An age-old question that spans all industries and sectors is: what do prospects really want? You may think you know, but after seeing the results of thousands of senior living prospect surveys, we do. 

In this blog post, we share some of our learnings from over 1,700 surveys over a 7 month period from November 2020 to June 2021, and more importantly, provide solutions or opportunities to use this information to help turn senior living prospects into happy residents at your community.

Following the rule of three, here are three survey results that piqued our interest.

1) The Data – Preferred Contact Method

How do prospects want to be first contacted? Email right? You got it. 53% of these surveys respondents preferred to be contacted via email.

Beyond the Numbers

Knowing this information is validation, but more important than anything is making sure that you follow each and every prospect’s preferred contact method. If you do not, it comes across, as this salesperson is not listening to me, and they, the prospect, will limit their time talking to you or cross your community off their list, even if your community is the right community for them or a loved one.

2) The Data – Important Concerns & Interests

What is important to senior living prospects?  The top 5 in order of importance were:

• Safety & Security
• Family & Grandchildren
• Covid-19 safety
• Transportation
• Proximity to family and friends

For interests, the top 5 were:

• Music
• Books & Reading
• Nature
• Friends & Socializing
• History 

Crafts was close, in 6th place.

Beyond the Numbers

Knowing this information is helpful, but what you use this data for and how you use this data is even more important.  

So make sure that you ask each prospect their concerns if you don’t already have this data on them. Then, you can use these top 5 as a guide and be sure you cover these data points during any tours.

For interests, you can use interest data to better connect with your prospects during the sales process. In addition, you can highlight how your community meets their needs and wants. 

For programming, do you offer access to music through classes, events, or have music playing in common areas? Do you have a library or the ability to borrow books? How about a book club or transportation to visit the local library?

Much of this data can be used to enhance your community programming either now or in the future.

3) The Data – Budget

A smaller subset of 1000 surveys had a budget question, and 66% of these survey responses didn’t give a budget number and instead selected, ‘depends on what is included.’

Beyond the Numbers

The budget is a tricky one. You want to learn more about a prospect’s budget early on, but you don’t want them to drop from the survey when they get to this question.

Many senior living providers are hesitant to provide starting at pricing on their website. Instead, they want to provide this information when they first meet with the prospect to go over everything included, both of tangible and intangible value.

On the prospect side, most don’t know what senior living costs are or what is included, nor whether what they are looking at is a good price or not.  In many cases, they do not know what their budget is or what they can afford. 

It is not like buying an appliance, car, cruise vacation, house, or anything else, where those prices, comparables, and price history are readily available. 

The budget question should be handled carefully, especially on the ask of a prospect.  If you do include the question in a survey, give the consumer a way to answer without committing to an exact number or range.  They might drop from the survey. Even if they aren’t financially qualified, the data you collect is still very valuable.

What we do know is that the two top things that consumers look for when looking at senior living provider profiles on AgingChoices.com are provider reviews and provider starting at pricing.  Just keep that in mind.

A Bonus Data Point