Sales Enablement Strategy Increases Efficiency in Managing Leads

As the management of leads becomes more complicated, the need for efficiency and smart utilization of resources becomes more important, especially when a senior living and care organization is occupancy challenged. Many organizations face this challenge, including Sugar Hill Retirement Community. As the new Executive Director, Pam Bigwood analyzed the marketing and sales systems and found an outdated CRM and no formal sales processes. With a relationship and inbound marketing program already in place with Marketing Essentials, Bigwood looked to Marketing Essentials to align their marketing and sales processes.

Sugar Hill, located in Wolfeboro, NH, is one of the nation’s few cooperative senior living retirement communities, meaning it's owned and operated by the seniors living there for their mutual benefit. When an individual buys into the co-op, they are not only a co-owner of the property but also have access to a wide range of services, amenities, social opportunities and financial perks.

Sugar Hill was not meeting occupancy goals, had an outdated CRM that was not fully utilized, did not have any formal sales process to facilitate the management of leads easily and the Executive Director was responsible for sales; thus identifying and creating avenues of efficiency were critical with the Executive Director’s limited time. The accuracy of lead data also was in question, and there was no avenue to identify what forms of marketing were generating the leads.

To solve this problem, Marketing Essentials put in place a sales enablement strategy. We analyzed how the existing sales process was conducted and then compared that to the existing buyer’s journey that was already being used for the inbound digital marketing program.  Opportunities were identified to streamline how leads were being managed, including repurposing existing content that sales could use to nurture a lead. Next, the old CRM was evaluated for data assets, HubSpot CRM was customized to match the sales process and existing lead data was imported into the system. Coaching was provided to the Executive Director and her support staff so they could easily manage the leads.

Sugar Hill went from occupancy challenge to a wait list. By mapping out a formal sales process, the Executive Director was able to efficiently and effectively manage leads. She trusted automated email campaigns in HubSpot to nurture leads who she had met with but weren’t ready to commit, which freed up her time to work on closing immediate leads. By having one seamless automated marketing and CRM system, lead conversion data was real time and accurate. She now has a handle on where her leads are in the pipeline. Immediately after implementation and execution of the new sales process and system, the Executive Director was able to identify a number of sales conversions directly correlated to their inbound marketing program and more accurately show ROI. And most importantly, she moved from occupancy challenged to creating a waiting list.

“During the past number of years, Sugar Hill Retirement Community has been fortunate to have Marketing Essentials as our digital marketing partner. We needed to align our marketing and sales process, including a new CRM, and Patty and her team of experts guided us through the entire process. As a result, new opportunities were discovered to improve our productivity, sales management and increased quality leads. In our opinion, it has been the knowledge and creativity of the Marketing Essentials team that has resulted in such impressive results. Patty and her team are ridiculously efficient on all levels. I am so fortunate to have them in our corner.”  — Pam Bigwood, Executive Director, Sugar Hill Retirement Community