that word, you don't choose it. And you just go through a free choice and saying, that word is me. That word is that me? And that's how the pattern is created. So the reason why I say that is the words you don't choose has as much effect under that pattern as the words they said as a, as you do choose. So they don't know the pattern you're looking for words, you don't choose also go into how that pattern will say if they had the right pattern for the wall. And the third one is through that zero, zero, zero, 1% as things they can escape the system, you always have behavior interview questions to confirm they have that behavior or not. But at, uh, you know, we have a team that that's our job to make sure people can't do that. And it's [inaudible] we remain validated. Okay.

Roy (22:10):

So in, uh, does, uh, did the results of the, um, analysis, does that lead into interview questions that you may want to ask particular candidates based on how they answered?

Marty (22:27):

Yeah. In our software, we create interview guides based upon what we're looking for in a role versus what that person's actual predictive index. So once we did, we created in our software, you'll get for every candidate interviewing questions that either confirm they have the behaviors shown on the predictive index. Or as I mentioned earlier, can they close the gap between what we're actually looking for in that role to the actual behavioral from that sample? So we provide you with behavioral interview questions out of our, out of our software.

Roy (23:00):

Yeah. That's, that's an awesome, uh, thing to have is, you know, depending on how the questions were answered, being able to have the right followup questions, not just the standard questions that a lot of, uh, you know, recruiters I ask in the interviews that are so general, that nobody really knows what the answer means. Nobody knows what the question really means or what the answer is. I mean, any way. So, uh, so, um, one thing we really haven't touched on is, uh, you know, the COVID environment that we're in now. So are there things that y'all have had to adjust either in the evaluations or working with the clients, you know, kinda what's going on with all?

Marty (23:46):

Yeah, we've done a couple of number one. Obviously the biggest change for us as consultants is all the training needs to be done face to face. Uh, and now obviously for safety, it's all done virtually, which the content has remained great. You know, the content is great people. We get been getting very great feedback on third positive feedback on the training. Yeah. The only thing you missed with that is you missed interaction during breaks or lunches and dinners, but the, you know, the content is what people are getting for the PI training has been, uh, fantastic. Uh, and other than that, it's just really helping our clients adjust their job targets based upon changes made and particular roles because of COBIT up, you know, decreased staff or asking people to do other things, to make sure we've got, we're getting that job right for them to diagnose and make sure we're getting it right based upon changes made because of the Cobra.

Marty (24:39):

And then really helping them understand that they do have people working remotely. We've done a lot of studies based on people's behaviors of who is struggling more, more in this environment who might not be struggling more, you know, some people are struggling because they can't control the meetings like it used to be able to control or especially a lot of, um, high social people, uh, high social people tend to read body language very well, tonality very well. And being on zoom calls, it's harder to do that. Cause you're only seeing the head versus the crossing, their arms in the presentation or presentation or housing. Sometimes you don't have the greatest quality. Uh, so those that were helping them with those types of things that help people as much get through that. And obviously, uh, to, to, to give them the tools and the playbook to be successful, uh, getting through this, uh, pandemic.

Roy (25:27):

Okay. Well, Marty, we appreciate your time. Uh, we're just going to try to wrap this up. Is there anything else, uh, any other information you feel would be important for the listeners to have?

Marty (25:40):

Yeah. Cut. Just one sec. One closes. I can give you my, my information. Uh, Roy, I think it's real important in senior living. So I'll just give you a bit of advice. I don't know. A lot of people kind of hire the other people that have experience in the industry and you're kind of hiring other people's headaches because people kind of bounce around from community communities. And I always thought that I was a great rep and senior living. Why would I leave a couple of them with our products? Should the top plans good? Why am I looking at that? I got the job master here. Right? So my advice to people is I always talk to senior living. I can teach somebody the product and I could teach somebody how to sell. Uh, so based upon that, I would make sure that I would get the behavior, right.

Marty (26:22):

I always look for getting the behavior, right. And then secondly, if a value system, right, in terms of work habits, honesty, integrity, passion for seniors. And then I would always look for a college degree cause they showed me they could search them, finish it. And they're smart enough to do that, but I would not look for skillsets. I would train them on sales training on the product knowledge and what happened for me. And it had a lot of success do it this way. Will you do it that way? Your people don't have a lot of loyalty to you. You know, they stick with you a lot more. Cause you're the ones that gave them a shot. You are the ones who gave the training. So I would recommend highly of looking at getting the Hazel. Right. And if I got the behavior, right, I could teach him so I could teach him, uh, uh, the product knowledge. So that would be my, uh, my recommendation.

Roy (27:06):

Yeah. That's very important. And I don't know, you may have just heard a jet fly over. Fortunately, I live, uh, not too far off of an air force base, so they've got some trainers out here training, but it's a, it's the sound of freedom. So that's a good thing. Sorry for the disruption. Uh, but I think I got it turned down in time, but yeah, that's an important, it's always, you know, we want to hire for the behaviors and we can train to the skills or the tasks that we need people to perform.

Marty (27:39):

Yeah. That it was out of Dallas. And again, you see a lot of people just bounced around the community cause he, and they last a year, you don't get the results you want, but you know, most important, most important after you got is your, is your talent, you know, PR is not the end all be all. We're not, you know, no one's ever tested of success, but you know, I got to experience after experience by getting you the Hazel, right. Getting your values. Right. I, I had an opportunity to create a lot of great sales people. They gave me a lot of success in my career in that industry.

Roy (28:09):

And I know you've told me before, but so what are some of the statistics around the, uh, you know, and this is kind of have to have the caveat that management has to use this tool the way it was intended, but what are some of the statistics around employee retention based on using it?

Marty (28:30):

Yeah. So, you know, again, you know, you have to do it right. Part of my job as a consultant is, you know, would you give, yeah, you also get me as your consultant. My, my job is to help you get the results you did, but, uh, you want to get by providing you the coaching on PEI, helping you learn PI, helping you make the right job targets. So throughout your journey at BI, I might share with you as your coach, as your consultant and that's, that's part of your agreement. That's not an extra charge that you're getting that I'm charging for. It just, I want you to have success with the program. Like I had have had it for 20 years. So based upon that, if you do it right, you fall the way we're doing it are our numbers show. And from our statistics that you're gonna have a 34% higher employee performance, 30% lower turnover of the top performers of HR is going to love you because you're a 31% less time with HR related issues, but at 16% higher strategic success rate.

Marty (29:26):

So, um, you know, they're, you know, you, it right, you are going to get, you know, hire better and, you know, retain, you know, the whole thing is, is all about results and how do you get the best results you hire the best people you hire better. And I keep them inspired. I, we came, but they're coming in to work, wanting to do great things every day. And I'm helping them do that versus having a bunch of people coming in and doing their job description, just doing enough to keep the job, not get fired or people that make the difference in your communities, in your organization and the people that want to do great things for you, for your customers, your internal customers. And that's what we try to help you do with PI is get people on that, on that, where they're wanting to do great things for you, but hiring great people and inspiring them to greatness.

