Touchdowns for Team Buying - Close the Multi-Decision Maker Sale This Holiday Season

Delicious aromas seduce you from the kitchen as loved ones gather around the television for today’s prime time football game. Children race up and down the hallway and the family dog is excited for all the ear scratches and belly rubs. The family is back together once again after the long pandemic hiatus. It’s great to be reunited, but what if a beloved family member doesn’t seem to be fairing as well as they were the last time you gathered?

While this may not be your reality right now, it likely is for many of those who will be contacting you shortly. The holidays are meant to be a time for love, gratitude, and joy, but for some families, a dark cloud is starting to settle over their days. But by offering support, empathy, and authenticity, mixed with a little bit of patience, you can position yourself as a trusted resource and an ally to the multiple decision makers tasked with how to care for their aging loved one.

Understanding How Many Players Are Involved.

Family dynamics can often function like teams. While these groups may not always be working together in the most cohesive manner, it’s important to keep in mind that deciding on care for an aging loved one is a complex process and requires a significant level of trust to be built.

According to recent studies published in the Harvard Business Review, 5.4 people are involved in decision-making on average and these individuals often hold very different jobs and functions, meaning it can be more difficult to understand what is important to each. Now more than ever, as Zoom and FaceTime have become a normal method of regular communication, you could even face the hurdles of a variety of geographic locations and time zones.

In addition to emotionally invested family members, it’s also very possible that professionals, such as therapists, doctors, or social workers, could be assisting in the decision-making process, offering their seasoned experiences and qualified opinions. So, as a new prospective family reaches out to you, the first step to your new relationship needs to be to understand how many decision-makers will be involved throughout this process.

Get to Know Your Players, Burt.

Much like Coach Cotton working with a young Michael Oher (from the football movie The Blind Side - if you haven't seen it you really should!), in order to guarantee a mutually beneficial outcome for the families you work with and your community, you need to get to know a little bit about the decision-makers. While it may seem natural to proceed in the same manner that you’ve used and proven successful before, this is when it’s important to ask open-ended questions and to listen with the intention of understanding, not just answering.

Who are these people? How did they spend Thanksgiving? What do they do for a living, and maybe even in their free time? By focusing on the needs and values of these people, you’re demonstrating a desire to understand them and empathetically offer support for the decision they need to make. Recently, Forbes investigated the exponential demands for empathy within the sales profession since the onset of COVID-19, reporting a significant increase in the importance of building trust and cultivating long-term customer relationships, both before and after the sale.

You Can’t Skip Right to the Fourth Quarter.

Once you think you have a general understanding of the individuals involved in the decision-making process, you can’t fast forward right into a cookie-cutter sales pitch and try to close the deal. Proceeding in this manner may just earn you a flag for excessive celebration, resulting in backtracking 15 yards and even a possible suspension. You don’t want to sour a new relationship before you’ve even had the opportunity to demonstrate the value your community can offer their loved one.

After acknowledging who exactly is involved in the decision-making process and what makes each person tick, Harvard Business Review discourages you from over-personalizing your approach to each of the individuals and attempting to sell them on your solution. Early stages in the buying process can be especially difficult and too much personalization can backfire. Instead, the study suggests focusing your efforts on connecting the individual stakeholders to each other and to their shared goals. By putting their wants and needs at the forefront of conversation, you’re demonstrating your ability to understand their situation, showing that you care, and establishing authenticity. 

Sales Is a Team Sport.

“This all sounds great, but we have to at least sell them on our services at some point, right?” Don’t worry – we got you. Now that you’ve pivoted your sales journey to a strict, customer-centric approach, it may seem more difficult to tie in the value your community loves to provide. But, there are plenty of ways to share all the wonderful attributes of the fulfilling and enriching lifestyle you create for your residents. What’s one of the best ways to get these points across? Showcase your staff, even if they don’t have the word “sales” in their job title.

To quote the successful Richard Branson, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients.” By now, as experts in cultivating enriching environments, you already have that first step down. So, how do you showcase your rockstar staff to help you close more sales? Family members have likely already interacted with several sales and customer service team members via calling in, and possibly attending events or visiting the community, but what about teammates who spend their days serving your residents?

You have a phenomenal pastry chef who is passionate about creating the perfect cake to celebrate every birthday, or a devoted hairdresser that spends every day pampering everyone who sits in her chair. Give visitors the opportunity to meet with these people personally and showcase these experiences throughout your regular content marketing strategy. If a large percentage of your community’s population requires more support, through services such as assisted living, skilled nursing, or memory care, allowing visitors to meet with one of your specially trained medical professionals to better understand levels of care available can help position you as the experts you are. Your team is responsible for creating a life anyone would be thrilled to live, and telling decision-makers how you’ll serve their loved one in no way compares to the life they can imagine with a little help from storytelling and seeing live examples for themselves.  

You Can’t Rely on a Hail Mary – Put in the Time.

Much like a successful football game, you and your teammates will need plenty of prep time, a solid strategy, and the decision that you’re going to give it your all. The holidays can be an emotional time as it is without the added stress of the declining health of a loved one and being forced to make unplanned, uncomfortable decisions. If you feel like your community’s sales strategy could use a little disruption in order to better offer empathetic and authentic solutions, ADage Marketing Group is here to help. Contact us today to start an honest and open conversation about what your sales team needs to bring home the big win.