Senior living providers are rethinking incentive packages for leadership in sales and operations in 2026, moving beyond base compensation payouts to ensure communities increase occupancy while building a culture that retains staff.
As senior living demand remains high, corporate leaders are finding new ways to motivate staff to reach sales targets with incentives that now include benefits, recognition and targeted prizes for teams that reach their goals.
Through its pay-for-performance incentive model, Benchmark Senior Living includes tiered bonuses for staff while offering standard move-in bonuses for every new move-in, ensuring that sales staff are compensated for their efforts. Communities across the Waltham, Massachusetts-based provider receive customized sales goals based on occupancy and rate, while also offering incentive “accelerators” that increase payouts based on a tiered monthly sales target.
At 93% occupancy across its stabilized portfolio, Benchmark is in the midst of capturing strong demand through coordinated sales practices tailored to fit each community, according to Senior Vice President of Sales Pamela Filby.
“Make sure that what you’re offering as an incentive is really what you want the outcome to be,” Filby said during the recent Senior Housing News Sales and Marketing Conference in Orlando.
Other operators evolving their incentive structures include Solera Senior Living and The Aspenwood Company.
Why standardized commission plans are ‘an outdated concept’
Senior living sales staff monitor various metrics to gauge a community’s sales activity, including inquiry-to-tour and tour-to-move-in, but these metrics are lagging indicators and could be preventing a community from reaching its full capabilities, according to Aspenwood Vice President of Sales Joshua Bentley.
Tailoring incentive plans to each community’s unique attributes can help improve sales culture and better align with a specific property’s needs. Gone are the days of changing a commission plan across an entire portfolio, Bentley said.
To evolve incentive plans, Aspenwood sales leaders want to promote certain “leading behaviors” from sales teams. For example, this includes tracking new types of sales data, including a “next-step capture rate” for getting prospects to commit to the next step in the sales process, or a “visit preparedness index” for preparing operations and sales staff responsible for tours with a dossier on incoming prospects.
“Just changing a commission plan is really an outdated concept,” Bentley said during the SHN Sales and Marketing Conference.
Image courtesy of Merz Photography for WTWH Media Image courtesy of Merz Photography for WTWH MediaHaving customized incentive goals for each community beyond a standard bonus structure can help keep sales staff energized and improve staff retention. By looking at each community’s needs, whether it’s needing to accelerate occupancy growth or reach 100% census, customizing incentive plans improves morale and promotes staff support, Filby said.
If a community is 97% occupied, incentives look different than if a community “has a lot of volume” of units available. In the case of the latter, sales teams work to reach a higher target to “make it very advantageous” to reach those goals, Filby noted.
Incentives should serve as the “icing on the cake” for sales staff. But if there are cultural issues or operational challenges at a community, it makes the proverbial sales cake of senior living “empty and purposeless,” according to Anna Wynn, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Solera Senior Living.
By supporting sales teams with a culture of learning and accountability, Solera boasts a 90% retention rate among its sales staff. By setting customized incentive structures for each community, sales staff can focus on attainable goals with their local market in mind, Wynn added. Plans for incentives must cover high-occupancy communities, communities in lease-up, and those in stabilization.
“You need to commit the time to do the right thing for each community, and you need to pivot and be flexible with different plans for each community and market,” Wynn said during the conference.
Creating a strong sales culture also hinges on recognition in tandem with lucrative incentives, Filby said. Benchmark sales leaders recognize sales staff who achieve sales goals each month through a “$ell-ebrations” call. This promotes friendly competition between sales staff, as people want to see a big check but also want that companywide recognition.
“We’ve created a culture of really wanting to be on that leaderboard, not just because it’s great bonuses, but because it’s important to celebrate it since it means everything is operating well in the community,” Filby said.
Attaching incentives to NOI
During a time of strong demand, operators are focusing on increasing occupancy. This has improved margins back toward pre-2020 levels and beyond.
Sales staff account for roughly 4% of Solera’s overall roster, but they account for 40% of a community’s new revenue each month, Wynn said. With a “Zone 40” club, Solera recognizes sales leaders who meet sales goals alongside hefty incentive payouts. Since NOI is the goal, Solera builds incentive structures around NOI targets for communities.
Image courtesy of Merz Photography for WTWH Media Image courtesy of Merz Photography for WTWH Media“NOI is what we’re all aiming for in the end, and so when you build that out, everything is leading back to NOI,” Wynn said.
Beyond standard incentive tiers, Solera sales staff can receive bonuses based on a community’s overall NOI performance. This creates a clear link between performance and a community’s profitability, Wynn added.
Aspenwood also offers incentives for community directors on NOI goals and for sales teams based on the revenue captured, Bentley said.
By reducing the use of third-party lead aggregators, Aspenwood sales teams can reduce expenses and directly benefit when move-ins occur that drive profitability higher, Bentley added.
Incentivizing operations
In 2026, senior living providers are expanding incentive structures to allow operations staff to reap the benefits of a community’s profitability and occupancy growth.
Benchmark communities also run periodic, seasonal incentive efforts when sales, nursing and operations staff tend to be on vacation, but Filby also noted the importance of creating a healthy work-life balance for all employees.
Solera recently refreshed its operations incentive program, layering in management-by-objective (MBO) incentives with predetermined goals for all departments on a quarterly basis, Wynn said.
“Let them drive sales by doing that, empower them to run contests and rewards to the line staff and the team—that’s culture,” Wynn added.
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