Roy (30:10):

Yeah. And that's the, usually the worst start to the day you walk in at six 30 in the morning and there's the, uh, HR person is setting at, across your desk waiting to get in on Monday morning.

Marty (30:23):

Yes. I've been there done that.

Roy (30:27):

Definitely want to avoid those conversations.

Marty (30:31):

Thanks for the memory, Roy,

Roy (30:35):

If you wouldn't mind, uh, before you give us, uh, your contact information, uh, so what is one tool? Well, either a tool or maybe a ritual that you have during your day, uh, that you just don't think you could do without.

Marty (30:51):

Yeah. Great question. I, uh, I was UTI. I was number one, but yeah, I started this, this for the pandemic and Medina for several years now. I called my daily bread cheese. First thing I do when I get up is I write three things down that I'm grateful for. Uh, and it's not a big thing, obviously it's things like your health or your health and all those things are great. You know, that you want that, but it's more specific in terms of small things that happen that I'm grateful for. I had a great conversation with somebody I worked with before. One of my people that I've worked with before just got promoted or made my wife laugh three hard times yesterday, really, really hard. There's small things that you're grateful for. Cause when you're grateful, you can't be negative. And I think especially now with the pandemic, it's so easy to go into a negative town and pretty doubt about everything that's going on. Versus if you're grateful, it kind of gets me going in a positive direction for that day and gets me goals more positively or take today on ready attack the day versus sitting there worrying about, you know, the economy and everything that's going on and getting the virus, which was a healthy start today in a very positive way, stopped me from going down a negative town. Right?

Roy (32:04):

No, that's so important. Our gratitude and you know, the other thing is sometimes we're a little bit hard on ourselves. So, uh, you know, take some, uh, take some positive energy away from those small successes that we have every day. So, uh, well, Marty, it's been great talking to you as usual. I appreciate you taking time out of your day. And uh, if you don't mind just tell people, you know, how they can get a hold of you, uh, kind of who, um, I guess who in an organization that you typically work with and, uh, you know, anything else that feel is necessary. And I think everybody needs to remember is not only, you know, as PI, uh, it's a great evaluation, but you also get Marty with that. So with his years of experience in the senior living space, and then also his years, you know, as a talent advisor, uh, you just can't go wrong. So Marty tell them how they can get ahold of you.

Marty (33:03):

Yeah. So yeah. Uh, like, uh, so number one, you know, I was going to do a lot of work. She knew the street cause I know people there, but I know the industry, well not only sales, but I know, you know, what, what you need to have really with your nurses, maintenance caregivers. So I can help you all across the board in terms of, uh, what you need for each one of those positions. Because of my knowledge in that role and you know, customer for me as I I've that customer to started with me that had five people that they want, every hiring decision they wanted to make when they grew, they want to make, be successful and inspire people right off the bat to people who were thousand. So my customer is anybody that has a once a do great, get better results and wants to invest in the most important assets are people have people working for them.

Marty (33:48):

I'm a possible help for you when it comes to that. So you want better results and have people that are hires and more inspiration with your, uh, your team. Uh, I can, uh, that's, that's my, that's my customer wheelhouse. And that would be senior living because of my experience there. And then those who, um, who attended the podcast. If you want to have predictive in this, just kind of see what your behavioral traits are and what you bring to the party. You all bring it all of a sudden, there's no bad pie. We all bring something special. We all have special gifts that we're bringing to the party. The sin is putting people in a role that they're not going to be behaviorally successful for. So we'll all be some such a little party. As you want a periodic, please take five minutes. Now he's invested the time.

Marty (34:29):

Uh, it's a $250 value. I'll give it to you because he listened to the podcast for no charge and you take five minutes to complete it. Then I'll spend about a half an hour with you to go through the results. So as a gift to you is listen to the podcast. We'll do that. Or do you want to get ahold of me? My phone number is the up goals. School text me it's (949) 545-8121 (949) 545-8121. If I miss you, I'll call you right back. If you want to go email. My email is my first initial it's M my last name ramps are a M S E C K P I Ned, and my B Lantech, N T I c.com Emirate P I'm atlantic.com. And you're also free to I'm on LinkedIn, under Modi RAF sec. You're more than happy to connect with me on LinkedIn. And if he's in the message, they can give me a PSS with, to complete. I'm more happy to do it again. $250 value for no charge.

Roy (35:29):

Yeah. And be sure and take Marty up on that because it's interesting. Uh, you know, maybe just to learn more about yourself as well and what your needs are now, you know, other people view you so worth it. I will put all of his contact information into the show notes as well. So you can reach out. Thanks so much for taking time to listen to the senior living sales and marketing podcast. Again, you can find [email protected], or also you can download the show on iTunes, Stitcher, Google, play, and Spotify, be sure and share. So your friends can certainly take advantage of this great offer. Marty's put out there until next time. This is Roy. Have a good day.

 

As a sales professional are you asking the right questions? Don't just spew information at your prospects, really have a thoughtful conversation with them that includes asking good questions. Questions are key to gathering information in order to build relationships, target conversations, and thoughtful follow-up.

Jessica Koch is here to help us ask the right questions. 

www.jessicakoch.com
[email protected]

 

In Episode 5 Roy Barker talks with Heather Deveaux about the importance of developing a content calendar to aid in planning and posting content to your preferred channels. 

Heather Deveaux is a freelance writer and loves helping clients who need specialized content for websites, blogs, or other writing needs. Heather’s unique ability to create content that conveys your message to customers will result in more value, more authority, and more sales.

Heather can be reached at www.heatherdeveaux.com and see her new project The Freelance Writing School at www.thefreelancewritingschool.com

You can find out more about Roy Barker at www.roybarker.com,www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com  and listen to his other podcast at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. The podcast is also available for download on iTunes, GooglePlay, and Stitcher. Search Roy Barker or The Senior Living Sales and Marketing Podcast.

Below find the full transcript of the interview

 

Roy Barker:                        00:02                    Welcome to episode five of the Senior Living Sales and Marketing Podcast. As a reminder, you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. Please take a few minutes to download the podcast and rate it. It'll make it easier for others to find. You can also go to our website at www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com and sign up for our newsletter, which will let you know when each and every new episode comes out.

Roy Barker:                        00:34                    Well, today I want to welcome back Heather Deveaux. She is our content writer, and as we talked at the end of our last episode, once we've got all this great content and then also how to basically plan what content we want, where it's going to go, we need to think about a calendar, and I am terrible at this. I actually have some content lying around that I haven't posted yet. New things come up that I usually rush in. So hopefully today I'm going to be able to learn a lot from Heather as well about how to set down at the very beginning and make out a calendar that you can stick to, that can cover all the different channels that we want to release our content into, so we're not having duplicates, and if we can get scheduled a couple of weeks out, we'll know exactly what we need to do in the future.

