Author: David Shoffner

Diane Harris is a former editor-in-chief of Money Magazine and a former deputy editor of Newsweek. She’s an award winning journalist, a well-traveled speaker and an expert in personal finance and financial wellness. She also recently wrote an article for the New York Times about solo agers and planning for retirement when you’re on your own.   

On a recent episode of Varsity podcast, Roundtable Talk, Derek and Diane talked about solo aging (and the classic mistake that many solo agers make when choosing a proxy), financial longevity, how retirees can plan for healthcare costs and easing into retirement by keeping a hand in the workforce, not your whole body. 

Here are some fresh perspectives from that conversation: 

WHAT ADVICE FROM EXPERTS SOLO AGING STOOD OUT TO YOU?

It was a fascinating topic. I was really surprised to learn how large a population solo-agers are. What was most valuable in terms of advice was that solo-agers face the same issues as everyone else, but without someone to rely on, they need different solutions. 

The experts stressed to me that solo-agers have to approach planning with an extra layer of intentionality and urgency. That phrase really stuck with me. It’s not that the issues are different—it’s that different circumstances may dictate different solutions.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE UNEXPECTED BENEFITS OF SOLO AGING?

I’m so glad you asked that. A recent AARP study found that when solo-agers were asked about their experience, the top three responses were all positive—independence, satisfaction, and happiness. And the number one benefit? Freedom.

There’s a great advantage to not having to run your decisions by someone else. If you want to travel, you can. You don’t have to compromise. You don’t need permission. There’s a lot of joy in having the freedom to shape your life exactly the way you want.

WHAT STRATEGIES CAN LATE SAVERS USE TO MAXIMIZE THEIR RETIREMENT FUNDS?

Wherever you are, there are steps you can take. The number one regret people have is not saving sooner or saving enough. But even if you got a late start, you can catch up.

If you have a workplace retirement plan with a match, make sure you’re contributing enough to get the full match—it’s free money. If you’re over 50, take advantage of catch-up contributions. And if you’re between 60 and 63, starting next year there’s going to be an even larger catch-up contribution available.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR YOUNGER SELF?

Be bolder. Every time I’ve taken a big risk, it’s rewarded me. If I could go back, I’d tell myself to take that year abroad, to move to a different part of the country, to not be so bound by golden handcuffs. I’d remind myself that richness in life isn’t just about money—it’s about experiences.

Want to hear more from Diane? Check out the full episode of Roundtable Talk for more fresh perspectives. Watch new episodes of Roundtable Talk on the Varsity website and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio.

Keith Carson from Integrated Sales Solutions was a recent guest on our weekly Roundtable meeting. His presentation — titled “Seeing Sales Differently: Transforming Practices for Meaningful Impact” — explored the profound impact of rhythms, practices and rituals in sales.

The conversation focused on three stages of the sales process – Engage, Qualify and Propose. Here’s a closer look at each stage: 

ENGAGE

Keith introduced the first stage of the sales process, highlighting its importance in setting the tone with prospects. He contrasted the typical approach, where a salesperson like “Salesy Steve” focuses on features and benefits, quickly diving into what his organization can offer. 

Instead, Keith advocated for a different strategy: start with the “why” behind the services. By addressing the deeper purpose and values that drive their work, sales professionals could foster a more genuine connection from the beginning, creating a relationship based on authenticity and shared values rather than a standard pitch.

QUALIFY

In this stage of the sales process, you can connect directly with prospects, asking questions to understand their needs and challenges. Keith contrasts this with “Salesy Steve,” who pressures prospects with relentless questions, often missing the empathy needed to address their unique struggles. 

Keith noted that sales professionals are often viewed with skepticism, with prospects wary of hidden agendas. Keith emphasized that trust is built not through grand gestures but through small, consistent actions—calling when promised, negotiating fairly, and being transparent about what the community can and cannot offer. These everyday moments establish genuine trust.

