July 23, 2025 • 33 mins
Summary
In this episode, Jerry Vinci and Evan Petig discuss the complexities of the senior living industry, focusing on the importance of bridging the gap between sales and ownership perspectives. They explore how understanding product value, optimizing inventory, and pricing strategies can enhance community engagement and performance. The conversation also touches on the future challenges and opportunities in senior living, emphasizing the need for innovative solutions to accommodate the growing senior population.
Learn More:
- Connect with Evan Petig
Takeaways
- The real power move is aligning sales and ownership perspectives.
- Sales teams must understand the product's value proposition.
- Ownership seeks collaboration, not criticism, from sales teams.
- Sales counselors face unique challenges in selling senior living.
- A holistic view of the product includes pricing, finishes, and community engagement.
- Inventory optimization requires data analysis and team collaboration.
- Establishing standards can eliminate objections in sales.
- Trust and value are critical in driving decisions in senior living.
- Celebrating small wins can build momentum in turnaround situations.
- Innovation and testing are essential for long-term sustainability in the industry.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
03:52 Bridging the Gap Between Sales and Ownership
13:40 Holistic View of the Product in Senior Living
18:22 Inventory Optimization in Senior Living
24:05 Success Stories: Aligning Product and Pricing
29:31 Key Signals for Property Turnarounds
37:20 Innovative Solutions for Housing Older Adults
Keywords
senior living, sales, ownership, marketing, inventory optimization, pricing strategies, community engagement, leadership, future of aging, senior care
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You are trying to get somebody to buy a product that they
probably don't want or at least wish that they didn't want.
And you know, if we're being truly transparent about it,
you're you're selling somebody on moving into a place where
they are going to die. And that is a very difficult
sale. What if the real power move
isn't sales or ownership, it's what happens when both speak the
(00:21):
same language? Welcome to From Leeds to Leases
ACCR Growth podcast that helps senior living providers
transform their complex challenges into opportunities.
Listen in for stories from industry leaders, innovative
strategies and insights, and with our expertise, learn how to
increase occupancy faster, Guaranteed.
(00:45):
Welcome back to another episode of From Leeds.
To Lease is the podcast that dives deep into the senior
living and senior care industries, bringing you
insights, strategies and storiesfrom the experts at the
forefront of innovation, leadership, and care.
I'm your host, Jerry Vincey, CEO, CCR Growth.
For those of you who don't know about us, CCR Growth is a full
service marketing and growth agency that's exclusive to the
(01:06):
senior living industry. And through this podcast, I'm
here to guide you through the evolving landscape of senior
care, exploring the innovations,the strategies, and leadership
insights that are shaping the future of the industry.
So whether you're a provider, a caregiver, or an industry
leader, this show is here to help you make informed decisions
and create meaningful impact. So today's guest is Evan Pettig,
(01:28):
a senior living asset managementexpert with over 12 years of
experience managing investments and partnerships across some of
the industry's most complex and high value portfolios.
With leadership roles at LCS andSunrise Senior Living, Evan has
helped guide teams managing over5 billion in assets.
And what sets him apart is how he sees value, not just in
(01:49):
square footage or financials, but in the strength of owner
operator collaboration. He's here to help bridge the gap
between what sales and marketingneed and what ownership is
looking for. So Evan, welcome to the show.
I'm so glad to have you here. It's great to be here, Jerry.
Thank you. Yeah.
This is a very interesting topicand I think anytime we can
bridge the mind of sales and marketing and operations, it
(02:13):
always leads to a really cool conversation.
So because you've worked with sales and with ownership groups,
what's the one thing you wish each understood about each
other? That's a great question.
And I, I think it's exactly thatjust trying to take the other's
perspective. I think at, at a base level,
what ownership wants to see whenthey're walking through the
building is that the sales team knows what they have, they
(02:37):
understand and are able to sell the value to a consumer.
So that's, that's table stakes. Just you know, do you, do you
know and understand your product?
Can you cite the value proposition?
And that's usually as far as some of the best owner visits,
what the first few minutes of the tour really is.
They just want to get comfortable that the the
salesperson really knows and understands what they have.
(03:00):
The next level is really what I think would be the highest level
from an owner is is it does a sales people, are they thinking
like a business person or are they thinking like an owner?
You know, and what that really means, I think from an ownership
standpoint is just not being able to say here are obstacles,
but then bringing solutions likeif you own this building, if
(03:22):
this was your responsibility, you know, what would you do or
what could we try? And so I think that will go a
long way with ownership just in in doing exactly that letting or
encouraging trying something newif if you've been stuck or if
there's a potential solution outthere, they haven't tried yet on
the other side. And again, that sales teams have
(03:43):
more experience or you have moreexperience with this and tell
me, but I think it's just recognition of how hard it is to
sell. Our sales counselors, residency
counselors are experts in what they're doing and they're trying
to do something extremely hard. You are trying to get somebody
to buy a product that they probably don't want or at least
which that they didn't want. And, you know, if we're being
(04:03):
truly transparent about it, you're selling somebody on
moving into a place where they are going to die.
And, and that is a very difficult sale.
And so going into it, I feel like when sales teams feel like
owners understand that and understand just one, the
professionalism and skills that they bring and, and how hard it
is. And it's, it's really easy to
get caught in the trap of which just, well, you know, I used to
(04:25):
have a coach and he would come up to you and be just so
frustrating. He would say, but just run
faster, right? And, and that's not helpful.
You can't do anything with that.It's really how do we, how do we
kind of partner on this togetherand, and what are the things
that we need to do to solve this?
That if you can think about it from the other perspective, you
can get there. Yeah, that's a great answer.
Back to what you're saying aboutempowering sales to think more
(04:46):
like owners too, I think that's a great perspective because
often we get siloed into the different departments, either
whether it's marketing or sales,and everybody's pointing the
finger at somebody else as to why something can't happen or
hasn't happened, and they're just pointing out problems.
They're not thinking about solutions.
So if you can get people into that mindset of everyone
thinking, what if this was your building?
What would you do to solve that problem?
(05:07):
It's it changes the landscape, it changes the conversation and
it gets people thinking in a more creative way.
And also it says something aboutleadership.
If leadership is open to having those kinds of discussions too,
right? They're not just saying my way
or my way. They're like, well, what would
you do? How would you solve this
problem? I love that.
It comes back to it's a community, right?
And so it's us, it's a team. And it's not just, oh, well, the
(05:30):
sales team is not doing this or the food and beverage group
isn't providing the right level of service, right?
It's just what, what do we do? And and that just that brings
people together and enhances performance.
What you said too about the IT is a hard product to sell
because of the fact that literally this is probably the
last place they're going to liveand they don't necessarily want
to come here. And then you also layer on the
(05:50):
fact that it's just getting increasingly more difficult just
because the customer more savvy now they know what they want.
There's more ways to search and find exactly what you want and
need, and there's just more competition in the market.
So the salesperson has to work extra hard to even get that
person to take the next step to take the tour or even just move
ever so slightly in that sales process.
(06:11):
Absolutely. You often say owners aren't
trying to be the critical in laws walking through the house.
Can you expand on that idea and how ownership actually wants to
be a partner in performance? Yeah, I think when.
We. Or when I would would bring an
owner to a community, I mean, one it, it's a big deal from a
community standpoint, right? They want to have a good
impression. It's stressful.
(06:33):
There's again essentially the the big boss coming to visit
your community. And so how do you sort of set
everybody at ease? And so I guess what I've tried
to do is facilitate an environment where there's more
collaboration. I think it's easy for owners to
walk through and find something wrong.
I mean, you can do it with your house, right?
You can walk through your house and, and, and you know, where
(06:55):
lots of little things aren't exactly perfect.