Roy Barker:                        01:28                    Heather, thanks a lot for taking time out of your day again to come help us with this content calendar issue. How are you?

Heather Deveaux:            01:36                    Good, Roy. Thanks again for having me back. I'm excited to be talking about more content.

Roy Barker:                        01:40                    You bet. You bet. If you don't mind, for somebody that may just be listening to this episode for the first time, why don't you just give a short introduction?

Heather Deveaux:            01:50                    Sure, so my name is Heather Deveaux, and I am a full-time freelance writer, so I write mostly web content for our clients, and I work with clients all over the world and I am based on the East Coast of Canada. In addition to doing freelance writing, I also launched this year a freelance writing school, which is called The Freelance Writing School and I, just two weeks ago, had my first set of students start their online training program, and so I'm excited about that. I'm excited to be sharing what I do with people and help them start for themselves to be a freelance writer.

Roy Barker:                        02:32                    Well, that's awesome and that'll be a great topic for a future podcast, is setting up training sessions. I'm sure that is not easy, but I'm glad to hear that you're having success with that.

Heather Deveaux:            02:44                    Yes, it's going well. It's slow, but everything is in the beginning, so I consider it a success for sure.

Roy Barker:                        02:51                    Well, that's great. Let's talk about this calendar issue. I guess we could talk to two audiences. One is the audience that's just starting, that they really don't have anything, and so it's like, "Well, what do I need? And where should I even start writing? And where should I start my efforts?" The other audience is, "Well, I'm already knee deep into this, but I'm kind of all over the board with what I'm putting out, where I'm putting it in." So I think we can help both of these groups kind of channel their efforts to put out consistent content where they know, " I did something last Tuesday. I need to do something this Tuesday," depending on how much they want to put out.

Roy Barker:                        03:36                    Then also the channels. Like, "Well, I released a blog last week, but I didn't do any Facebook or any LinkedIn." One thing I have started doing is taking excerpts from the blogs or from these podcast transcripts and actually releasing them as snippets of social media, as quotes either through LinkedIn or through Facebook, Google Plus, things like that. I know it's a lot to cover. I'll kind of let you start where you think we need to.

Heather Deveaux:            04:13                    Yeah. Okay, so maybe what I will start with is if you're just starting out, because I think that this will actually answer a lot of questions for people who are new to content planning, and if you're a seasoned content writer or if you release content on a regular basis, going back to basics is a great way to sort of reorganize yourself, so I guess we'll start with that. If you're new to content writing and you're new to sharing content, the first thing that a lot of people think of is they need to be publishing every single day. I would say to that yes, but not the same kind of content every single day, so I'll use your blog example where you're taking excerpts for social media.

Heather Deveaux:            05:01                    If you write a blog on Monday and you release that on Monday to your website or to your podcast, wherever you have that living, and then you schedule something for a different excerpt from that podcast or from that blog for Tuesday, for Thursday, for Saturday, and then you share it on three different platforms — say, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn — and then you share on the Wednesday, the Friday, and the Sunday three different excerpts on say, Facebook, if you use Snapchat, or if you use another platform, so that you're touching each platform at least once a week, but you're publishing every single day.

Heather Deveaux:            05:49                    The idea behind publishing every day becomes a lot less overwhelming when you realize that you actually only need to be publishing one great piece of content a week, maybe twice a week, but for starters once a week, and then you're just sharing that content in different realms, with different audiences in different ways. That's a really great way to get a really long-term use out of your content.

Roy Barker:                        06:14                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            06:15                    So that would be the first thing that I would say.

Roy Barker:                        06:17                    Yeah. Before we go on, I think it'd be a good point to make, I don't want to get off-topic on the calendar itself, but I'll just speak from my own experience that when I first started writing and blogging and putting stuff on social media, I really was under pressure, under the gun to think I had to have something new every day or at least every other day, and so struggling to find that. But one thing I've read a lot about lately is that instead of focusing on the volume of content we put out, number one, we should focus on quality no matter what.

Heather Deveaux:            06:53                    Right.

Roy Barker:                        06:54                    But also they say that really, instead of creating all this content, we should actually spend more time promoting that content, and so what you're saying about taking these snippets and using them on different platforms kind of plays into that, is that I think that the latest I heard was that you should spend about 20% of your time writing and about 80% on promotion. So just for our audience to know, is that whenever you promote those snippets of your content, you can already put a link back to the original post, wherever that lives at. Then, that way, you're spending a good amount of time promoting the content that you already have out there.

Heather Deveaux:            07:42                    Yeah, and I would say that that's accurate, 20/80. I was publishing on Fridays, but summer is coming, so that's not working too great for me anymore.

Roy Barker:                        07:52                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            07:53                    So I switched it to Mondays and now I'm averaging ... I usually get it out on Tuesday. If it's a good week, I'll get my blog out on Tuesday. I found that you're right, I devote 20% of the time, so one day a week, on publishing, and the rest of the week I spend bringing people back to that piece of content. When I first started my freelance business, I didn't have a website and didn't have a blog, and I was about six months in before I started doing that.

Heather Deveaux:            08:22                    When I started doing that I, the same as you, thought I need to publish all the time. I settled instead. I took a sort of backwards approach to it. I said, "I'll commit to once a week," because it doesn't matter what's going on, I could write one blog post a week for myself, because the idea was, of course, that I would be writing for everybody else and growing my business. So I committed to once a week, and after about two months of that, I tried to increase it to two times a week, and I couldn't do it. It was just too much, so I went back to just recommitting to the once a week and then using the rest of the week to promote the content, and that's brings steady traffic to my website each week, doing that.

Heather Deveaux:            09:02                    As far as the calendar came in, I physically scheduled that time to write every week on my calendar, so it was originally Friday, and so this is how I did it. Wednesday was my writing day. I would take an hour on Wednesday afternoon and write the blog. On Thursday I would edit it, and on Friday I would publish it, and so it was a three-day effort. That was easier for me because I knew at this point how I was working and how I was delivering content to clients. I knew I had an hour on Wednesday afternoon, I had an hour on Thursday afternoon, and I had an hour Friday morning to publish that.

Heather Deveaux:            09:38                    As I said, that went for a little while, but it turned out that Friday isn't a good day for me because then I started publishing my podcast, which also delivered on Friday morning and then I became very content-heavy at the end of the week, and at the beginning of the week I had nothing new to share with people. So I flipped, and that's really important to think about when you're not only thinking about how you work and where you're going to fit in the time to your own calendar to write, but how you're engaging people on a regular basis with new content.

Heather Deveaux:            10:09                    I was content-heavy on Friday and I had nothing new on Monday, and of course, engagement goes way down over the weekend, and so when we talk about planning and things like that, I think it would be really important for people to plan engagement over the weekend, because I took a break from social media two weekends ago and it cost me 10 or 15 followers on Instagram.

Roy Barker:                        10:09                    Wow.

