Stop Scrambling: The 90-Day Roadmap To A Full Community - Day 21

You Learned It. Now Here's How to Actually Implement It — Week by Week.

The final episode in the twenty-one days series. If you've been with me since Day 1, first let me say thank you. But maybe you're sitting there right now thinking:

"Okay Tiffany...now what?"

Because by now you've learned about many things in your business that suddenly feel like they all need attention. And if you're have a small community, you're probably wondering how one person is supposed to do all of it.

The answer? You're not...At least not all at once.

In this final episode of the series, I'm giving you the roadmap I wish more owners had from the beginning. Not another strategy. Not another checklist. But a practical 90-day plan that helps you prioritize what matters most first.

If you are wondering how to secure your next move-in, this episode is for you.

What's Next?

I'm gearing up for two exciting opportunities to help you continue building momentum: 

Momentum Marketing Bootcamp - June 10th

A 10-week implementation-focused program designed to help you attract more inquiries, build referral relationships, strengthen your messaging, and create a marketing plan that actually drives move-ins.

Compass Rose XL - July 9th

A 12-month coaching and implementation program for new owners and communities under 50% occupancy who want deeper support, accountability, and long-term growth.

Learn more:

www.startwithoccupancy.com/programs

If this 21-day series helped you, would you do me a favor?  Share it with another owner.  Also, please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss what's coming next.

And if you've been listening quietly from the sidelines, leave a review. It helps more owners discover the show and ultimately helps more aging adults receive better care.

Take what you need. Share what helps. Come back for more. 🎧

Until next time...

Let's continue to inspire change, impact lives, and improve outcomes.

Transcript

Tiffany Updated voice 0:00

Okay, I know what some of you are thinking right now. "Tiffany, I don't even know where to start with all of this. I need to fix my response time. I need to improve my discovery questions. I need to create a better visit experience. My move-in process is not where it needs to be. Oh my God, what about my culture and my staff? I need to train them so that they can be what I need them to be. I need to set up a follow-up system, and oh my God, what about that Google profile and get reviews and a wait list and all of this? Oh my God, I'm only one person." Running an eight-bed, ten-bed, sixteen-bed community, How am I supposed to do all of this? Well, hear me clearly, you're not. Not all at once, at least. Here's what I know from the training sales teams Here's what I know from training sales teams over more than 15 years in this industry. When you try to do everything at once, you will do nothing well at all. You get overwhelmed, you get frustrated, and eventually you will quit making the effort altogether, and I don't want that for you, not after 21 days of showing up. So here's what we're going to do instead. Today on this final episode, I'm going to give you the roadmap, the order of operations. I'm going to show you exactly what to do in week one, week two, all the way through week 12. What to prioritize, what to delegate, and what to set down, for now. Because by the end of the 90 days, you should have a sales system that connects with families, fills your communities, and keep you full without you working every waking hour to make it happen. This is day 21 of the final episode of the 21 Days All Things Senior Living Sales series, 'cause yes, I changed the name, and we are going to finish this thing strong. Hi, I'm Tiffany Hill Allen. Let's get into it

Tiffany 1:56

Uh huh. Welcome to Start With Occupancy, the podcast for senior living owners, operators, and sales professionals. /Hi, I'm Tiffany, marketing strategist and former corporate baddie who got tired of producing results for wall street and wanted to make a change on main street. /I provide quick tips, idea nuggets, and case studies to help you with proven sales, marketing, and business development strategies along with leadership concepts so that you can inspire change, impact lives, and improve outcomes for the aging, their families and your teams. /I'm committed to equipping you with the tools, the knowledge and resources that you need to excel in your business. /With experience working inside senior living companies, large and small, I've developed a deep passion for advocating for the aging adult and those who care for them, all while driving business growth. /So whether you're already in the senior care industry or maybe you would like to be, if your mission is to serve them, my mission is to serve you. /Join me as we unravel the strategies and tactics that drive success in your business while making a difference in someone's life. /The goal is to touch, guide, and impact the lives of 10 families per month! /Are you with me? It's time to be inspired, gain practical tips and own your future.