And it's, it's overlooking thoseand, and, and trying to really
identify what matters. And I sort of joke, yeah, it's
like, you never want an owner visit to be like your
mother-in-law coming to visit. And I have two mother in My wife
has a mom and a stepmom and they're both amazing.
That is, that is purely for illustrative purposes, but it's
(07:16):
it's that where you don't want to feel like they're gone.
I'm exhausted. You want it to feel like, OK,
that was a good visit. And we have some great next
steps and we're excited about the next week, the next month,
the next six months. That's how you want an owner
visit to go. That's a great way to look at
it. I love that talking about the
product to a lot of people, whenthey think about the product,
(07:37):
they're thinking just about the walls.
But your your definition of thatalso includes the pricing, the
rooms and the finishes. Can you break down how that
holistic view shapes your approach?
Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't encompass all of
those things because as an example, you say, OK, I'm going
to move into a community, what'sthe price?
We can give a price and $5000 a month might be extremely
(08:00):
expensive for what you get or itmight be an amazing deal.
It's really what's the value that's there.
And I know a lot of our focus isreally on the room as a product
itself, which includes the pricing, the finishes and and
all of those aspects. But if you zoom out, it also
includes the programming at the community it improved.
It includes the community itself.
(08:21):
That meaning that the different people and activities and clubs
and and all that. So really need to take all of
that into account, You know, kind of getting back to the room
in and of itself. I kind of always say that look,
we there James had three things.When when Prospect and their
family walks into a room, so they've gone through the
community, they've walked down the hallways, they've seen the
common spaces, now they're goingto get to the room.
(08:42):
It needs to have three things. So one, it needs to be like new
2 needs to be on brand and the third is nothing weird.
And I think we all kind of recognize if we've been in
senior housing, what that means.But I'll break down each one of
those. The the like new, I mean, you
can't have stains on the carpets, dents in the
appliances, chips in the in the paint, right?
Because in a lot of in, in many cases, you're likely selling
(09:05):
against a new building down the street and high potential that
your prospects and their families have toured something
that is built, you know, maybe it's it's brand new or built
within the last several years. So yeah, you don't want to walk
into the room and have the salespeople have to apologize or
distract from something that catches somebody's attention
(09:26):
right away on brand. So that's very important to have
standards and I think we'll talkabout that a little bit later,
but it needs to be at the right level for your brand.
So not every community is gonna be the Taj Mahal and every
community is gonna be the entry level bare bones, but is what
you've got in that building and in that room at the right level
(09:47):
for what you're trying to sell? So if you are at the upper end
of the market, do you have granite countertops, new
cabinets off closed door tile, you know, tile showers, those
those types of things. And again, not saying every
community has to have that, but is that the right level for your
community? And then thirdly, and and this
is the the culmination of lots of lists of how don't have this,
(10:08):
don't have this. It just comes down to nothing
weird. And I think we all know what
that looks like in the communityand it means something different
to everybody. But yeah, some of some of my
favorite examples where we've gone through and refreshed your
room and you, hey, we replace the outlet covers and then look
at their white, but the outlets themselves are still brown or
almond, right? But you've got doors that sort
(10:29):
of open into each other, the layouts not quite right.
You just or one of my favorites,you've got the tub with the cut
out in it where, you know, it kind of makes like a little U
shape in it. And so I've found that that's
really helpful vernacular for the sales teams and the plan OPS
team to kind of go through together.
And and you can you can if you and I were to walk into a room,
we could say, hey, Jerry, is, isthat weird?
(10:51):
Yeah, that's weird. OK, we need to do something
about it, right. And so, you know, from a product
standpoint, if, if you can have those three things, then you
eliminate, you know, 99% of objections that that that folks
can have. I think along those same lines
too, another term that you used last time we spoke was inventory
optimization. What does that actually look
like in practice? Yeah.
(11:13):
And that, that is the culmination of quite a bit of
work from from me and a team that we assembled.
And it's, it's a pretty fun process, but it started as
pricing. So we'd say, OK, we're going to
go do a pricing exercise. But we really realized pretty
quickly that it's not just aboutprice because again, our product
is so different. And when you think about, I've
(11:35):
worked in pricing and a couple of other industries and I think
about Coke and Pepsi and they know, OK, if I increase the
price, you know, from $1.50 to $1.60, then my volume is going
to do this. And we just, we just can't do
that. There's so many other elements
to it. It really is a, a combination of
art and science. You want to have the data, you
want to have the metrics, but then there's also you, you got
(11:57):
to have the input from the salesteams and frankly, and, and
through them, the customers. What are people saying when you,
you walk into this room, you mayhave a unit that is much larger
than a competitive unit, even within the same building.
And people like unit 2 so much better because of the layout.
And, and you've got to kind of take that into account the, the,
(12:17):
the process that that we kind ofdeveloped over time.
This, this is a series of different optimization events
was, you know, one start off with the data.
So take the rent roll. You, you look at that, you
analyze that. And I always like to say that
that will lead you to lots of interesting questions, some that
you won't know the answer to until you get to the community.
(12:39):
You may realize like, OK, hey, you know what, In a community
that's 85% occupied, you might have one room type that is 99%
occupied and another room type that seems very similar, seems
very, you know, similar layout that's 60% occupied.
And and so you kind of go from there like that's interesting,
Why is that? Let's see if we can unpack that,
get to the bottom of that. Sometimes the teams can tell you
(13:01):
exactly what it is or sometimes you have to actually have to get
there. But it starts with really taking
that and breaking down the ret roll and the data and analyzing
what you have there. Then what we've done is we bring
everybody together and, and haveconversations about it.
You know, you've done the analysis on a kind of a price
per square foot basis. And, and again, some of it might
be we've got the one bedroom denpriced at a much better value to
(13:26):
the two-bedroom. And that's why it's, it's
selling, right. And then that's something you
could tweak and adjust on a spreadsheet.
But actually getting to the community, sitting down and kind
of identifying, OK, where's our opportunity?
You might say we've got 25 open units and 18 of them are this
floor plan. OK, there's your opportunity.
Now let's talk about what do we need.
Part of that inventory optimization is having
(13:47):
standards. Again, many communities have
standards and they know exactly what it is.
But in the work that that I've kind of done, what we found is
in a lot of cases it's it's kindof loosey goosey.
And, and that happens for a couple of reasons.
And some it has to do with budgets.
Regardless of who's ever in charge of room turns, whether
it's the the plant operations maintenance team or the sales
(14:09):
teams, they have a limited budget.
And so in a lot of cases, they do the best that they can with
that budget. And, and frankly, that budget
may depend on how many total units they have to turn.
So you could just have a year where you've got a lot of units
to turn and therefore you do less, which then leaves you with
a slug of inventory that's different from the inventory
that was turned the year before,right.
So if you've got those standards, that's that's step
(14:31):
one. And again, the standards don't
necessarily mean everything needs to be the same, but if it
kind of fits the like new on brand thing, weird.
You can have different level of inventory for the same floor
plan. And frankly, sales teams like
that, they like to be able to say, oh, Jerry walks in and
Jerry's going to be a high end customer.
OK, I'm going to show him the the one it it it meets all those
(14:52):
three things. But we've taken that finishes to
a higher level. I'm going to show him that 10
Evan walks in. He's more value conscious.
So I'm going to do this one where we haven't maybe done a
complete turn, but at least it'sit's nice, it's solid, it's a
good unit. And so, you know, kind of going
through that, identifying what we need to do from a product
standpoint, from a room standpoint, and then working
(15:14):
that. And then it's a, you know, rinse
and repeat. You do it again and again until
you get to the place you want tobe from an occupancy standpoint.
Going back to what you said about Pepsi and Coke, if one
increases the price, obviously they have to calculate what
that's going to do to their volume.
What's driving the senior livingindustry?
It's not brand loyalty for sure,because obviously most people
until they start searching don'teven know about senior living
(15:36):
brands. Is price driving the market or
is there something else that youthink is motivating more people
to make that decision to move in?
