Senior Living Sales - Don't neglect your inquiry-to-tour ratio

Your conversion rate is the percentage of inquiries who take action on what you have offered them. There are many important metrics to measure in senior living sales efforts such as website to inquiry ratio, tour to move in ratio, inquiry to connect ratio, inquiry to move in ratio and inquiry to tour ratio.

In this short article, we will discuss inquiry- to - tour conversion rates and why they are so important to track and monitor.

Call-Ins Remain the Largest Source of Leads and Tours

While the Internet is undoubtedly changing how we explore senior living options, most individuals who are ready to make a decision will still pick up the phone and try to connect with a local community within 10 miles of their home. You do NOT want to miss these calls! Data shows that phone inquiries continue to generate many more leads and tours than other methods for all levels of care:

• 64% of all tours at independent living communities
• 68% at assisted living communities, and
• 51% at memory care communities.

These data points suggest that individuals still crave a personal interaction when considering long term care choice. For senior living providers, this means you need to have someone available to answer the phone! Think about your own personal buying habits, when you call a new nail salon to inquire about their rates, availability and hours, what do you do if they do not answer the phone or send your call to voicemail? If you are like me, you simply dial the next and closest local choice on your list until you a reach a human that can answer your questions. Today's Senior Living consumers are most comfortable with non-automated personalized attention. They will likely behave in the same manner when researching such an important topic as Assisted Living or Memory Care options for their loved one.

**fast fact- Follow-up time is vital to improve your inquiry to tour Ratio. The odds of getting in touch with a lead decreases by more than 10 times after the first hour!

How Do you Calculate a Conversion Rate?

If math is not your favorite subject, have no fear! Calculating your conversion rate is usually as simple as logging into your CRM. There will be a canned reporting function that you will be able to access. For those of you who prefer a more manual method: Grab a notebook and keep it near your phone. If you want to calculate your rate manually you will need to know how many tours you have conducted during the reporting time frame and how many people called to inquire about your community. Divide your total tours provided number by the amount of inquiry calls received and then multiply that number by 100.

• Example: You had 25 incoming calls last month and you conducted 4 prospect tours. 4 % 25= .16 x 100= 16% inquiry to tour conversion rate.

What is a Good Inquiry -to -Tour Conversion Rate?

As a Senior Living Sales Director, your organization will have many goals for you to achieve that include your inquiry to tour conversion rates. Determine what those metrics are, then calculate your current results. This will provide you with important data to help understand if you need to be placing more time on the phone and less time elsewhere.

If your organization does not have set metrics- monitor yourself against other Senior living sales associates and work from there to improve and excel your personal conversion rates.

The majority of senior care marketers recently surveyed indicate they have about a 30% inquiry to tour conversion rate. Do you know your current inquiry to tour conversion rates? I would love to see your comments about rates and effective strategies to improve them!