We put a lot of emphasis on generating senior living and senior care leads. And that’s important! But fresh leads are precious – and very expensive.
Industry statistics put the average cost per lead around $500!
However, what’s the point of engaging Prospects and Referral Sources, and piquing their attention, you if you then drop the ball?
I’m not trying to be critical. But in fact, 65% of managers cited “Follow UP” as their #1 business failure. And 80% of leads that contact a senior community NEVER receive any type of follow up! OUCH! That’s expensive!
Follow up failure is unquestionably the #1 leak in the sales process.
But the reality is, when you leave follow up to a person’s memory (even with the best intentions) it becomes a “hit or miss” proposition – at best. Life gets in the way…and before you know it you've got a list of names – but no idea what to do with them.
I call it the middle of the night “oh shoot” moment. When you wake up and remember “oh shoot! Was I supposed to send something to Mrs. Jones this week?”
That makes for a rough night, so we decided to try to solve it.
Our mantra is, “you can’t duplicate your success unless you can replicate your process”. Like a franchise, you need to have a proven system (or track to run on) that you follow militantly for your web leads, A Leads, B Leads, Referrals, etc. Pre-defined processes ensure that regardless of where they come from or who they are assigned to, all your leads receive your best practices follow up – automatically where possible – to ensure that they cannot fall through the cracks.
But how?
You might remember the Ronco commercials. They had a rotisserie (and now a slice-o-matic) machine that you could put a whole turkey in, press a few buttons and hit start. They would chant: “Set it and FORGET it”.
We thought, “What if you could apply that same ‘set it and FORGET it’ principle to your business follow up processes?”
What if you could build entire follow up processes, based on best practices, customized for your communities for all different types of scenarios - website leads, walk-ins and call-ins, your A leads, and even your referral sources? How powerful would it be to eliminate follow up failure?
We loved the idea and built it. We called them TaskoMatics – a play on the “set it and forget it” concept.
Here’s the key. The key is to take the time to think through and establish your best practices for each “category” of contact. What do you want your follow up experience to be like? How do you want every A Lead to be treated, what do you want to send them, what questions do you want to ask when you call, at what intervals and by whom?
Once you’ve established those processes, the hard work is done!
By developing and using standardized processes – tracks to run on – you’ve given both your Top Performers and your newbies a level playing field. Regardless of where those leads came from or who they are assigned to – they end up on a track that ensures that they all have the same experience as you engage them, nurture relationship with them and move them to move ins.
TaskoMatics allow you to pre-build follow up sequences of activities based on those best practices for all different categories of leads. Those activities would consist of emails, letters and even calls tied to Discovery Guides (scripts or questions) and then AUTOMATE the whole thing – even fulfilling your letters and emails for you.
When you engage a lead (or prospect or referral source), you simply put them on the appropriate TaskoMatic and the system takes over for you.
Imagine, how many more prospects and family members and referral sources you could manage effortlessly at the same time if your systems were all predefined, set up for you, and automatically done for you – set it and forget it style? Would it be possible for anyone to ever fall through the cracks again?
Whether you revive them, they call in or walk through your door, are referred to you, or come through your website– fresh leads are precious and your follow up is the single most important key to turning leads into buyers. Every single one should be followed up with (appropriately) as if they are the only person that matters.