Price is, is part of it, but it's, it's imperfect
information. You know, I mean, there there's,
you touched on it earlier that there's so many different types
of products available even within a single market.
You could have you could have a life plan community, you could
(15:57):
have a CCRC, you could just an AL memory care only building.
You have 55 plus you have all sorts of different types of
products and then with each one of those, there are are also
multiple different variations, variations and options on that.
And so, and it's such a intimidating product to step
into that. And what's driving it is can you
(16:19):
establish that relationship? Can you establish that trust?
Can you show the value and all of the things that fall straight
in front of sales and marketing and and the frankly, the
community leadership team too, right?
Like when they tour the building, does it feel good?
Does it feel, are you welcomed warmly all of those things?
So I mean, I think the answer is, you know, trust and value.
From an owner's perspective, what kinds of feedback are
(16:41):
helpful from the field? I think.
Facts are helpful yeah, bringingbringing data is is helpful and
data and goals what it what is our baseline and and what do we
want to get to what is a huge turn off is that the camps we
can't sell this because of this or oh the place across the
street they're discounting. And so you know what there's
(17:02):
nothing we can do. You want to bring solutions.
So, you know, having that data and that information as well as
bringing a plan, bringing a solution, so you can, can say
that this unit has been on the market for 365 days.
You know, we've had X number of people too.
Or maybe you don't have all of this data, but at least you can,
you can even go back and say over the last two weeks, I've
(17:22):
shown this apt 8 times. And here's what the feedback had
been. We would like to do this.
We here's, here's our hypothesis.
You know, we think that if we added some lighting and change
out the carpet that it would show much better and we would
overcome some of those objections and it'll sell.
So it's it's bringing that more than anecdotal data.
(17:43):
And also, what's the suggestion for?
How do we solve? And if a sales director was
feeling stuck with pricing or product, what's the right way
for them to bring that up to ownership?
Bringing that data, so and how many days on market, what's
what's the occupancy of this floor plan?
How many rooms do we have of this type?
It's like, hey, we have five of these types of rooms available.
(18:03):
We'd like to try this with two. And then also stepping into that
ownership mindset and say, you know, hey, here's what the
financial impact could be. You might not be perfect at it,
It might not be exactly the way the owner thinks about it.
But at least if you say, look, if we, you know, we, we think
you're going to have to spend $5000 on this room, you know,
but it's been sitting open for the last month.
(18:24):
So you know, what is the, the lost rent on that, right.
And, and just kind of stepping into that, I think that can be
helpful. And then the last thing with
that is really building up that trust and that comes with
communication. So too many times we will say,
OK, here's what we're gonna do, We'll have a call with
ownership, here's what we're gonna do.
And the worst thing that sales team and operations can do is go
(18:47):
dark because then what happens is, so we were going to do this
during the month of June, it's mid-july.
The owner says, oh, shoot, I wonder how that went.
They pick up the phone and they call them and then we're
backpedaling or we're trying to pull together the stuff, right?
Even if it doesn't go exactly how we thought, if we said, OK,
we're going to, we're going to do what we talked about to 4
units. So we've only sold one of them.
(19:08):
But here's what we think, here'swhat we've learned.
Here's kind of our new hypothesis, or here's how we're
thinking has evolved that can goa long way with owners.
Is there a particular success story or example you can share
where a property improved by aligning its product and pricing
with a deeper understanding of the market?
Yeah, I do. I think about 11 CCRC in
(19:29):
particular. And this is where a lot of this
started. I'll tell a little bit of that
story. We had gone through.
We pulled, we pulled a bunch of data and assembled A-Team to go
to that community. And I had a key collaborator.
He was actually in procurement, but was also kind of a lean
Sigma guy, very much a process guy.
And you know, we, we developed alot of this, working on it
together. So we, we went down to this
(19:50):
community and we gathered the regional operations team, We
gathered the executive director,the sales and marketing team and
the sales and marketing director, as well as the plan
operations who oversaw all of the room turns.
So it was a, it was a big group.One thing I will say, and I
should have said maybe at the beginning is part of the reason
we chose this community is because they were always willing
(20:11):
to try stuff. They were.
Open to ideas and flexible. And so that made them the
testing ground for, for all sorts of different things, some
successful, some not, but it wasjust, I know it was something
that the executive director in particular brought to that
community is, hey, we, we'll give it a shot, right.
So we, we gathered everybody there.
We were going through some of the some of the data and the
(20:33):
nice thing about being there, and I should have talked about
this on the inventory optimizations was as we were
having either a disagreement or even maybe not remembering, hey,
what, what kind of did this unithave?
You could get up and go see it. And we did that multiple times.
We kind of talk and then we say,OK, we wanted to go look at it
and let's go look at this, this and this and everybody can get
aligned on it. A couple of really key things
(20:54):
came out of that. One was we were talking about,
we, we, we were seeing all of the stuff I was talking about
earlier as far as similar products, different finishes had
some had showers, some had two bathtubs, just all the, all the
different things we talked about.
This is where we came up with the standards.
We talked with the sales and marketing director and there's
(21:15):
and their team about like what is the consumer expect?
What, what are the things? And as we were ticking through
that list, we said, OK, so this is our list of standards that we
all aligned on that. And she said, yeah.
And she said, you know, if I have this product, I don't need
discounts and they have been using 15 to 20% discounts off of
entrance fees for the entrance fee in order to sell the
(21:35):
product. And she said if if I have this,
I I don't need those discounts. So yes, we ended up, and that
was exactly the case to ownership was, Hey, we're going
to spend a little bit more on the room turns, but then we're
not going to have to discount. And we still kept a little bit
in their pocket because everybody wants a deal, right?
And you need to be able to have,you know, standard closing tools
and all of that. But that was kind of the, the
(21:55):
first thing is if you come up with the right standard, most
people will kind of walk in and look at this and said, OK, this
is nice. I'll take it.
There's always going to be some,that one customization or, you
know, something like that. But if, if you identify the
right standard, you're, you're likely good to go.
The other thing that was a big aha coming out of that community
visit was the sales and marketing director and the the
(22:16):
plan OPS director, two totally different worlds.
So the plan OPS director, he hadbeen at that community for more
than 20 years. It might have been 25, worked
his way up again, very innovative, very much, hey,
let's, let's try something new. But he was Georgia born and bred
and had been at that community for a very long time.
Sales and marketing director wasbrought in fairly new, probably
(22:37):
less than six months from I think it was Indiana or
somewhere just just as a new opportunity to try to to help
this community. They've been stuck kind of in
the low 80s from an occupancy standpoint and and they were
teasing each other a little bit.And I'm not going to do the the
accent of the of the plant OPS director, but basically he
looked at her in a teasing way. He said, you know, every time we
(22:59):
get a room ready, you guys sell it and we're just like, wait,
that's it right there. Cuz this community had, they
had, they hung their hat on customization where you would
walk in and you'd say, OK, they'd convince you to buy a
unit. And then Jerry, now we're gonna
go and sit down and pick out herfinishes.
And then they're going to work through and install all those
finishes. And what that, what that does to
(23:20):
your sales lead time, it just expands it greatly, right.
And that the community that was their problem is they could
never catch up. They had an OK sales pace.
They had a good product, they had good.
You know, it's a nice community,but their, their, their pace was
just so slow because of all that.
So once we put the standards in place, we, we convinced, we took
(23:40):
the case to ownership and we didwhat we called the big 10.
We picked 10 units and we're going to turn them over to the
new standards. And just like the big tenant
expanded, it ended up being like12 or 15 that we ultimately did.
But we put that case to ownership, did those 10 units,
they all sold relatively quickly.
(24:00):
And, and then we, we learned from it.