Heather Deveaux:            10:33                    I laughed, because I said, "Oh my god. They must love me so much than that."

Roy Barker:                        10:37                    No kidding.

Heather Deveaux:            10:37                    So they won't follow me anymore. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. I wasn't on Instagram all weekend.

Roy Barker:                        10:44                    That is crazy. I would have never thought somebody would ditch you for just not posting for a week.

Heather Deveaux:            10:50                    Yeah, but that's how the algorithms and how all that stuff works now. It's like a dirty little secret. Like, if you're not on there all the time, you're losing engagement.

Roy Barker:                        10:59                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            11:01                    So that really solidified for me the change that I made in my own business, in my own content calendar, was I need to be content-heavy at the beginning of the week to reengage, because I don't do a lot of posting over the weekend, and I need to be content-heavy at the end of the week because that will get people interested in what it is that I'm doing and what I'm promoting, and have people thinking about it over the weekend.

Heather Deveaux:            11:24                    I am also in the process of ... I don't enjoy using automation because my business is all about authenticity and my personality and everything, but I recognize and I know the whole world knows this, the automation piece of it. You know, with something like Buffer or Hootsuite, it keeps that engagement, and if I had had that up on my Instagram for the weekend that I took off from the internet, I wouldn't have lost those 12 or 15 followers. It's good to sort of play with it a little bit to see not just your publication and not just how often you're putting things out, but what kind of return on that investment are you getting. So I know now if I'm not on the internet every day, that I'm losing an audience.

Heather Deveaux:            12:09                    I think that you have to sort of play with that and figure that out, so it's been a trial and error for me to see that I definitely need content at the beginning of the week, then I need content at the end of the week, and the rest of the week is just promotion of everything. It's sort of like there's no like ... what's the word? There's no recipe, I guess, for success with this stuff because it depends heavily on your audience, what people want from you, and what your goals are with your content and your own schedule. Like, you have to think, do you even time? Do you have three hours a week to commit to writing a blog?

Roy Barker:                        12:49                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            12:50                    Some people will say no.

Roy Barker:                        12:52                    Right, and I think for solopreneurs like ourselves, I think that's an important issue to consider because from what I've heard, is that the only thing worse than not being consistent is if you start, if you start and then you quit or you have these gaps, that's also going to make people not want to continue to follow you because they don't understand, is it coming out today? Is it going to have something this week? And they won't continually come back and check your site or wherever your content lives. They won't continue to come back and check for you. They just will give up, so in some points it's like, if you can't be consistent, sometimes it's just better not to even try, because it'll be even more of a failure, but also I think that was a good point you made about scheduling the time on your calendar. Go ahead and have it on your content calendar. Put down those hour blocks for you to sit down and write and edit and get your content ready.

Heather Deveaux:            14:02                    Yeah, and it's a good idea ... You mentioned you have some content that you have waiting to be published. It's good idea to go through that and just on your calendar, if you just sort of number it or you identify it with some sort of filing system, to go through your calendar and say, you could schedule the next six to eight weeks' worth of content just with things that you have lying around or with content that's half finished or just with ideas that you have. Then at least you know, if we're coming into the summer, so right away things are going to start to slow down, business is going to slow down, engagement is going to slow down, so we need to be thinking about over the next three months how are we keeping people engaged with our websites and with our businesses?

Heather Deveaux:            14:45                    And it's going to have to be through new content and new engagement or re-engagement. I think that that is something that people, they overlook a lot because like we said, we're always thinking about, how do we get new content out there? But the summer is the perfect time to reintroduce people to your content, so as we're coming in to the ... people want to take Friday afternoon off, and especially if you're an entrepreneur, you work all year to be able to say, "I'm taking a long weekend" or whatever, and so as you're-

Roy Barker:                        15:14                    You get to take long weekends?

Heather Deveaux:            15:16                    Oh, I try as much as I can.

Roy Barker:                        15:17                    Okay. You know, I want to put that on my calendar.

Heather Deveaux:            15:21                    Yeah. Yeah. I try. I try. I think it's the best part of my job is I'm not working today, Roy.

Roy Barker:                        15:35                    Right, right. Then I had to call you.

Heather Deveaux:            15:35                    Yeah, I know, but I get to decide that, right?

Roy Barker:                        15:36                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            15:38                    I think when we're thinking about our content, and you always want to be in terms of three, six months ahead, and you work backwards, all right? So you say, especially if you're new, if you're starting out this week with your business and you're think, "My god, how am I going to fill six months' worth of content on a content calendar?" it's very simple, because the first job that you have as a new entrepreneur is to educate people about what it is that you do, and you're the expert here. So you have a whole brain full of information that you can share with people once a week, twice a week, whatever, and if you just go to your calendar ...

Heather Deveaux:            16:15                    I use Google Calendar, just very simple, and I can access it wherever I'm at and I have it on my phone. If I have an idea, I can pull up my phone and I can jot it down in the calendar, a couple of notes or a couple of sentences about a blog or something that I want to publish, or even if it's for a client's project, if I have an idea that I just want to put in there and I'll go back to it later in the week, then that's there for me and I have that all the time. And it's very simple if you pick just one idea, so for content writing, for example, one idea is how to generate ideas for your content or for your website.

Heather Deveaux:            16:49                    You could talk all day about that, but the whole point is to get something on paper or on a calendar that you can say, "Hey, I commit to doing this every week or every day" or whenever it is, once every two weeks, whatever, and you make time to do that. I'm going to tell you right now, when things get busy, that's going to be the first thing to get wiped off your calendar.

Roy Barker:                        16:49                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            17:11                    So you really have to commit to saying, "This is not a paid work hour for me or this is not a paid afternoon of research or whatever," and especially if you've got work in the wings if you're a solo entrepreneur, or even if you're a company, to take people away from paid work to get them to do content will be the first thing to go. You have to really be in the mindset that it's not just a blog, it's not just an article. You're literally educating your audience, because you want them to know that they need you, that you're there to help them, and if you're not putting that stuff out on a regular basis, it's not their job to remember that you're there. It's your job to make sure they remember all the time, when they say, "Hey, I have a problem. I better call Roy." You need to be putting content out all the time and drawing them back in.

Heather Deveaux:            18:03                    That is where the calendar comes into play, because it says a commitment to you building your business, re-engaging and engaging your audience, and that is the number one job in a business, is to keep the audience engaged and keep them coming back for more. But it is the thing that goes right off the bat when things get crazy, if you're behind the eight-ball or you have a big project that you're delivering, and you have no work at all, you scramble to find work, but what you could be doing is reinvest in your business with content and with engagement, because we all know once it's out there, it's there forever, you know?

Roy Barker:                        18:38                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            18:40                    The value of that content is so important, so we let it go by the wayside when there's money on the line.

