St. Anne’s Terrace Grows Occupancy by More Than 20% With Aline 

Known for its welcoming, warm feeling of home, St. Anne’s Terrace, an Atlanta-based senior living community, largely attracted new residents by word of mouth — and the strategy worked well. St. Anne’s Terrace historically maintained an impressive 97% occupancy rate by mostly referrals. But like so many other senior living communities after the pandemic, occupancy rates fell as residents moved out and the economy stalled, said David Brooks, executive director of St. Anne’s Terrace.

The Challenges: Missing Leads and No Specialized Sales Training

As Brooks and his team worked to get back to pre-pandemic occupancy rates, manually tracking leads with spreadsheets left them at a disadvantage. Spreadsheets aren’t designed to include detailed sales notes or helpful prospect insights. After two team members retired, Brooks had to bring in new employees who lacked the background information needed to connect with prospects as they took over the sales process from those incomplete spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets also lack the functionality to integrate new leads and set up automated workflows with custom triggers to schedule activities, update fields, and send follow-ups to efficiently advance prospects through the sales journey. As these spreadsheet issues compounded, the new sales team needed a better way to manage leads.

“We were missing leads and didn’t have a reliable wait list,” Brooks said. “If someone toured in January and came back a few months later, we didn’t have any details, so we basically had to make a new cold call.”

With a new staff, sales training was also a priority for Brooks. Transitioning to senior living is an emotional experience for prospective residents and their families. Home is what they know and deeply rooted in their sense of comfort and well-being. Even if these seniors would be better suited to a community lifestyle as they age, leaving home can feel like a loss of independence and self-identity.

Given these emotional hangups, a typical sales strategy that focuses on transactional KPIs, such as the number of calls placed or emails sent, doesn’t build a strong foundation of trust and empathy. Without this foundation, untangling the complex emotions tied to leaving home becomes significantly more challenging, directly impacting the likelihood of conversion to ultimately grow occupancy rates.

The Solution: Aline CRM With PCS

Looking to revamp his team’s sales and marketing strategy, Brooks consulted with Love & Company, a senior living marketing firm. With nearly three decades in the senior living industry, Love & Company has seen what’s worked — and what hasn’t worked — when building a high-performing sales strategy. Love & Company highly recommended Aline CRM With Prospect-Centered Selling® (PCS) as the right solution to get St. Anne’s occupancy back on track.

Unlike some CRMs, Aline CRM With PCS is more than a sales and marketing task manager. Designed specifically for senior living, this solution combines Aline’s advanced CRM platform, featuring automated workflows, AI and predictive analytics, and performance reporting, with PCS, a proven sales methodology that focuses on addressing a prospect’s emotional journey to improve conversions.

Of course, excelling at a new sales methodology is a major commitment that requires specialized expertise, but St. Anne’s Terrace wasn’t alone in the process. To help Brooks and his team quickly find success, a knowledgeable Aline trainer held numerous sessions to teach sustainable practices for building empathetic prospect relationships. Some of these practices included:

• Spending more time with fewer prospects to hold more meaningful conversations.  
• Planning a unique sales strategy for each prospect based on their needs and wants. 
• Focusing on the right KPIs that drive sales.  
• Overcoming objections through proprietary tactics for consistent engagement.

These strategic practices not only improved the team’s sales and marketing approach but also deepened prospect engagements to create a foundation for more personal connections.

“We went from selling a product to selling a service,” Brooks said. “One tour would turn into a second tour or a home visit, and we could better understand and address the unique needs of each prospect as we continued to build the relationship. We’ve had a lot of residents tell us that we made them feel like family during the sales process.”

For additional PCS training, Aline offers in-person sales workshops, customized team and leadership coaching, and ongoing courses, all taught by respected senior living veterans Margot Cooke and Reed Davis.

As prospects move through the PCS methodology, the CRM supports this journey by creating a personalized nurturing process that emphasizes empathy-building sales activities, tactics, and KPIs. Central to this process is the Time in the Selling Zone dashboard, a powerful tool that measures team and individual benchmarks against industry-best sales performers. 

Unlike traditional models that focus on the quantity of activities, this dashboard prioritizes the time and quality of sales engagements. By aligning performance with data-driven benchmarks, Brooks ensures his sales team dedicates the appropriate time to activities most likely to result in move-ins.

“If you spend time on those more personal activities, like tours, home visits, and sending handwritten notes, it’s much more effective at converting,” Brooks said. “I’m not as focused as making a certain number of calls. Our reps have a goal for spending 60 hours a month in the Time in the Selling Zone, and this has been working well for us.” 

In addition to the Time in the Selling Zone dashboard, Brooks finds Aline CRM’s Occupancy Board helps his team refine their sales and marketing strategy even further, especially when reviewing data on conversion times and reasons for move-outs. These insights give Brooks and the team a clear view of how to optimize their time and budget for the biggest impact. 

“The Occupancy Board tells where we’ve had success to help us better focus our efforts,” Brooks said. “Our marketing team can see that our big open houses have been one of the most effective activities for advancing prospects, so we know that’s worth the investment. Budgets are tight, and it’s very important to make sure we optimize our strategy with the sales activities that get results.”

The Outcomes: Occupancy Growth for Better Business

Since implementing Aline CRM With PCS in January 2023, St. Anne’s Terrace has grown occupancy rates 21% in just a year and a half — a figure more than double the 10% increase Brooks initially projected. Brooks still has more room to grow occupancy, but considering how quickly his team already exceeded performance goals, he feels optimistic that St. Anne’s Terrace is on the right path to reaching its previous census numbers. 

In fact, occupancy growth is performing so well that St. Anne’s Terrace once again has a waiting list for its most popular floor plans, Brooks said. While growing census was the biggest challenge for Brooks prior to this year, it’s no longer his top concern, which has allowed him to focus on other important initiatives.

“Reaching a healthy census is the ultimate milestone,” Brooks said. “It ties into everything— it drives our revenue and allows us to strategically reinvest our budget where it’s most needed. Increasing the census has enhanced our financial stability while improving the overall well-being of everyone in the community.” 

Aline CRM With PCS has been so impactful for Brooks that he emphatically recommends this solution to any senior living operator looking to build a high-performing sales culture. With this innovative approach to senior living sales, St. Anne’s team more deeply connects with prospects and monitors the right performance metrics to drive conversions. Not only has this transformation reshaped the marketing and sales team’s strategies but it’s also infused a new level of empathy, trust, and effectiveness into their interactions. As a result, St. Anne’s Terrace has re-established itself as a standout community for seniors.

Boost Your Sales Performance

Ready to see how Aline CRM With PCS can elevate your senior living sales performance? Book a personalized demo today and discover how you can develop a high-performing sales culture that increases occupancy rates and supports maximum revenue growth.