We got back together. OK, what, what were some
finishes that maybe we didn't need?
Or how do we either, you know, kind of trim the cost or on
these units, we don't need to doX, we'll do Y instead.
And we just kept returning it and that that community grew
occupancy and, and really started to find, you know,
their, their place in the marketwith those, those units that
(24:20):
have been open for for quite some time.
That's awesome. That's great.
Great methodology. And when it comes to turnarounds
like that, what signals do you look for to gauge whether a
property can even bounce back? It's it's a couple of things.
One is the team itself, right? Is the team committed?
Are they engaged? Are they focused?
And a little bit, do they celebrate the win?
So I turn around, you know, I kind of say, is the saying you,
(24:43):
you can't turn an ocean liner around on a dime, right?
The same thing for a senior living property.
You know, there's a lot of driftthat occurs.
And if, if the community is in need of turn around, it's, it's
not just one thing that's broken.
There's, there's lots of different things and you and you
have to do it kind of slowly, intentionally and just focus on
that continuous improvement. But I will say the, the
celebrating of the winds is important.
(25:04):
And I think how they celebrate winds because we're going to
have goals along the way. And the first goal might be, OK,
let's get to 80% occupancy or let's get to 12 sales this
month, whatever it is. And you want the team to say,
all right, we did it high 5, we're not done yet, right?
What's the next challenge? What's the next thing?
Because you start to build that momentum and then it just feeds
(25:24):
on itself. And pretty soon they're selling
faster or the community is filling faster than it ever has
before. And it's not hard.
It's that initial inertia, they're starting that initial
movement that is the difficult part.
And then once they get going andthen it kind of feeds itself.
I would imagine sometimes just figuring out what that thing is
to get the ball rolling right, What's going to motivate with
this team to to kick it into thenext gear.
(25:45):
And then from there, everything just starts to snowball to some
degree. Yeah, for sure.
And I just think it is that environment of transparency, if
you want to call it vulnerability or safety, of just
being able to try some differentthings because not everything's
going to work. But if the environment isn't
such that somebody will bring upan idea, then you're never going
to hear that idea. And that might not be the first
(26:07):
thing, but it might be the fifththing that you need in the way.
And so having that, having the right environment is really
critical to you turn around critical to high performance, as
you know, but in a lot of cases for turnarounds in particular,
it's, it's changing that mindsetwhere it's like you have the
permission to experiment and trynew things and, and to not be,
(26:28):
you know, successful 100% of. The time when we look at sales
and marketing leaders too, I think they get siloed a lot of
the times and they're not reallythinking beyond move insurance.
Why do you think it's critical for them to kind of see the
entire business model? You want them to know and be
part of that team. In many cases, the sales and
marketing team is their own kindof silo, if you will.
(26:50):
And so one, they can frankly can't create chaos if they're
not part of that team to say, oh, yeah, I'm bringing.
I had an event today and at the food and beverage group is
unaware of it as an example. That creates chaos and then you
probably don't have a good eventand you have people pointing
fingers and things like that, right.
So that that's definitely part of it, but also that higher
level thinking about the business model of OK, yeah, I I
(27:12):
got 10 move insurance, but I gave away the farm and
discounts. And so our financial performance
that our executive director, forexample, is measured on is
actually going to be worse this month and last month because of
these things, right. And so knowing and and
understanding what all of the different pieces are for the
critical stakeholders only helpsyou be a better team member.
(27:34):
And if we were talking about long term sustainability in this
industry or even even short term, I would say what's the one
thing you believe will define success in the next five years
or the next 10 years? That's. $1,000,000 question,
right? I know it's going to have to be
a real look at we have and what we need from everybody that's
(27:55):
involved. I mean from a consumer
standpoint, from an owner and and provider standpoint and and
from the regulatory bodies and governmental agencies that are
all involved. I think whether it's on the
legislative side, you, you and Ihave both seen edicts that are
counterintuitive that you both of these things can't be true,
right. We can't have lower costs and
(28:17):
higher wages, those types of things.
And so just how does this work? I do think also our industry
functions fairly well at the higher demographic levels and
we've been talking about mid market ever since I've been in
the industry. It's struggling to serve that
and serve that as well as, you know, the below the mid market.
(28:38):
And just to me, that would be a success for our industry in the
next 5 years is if you can have something for everybody that's
clean, that's safe, that's comfortable, that's, you know,
providing the engagement and programming that people want and
need, have that long term sustainability for themselves as
a person. There just seems to be such a
gap in the market right now. You've got this group in the
(28:58):
middle who can't necessarily afford the private pay
communities or the larger communities, and so they're
trying to find other options. And then we also have this
massive influx of older adults coming into the market, and not
all of them are homeowners, so they're going to have to figure
something out. I just don't know what that
looks like. And nobody seems to have a good
answer in terms of how we're going to house everybody.
(29:19):
And obviously not everyone's going to be looking for housing.
But for those that are, what aresome reasonable solutions that
we can put into place? Yeah.
For sure, where I am hopeful about it is, is that the
solutions that we need are already under way.
I think providers, people that they're, they're nibbling around
the edges, they, they're trying something over here that works
(29:39):
or trying something over here. And there's not going to be a
one-size-fits-all approach. And so it's just continuing to
innovate where we can, but then also test and build scale.
But I think you know as well as anybody just that the numbers
are daunting and it's really going to take some, some
decisive action, yeah, on the regulatory side as well as by
(30:01):
all the other stakeholders to make sure that this system.
Work. If you had one principle that's
kind of guided you through your career that you wish more people
in senior living embrace, what would that be?
Yes, great question. I mean, I guess for me, it's, I
have an idea. You know, I've kind of talked
about this, trying something, having a hypothesis, testing
that hypothesis, seeing if it works out.
(30:23):
Because ideas can be changed andthey can be tested, they can
evolve. But when you have a dogmatic
belief and, and, and adherence to that, that's where that's
where people get stuck. That's where communities get
stuck. I think about communities that
new builds, as an example, new development communities.
There's an underwriting that exists, there's a plan.
And when communities stick too closely to that plan, when, when
(30:46):
ownership says, no, this, this is what you said prices were
going to be, we got to keep prices here.
Or that's when communities, I think, end up drifting and, and
not achieving what they, what they did, what they set out to
do. It's sort of, you know, half
joke, half, I mean, kind of believe, I guess, or have an
idea that we, we don't know whata community is going to look
like when it grows up. And that can be whether it's a
(31:08):
new opening or whether it's a community that we walk into
today that opened 20 years ago because it's to figure out, you
know, what is the right that markets have moved, demographics
have changed within where that community sits.
What does this community need tobe in order to be fully
functioning and kind of achieve all that it could be?
I mean, if somebody wants to stay connected with you or learn
(31:29):
more about what you're up to, where can they go?
I'm active on LinkedIn, that's likely the the best source.
Well, Ivan, thank you so much for such a great conversation
and I really appreciate you coming onto the show today.
Thank you for having me, this isgreat.
Yeah, anytime, anytime. As we wrap up today's episode, I
want to extend a huge thank you to Evan Pettig for joining us
and sharing his hard earned insights from the owner's
(31:51):
perspective. From product standards and
pricing strategies to capital planning and the future of
housing for older adults. Evan, your voice adds depth to a
conversation our industry needs more of.
And if you want to stay connected with Evan or learn
more about his work in asset management and operations, we've
included his LinkedIn in the show notes.
As always, we hope you found this episode insightful and
(32:12):
inspiring. Don't forget to subscribe to our
podcast on your favorite platform.
And stay tuned for more episodeswhere we continue to explore the
evolving world of senior care, covering everything from
innovative care models and leadership strategies to family
support, technology and the future of aging.
Also, remember that From Lease to Lease isn't just an audio
experience. We're also a video podcast.
