How do you sell change?

How do you sell a life change?' Is this an unusual question to ask? It shouldn’t be if you work in the retirement living sector.  

Most of us know from experience that profound life change is difficult. The decisions prospective buyers are faced with in our sector are fraught with difficulty. 

Remember your first day of school? It was a huge life change. Yet, your parents didn't 'sell it' to you on the basis of how many books you would read, the quality of the school lunches or the square footage of the classroom. Instead, school was an opportunity to make new friends, learn and have fun. It was probably a sympathetic sales pitch, given that you had no choice in the matter. But for all of the parental 'spin', that first day was still mildly terrifying was it not?  

Most of us seek to avoid life change because it’s difficult gritty stuff. However, time is the relentless midwife of change and the intelligent question we should really ask ourselves as humans is, do you let the change happen ‘to’ you, or do you try to guide the change? This key question is a distillation of the dilemma that people considering moving into a retirement community are grappling with. As a result, roughly 90% of your sales leads say, 'I’m not ready for that sort of change'. Who can really blame them? 

So, whilst you and your marketing team may presume that you are selling an apartment with a groovy kitchen, fabulous on-site amenities, friendly 24-hr support staff and an idyllic ‘lifestyle’ (whatever that means) your lead(s) are trying to size up the life change conundrum. Emotionally speaking, it’s not a million miles away from that first day at Big School, only this time it’s a discretionary decision and the cost is more than being the new kid ‘again. It’s also probably most of your life savings and partially surrendering your current identity, that is so wrapped up in your home and sanctuary. In essence, we as an industry, are asking people to start a new chapter by making an unwanted life change in their 80’s. That really is a tough ask if you are selling it! 

Here is a hard truth: sales in our sector are one of the most complex and emotionally fraught in the modern capitalist economy. Sales are high value but low volume. They are targeted at people who, on the whole are very sophisticated consumers, people who have accrued some wealth over a lifetime and have experience under their belt. The decision our prospects are expected to make (unless you are a rental model) result in arduous, legally complex and expensive outcomes. In addition to this bureaucracy and horrendous disruption, it’s a one-way trip. However, in truth, that’s just the easy stuff! 

The dark sticky treacle that sales people really need to embrace, if they are to be great at sales, is the human stuff, the emotional stuff, the stuff that we British are particularly unused to talking about. Fears, motivations, acceptance of change, sense of self.  

At Sherpa we have a saying, 'You can’t close the deal until you have opened the prospect up'. It may sound glib and a bit 'hippy', but Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman says in his book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market,  that 95 percent of our purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind. If that is correct, and 95% of sales are based on emotion and feelings and human connection, then why do we spend so much time talking about kitchen tops, balconies and square footage?  

Of course, the alternative to this human-centric approach is to keep selling to people who are in midst of a crisis (either present or imminent). What you then end up with is a high-acuity care home disguised as a retirement community. 

The gold dust you should be actively working sits in the 90% of your leads who probably contacted you directly, who are qualified, and to whom you can’t apparently sell. These are the people who need some guidance (Sherpa guidance if you really want to embrace this concept) through the emotional difficulties they are trying to reconcile before selling up, moving out and buying into you, and your community.   

Take a moment to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone grappling with this decision. Start by thinking back to what it felt like to be stood outside those iron gates of big school on that first day of term. What was that feeling like? Were you really thinking about the building and its amenities, or did you have butterflies and an uncomfortable sense of being overwhelmed? If you were anything like me you were looking for someone to trust, someone who could stand next to you, someone who would be your friend so you could navigate this new world together.

In truth, none of us actively selling in the sector today can relate to what being in our 80's and walking away from everything that is familiar, feels like, because we are young (its all relative!). So rather than shouting through those metaphorical iron school gates with brochures etc. about how marvellous your community is, walk across the road to where that slightly scared human being is (and no, they will rarely admit it...did you?), extend the hand of friendship, acknowledge that it's hard, reinforce that it's natural to have reservations and offer to help and guide them.

The outcome is that those emotional reservations, if you slow down and guide as opposed to sell, may just turn into physical reservations. However it takes emotional intelligence, patience and kindness. If we think back to when we were stood at those gates, it was always the Teachers that behaved like that who helped change our lives for the better. That's a lesson we should perhaps all embrace.