Tiffany Updated voice 3:27

Before we get into the roadmap, let me give you a quick catalog of what the series actually covered, because you're gonna want this as a reference episode. It'll also be posted on the website. Days one and two covers response time and discovery questions. Days three and four covers pre-visit preparation and listening skills. Day fives through six is the move-in experience and execution. Day seven and eight and 10 covers culture, staff training, and the first seven days. Day nine is the VIP experience. Days 11 through 13 is the follow-up systems, the tech tools, and the metrics, how to interpret what's happening so you know what to do next. Day 14 is handling family concerns, also known as objections. Why would somebody not move in or move forward with you? Days 15 and 16 is seasonal referrals and local influencer partnerships. Day 17 and 18 is your online presence and your pricing strategy. And finally, days 19 through 20 is your competitive positioning and wait list management. That's 21 days of strategy all designed especially for you as a jumpstart to get you going in this business. If you tried to implement all of it at once, I would be worried about you. So let's prioritize it with a whole roadmap, So here's the framework for your next 90-day plan. Phase one covers your first 30 days. The foundation. Stop losing the inquiries you should be moving in. Phase two is your next thirty day of focus, and that is the growth. Generate more inquiries so that you can fill your community. Lastly is the last ninety days of your plan is phase three, how to stay full long term and reduce your workload. So let's start off with phase one, the inquiry section, where you might be losing them It's like, um, a sifter. You think you're catching something, but everything is falling through the holes and the cracks. So week one, we're gonna fix your response time. That is where you're gonna focus on. This is the easiest fix with the biggest impact for you. Responding to every inquiry within four hours, ideally within one hour if you can. If you do nothing else for this particular focus week, that's what you're going to do to change your numbers. Week two is improve your discovery questions. Asking better questions will give you better results. So what you're going to do is really focus in on how to ask better questions on the phone before they even walk through the door. If you don't understand their situation, you can't show them how you can solve their problem when they come and visit you. So we covered the first five questions in day two of the series. Pull that episode back and put them into practice. Day three of your ninety days is to set up your follow-up system. Most move-ins happen after several touch points. This could be text, this could be email. It depends on the length of the, the sales cycle in terms of how long it is before they reach out to you. Typically, back in the day, it was about a hundred and twenty days, um, for assisted living. It was about eighteen months for independent living, and for memory care it was about thirty to sixty days. That gives you an idea of when somebody calls you, on average now, um, how long it takes for them to make that decision to move in. So knowing what th-those timetables are helps you to front load your, your, um, inquiries, who you're working with now, and who you need to market for in the future. The key is if you're only following up once, you're leaving move-ins on the table. This week, week three, you're going to build the system with the three Cs that we talked about: consistency, clarity, and creativity. Week four is where you're going to audit your visit experience. This is where families who visit three, four, five, nine communities before they even make a decision. If your visit is generic with you, if their experience is generic with you, they will forget you. So walk through your own community this particular week, week four, as if you are a family member visiting for the first time. What do you see? What do you feel? What needs to change? And also, what do you smell? Ha, don't forget that! Then after you do that, pull the VIP experience framework from day nine and make it yours. It's that easy. All right, we just finished the first 30 days. So in those four weeks, we covered the beginnings, the foundation. Here's what I want you to do. Look at your calendar for the next month. Block out two hours per week to work on your business now, not in it, on it, and this is where the real progress happens. So phase two is going to be your growth phase, building what's missing and to generate more inquiries and more people calling your community. The reason I, I have this as a phase two is because until you have the foundation right for when they call, going out and getting more referrals is gonna, is gonna be a vicious cycle because then you're not able to-- you don't have the foundations to take those calls. So here we go, week number five. You wanna make sure that your Google profile is claimed and that it is active. Ninety-eight percent of families start their search online. And if you're not on Google, you are virtually invisible to the