So if you want to see the video versions of our episodes like
(32:34):
the one here with Evan, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube
or Spotify channels. I'm Jerry Vincey, CEO of CCR
growth. Thank you for joining us on From
Leads to Leases. Please like, subscribe, and
share this episode with anyone who might find it useful.
I'm truly grateful for your timeand attention.
Until next time, lead with strategy and with heart.
Chat with you again soon. Thanks, Evan.
Thanks, Jerry. Thanks for listening to From
(32:58):
Leads to Leases. Are you ready to fill your rooms
faster and increase occupancy? Visit ccrgrowth.com to learn
about our Senior Growth Innovation Suite, a proven
system to generate highly qualified tour ready leads,
accelerate sales and reduce acquisition costs.
Let's connect and turn your challenges into opportunities.
See you next time.
You are trying to get somebody to buy a product that they
probably don't want or at least wish that they didn't want.
And you know, if we're being truly transparent about it,
you're you're selling somebody on moving into a place where
they are going to die. And that is a very difficult
sale. What if the real power move
isn't sales or ownership, it's what happens when both speak the
(00:21):
same language? Welcome to From Leeds to Leases
ACCR Growth podcast that helps senior living providers
transform their complex challenges into opportunities.
Listen in for stories from industry leaders, innovative
strategies and insights, and with our expertise, learn how to
increase occupancy faster, Guaranteed.
(00:45):
Welcome back to another episode of From Leeds.
To Lease is the podcast that dives deep into the senior
living and senior care industries, bringing you
insights, strategies and storiesfrom the experts at the
forefront of innovation, leadership, and care.
I'm your host, Jerry Vincey, CEO, CCR Growth.
For those of you who don't know about us, CCR Growth is a full
service marketing and growth agency that's exclusive to the
(01:06):
senior living industry. And through this podcast, I'm
here to guide you through the evolving landscape of senior
care, exploring the innovations,the strategies, and leadership
insights that are shaping the future of the industry.
So whether you're a provider, a caregiver, or an industry
leader, this show is here to help you make informed decisions
and create meaningful impact. So today's guest is Evan Pettig,
(01:28):
a senior living asset managementexpert with over 12 years of
experience managing investments and partnerships across some of
the industry's most complex and high value portfolios.
With leadership roles at LCS andSunrise Senior Living, Evan has
helped guide teams managing over5 billion in assets.
And what sets him apart is how he sees value, not just in
(01:49):
square footage or financials, but in the strength of owner
operator collaboration. He's here to help bridge the gap
between what sales and marketingneed and what ownership is
looking for. So Evan, welcome to the show.
I'm so glad to have you here. It's great to be here, Jerry.
Thank you. Yeah.
This is a very interesting topicand I think anytime we can
bridge the mind of sales and marketing and operations, it
(02:13):
always leads to a really cool conversation.
So because you've worked with sales and with ownership groups,
what's the one thing you wish each understood about each
other? That's a great question.
And I, I think it's exactly thatjust trying to take the other's
perspective. I think at, at a base level,
what ownership wants to see whenthey're walking through the
building is that the sales team knows what they have, they
(02:37):
understand and are able to sell the value to a consumer.
So that's, that's table stakes. Just you know, do you, do you
know and understand your product?
Can you cite the value proposition?
And that's usually as far as some of the best owner visits,
what the first few minutes of the tour really is.
They just want to get comfortable that the the
salesperson really knows and understands what they have.
(03:00):
The next level is really what I think would be the highest level
from an owner is is it does a sales people, are they thinking
like a business person or are they thinking like an owner?
You know, and what that really means, I think from an ownership
standpoint is just not being able to say here are obstacles,
but then bringing solutions likeif you own this building, if
(03:22):
this was your responsibility, you know, what would you do or
what could we try? And so I think that will go a
long way with ownership just in in doing exactly that letting or
encouraging trying something newif if you've been stuck or if
there's a potential solution outthere, they haven't tried yet on
the other side. And again, that sales teams have
(03:43):
more experience or you have moreexperience with this and tell
me, but I think it's just recognition of how hard it is to
sell. Our sales counselors, residency
counselors are experts in what they're doing and they're trying
to do something extremely hard. You are trying to get somebody
to buy a product that they probably don't want or at least
which that they didn't want. And, you know, if we're being
(04:03):
truly transparent about it, you're selling somebody on
moving into a place where they are going to die.
And, and that is a very difficult sale.
And so going into it, I feel like when sales teams feel like
owners understand that and understand just one, the
professionalism and skills that they bring and, and how hard it
is. And it's, it's really easy to
get caught in the trap of which just, well, you know, I used to
(04:25):
have a coach and he would come up to you and be just so
frustrating. He would say, but just run
faster, right? And, and that's not helpful.
You can't do anything with that.It's really how do we, how do we
kind of partner on this togetherand, and what are the things
that we need to do to solve this?
That if you can think about it from the other perspective, you
can get there. Yeah, that's a great answer.
Back to what you're saying aboutempowering sales to think more
(04:46):
like owners too, I think that's a great perspective because
often we get siloed into the different departments, either
whether it's marketing or sales,and everybody's pointing the
finger at somebody else as to why something can't happen or
hasn't happened, and they're just pointing out problems.
They're not thinking about solutions.
So if you can get people into that mindset of everyone
thinking, what if this was your building?
What would you do to solve that problem?
(05:07):
It's it changes the landscape, it changes the conversation and
it gets people thinking in a more creative way.
And also it says something aboutleadership.
If leadership is open to having those kinds of discussions too,
right? They're not just saying my way
or my way. They're like, well, what would
you do? How would you solve this
problem? I love that.
It comes back to it's a community, right?
And so it's us, it's a team. And it's not just, oh, well, the
(05:30):
sales team is not doing this or the food and beverage group
isn't providing the right level of service, right?
It's just what, what do we do? And and that just that brings
people together and enhances performance.
What you said too about the IT is a hard product to sell
because of the fact that literally this is probably the
last place they're going to liveand they don't necessarily want
to come here. And then you also layer on the
(05:50):
fact that it's just getting increasingly more difficult just
because the customer more savvy now they know what they want.
There's more ways to search and find exactly what you want and
need, and there's just more competition in the market.
So the salesperson has to work extra hard to even get that
person to take the next step to take the tour or even just move
ever so slightly in that sales process.
(06:11):
Absolutely. You often say owners aren't
trying to be the critical in laws walking through the house.
Can you expand on that idea and how ownership actually wants to
be a partner in performance? Yeah, I think when.
We. Or when I would would bring an
owner to a community, I mean, one it, it's a big deal from a
community standpoint, right? They want to have a good
impression. It's stressful.
(06:33):
There's again essentially the the big boss coming to visit
your community. And so how do you sort of set
everybody at ease? And so I guess what I've tried
to do is facilitate an environment where there's more
collaboration. I think it's easy for owners to
walk through and find something wrong.
I mean, you can do it with your house, right?
You can walk through your house and, and, and you know, where
(06:55):
lots of little things aren't exactly perfect.
And it's, it's overlooking thoseand, and, and trying to really
identify what matters. And I sort of joke, yeah, it's
like, you never want an owner visit to be like your
mother-in-law coming to visit. And I have two mother in My wife
has a mom and a stepmom and they're both amazing.
That is, that is purely for illustrative purposes, but it's
(07:16):
it's that where you don't want to feel like they're gone.
I'm exhausted. You want it to feel like, OK,
that was a good visit. And we have some great next
steps and we're excited about the next week, the next month,
the next six months. That's how you want an owner
visit to go. That's a great way to look at
it. I love that talking about the
product to a lot of people, whenthey think about the product,
(07:37):
they're thinking just about the walls.
But your your definition of thatalso includes the pricing, the
rooms and the finishes. Can you break down how that
holistic view shapes your approach?
Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't encompass all of
those things because as an example, you say, OK, I'm going
to move into a community, what'sthe price?
We can give a price and $5000 a month might be extremely
(08:00):
expensive for what you get or itmight be an amazing deal.
It's really what's the value that's there.
And I know a lot of our focus isreally on the room as a product
itself, which includes the pricing, the finishes and and
all of those aspects. But if you zoom out, it also
includes the programming at the community it improved.
It includes the community itself.
(08:21):
That meaning that the different people and activities and clubs
and and all that. So really need to take all of
that into account, You know, kind of getting back to the room
in and of itself. I kind of always say that look,
we there James had three things.When when Prospect and their
family walks into a room, so they've gone through the
community, they've walked down the hallways, they've seen the
common spaces, now they're goingto get to the room.
(08:42):
It needs to have three things. So one, it needs to be like new
2 needs to be on brand and the third is nothing weird.
And I think we all kind of recognize if we've been in
senior housing, what that means.But I'll break down each one of
those. The the like new, I mean, you
can't have stains on the carpets, dents in the
appliances, chips in the in the paint, right?
Because in a lot of in, in many cases, you're likely selling
(09:05):
against a new building down the street and high potential that
your prospects and their families have toured something
that is built, you know, maybe it's it's brand new or built
within the last several years. So yeah, you don't want to walk
into the room and have the salespeople have to apologize or
distract from something that catches somebody's attention
(09:26):
right away on brand. So that's very important to have
standards and I think we'll talkabout that a little bit later,
but it needs to be at the right level for your brand.
So not every community is gonna be the Taj Mahal and every
community is gonna be the entry level bare bones, but is what
you've got in that building and in that room at the right level
(09:47):
for what you're trying to sell? So if you are at the upper end
of the market, do you have granite countertops, new
cabinets off closed door tile, you know, tile showers, those
those types of things. And again, not saying every
community has to have that, but is that the right level for your
community? And then thirdly, and and this
is the the culmination of lots of lists of how don't have this,
(10:08):
don't have this. It just comes down to nothing
weird. And I think we all know what
that looks like in the communityand it means something different
to everybody. But yeah, some of some of my
favorite examples where we've gone through and refreshed your
room and you, hey, we replace the outlet covers and then look
at their white, but the outlets themselves are still brown or
almond, right? But you've got doors that sort
(10:29):
of open into each other, the layouts not quite right.
You just or one of my favorites,you've got the tub with the cut
out in it where, you know, it kind of makes like a little U
shape in it. And so I've found that that's
really helpful vernacular for the sales teams and the plan OPS
team to kind of go through together.
And and you can you can if you and I were to walk into a room,
we could say, hey, Jerry, is, isthat weird?
(10:51):
Yeah, that's weird. OK, we need to do something
about it, right. And so, you know, from a product
standpoint, if, if you can have those three things, then you
eliminate, you know, 99% of objections that that that folks
can have. I think along those same lines
too, another term that you used last time we spoke was inventory
optimization. What does that actually look
like in practice? Yeah.
(11:13):
And that, that is the culmination of quite a bit of
work from from me and a team that we assembled.
And it's, it's a pretty fun process, but it started as
pricing. So we'd say, OK, we're going to
go do a pricing exercise. But we really realized pretty
quickly that it's not just aboutprice because again, our product
is so different. And when you think about, I've
(11:35):
worked in pricing and a couple of other industries and I think
about Coke and Pepsi and they know, OK, if I increase the
price, you know, from $1.50 to $1.60, then my volume is going
to do this. And we just, we just can't do
that. There's so many other elements
to it. It really is a, a combination of
art and science. You want to have the data, you
want to have the metrics, but then there's also you, you got
(11:57):
to have the input from the salesteams and frankly, and, and
through them, the customers. What are people saying when you,
you walk into this room, you mayhave a unit that is much larger
than a competitive unit, even within the same building.
And people like unit 2 so much better because of the layout.
And, and you've got to kind of take that into account the, the,
(12:17):
the process that that we kind ofdeveloped over time.
This, this is a series of different optimization events
was, you know, one start off with the data.
So take the rent roll. You, you look at that, you
analyze that. And I always like to say that
that will lead you to lots of interesting questions, some that
you won't know the answer to until you get to the community.
(12:39):
You may realize like, OK, hey, you know what, In a community
that's 85% occupied, you might have one room type that is 99%
occupied and another room type that seems very similar, seems
very, you know, similar layout that's 60% occupied.
And and so you kind of go from there like that's interesting,
Why is that? Let's see if we can unpack that,
get to the bottom of that. Sometimes the teams can tell you
(13:01):
exactly what it is or sometimes you have to actually have to get
there. But it starts with really taking
that and breaking down the ret roll and the data and analyzing
what you have there. Then what we've done is we bring
everybody together and, and haveconversations about it.
You know, you've done the analysis on a kind of a price
per square foot basis. And, and again, some of it might
be we've got the one bedroom denpriced at a much better value to
(13:26):
the two-bedroom. And that's why it's, it's
selling, right. And then that's something you
could tweak and adjust on a spreadsheet.
But actually getting to the community, sitting down and kind
of identifying, OK, where's our opportunity?
You might say we've got 25 open units and 18 of them are this
floor plan. OK, there's your opportunity.
Now let's talk about what do we need.
Part of that inventory optimization is having
(13:47):
standards. Again, many communities have
standards and they know exactly what it is.
But in the work that that I've kind of done, what we found is
in a lot of cases it's it's kindof loosey goosey.
And, and that happens for a couple of reasons.
And some it has to do with budgets.
Regardless of who's ever in charge of room turns, whether
it's the the plant operations maintenance team or the sales
(14:09):
teams, they have a limited budget.
And so in a lot of cases, they do the best that they can with
that budget. And, and frankly, that budget
may depend on how many total units they have to turn.
So you could just have a year where you've got a lot of units
to turn and therefore you do less, which then leaves you with
a slug of inventory that's different from the inventory
that was turned the year before,right.
So if you've got those standards, that's that's step
(14:31):
one. And again, the standards don't
necessarily mean everything needs to be the same, but if it
kind of fits the like new on brand thing, weird.
You can have different level of inventory for the same floor
plan. And frankly, sales teams like
that, they like to be able to say, oh, Jerry walks in and
Jerry's going to be a high end customer.
OK, I'm going to show him the the one it it it meets all those
(14:52):
three things. But we've taken that finishes to
a higher level. I'm going to show him that 10
Evan walks in. He's more value conscious.
So I'm going to do this one where we haven't maybe done a
complete turn, but at least it'sit's nice, it's solid, it's a
good unit. And so, you know, kind of going
through that, identifying what we need to do from a product
standpoint, from a room standpoint, and then working
(15:14):
that. And then it's a, you know, rinse
and repeat. You do it again and again until
you get to the place you want tobe from an occupancy standpoint.
Going back to what you said about Pepsi and Coke, if one
increases the price, obviously they have to calculate what
that's going to do to their volume.
What's driving the senior livingindustry?
It's not brand loyalty for sure,because obviously most people
until they start searching don'teven know about senior living
(15:36):
brands. Is price driving the market or
is there something else that youthink is motivating more people
to make that decision to move in?
Price is, is part of it, but it's, it's imperfect
information. You know, I mean, there there's,
you touched on it earlier that there's so many different types
of products available even within a single market.
You could have you could have a life plan community, you could
(15:57):
have a CCRC, you could just an AL memory care only building.
You have 55 plus you have all sorts of different types of
products and then with each one of those, there are are also
multiple different variations, variations and options on that.
And so, and it's such a intimidating product to step
into that. And what's driving it is can you
(16:19):
establish that relationship? Can you establish that trust?
Can you show the value and all of the things that fall straight
in front of sales and marketing and and the frankly, the
community leadership team too, right?
Like when they tour the building, does it feel good?