Roy Barker:                        18:50                    Right, right. Yeah, and I think it's important to reflect on your weekend. When you took off ... In this society we live in of instant gratification, it's like, "Well, if Heather is not there this weekend, I'm moving over to somebody else who I did see their post." That's a chance you take when you're not consistent and you don't have engaging content, I think is that people will tire and they'll move on to the next guy.

Roy Barker:                        19:16                    So that's why we have to be very mindful and thoughtful about not only what we write, what we put out there, but being consistent. I think that's the great part of trying to set up a calendar, is you can actually see. You don't let time get by, and I'm guilty. That's why I can say this, is because sometimes you publish and then things get busy, and then you look up and it's been two or three weeks, and I may even have something either ready to go or just in the works, but it just wasn't top of mind for me to put it out there, so I think that's where a calendar will help you out a lot.

Heather Deveaux:            19:56                    Yeah. These are all things we know, but it helps a lot to repeat it, but the calendar only works if you keep it up-to-date and if you sort of honor it. When I was publishing my blog for Fridays and I was under the gun, and the week was going by quickly and I had things I had to deliver, if Wednesday afternoon rolled around, in my mind I knew, "Well, I have tomorrow." You know? I could start that tomorrow, and then I've seen myself get up on Friday mornings and write my blog on Friday mornings because in my mind I committed to doing that and I didn't want to let people down, but I was letting myself down too because I wasn't honoring the system that I had put in place for myself to make my job easier.

Roy Barker:                        20:42                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            20:42                    So these content calendars will only work if you commit to honoring them and they become ... You know, it wasn't paid work for me, but it resulted in paid work and that's something that you need to remember, that you're taking time out of your day or away from your family or whatever, but it's all in the best interest of your business, and if you can't do it, then you find someone else to do it for you or you pay someone or you contract someone. But the point is that you have to honor it in some way and make sure that that happens, because why do we have these calendars and these machines and these devices that our whole lives are on them? But if we ignore the timetable of it, then we're no better off, so I think that's important, is that before you do anything with your content calendar, commit to it and make it a part of your routine.

Heather Deveaux:            21:31                    Check it every day, because again, it's great if you've got the whole week settled out, but if you're not looking at your schedule, you're missing phone calls, you're missing meetings, you're missing deadlines. People do that, and it's surprising that that still happens when we have so much technology at our disposal, but I think it happens even more now because sometimes you get to the end of the day and you're like, "I just can't look at my phone anymore. I just need a break from it." Then you say, the next sentence is then, "I'll write the blog tomorrow," or, "I'll get Cheri to write that when she gets into the office tomorrow, and then I'll edit it." Then, "Oh, it's Friday." It becomes Monday, and suddenly it's not out, and it's very easy to let it go.

Heather Deveaux:            22:09                    And the social media, especially with your content, when you're planning out your calendar, is to take the time to plan out that social media. I think that would be the second thing that people would let that go by the wayside, because they say, "Oh, it's not important anyway. They're just pictures." You know? But it really is, and I'm living proof that if you're not there, you're losing. I only have a few hundred followers, so if I lose 20% of my followers, that's a big deal.

Roy Barker:                        22:36                    Right, right. Well, and I think the overall scheme of how marketing works, sometimes we have to keep that in mind because what happens is, excuse me, once we get busy and we let our content slip, we still have business coming in and we think, "Oh, well, life is good. I've got enough out there that I'm still getting some phone calls, and so it's not that big of deal." But what happens is there's a lag. Sometimes it's one month, sometimes it's six months, sometimes it could be a year, but the results of blogging or writing or putting content out there today is not necessarily business tomorrow, but it's building that library and something future business. Well, it works just the opposite for, if you've been blogging along and along, and business is getting good, and then you just quit, you're not going to see that impact today or tomorrow.

Roy Barker:                        23:32                    But in six months from now when your business falls way off, you'll be looking at and saying, "Oh, that's what happens, because I quit blogging." Then you're kind of in a hole because it's going to take you another three to six months to start putting more content, so it can be a very dangerous up and down rollercoaster that you can get on if you're not careful. I think that's one thing that this calendar can do. It can kind of help you smooth that rollercoaster out. Even if you're not putting out as much as you want, if you can get it to a consistent basis where you can just stay on your schedule, in the long run you'll be much better off.

Heather Deveaux:            24:12                    I think so too, and I think especially for people who are established, if you've been blogging or if you have any kind of library online for resources, the thing, like I said, it's easy to let it go by the wayside, but it's very difficult to get that traction back once it's been lost. You talk about like your return on your investment, and you're not going to be able to see that return on your investment for some time. Then it takes you even more time to go back and track that alignment with that, and then to start a new calendar again.

Heather Deveaux:            24:47                    You haven't been following this audience and this audience hasn't been following you. You don't know what they need anymore. You're almost completely disconnected from people who were building and supporting your business for months and months, maybe even years, and you got to get sort of back in the game and figure out, "Well, what do these people want to know now?" You'll want to go back to jump right back into it. There are sort of three types of content that when you're planning your content, there are sort of three levels of it.

Heather Deveaux:            25:17                    The first level is sort of introductory, educational, informational, very high level. These are your How To Write a Blog blogs, you know? Very simple, for people that are just starting out. Then the second level is a little bit of a tutorial where you actually maybe have step-by-step instructions. This might be something like How To Build a Website, so it will be step-by-step how do you do that. Then your third level of content is the cornerstone, the evergreen, the real meat and potatoes of your business and of your library or blog.

Heather Deveaux:            25:51                    And if you've been blogging for a time and you've achieved those three levels of content, your instinct is going to be to go right to that highest level of content, that third level, but if you've lost your audience you have to kind of go back. You have to step back and rebuilt that audience. So you need to recognize that you might have to go back to the how-to and the tutorials and the lighter content, because you're starting from scratch again. You think you're established in your blog, but a blog that's six months old that hasn't been promoted, doesn't have any engagement with it, it's difficult to ... you know, where is your authority in that? Where's the authenticity in that?

Heather Deveaux:            26:26                    A business changes a lot over six months, and you've not documented that in any way. You've not shared that with people in any way, and you lose that. So the calendar, if you say three to six months, that might seem really overwhelming to sit down and schedule that out, but that is just once a week. That's just 25, 26 blog articles, and you could come up with ideas for that in, say even an hour. Say it took something an hour to do that, and just plug that in, in their calendar. Then at least they know that they've got some momentum and they've got something to work towards. I think when it comes to, if you're seasoned and you've been writing for a long time, the idea that you go back, so if you have this first level of content where it's a very simple how-to or introduction, that you can go back and build on that because now you've even more seasoned. You're even more experienced than when you wrote that blog, and you can go back and say, "What else can I add to this?" You can bring that back to life that way and reuse it that way, but you'll only think of those things, because like I said, your content is going to be not top of mind because your always top of mind is, "How do I make money? How do I grow my business?"