family who's searching for a community within their zip code. This, however, is changing and changing very quickly. So I will also add to take a review or to take a look at your website, because a lot of people now are moving towards the learning language models, meaning AI, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, to also do research. And so you wanna make sure that you are positioning your website to, to, um, be discoverable. If you don't know how to do that, that's something we're gonna follow up on on another episode. I didn't quite go over it during this series, but that is going to be very important coming into the future. The cool part about that, it democratizes everything. You don't have to pay to be on the front end or to be seen as in the Google list, right? So this is gonna be something that is definitely gonna be a big one going forward. But you least wanna have yourself on Google. The next week, week six, you wanna get your first ten Google reviews. Ask families that you have that's inside your communities. Ask your vendors to give you a review of what they've seen when visiting. Family trusts online reviews the same way they trust a personal recommendation. A lot of people read through those reviews, and they look at how many stars you have. If you have zero to two reviews, they may remove you from the list altogether. This week, identify ten families or people you know or vendors, um, who-- or, or referral partners who love your community and ask them. Create one simple page instruction sheet. Make it easy for them to say yes to giving you a Google review Week seven, start showing up on social. Yes, I said it. Start showing up on social. Just start recording your very beginning of your day. What are you doing in that day? Um, a lot of families check your Facebook page before they call you. If it looks inactive, they assume your community is too. Two to three posts a week is all you need. An event photo, a staff spotlight, a resident moment, with permission, of course. You don't need to go viral. That's not the game plan here. You just need to look like your community is alive and doing fun things, and that you're interactive. It helps if you have something about you, um, so that they can get to know who the owner is and your heart and your passion. So at least one post should be why I started this. Okay? Let's go into week eight. We're almost done with the second month. So launch your first referral campaign. Referrals convert five times the rate of a cold inquiry, and they're free for you. So this week, in week number eight, you're gonna choose one campaign, either a seasonal family referral campaign or a local partnership, and just launch it. We covered both frameworks earlier in the series. Pick one and go. Take a moment here. If you've done the work, you've shown up consistently for sixty days, you should already be seeing the results from that. We covered both frameworks in the series, so just pick one and go All right, you guys, take a moment here. If you've done the work and you've shown up now consistently for those sixty days that we just went over, you should already be seeing results. You should have more inquiries, you should have more visits to your communities, and you should have more move-ins. But getting full is only half the battle. The other half is staying full, and that's where phase three comes in, and this is gonna be the last of your ninety-day program. This is where the operators and owners who thrive long-term separate themselves from the ones who get stuck in the cycle scrambling to find a resident for a room when they have a move-out, losing a resident and scrambling again. You deserve better than that cycle. So phase one was all about fixing what was broken, and now phase two is all about building what was missing. So phase three is about protecting what you've built and setting yourself up to stay full for years to come. Can it be done? Absolutely. I've seen it. So the last phase of this in week nine, what you're gonna do is start building a waitlist. Turnover and move-outs is inevitable in this business. You have got to plan for that. So you-- having a waitlist for when a room opens in your community, you'll... won't have to start from scratch every single time. And in week nine, what you're going to do is create your waitlist form. I'll have one for you as well, but you wanna make sure you utilize that form. Call everyone who has inquired into your community for the last six months and begin tracking them. A waitlist of five to ten ready prospects will save you weeks of scrambling at the last minute. Week number ten is setting up your metric system. You wanna be able to know what's going on in your business, so you know how to move. You cannot improve what you don't measure. So this particular week, you're gonna set up a simple tracking spreadsheet, inquiries, visits, move-ins, where are they coming from? Where are you losing them? Once you know your numbers, you know where to focus. One of the things too is knowing w-who is your biggest referral source. Even if the person doesn't move in, if they send you referrals, they are still someone that you