Future efforts to raise occupancy and increase margins will hinge on hiring and retaining staff, including caregivers, program directors, nurses and especially salespeople.
Operators including Primrose Retirement, Belmont Village and Watermark Retirement Communities have revamped sales staffing efforts since the pandemic began roughly five years ago. Through that process, they have learned that today’s salespeople want flexibility, clear training and a strong, engaging culture – and in some cases, a higher salary without commission rather than lower pay with it.
At the same time, senior living companies are also putting more time and effort into finding candidates that possess qualities that make them a good fit for the job, such as empathy, good listening skills, resilience in the face of rejection or pressure and a drive for self-improvement.
Recruiting and retaining sales staff
Primrose in 2024 notched its best retention rate in five years for sales leader, according to Jessi Weldon, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Primrose Retirement.
For Primrose, achieving better retention is part of a process that starts with hiring. The company asks referral partners for recommendations on top local sales talent. To date, Primrose has found that daycare workers often possess skillsets that translate well into senior living sales.
“We have had such good success with those individuals. They’re empathetic, and they can problem-solve better than anybody I’ve met,” Weldon said during a panel discussion at the recent Senior Housing News Sales & Marketing Conference in Bonita Springs, Florida.
Primrose created its own sales hiring workflow with an emphasis on helping underperforming communities attract and keep top talent.
“We’ve narrowed it down to three things: Resiliency, being influential and having high drive,” Weldon said. “Those are non-negotiables.”
Watermark uses three corporate recruiters to help hire salespeople, who are coming from industries including hospitality and multifamily sales. According to Dawn Trombetta, national director of sales, the operator is looking for an “it factor” in new employees. Typically, that means someone who is driven and takes time to listen and think critically.
At the same time, the company’s applicants want to work for a company with a strong culture they can see themselves fitting into.
“They want to know what it’s like to work here,” Trombetta said. “They’re doing a lot of their homework on us before coming and applying.”
Houston, Texas-based Belmont Village has built its own training program to advance talent through its ranks and into different roles. For example, Carlene Motto, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Belmont, said more than a third of her staff are former sales assistants or worked other roles. The company also created a training program to help give new skills to workers that may not be as familiar with the industry or the selling process.
In senior living, one challenge is keeping employees past the 90- and 180-day mark. That also applies to salespeople. Primrose has developed a method Weldon dubbed “PEP” – person, environment and plan – to identify why an employee might succeed or fail in a role. She compared hiring a salesperson to filling an offensive position on a football team.
“Your ED is the head coach. What does their involvement look like? You’ve got to have operations aligned to ensure that ED is all-in and supporting sales,” she said. “Your regional is the quarterback coach. Are they competent to do that job?”
Primrose also assigns new employees a peer mentor within their first 30 days and organizes visits to other, more stable communities within their first 90 days.
Training is also a cornerstone of good sales, especially given how complex senior living and all its moving parts are.
“One thing we’re not talking a lot about is how the external world has changed with health care,” Motto said. “When you look at what our sales teams have to do to get the paperwork requirements of the state, the doctor’s office, tracking down the discharge planner, finding the discharge planner … All of that world has really turned upside down.”
Most of Belmont Village’s turnover stems from the company “pulling the trigger on the wrong person” within the first 90 days if they are going to an underperforming community, Motto added.
Tucson, Arizona-based Watermark Retirement Communities has adopted a two-pronged approach to tackle onboarding, with recruits with industry experience to learn more about the company culture and sales process while those new to the industry meet with designated sales specialist teams to better understand the company’s offerings, Trombetta said.
Afterward, talent reviews are conducted regularly with all of Watermark’s sales staff, and even high performers receive development plans. The plan as a whole, Trombetta said, allows the company to always be developing its staff and helping with retention.
Changing sales pay
Alongside the training changes it has made, Watermark has shifted its pay model for sales teams to no longer have commission at most of its communities. According to Trombetta, the practice has been largely beneficial, as the base rate is now roughly the same as if a team member was performing well with commission.
“We trust they’re going to do the right thing,” she said. “We don’t want if they have a bad month for that to affect their paychecks.”
By doing so, it has also reduced the number of concessions being offered and made for prospective residents. Communities that do not have commissioned roles have been outperforming commissioned ones two-to-one, Trombetta said.
While Belmont Village still maintains commissions, a tool that has proven effective is employee contests as an incentive roughly every quarter on a team basis to promote alignment, such as “Shop ‘til you Drop” where winning staff members are rewarded a budget and time off to go shopping, Motto said.
Maintaining commission does create its share of problems, she noted, particularly when occupancy is performing well in a community and sales members feel they will be earning less.
To remedy this, Belmont Village is planning a “one size fits all approach” that is meant to address management team alignment with net operating income goals and providing “good monthly commissions” as communities continue to fill up, and everybody that influences the business is receiving a quarterly bonus based on NOI and occupancy.
In order to continue incentivizing employees, Primrose “amped up” its bonus plans in the first quarter of 2024, resulting in “the most intensive bonus plan” in place for sales leaders and executive directors, Weldon said. Smaller bonus plans have also been rolled out for property maintenance technicians and the director of nursing, which have also proven successful so far.