Heather Deveaux:            27:39                    But the investment in the time and the content really does provide a good return on your investment because it's the roadmap of your business, you know? It's the history of it and everything that's gone on, so your content calendar could be, you could go back once a year and circle back to all that content. You don't even need to be writing new content. You need to just be adding content, and maybe reiterating content or writing it from a different perspective. So if six months ago I said to you the best day to post a blog is Friday and now six months later I've realized that that's the worst day to post a blog, then I need to write a blog about that so people know that, because I've learned that and I want to share it with people.

Heather Deveaux:            28:23                    So you might want to put in your calendar every six months, in addition to planning your weekly posts or your weekly content, whatever that might be, you might want to put a circle back note in there to say, "Go back. Review this content. See what's changed in the business. See what's changed in the industry." And you can reuse that content and feature it, and then add additional information to it, and then your job becomes half. You know, you only have to do half the work that way.

Roy Barker:                        28:49                    Right. Yeah, that's why I was going to say, is that if you use statistics or numbers family 2017, that's an easy to rewrite in the latter part of 2018, is just to go back. You might want to refresh the words a little bit, but you definitely want to go pull the 2018 facts and figures, statistics, whatever you're using, and you've probably got 80% of the work already done there. I think it's good because you had readers that read that 2017. They may be waiting and looking for this 2018 update to came out, so I think that's very advisable.

Heather Deveaux:            29:31                    Yeah, and it's really interesting how, especially new content writers, like people who are just putting out content for the first time, how they will underestimate the reach. We've all heard like, "Nobody is going to read your blog." That's garbage. People are reading the stuff. If you're putting it out there, people are reading it. It might just be one person, it might be 10 people, it might be 1,000 people, but somebody is reading what you're writing. If you're putting out images or you're putting out podcasts, I think it's important to note that there are different kinds of content, and it doesn't always have to be writing. So the importance of putting out the various types of content and figuring out what works for your audience and figuring out what it is that you want to represent your business with, that's all really important.

Heather Deveaux:            30:26                    The idea that you have to be writing all the time, that isn't the case. You just have to be publishing. You have to be putting stuff out. You have to be sharing with your audience. With video and things like that, it's so easy now and it's so easy to reach people, and people forget that that's content because they're not slaving over a blog post for three hours. They think that there's no longevity in that, but there's lots of ways to capture that and reuse it and share that.

Heather Deveaux:            30:55                    For instance, when you put out a podcast, you share it on social media, you put it on Instagram, and then you can jump out onto Facebook live and talk about your podcast. Then you can keep your show notes, which are transcribed, right? That itself could become a blog, so that's four different types of content with just one bit of work. So you record the podcast, you've got your show notes, you do a Facebook live to promote and you talk about it. Maybe you add a little bit extra content that wasn't in the podcast, and then you share a post on Instagram about it to drive traffic to it. That all takes 15, 20 minutes to put together, and you've got lots of good engagement, you've got lots of promotion.

Heather Deveaux:            31:39                    But that only works if you put that in your calendar and if you say, "I publish this podcast on Thursday, and by the end of this Thursday I will have shared this on three different performances, I'll have published the show notes, and I'll have done a Facebook live." It might mean that you need to block out an entire morning or afternoon to do that, depending on what it is that you want to achieve, or you hire someone to do it. You know, like if you've got more employees, you assign that to someone to make sure that they're blowing that information out to the world, but the consistency is key over anything. If you're only publishing once a month, publish once a month. Like, do it. Don't resist this.

Roy Barker:                        32:17                    Right. I think you talk about a good point, like exploiting what you have. Excuse me. I'll use myself as an example on the podcast. Used to, I would just publish the podcast and try to get people to go over there and listen. Well, then I heard about an easy way to get it transcribed, so what that allowed me to do, though, is now all of a sudden the podcast turned into a long form post, and some of these podcasts can be five to 8,000 words, so that is awesome for the SEO to have it on the website as well. But then it allows me to go through there and pull out snippets and quotes from guests like yourself that I can use those to continue to publish this without just putting just the podcast out there by itself or a post with a picture of it. I'm able to put these quotes that might interest somebody that hasn't listened before to go over and take a listen.

Roy Barker:                        33:24                    So I think when you sit down and you look at your calendar, you really need to think about all the different ways that you can exploit any piece of content that you have or are fixing to create, because I think even with just a blog you can still pull quotes out of that and use that on the different social media, so sometimes if you can create a good quality piece of content, it should have legs to be able to go on for probably two, three, maybe even a week. I mean, maybe a month or more of being able to put out little pieces, so I guess when we talk about it, then we look at building. Okay, so now I've got three pieces of content out. Now I'm still posting snippets from the first piece and some from the second and some from the third, so I think you can find a way to fill your calendar up quickly when you look at all the different ways to use it.

Heather Deveaux:            34:25                    Yeah, absolutely. I think that a good message to remind people of is that this stuff doesn't take long. We send more time worrying about how we're going to do it than it actually takes to do, and you can set up automated social media posts in 15 or 20 minutes a week and get them for the whole week. That's just done for you, you know? I always think of it like investment, so you put money in an investment account and it's making you money while you sleep. That's what I think about when I think about automation, is that if you're someone who wants to be putting out a lot of content on a regular basis, automation is definitely the way to go because it keeps that engagement high and you're return on your investment remains high.

Heather Deveaux:            35:11                    The difference, when people are talking about, you have to authentic and you have to be yourself and all those sort of things, there's lots of different ways to do that. Like, when I publish my blog, my blog, it's personal and professional because I read books every week about business and about self-improvement and professional development, and then I apply it in a way to my business that it's helped me to grow my business. That's a very sort of raw form of writing, and it's certainly not academic and it would barely pass as professional, because I'm writing from a point of, "This is where I'm at in my life and this is what I'm learning." But if you go over to my podcast, the podcast is very conversational.

Heather Deveaux:            35:53                    So people will get hung up on, "It needs to be perfect." It doesn't, because the most engaging content is the content that is happening in real time, and that's why people are loving video right now, because it's capturing everything, like your messy kitchen table behind you when you jump on Facebook to do a post. It's all there. People can see it. I would encourage people to think about writing that way as well, that when you are thinking about your content, you're not stressing over how perfect it needs to be because it stays there. You can always go back and change it later. You can always edit it. You know, nothing is carved in stone, and there's ways of just approaching this from a very real point of view.

Heather Deveaux:            36:36                    I think that with the trends that are happening now in content, that that's what people want to see. They want to do business with people that they know and they like, and the only way that they're going to get to know and like you is if they can see you and they see the many facets of you. The thing that drives me crazy is when I get on a website, if their blog is any more than a month old or two months old, then I know they're not engaged in their business and I can't be engaged with their business.