wanna keep really close contact with because they believe in you enough to send you business. Week eleven of the, of the ninety-day roadmap is train your staff. Your staff is your brand. The way your team greets a family at the door, answers the phone, engages with residents, that is your marketing. A thirty-minute training this week on the basics of customer service and family engagement can shift the entire experience your community delivers. And sometimes people just need a refresher. Do you know that when I was with m- my community, it was required every quarter that I would have a refresher training for the managers that would step in while I was out of the community or on my days off. And it was through that that even one of them became a sales director much later because she was what we called my A team member. She was the person that was my immediate backup. But I would have to train the whole team, and of course, I wouldn't do the same thing every, mm, you know, every quarter. But what I did do is refresher. Ask them, "Where are the things that you're having, you know, problems talking about?" Or, "Where, where do you find it the most difficult when somebody comes in and you have to take them around the community?" Finding out and then doing role-playing with them. It's okay to role-play. I'm sorry. I'm going into a lesson again, but I'm so passionate about having trained staff. It is ridiculous Maybe because I'm a trainer, I don't know. Week twelve is optimize your culture. You want a culture that is drop... I don't know. I don't wanna say drop dead. That's bad, right? Your culture is your competitive advantage. Like when people walk in, they say, "I don't know what it is, but I just felt X, Y, and Z." Whatever that I just felt X, Y, and Z and that made me feel good, that's what you want in your communities. Families don't just choose communities that have good care, 'cause everyone says they have good care. They choose communities where they feel good walking in. And this week I want you to audit your culture. Are your residents engaged? Is there laughter? Is there life in your community? Are your staff smiling? Are they interacting with the residents? Are they interacting with each other? Then create one new activity or tradition that brings your community together. Start small. Start somewhere. One of the things that we did in corporate is we had something called, um, not our daily standup, but we had our all staff. So all staff is when everybody got together, and we would go over what's happening in the community, where there's areas that we can improve as a team, um, who might be moving in, what's going on with residents, um, how can we make the community better. And having that all staff was helpful. Everybody had to come in, whether night shift or day shift, whatever, and we had a one-hour all staff. And we, we would give them pizza. We would have games, a team-building game. We would do little things. In a smaller community, I know that's a little bit harder obviously. However, I think it's important that there's at least once a month, once every other month that you get everybody together because it makes a more cohesive team. That's what I have to say about it. Okay. So that is the end of our ninety days, and now we're gonna transition into practical tips for making all of this work Tip number one, block time on your calendar. Don't just plan to find the time. Block two hours every Monday, every Friday, whatever day works for you for the next 12 weeks. Label it Marketing Roadmap Implementation and protect it like a doctor's appointment. If it's not on the calendar, it won't get done. I've seen this way too many times, and I say it so gently, you need time out for planning. It was one of the best advice that I received from my corporate trainer when I was so depleted, running around like a chicken, and she said, "Tiffany, you need to put it on your calendar that this is your planning time. No calls, closed door, And you sit down every week, and you plan your week." And I tell you, that was a gift, and so I'm giving that gift to you guys. Tip number two, focus on one thing per week. Not two things, not five things. Do it well, then move to the next. Progress over perfection every single time. And inspect what you expect, even from yourself. So if you're only implementing one thing a week, are you perfecting that one thing, getting it to where you would be happy with that? Not, is it okay and sliding by? Because remember, you are not only competing with others, but you're competing with home, and you're competing with yourself. And what's the highest, highest version of who you are and who you're going to show up for your residents to be as a community and as a business? Tip number three, delegate what you can. That's what you wanna do. You do not have to do everything yourself. Social media posts, Google profile updates, review requests, those can be delegated to a team member or a trusted person in your circle. What you should not delegate is the discovery conversation, the visit experience, the follow-up call. Those are yours. Those sales relationships are all yours, and you need to own