Does it feel, are you welcomed warmly all of those things?
So I mean, I think the answer is, you know, trust and value.
From an owner's perspective, what kinds of feedback are
(16:41):
helpful from the field? I think.
Facts are helpful yeah, bringingbringing data is is helpful and
data and goals what it what is our baseline and and what do we
want to get to what is a huge turn off is that the camps we
can't sell this because of this or oh the place across the
street they're discounting. And so you know what there's
(17:02):
nothing we can do. You want to bring solutions.
So, you know, having that data and that information as well as
bringing a plan, bringing a solution, so you can, can say
that this unit has been on the market for 365 days.
You know, we've had X number of people too.
Or maybe you don't have all of this data, but at least you can,
you can even go back and say over the last two weeks, I've
(17:22):
shown this apt 8 times. And here's what the feedback had
been. We would like to do this.
We here's, here's our hypothesis.
You know, we think that if we added some lighting and change
out the carpet that it would show much better and we would
overcome some of those objections and it'll sell.
So it's it's bringing that more than anecdotal data.
(17:43):
And also, what's the suggestion for?
How do we solve? And if a sales director was
feeling stuck with pricing or product, what's the right way
for them to bring that up to ownership?
Bringing that data, so and how many days on market, what's
what's the occupancy of this floor plan?
How many rooms do we have of this type?
It's like, hey, we have five of these types of rooms available.
(18:03):
We'd like to try this with two. And then also stepping into that
ownership mindset and say, you know, hey, here's what the
financial impact could be. You might not be perfect at it,
It might not be exactly the way the owner thinks about it.
But at least if you say, look, if we, you know, we, we think
you're going to have to spend $5000 on this room, you know,
but it's been sitting open for the last month.
(18:24):
So you know, what is the, the lost rent on that, right.
And, and just kind of stepping into that, I think that can be
helpful. And then the last thing with
that is really building up that trust and that comes with
communication. So too many times we will say,
OK, here's what we're gonna do, We'll have a call with
ownership, here's what we're gonna do.
And the worst thing that sales team and operations can do is go
(18:47):
dark because then what happens is, so we were going to do this
during the month of June, it's mid-july.
The owner says, oh, shoot, I wonder how that went.
They pick up the phone and they call them and then we're
backpedaling or we're trying to pull together the stuff, right?
Even if it doesn't go exactly how we thought, if we said, OK,
we're going to, we're going to do what we talked about to 4
units. So we've only sold one of them.
(19:08):
But here's what we think, here'swhat we've learned.
Here's kind of our new hypothesis, or here's how we're
thinking has evolved that can goa long way with owners.
Is there a particular success story or example you can share
where a property improved by aligning its product and pricing
with a deeper understanding of the market?
Yeah, I do. I think about 11 CCRC in
(19:29):
particular. And this is where a lot of this
started. I'll tell a little bit of that
story. We had gone through.
We pulled, we pulled a bunch of data and assembled A-Team to go
to that community. And I had a key collaborator.
He was actually in procurement, but was also kind of a lean
Sigma guy, very much a process guy.
And you know, we, we developed alot of this, working on it
together. So we, we went down to this
(19:50):
community and we gathered the regional operations team, We
gathered the executive director,the sales and marketing team and
the sales and marketing director, as well as the plan
operations who oversaw all of the room turns.
So it was a, it was a big group.One thing I will say, and I
should have said maybe at the beginning is part of the reason
we chose this community is because they were always willing
(20:11):
to try stuff. They were.
Open to ideas and flexible. And so that made them the
testing ground for, for all sorts of different things, some
successful, some not, but it wasjust, I know it was something
that the executive director in particular brought to that
community is, hey, we, we'll give it a shot, right.
So we, we gathered everybody there.
We were going through some of the some of the data and the
(20:33):
nice thing about being there, and I should have talked about
this on the inventory optimizations was as we were
having either a disagreement or even maybe not remembering, hey,
what, what kind of did this unithave?
You could get up and go see it. And we did that multiple times.
We kind of talk and then we say,OK, we wanted to go look at it
and let's go look at this, this and this and everybody can get
aligned on it. A couple of really key things
(20:54):
came out of that. One was we were talking about,
we, we, we were seeing all of the stuff I was talking about
earlier as far as similar products, different finishes had
some had showers, some had two bathtubs, just all the, all the
different things we talked about.
This is where we came up with the standards.
We talked with the sales and marketing director and there's
(21:15):
and their team about like what is the consumer expect?
What, what are the things? And as we were ticking through
that list, we said, OK, so this is our list of standards that we
all aligned on that. And she said, yeah.
And she said, you know, if I have this product, I don't need
discounts and they have been using 15 to 20% discounts off of
entrance fees for the entrance fee in order to sell the
(21:35):
product. And she said if if I have this,
I I don't need those discounts. So yes, we ended up, and that
was exactly the case to ownership was, Hey, we're going
to spend a little bit more on the room turns, but then we're
not going to have to discount. And we still kept a little bit
in their pocket because everybody wants a deal, right?
And you need to be able to have,you know, standard closing tools
and all of that. But that was kind of the, the
(21:55):
first thing is if you come up with the right standard, most
people will kind of walk in and look at this and said, OK, this
is nice. I'll take it.
There's always going to be some,that one customization or, you
know, something like that. But if, if you identify the
right standard, you're, you're likely good to go.
The other thing that was a big aha coming out of that community
visit was the sales and marketing director and the the
(22:16):
plan OPS director, two totally different worlds.
So the plan OPS director, he hadbeen at that community for more
than 20 years. It might have been 25, worked
his way up again, very innovative, very much, hey,
let's, let's try something new. But he was Georgia born and bred
and had been at that community for a very long time.
Sales and marketing director wasbrought in fairly new, probably
(22:37):
less than six months from I think it was Indiana or
somewhere just just as a new opportunity to try to to help
this community. They've been stuck kind of in
the low 80s from an occupancy standpoint and and they were
teasing each other a little bit.And I'm not going to do the the
accent of the of the plant OPS director, but basically he
looked at her in a teasing way. He said, you know, every time we
(22:59):
get a room ready, you guys sell it and we're just like, wait,
that's it right there. Cuz this community had, they
had, they hung their hat on customization where you would
walk in and you'd say, OK, they'd convince you to buy a
unit. And then Jerry, now we're gonna
go and sit down and pick out herfinishes.
And then they're going to work through and install all those
finishes. And what that, what that does to
(23:20):
your sales lead time, it just expands it greatly, right.
And that the community that was their problem is they could
never catch up. They had an OK sales pace.
They had a good product, they had good.
You know, it's a nice community,but their, their, their pace was
just so slow because of all that.
So once we put the standards in place, we, we convinced, we took
(23:40):
the case to ownership and we didwhat we called the big 10.
We picked 10 units and we're going to turn them over to the
new standards. And just like the big tenant
expanded, it ended up being like12 or 15 that we ultimately did.
But we put that case to ownership, did those 10 units,
they all sold relatively quickly.
(24:00):
And, and then we, we learned from it.
We got back together. OK, what, what were some
finishes that maybe we didn't need?
Or how do we either, you know, kind of trim the cost or on
these units, we don't need to doX, we'll do Y instead.
And we just kept returning it and that that community grew
occupancy and, and really started to find, you know,
their, their place in the marketwith those, those units that
(24:20):
have been open for for quite some time.
That's awesome. That's great.
Great methodology. And when it comes to turnarounds
like that, what signals do you look for to gauge whether a
property can even bounce back? It's it's a couple of things.
One is the team itself, right? Is the team committed?
Are they engaged? Are they focused?
And a little bit, do they celebrate the win?
So I turn around, you know, I kind of say, is the saying you,
(24:43):
you can't turn an ocean liner around on a dime, right?
The same thing for a senior living property.