Roy Barker:                        37:01                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            37:03                    Where there are so many fly-by-night businesses now and where anybody can start a blog, if it isn't being regularly updated, or at the very least regularly promoted, then you can't trust that that is something that is alive and well, you know? Like, why aren't they publishing? Why aren't they showing us what's happening in their business? Why aren't they sharing this with us on the internet or on social media? I would hope it would be because they're not tucked away in some corner office somewhere stressing about grammar, because at the end of the day there are certain things that that matters for, but when you're talking about blog posts or you're talking about everyday life in your business, that stuff doesn't matter because you're just trying to show people that you're there to help, first and foremost. And if you spend all week worrying about your blog, you're not going to get it out to the point that it's going to resonate with people.

Roy Barker:                        37:57                    Right. There's an old saying that perfection is the obstacle to progress, and so a lot of times we do stress over making it perfect. I think you hit on a good point about the personal narrative. I think that's what people want, is they want to see somebody like themself. They want to see that entrepreneur with the stuff stacked up on their table, because at home they've got stuff stacked up on their table as well. Whenever I see things that are too sterile, it makes me question the motives behind that, and how it was contrived and not just natural, so I think trying to get things too perfect can be a hindrance as well.

Roy Barker:                        38:47                    The other thing I wanted to comment on too is you said getting enough readers or how we worry about, "Well, I did have 10,000 people read that article," but what we need to realize is that we only need one person, the right person to read our blog.

Heather Deveaux:            38:47                    Exactly.

Roy Barker:                        39:05                    And if we can help that person who's going to engage and do business with us, then we've done our job. I think we can get hung up in these vanity numbers like, "Oh, I got 5,000 likes on Facebook," or, "I got all these likes on LinkedIn," but that doesn't translate to engagement. It's easy just to, and there are people who just go through and hit the like button for everything without reading it or knowing what it's about, so I don't think it's necessarily about the volume as the quality of the people that we are getting to look at it.

Heather Deveaux:            39:44                    Yeah, and it's true. I think it's one of my favorite things that is happening to me right now, is I'm getting emails from people who are not my clients. They'll never be my clients, but they're being impacted by what I'm doing. I've probably gotten maybe three emails over the last year from people who have said, "I'm loving what you're doing. It's really inspiring. I'm glad you're just being yourself and you're showing us that like, everybody falls on their face, and we're just all trying to learn." I have approached business from the point of view of like, we're all just trying to learn. I know different things than you know. Let's work together and help each other. The thing that really strikes me is I have no idea how many people liked my Instagram posts on Friday, but I know the name of that person who sent me that email because I touched them in some way, and it means more to me than any number of likes on the internet.

Roy Barker:                        40:43                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            40:45                    You would agree, right? When people say like, "This is really helpful," not only it acknowledges the work that you're doing, but it makes it easier for you to say on a Wednesday afternoon, "Jeez, I got to make time to write that blog because my one reader is looking forward to it."

Roy Barker:                        41:02                    Right, exactly. That's what we have to do, is to just help one person at a time, and even if that person won't be your client, we don't know who they know.

Heather Deveaux:            41:13                    Exactly.

Roy Barker:                        41:13                    So as they are out in their life and they hear somebody talking about content, and they say, "Oh my gosh, there's this great lady I know, Heather. Why don't you check her out?" So we have to be mindful that as long as we're touching people's lives and having some sort of an impact, that is the goal of this. It doesn't necessarily have to be that, "Well, that person didn't actually sign up, so that was a total loss." I don't look at it that way. I think we need to spread the message, and if we can help the do-it-yourselfers, then that's fine, because they are never going to be a client anyway.

Heather Deveaux:            41:54                    Right.

Roy Barker:                        41:54                    But sometimes it's just like home improvement projects that I have good intentions of going to Home Depot and buying all this stuff and getting started, and then it turns into something more than what I thought, and so then I call somebody to come help. It's the same way in our businesses, that there's a lot of people that they're making it in life without us and that's fine, but you never know when there's going to come that day that they're going to be like, "I can't do this. This is above my head. I don't have the time." Whatever the reason, that's when they pick up the phone and give us a call.

Heather Deveaux:            42:28                    Yeah, and I would-

Roy Barker:                        42:29                    It's not always instantaneous.

Heather Deveaux:            42:31                    Yes, exactly. I would say that in terms of like, talking about content calendars is something that lots of people talk about it, but the point is that everybody learns differently, everybody hears information differently, and it might be this conversation that is going to make someone sit up and say, "I'm going to start a calendar today," because they heard it in a different way. They were ready to hear the information. That's why calendars are so important for your content, because you have to be putting it out all the time in different ways because you don't know how people are going to interact with it. And just because they didn't like it doesn't mean they did see it, doesn't mean they didn't hear it, and doesn't mean that they didn't read it and that they didn't walk away with some pieces of information. So you might have just one, two hits a day on your website, but those one or two hits a day are important because it means that you're reaching somebody.

Heather Deveaux:            43:27                    I said earlier that you have to commit, you have to honor to the calendar. If that's too much work, if that just seems like it's one more thing on your plate and you don't know how you're going to do that, then I would suggest using it as a guide and just having a high-level idea every week of the things you want to do, because you do want to do these things. This isn't like, you're not drudging through this work. This is important work and the things you want to accomplish, and if it all gets pushed off to Friday afternoon, well, you're going to have a really creative Friday afternoon.

Roy Barker:                        43:57                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            43:57                    But just commit to like, just commit to getting it done, and whatever it ends up looking like, and I think that's important too, especially for beginners. What you publish today does not have to be what you publish six months from now. You might find that the rate at which you're publishing is not enough or it's too much. You might find that you're putting out the long content or you're putting out exactly the right content, but you're only going to know with time because you can't base the success of your content on one or two posts. It has to be all the time.

Heather Deveaux:            44:29                    The other thing is that you can't be relying on the same channels all the time. People talk a lot about ... I keep saying Facebook and Instagram. They're ruling the world, Facebook and Instagram, because that's where people go. That's what people think of, but one of the things that I started doing recently was I'm in this women's group and they're just a small group of women who are business owners, and my blogs are about the books I read every week. I said to myself like, "Oh, they wouldn't be interested in that," and they're turned out to be some of my best readers. They are engaged with the content. They write me about the content. They share it for me.

Heather Deveaux:            45:08                    I was sort of prejudging that group because I said, "Oh, I don't want to bother them. They're not my clients," but that's not the point. The point is get the content out there. Let people know who you are and what it is you're doing, and that was a group that I had taken for granted, and I know that people listening have groups like that, that they're saying to themselves, "These people don't want to hear what I have to say." My advice to those people would be, don't prejudge those people and don't take that opportunity away from them. If they don't want to read it, they're not going to read it, but the least that you can do is offer it to them and then see what happens. You never know.

Heather Deveaux:            45:41                    It sort of sparks this conversation now where people will say like, "I really needed to hear this today, that you've also fallen on your face this week. This has helped me." That's what people want to know and that's what they want to see, is that they're not alone, and we can only achieve that if we're actually sharing this content and we're not prejudging the people who will benefit from it, because you don't know. You have your target market. You have your ideal client, but you'll find out that there are other people who would benefit from it, and you might be surprised.