it, unless you have someone designated in the community, which you should always have a backup person who's there when you're not, who is able to do the same things in terms of sales, because you always wanna have that backup. I will say use this training system here on this podcast to train your new people or to train your backup. That's what it's designed to do. So I- I'm hoping that you take advantage of this podcast series to be a training for that backup person for you. Um, at the end of the day, that relationship with the family, the sales relationship is yours if you are the one who's guiding it Tip number four, celebrate the small wins. Don't wait until you're at 100% occupancy to celebrate yourself. You responded to an inquiry within an hour, that's a win. You got your first Google review. Kick back, grab a drink, and celebrate it. It could be Kool-Aid, I don't care. It could be a latte, but just celebrate it. You filled an empty room in your house that was been empty for the last three months. Mark it. Progress matters, and when you track the wins, you find the motivation to keep going, especially during those tough days. Tip number five is adjust as you go. This roadmap is a guide, not a rule book, okay, you guys? If you're already at 90% occupancy, then skip phase two and go straight to scaling. If your online presence is solid, move right ahead. Every community is different. Customize it to fit where you actually are, not where someone else told you you should be. However, if you want a refresher or you want to say, "Hey, I need to do a checklist of what I'm doing right or what I need to do. I want to, to run my systems that I have in my business through this filter and listen to all 21 episodes," then do that The whole idea and the reason why I created this is that there were so many people who had so many questions about how do I do this and how do I do that? I wanted to make sure you had that, and there was no one who was specifically focusing in on sales, just sales. I'm not, I'm not about licensing. You're gonna be licensed. I have people who do that. My goal is how do you get full? So before I get into what I'm going to offer you, I wanna stop and acknowledge something. If you have been with me for all 21 days, every single episode, I want you to know that I do not take that lightly. You showed up, you took notes, you were patient with me, you listened when it would have been a lot easier to scroll past or listen to another podcast, put it off till later. That tells me something about who you are, how committed you are. It also tells me how serious you are about this work. So here's what I wanna do. Screenshot this episode, post it on your socials, and tag me. Tell somebody that you just completed 21 days Of making your community great, because that deserves to be said out loud. And if you know of another operator or owner who is struggling to fill their community, to get new residents, to connect with families, to get referrals, or who's brand new and is just starting, send them this podcast and send them back to day one. The series is free. There is no gatekeeping here, and it will be free for them because the information to get new residents, connect with families, and be a better operator should never be a barrier between an owner and a full community. So share it, tag it, pass it along. That is how we grow this thing together. Now, if you're thinking, "Tiffany, this was all good. My problem is I don't know how to market my community. I don't know what to do to get people to call me. I don't know how to get referrals from social workers and from, um, professional referrals. I don't know what my messaging is that is going to convince families that this is the right choice for them. I don't know how to make a 90-day execution marketing plan that will put my community out there to drive the families to me so that I can implement what I've learned in these 21 days So that's a different conversation, and that is what I have for you today. That is Momentum Marketing Bootcamp. This is my bootcamp that I have that covers a period of ten weeks, and what it is is a live training on everything marketing. It's going to go over who you are, your proposition in the community, meaning the greater neighborhood. How do you market yourself? What is your value proposition? It goes over how to plan out a whole 90-day execution-ready marketing campaign and program using nine channels of marketing and which channel is right for you, for your business, where it is right now, and sometimes even least expensive, because we have to understand our budgets. And then the last part is that when you're in front of those professionals, when you're doing, um, partnership agreements, w-what do you say? How do you connect with them? How do you connect with an elder law attorney? How do you connect with a social worker in a hospital versus a social worker at a skilled nursing facility versus a social worker at a home care or home health agency? They're very different. They have different priorities, and you knowing what to say to each one of them is important. That is where the M-Marketing Momentum Bootcamp is going to be