Best Practices to Increase Move-In Conversion
Starting a new year can be a great time to evaluate and redefine your goals, including move-ins growth and occupancy. Whether you’re a new partner of A Place for Mom or have been a partner for many years, our objective is to help you meet and exceed those goals!  Our partnership benefits you in many ways. Here are some helpful tips that have been used by our partners to successfully increase their move-in conversion rates from A Place for Mom referrals.
- Contact the referred family immediately
- Communicate with our Senior Living Advisors throughout the entire process
- Keep your community profile up to date
- Utilize tools such as Partner Central and Partner Web Services
Contact The Referred Family Immediately
Our partners have found that responding to a referred family as soon as the lead is received is one of the keys to increasing move-ins. In fact, communities that respond to APFM leads within 2 hours have a 22-25% higher share of move-ins of APFM-referred leads than those communities that wait 24 hours or longer to respond.
After receiving the referral alert, our successful partners have found the following process works best to reach a family
- Call the family as soon as you receive the referral.
- If phone contact is not made, or if the referred family had expressed a preference to communicate via email, send an email introducing yourself.
- In addition, text the family and ask if there is a good time to connect.
- If necessary, call again 24 – 36 hours later.
If you cannot reach the family when you call, leaving a warm introductory voicemail to your community can improve call backs. Remember, this is your first connection with the family, and the impression you make by the tone and warmth of your voice will help them overcome any reservations/fears that may have arisen about taking the next step on their journey.
Communicate Regularly and Often to Increase Lead Conversion
Our Senior Living Advisors (SLAs) are trained and coached to guide families in their senior living search. Prior to receiving the referral alert, they have spent a fair amount of time understanding the needs and situation of the family and their loved one. This specialized information is passed on to you via the Referral Alert to help guide your conversations with the family.  Actively engaging with your local SLA about the family’s progress throughout the search allows all parties stay connected and provides the best chance for helping the family find the right fit for their loved one’s lifestyle and care needs.
Share What Sets Your Community Apart
Helping your local Senior Living Advisor better understand your community is a best practice we strongly encourage. Partners with thorough and detailed community profiles usually achieve higher move-in conversion with A Place for Mom referred families. In addition to maintaining a robust community profile, help your local SLA(s) understand your mission, tenure of staff, unique programs and any additional information they may be able to share with families to help interest them in your community. Taking these steps ensures that A Place for Mom can best represent your specific community and offers us every opportunity to connect you with the right families.
Tools & Resources for our Partners
A Place for Mom provides a number of proprietary (and free!) tools that help you connect and communicate with us. Understanding how each of these tools work and actively using them will lead to higher conversion rates of APFM leads.
Partner Central is your free resource that allows you to easily access our best practices, reference industry trends and quick tips when working with A Place for Mom. It also allows you to generate powerful reports, quickly access information about each referral, and easily update the information and rates our advisors use to prequalify families for your community. This information ensures we’ll be referring the right families for you.
Partner Web Services (PWS) is our free lead integration connector that automatically sends A Place for Mom referrals directly into your lead management system. PWS lets your team spend less time doing data entry into your CRM, and more time working with families to get move-ins.  Partners who have adopted PWS have seen their conversion rates improve by 10-15%. It generally requires minimal development time, and we currently offer a number of 3rd-party CRM connectors, with more on the way.
The Partner Services Team at A Place for Mom is dedicated to providing assistance to our partners to ensure your success. For more tips and best practices working with A Place for Mom, visit Partner Central today.
This has not been working much for me.
Secondly I get a lot of referrals that express interest in totally different locations and either they do not call back at all or if I find them on the phone, they simply tell me that my location is not their desired area.