Roy Barker:                        46:13                    Right.

Heather Deveaux:            46:13                    Like I was really surprised to find with my online courses for my freelance writing school. I was promoting it to women, and I have had several men sign up. I had no idea that that was going to happen until I put it out in the world and it resonated with several men, and had I not done that, had I only targeted or had I only marketed to the people I had in mind, I would have lost out on a really great opportunity. That was why, after I did that, I started sharing my blogs with this women's group, because I said, "God, who am I to say who will benefit from this content?"

Heather Deveaux:            46:51                    So I think it's important to remember that if you're just getting the same results all the time, that you've got to get out of your comfort zone even in how you share this stuff. It's one thing to get out of your comfort zone to create it. It's another thing to commit to putting it out there, and then it's another thing, another level to say, "I'm going to share this with people who work in marketing. I'm going to share this with people who are web developers. I'm going to share this with people who run senior homes for a living." You have to try these things.

Heather Deveaux:            47:23                    I guess maybe one of the last things I'll say about this is that when you're doing your calendar, commit to that on a regular basis as well, to sort of go outside your comfort zone once or twice, even a quarter, to say, "I'm going to send this somewhere new," or, "I'm going to try to have this published somewhere else," or, "I'm going to see if I could do a guest blog somewhere about this," just to push yourself that little more, because you don't realize the impact of your content until you actually put it out there.

Roy Barker:                        47:49                    Right. I think that's a good point as we talk about a structured calendar and sticking to it and having it laid out for three to six months, but I think you would agree that we don't want to imply inflexibility as well, because part of disseminating content is being timely and relevant. So even though you've got a blog scheduled for next week to go out, over the weekend you were talking to either one of your clients or one of your friends, an issue comes up and your think, "Wow, that's something that's happening right this minute." It's okay to push everything out and insert this new idea in your content, so I just want to kind of say that even though we're creating the schedule, it's not so rigid that you can't have flexibility within inside of it to move things around.

Heather Deveaux:            48:46                    Oh, yeah. You shouldn't either. Like I said, it's not written in stone. The whole point is that and I think the thing that people struggle with is just making time for it, so the whole idea is that you're going to get to a point in the day or in the week where you can't put it off anymore. Don't let that be Friday afternoon.

Roy Barker:                        49:04                    Right, right.

Heather Deveaux:            49:06                    Because like, if you are allowed, and you want to go enjoy the life that you've created for yourself, you don't want to be slugging away on the weekend on things you should have done during the week. I think what you'll find is that if you can commit to just those one or two things on your to-do list related to content, you'll find that other areas of your business will start to become more streamlined as well because you'll realize that consistency and anticipation of that consistency will help you to get out the door on time in the morning. You'll get to your meetings on time. You'll finish a meeting on time, which could be a whole other podcast in and of itself, getting through those meetings.

Heather Deveaux:            49:42                    I think that when you're committing to yourself and you're committing to your business, the calendar is just the accountability piece, and people rely heavily on those accountability pieces. The planning market, those planners, the Happy Planners and the reflective planners, they're practically scrapbooks, which I love because, of course, I love scrapbooking, but they're these 50, 60 dollar calendars that people lug around with them because they think that it's going to make them more organized. If all they're doing in them is doodling and writing their grocery lists in them, it's not moving them forward, and so the calendar represents the accountability and the dedication to your craft to share that with people.

Heather Deveaux:            50:25                    And it could be anything. It doesn't even have to be a calendar. It could be a grocery list of every week that you want to check off every week from top to bottom. You could have a vision board or a goals board or a whiteboard in your office, but the idea is that you have a high-level idea of what you want to accomplish every week related to content, related to sharing, related to investing in your business with tangible things. Content and visuals are tangible and measurable, and so the calendar is the representation of that commitment. And if you go out and spend 50 or 60 bucks on a planner, just use it, and if you don't want to spend money, then get a Google Calendar or a Microsoft. I know they have calendar products, and use it. Use your phone. We've all got our phones.

Roy Barker:                        51:13                    Right. Right. One more thing before we wrap this up is we talk a lot about content that we generate, and so one thing I do is I set ... Google has a news alert where you can put a topic in there, and of course a few of my big ones are of course senior living, sales, and then also employee retention. So what I've got is alerts that they send me every day. You can change that to schedule it to once a week or whatever your timeframe is, but I get them every day. That shows me news articles of what is happening out there, so it works as two-fold. Number one, it keeps me informed about what's going on in the world, so I might choose to write about something from my perspective, but it also lets me have the option to repurpose their content as just a post, which the way I like to use is not only does it fill in the gaps between with I create, but also it can work to reinforce what I create.

Roy Barker:                        52:27                    If I tell you that the sky is going to be green tomorrow and you're like, "Oh, that sounds kind of crazy an idea," but if I can find five other sources that are going to tell you the same thing, all of sudden it lends a lot more credibility to the message that I'm putting out there, so just an idea, is that we do need to create our own, because we want to show people our philosophy, what we know, how we can help them, but it doesn't hurt to also use other content to support that in the interim.

Heather Deveaux:            53:03                    Yeah, for sure, and that should even be part of your planning. Like, when you're sitting down to plan your blog, you should have some research elements in there. Even if it's 15, 20 minutes to just going off on what's happening in your industry, it should be part of the writing process. You should be coming from a place of being informed.

Roy Barker:                        53:22                    Right, right. Well, Heather, we've taken enough of your time today. I want to thank you. I appreciate it. Then just for our listeners, Heather was a real trooper today. She didn't have a signal in the house, so she actually conducted this interview standing outside. Luckily it was a nice day in Eastern Canada, which that's kind of hit and miss this time of year, but at least it was a nice day.

Heather Deveaux:            53:22                    That's right.

Roy Barker:                        53:46                    So thank you for standing outside and giving your time and your expertise into this, creating content calendars. Actually, I'm going to sit down and work on mine this afternoon and get it lined out.

Heather Deveaux:            53:58                    Yeah, it's a good idea.

Roy Barker:                        54:01                    If you don't mind, just go ahead and let everybody know all of your contact information, not only for you and the writing, but also for your writing school.

Heather Deveaux:            54:12                    Sure, so my website where you can reach me about freelance writing is heatherdeveaux.com, and if you're interested in learning about how you can become a freelance writer, you can check out thefreelancewritingschool.com. My email is [email protected], and any contact form on any of my websites will reach me as well.

Roy Barker:                        54:33                    Great. Well, Heather, have a great rest of your day. Thanks for listening to the Senior Living Sales and Marketing Podcast, and like I said, don't forget to download and rate the program. Help others to find us. We are on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. You can also look at the website at www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com, and don't forget to check out our sister podcast, The Business of Business, which is at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. You can also look at the services that I offer, Roy Barker at roybarker.com. Look forward to our next episode. Heather, we can think of another topic and get back with you shortly, and wishing everybody a great week until next time. Thank you.