important for you. So before you can focus on the sales side of it, understanding the marketing side of it is going to be a great help for you, and that's gonna drive in that traffic. And while you're driving in that traffic, you can then focus in on the 90 days, starting with the week one is how you follow up, right? Um, not follow up. I'm sorry. Week one is how do you respond to new inquiries fast. So June 10th starts the new cohort for the Momentum Marketing Bootcamp. I wanna make sure I invite you to that. Go to startwithoccupancy.com/programs, and you will see the sign-up to, um, go into that program, and you can learn more about it there. Now, if the marketing is not your issue and you are ready to implement a lot of what we talked about in this series, and you're saying to yourself that you're wanting every template from days one through 21, you want the discovery scripts, you want the follow-up emails, the visit checklists, pricing worksheets, referral campaign templates, just all of it, then I have something for you too I created the 21 Days All Things Sales workbook for you, and I'm releasing it on June the 4th, which is, by the way, nationally recognized as the Audacity of Hope Day, because that is exactly what this is for. The person just like you who had the audacity to get licensed, to open your doors, to say yes to this type of work when most people wouldn't even try. I am cheering for you from my seat. And in this workbook, you will find every resource from this series compiled into one place. All the scripts, the checklists, the templates, additional worksheets that's not downloadable per episode, a metrics calculator, resource guides, AI prompts to help you through, um, short instructional videos walking you through the key tools that we're talking about. So you're not just reading a checklist, you're seeing how to use it. This is Senior Living Sales 101 in a box for you. It is not a replacement for the live training that we have that is the sales training. However, it is the roadmap. It is the tool and the support that you can get to get you started. You have no reason to stay stuck. It's only $95 and it drops June the 4th. Head to startwithoccupancy.com/workbook to get on the wait list to be the first to know when it's live, and I will drop it right into your email. All right, we made it. Day twenty-one, The final episode of the newly changed title, Twenty-One Days All Things Senior Living Sales Series. So that's it, you guys. Twenty-one days, 21 frameworks, 21 strategies, all designed to help you connect with families, fill your community, and serve more aging adults with the care that they deserve because 21 is my favorite number. But here's what I need you to walk away knowing is that this: You don't need to do everything. You need to do the right things in the right order. Start with week one and fix the first thing, your response time. Just that one thing will change your numbers, and then move on to week two and then week three. Take it one week at a time, one action at a time, one win at a time. And 90 days from now, you'll look back, and you'll realize you're not overwhelmed anymore. You're not scrambling. You have a system. You have a pipeline, and you have a community that is moving toward full, and you built that. I didn't get into this work to see operators struggle like you or owners struggle or sales professionals in the corporate world struggle. And I know that's not what you want for yourself. You got into this to make a difference, to care for people, and to create a place where residents feel like they belong and where families feel like they made the right choice. So you can't do that if your community is empty, number one, right? You can't do that if you're running on overwhelm because you'll be good to no one, right? But you can do it when you have a system. And now you have one. Thank you for spending these 21 days with me. Thank you for showing up every day and choosing to grow. I don't take that lightly. I'm honored to be a part of this journey with you. And if you want to go deeper, join me in the Momentum Marketing Bootcamp. And you can also join me on YouTube, where we have some YouTube shows coming out, um, this month. I'm super excited about it. YouTube channel is Start With Occupancy, so go over there and just press subscribe, and You'll be notified of the, um, new shows and what's coming up. If you want the workbook and the tools to get started right now, grab the 21 Days All Things Sales workbook on June the 4th. And if you want to stay connected with me, follow me on social at Start With Occupancy on Facebook as well as, um, Instagram or Tiffany Hill Allen on Instagram. And keep listening to the Start With Occupancy podcast. I love to read your reviews, um, where, whether you DM me them or whether you're on the podcast. But by putting a review in the podcast, it helps elevate the podcast and go out to other people who's looking for this work. rating the podcast and sending a review is so very helpful, and I would be most appreciative if you can take the time out to do that. Until next time, we are here to inspire change, impact lives and improve outcomes.