In senior living, making a good first impression can make or break a sale. But it’s an opportunity that only comes once.
Sales leaders with operators including Watercrest Senior Living, Harbor Retirement Associates and Solinity know that fact all too well, which is why they prioritize tours and first meetings that get prospects to move in rather than move on.
But how senior living operators make good first impressions is changing with the new generation, the baby boomers, which are bringing with them new preferences – and often their adult children, who are driving as many as 88% of senior living sales, according to Michael Marlow, vice president of sales education for Watercrest.
“We really do need to have a revolutionary change,” Marlow said during the recent Senior Housing News Sales and Marketing Conference.
He added the company is trying to stand out in a “sea of sameness.”
“The sea of sameness is when our customers and focus groups tell us you look alike, you price alike, you advertise alike, your signs all say tour today, yet we want to say, ‘Hey, we’re unique,’” Marlow said.
First impressions start before a prospect even enters a community. Leaders with Harbor Retirement Associates have revamped the company’s website and social media pages to better appeal to the boomers and their children, who are “savvier than ever” and doing more of their research online, according to Ginger Atwood, national director of marketing and sales.
The Harbor team has since taken on an “epic” approach that tasks everyone in the community, not just the sales director, with helping to increase census, Atwood said. Epic is an acronym that stands for “everyone participates in census,” and centers on the idea that a good first impression is holistic and involves every facet of a community.
“When that prospect does come in for that tour … they are expected and they are welcomed,” Atwood said.
Pricing transparency, answering basic questions and helping residents more easily schedule a tour made a difference, she said. . By taking this kind of approach, the Vero Beach, Florida-based company brought in nearly 400,000 visitors to its new website launched in 2024 and increased its prospect-to-move-in ratio up to 45%.
Helping prospects find purpose
Senior living prospects often must visualize themselves living in a community before they can commit to moving into one. While beautiful architecture, upscale amenities and good food can help seal the deal, a sense of belonging or socialization is what really appeals to prospective residents. But that can be tougher to show than an olympic-sized swimming pool or glitzy wellness center.
Solinity utilizes resident ambassadors during the tour process to give prospects a firsthand account of community life, according to Sara Mitchell, president of marketing. The operator also disseminates information on the community and reinforces what prospects saw during the tour with a handout or digital brochure.
“How is that story told through the tours that are happening, day-in and day-out in communities, through the people who are actually living it? Ambassadors are one key way,” she added.
Harbor also takes a similar approach. The operator informs residents when new prospects are coming to see their community so they can act as “living testimonials.”
“They spend time with the potentially new resident, invite them back to special events and kind of just take them under their wing,” she said. “We have found it to be incredibly helpful and productive.”
According to Marlow, current residents’ family members are the most persuasive for new prospects and their loved ones. Among the most powerful sales tools an operator has is to make a resident or their family feel welcome.
“Everybody sells … and then when we add another layer of that with our residents, and especially our greatly underutilized sales force, our residents’ family members, we’re a pretty unstoppable force at that point,” Marlow said.
HRA and Atwood believe that helping residents find their purpose in the community can entice them to move in – something she thinks will become even more important as the boomers move into senior living communities.
She shared an example of a 92-year-old man who toured a community in Connecticut who the operator discovered was the inventor of the first penny candy machine in the 1950s.
“We do have penny candy and old fashioned candy in the community, so we gave him the job of purchasing the candy and making that selection. He loved it,” she said. “It gave him purpose, and that’s what we mean by that.”
Tailoring the tour
As Marlow said, senior living operators often are engaged in a battle to stand out among a sea of their similar competitors.
Operators must be creative – and Marlow knows from personal experience. Over a decade ago, he and his mother toured nearly a dozen communities with generic tours and no follow up.
“It was like, ‘Do you really even want my mother to move in?’” he said.
The experience taught him about the importance of creating memorable experiences for prospective residents and addressing their needs is something the industry needs to change.
According to Marlow, most of all interactions between salesperson and customer is a generic experience and a generic tour.
“I’ve helped a family member in East Lansing, Michigan, and they went to eight different communities in 2025. Guess what they got in all eight situations? Eight generic tours,” Marlow said. “[He] said ‘We chose the one that was the least offensive to my mother,’ and it just broke my heart.”
There are plenty of small changes operators can make to personalize the experience for a prospect, including welcoming them with signs or tailoring the route of a tour to “appeal to their story,” Mitchell said. Sales people also can ask leading questions to change a prospect’s perception of a community before setting foot inside, she said.
Like Marlow, Mitchell saw how generic tours and follow-ups were when she helped her grandfather search for a community in east Tennessee. The only community that stood out over competitors was the one that had lots of resources online.
Harbor aims to respond to prospects within 24 hours of first contact. Often the operator invites prospects to a special event catered to their interests. The teams also utilize video storytelling through its website to help attract prospects, Atwood said.
“Not only do we have our virtual tours, but we also have resident experiences as often as possible,” she said. “If we know of things that are very important to them, then we create videos and send them out to them. That’s a way for them to relive what they’ve already gone through with the tour process and make a final decision.”
However, creative follow up shouldn’t come from just the sales director, Marlow said. Watercrest tasks leaders in multiple disciplines, such as chefs and wellness directors, to follow up with residents in order to build up “relationship equity.”
“We have to have that trust based relationship up front, and that’s where relationship equity comes in,” Marlow said. “It takes time to build that equity … we should build it with multiple people in our community through our creative follow up process.”