You know, there's a lot of driftthat occurs.
And if, if the community is in need of turn around, it's, it's
not just one thing that's broken.
There's, there's lots of different things and you and you
have to do it kind of slowly, intentionally and just focus on
that continuous improvement. But I will say the, the
celebrating of the winds is important.
(25:04):
And I think how they celebrate winds because we're going to
have goals along the way. And the first goal might be, OK,
let's get to 80% occupancy or let's get to 12 sales this
month, whatever it is. And you want the team to say,
all right, we did it high 5, we're not done yet, right?
What's the next challenge? What's the next thing?
Because you start to build that momentum and then it just feeds
(25:24):
on itself. And pretty soon they're selling
faster or the community is filling faster than it ever has
before. And it's not hard.
It's that initial inertia, they're starting that initial
movement that is the difficult part.
And then once they get going andthen it kind of feeds itself.
I would imagine sometimes just figuring out what that thing is
to get the ball rolling right, What's going to motivate with
this team to to kick it into thenext gear.
(25:45):
And then from there, everything just starts to snowball to some
degree. Yeah, for sure.
And I just think it is that environment of transparency, if
you want to call it vulnerability or safety, of just
being able to try some differentthings because not everything's
going to work. But if the environment isn't
such that somebody will bring upan idea, then you're never going
to hear that idea. And that might not be the first
(26:07):
thing, but it might be the fifththing that you need in the way.
And so having that, having the right environment is really
critical to you turn around critical to high performance, as
you know, but in a lot of cases for turnarounds in particular,
it's, it's changing that mindsetwhere it's like you have the
permission to experiment and trynew things and, and to not be,
(26:28):
you know, successful 100% of. The time when we look at sales
and marketing leaders too, I think they get siloed a lot of
the times and they're not reallythinking beyond move insurance.
Why do you think it's critical for them to kind of see the
entire business model? You want them to know and be
part of that team. In many cases, the sales and
marketing team is their own kindof silo, if you will.
(26:50):
And so one, they can frankly can't create chaos if they're
not part of that team to say, oh, yeah, I'm bringing.
I had an event today and at the food and beverage group is
unaware of it as an example. That creates chaos and then you
probably don't have a good eventand you have people pointing
fingers and things like that, right.
So that that's definitely part of it, but also that higher
level thinking about the business model of OK, yeah, I I
(27:12):
got 10 move insurance, but I gave away the farm and
discounts. And so our financial performance
that our executive director, forexample, is measured on is
actually going to be worse this month and last month because of
these things, right. And so knowing and and
understanding what all of the different pieces are for the
critical stakeholders only helpsyou be a better team member.
(27:34):
And if we were talking about long term sustainability in this
industry or even even short term, I would say what's the one
thing you believe will define success in the next five years
or the next 10 years? That's. $1,000,000 question,
right? I know it's going to have to be
a real look at we have and what we need from everybody that's
(27:55):
involved. I mean from a consumer
standpoint, from an owner and and provider standpoint and and
from the regulatory bodies and governmental agencies that are
all involved. I think whether it's on the
legislative side, you, you and Ihave both seen edicts that are
counterintuitive that you both of these things can't be true,
right. We can't have lower costs and
(28:17):
higher wages, those types of things.
And so just how does this work? I do think also our industry
functions fairly well at the higher demographic levels and
we've been talking about mid market ever since I've been in
the industry. It's struggling to serve that
and serve that as well as, you know, the below the mid market.
(28:38):
And just to me, that would be a success for our industry in the
next 5 years is if you can have something for everybody that's
clean, that's safe, that's comfortable, that's, you know,
providing the engagement and programming that people want and
need, have that long term sustainability for themselves as
a person. There just seems to be such a
gap in the market right now. You've got this group in the
(28:58):
middle who can't necessarily afford the private pay
communities or the larger communities, and so they're
trying to find other options. And then we also have this
massive influx of older adults coming into the market, and not
all of them are homeowners, so they're going to have to figure
something out. I just don't know what that
looks like. And nobody seems to have a good
answer in terms of how we're going to house everybody.
(29:19):
And obviously not everyone's going to be looking for housing.
But for those that are, what aresome reasonable solutions that
we can put into place? Yeah.
For sure, where I am hopeful about it is, is that the
solutions that we need are already under way.
I think providers, people that they're, they're nibbling around
the edges, they, they're trying something over here that works
(29:39):
or trying something over here. And there's not going to be a
one-size-fits-all approach. And so it's just continuing to
innovate where we can, but then also test and build scale.
But I think you know as well as anybody just that the numbers
are daunting and it's really going to take some, some
decisive action, yeah, on the regulatory side as well as by
(30:01):
all the other stakeholders to make sure that this system.
Work. If you had one principle that's
kind of guided you through your career that you wish more people
in senior living embrace, what would that be?
Yes, great question. I mean, I guess for me, it's, I
have an idea. You know, I've kind of talked
about this, trying something, having a hypothesis, testing
that hypothesis, seeing if it works out.
(30:23):
Because ideas can be changed andthey can be tested, they can
evolve. But when you have a dogmatic
belief and, and, and adherence to that, that's where that's
where people get stuck. That's where communities get
stuck. I think about communities that
new builds, as an example, new development communities.
There's an underwriting that exists, there's a plan.
And when communities stick too closely to that plan, when, when
(30:46):
ownership says, no, this, this is what you said prices were
going to be, we got to keep prices here.
Or that's when communities, I think, end up drifting and, and
not achieving what they, what they did, what they set out to
do. It's sort of, you know, half
joke, half, I mean, kind of believe, I guess, or have an
idea that we, we don't know whata community is going to look
like when it grows up. And that can be whether it's a
(31:08):
new opening or whether it's a community that we walk into
today that opened 20 years ago because it's to figure out, you
know, what is the right that markets have moved, demographics
have changed within where that community sits.
What does this community need tobe in order to be fully
functioning and kind of achieve all that it could be?
I mean, if somebody wants to stay connected with you or learn
(31:29):
more about what you're up to, where can they go?
I'm active on LinkedIn, that's likely the the best source.
Well, Ivan, thank you so much for such a great conversation
and I really appreciate you coming onto the show today.
Thank you for having me, this isgreat.
Yeah, anytime, anytime. As we wrap up today's episode, I
want to extend a huge thank you to Evan Pettig for joining us
and sharing his hard earned insights from the owner's
(31:51):
perspective. From product standards and
pricing strategies to capital planning and the future of
housing for older adults. Evan, your voice adds depth to a
conversation our industry needs more of.
And if you want to stay connected with Evan or learn
more about his work in asset management and operations, we've
included his LinkedIn in the show notes.
As always, we hope you found this episode insightful and
(32:12):
inspiring. Don't forget to subscribe to our
podcast on your favorite platform.
And stay tuned for more episodeswhere we continue to explore the
evolving world of senior care, covering everything from
innovative care models and leadership strategies to family
support, technology and the future of aging.
Also, remember that From Lease to Lease isn't just an audio
experience. We're also a video podcast.
So if you want to see the video versions of our episodes like
(32:34):
the one here with Evan, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube
or Spotify channels. I'm Jerry Vincey, CEO of CCR
growth. Thank you for joining us on From
Leads to Leases. Please like, subscribe, and
share this episode with anyone who might find it useful.
I'm truly grateful for your timeand attention.
Until next time, lead with strategy and with heart.
Chat with you again soon. Thanks, Evan.
Thanks, Jerry. Thanks for listening to From
(32:58):
Leads to Leases. Are you ready to fill your rooms
faster and increase occupancy? Visit ccrgrowth.com to learn
about our Senior Growth Innovation Suite, a proven
system to generate highly qualified tour ready leads,
accelerate sales and reduce acquisition costs.
Let's connect and turn your challenges into opportunities.
See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com