PROPOSE

At the proposal stage, you’re close to helping the buyer decide to join your community. Keith emphasized that while it’s tempting to focus on closing the deal, the priority should still be on the buyer’s needs. He urged sales professionals to approach this meeting with a service mindset, ensuring it’s genuinely about the prospect, not just the sale. 

By keeping the focus on addressing their specific needs and offering a tailored solution, you reinforce trust, creating a more authentic connection that supports the buyer in making the right decision for themselves.

Varsity’s Roundtable is a weekly virtual gathering of senior living marketers and leaders from across the nation. For updates about future weekly Roundtable gatherings, submit your name and email address here.

Varsity Sales & Marketing Strategist Jackie Stone knows a thing or two about recruiting and training salespeople. Said Jackie: “Spending time up front to hire the right people and train them saves money, time and potentially your job!”

Jackie was also a recent presenter on Varsity’s weekly Roundtable gathering where she talked about recruiting and training salespeople for success, including, tips for finding good sales team candidates, asking the right interview questions to learn more about each candidate and the importance of clearly defining expectations for your sales staff.

The following are some highlights from that conversation.

CONSIDER CANDIDATES FROM OUTSIDE SENIOR LIVING

Jackie suggested considering sales candidates from outside senior living in related industries like hospitality. She recalled that when she first began her career in senior living, Greystone often recruited salespeople from local hotels, valuing their experience in customer service, sales and operations, which translates well to senior living. Jackie noted that many people from the hospitality industry have successfully transitioned into senior living roles, and still hold those roles today.

DIVE DEEPER WITH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Jackie advised against using the cliché question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Instead, she suggested more targeted questions to evaluate candidates effectively.

For sales experience, ask, “How do you sell the product you’re currently offering?” To assess handling challenges, try, “How do you handle customer objections?” and “Have you met your sales goals consistently? What challenges did you face?” Gauge industry knowledge with, “What do you know about senior living? Did you research our organization?” Lastly, test strategic thinking with, “If our sales were declining, what steps would you take to improve them?”

ESSENTIAL SENIOR LIVING SALES TRAINING

Specialized training is essential for all salespeople, regardless of experience, to excel in senior living sales. Training should include techniques for overcoming objections unique to the industry and discovery methods that delve into prospective residents’ values for tailored presentations. Emphasis on values-based selling, rather than just giving standard tours, is crucial to connect with what the prospect cares about. Creative follow-up approaches that move beyond simple thank-you notes and incorporate personalized outreach helps sales teams stand out. Training should also cover community outreach strategies, ensuring effective networking and targeted messaging to referral sources.

REVIEW AT 90 DAYS

The 30-day review for new hires is often skipped, as the initial period is focused on learning the community, its processes, and culture. Instead, a 90-day review provides a more accurate assessment of performance. Key evaluation criteria includes meeting sales goals, effectiveness in marketing activities like scheduling appointments and community outreach, and building strong relationships with prospects, residents, and colleagues. Commitment to self-improvement and seeking additional training or support are also important factors.

Varsity’s Roundtable is a weekly virtual gathering of senior living marketers and leaders from across the nation. For updates about future weekly Roundtable gatherings, submit your name and email address here. 

 

We recently welcomed Lindsey Beagley from Mirabella at Arizona State University as a guest on Varsity’s weekly Roundtable gathering. Lindsey describes her work as “innovating at the intersection of higher education and longevity.” As senior director of lifelong university engagement for Mirabella at ASU, Lindsey creates opportunities for residents to engage with the ASU campus. 

The following are some highlights from her Roundtable conversation. 

TWO INDUSTRIES, ONE POWERFUL NEW POSSIBILITY

Merging higher education with senior living might seem unusual, but this fusion can disrupt and redefine both fields. The concept of a university-based retirement community exemplifies how bringing together two distinct industries can lead to groundbreaking innovations and new possibilities.

DEMAND IS GROWING

The baby boomer generation, being the most educated retiree cohort ever, has a strong nostalgia for its college years. Additionally, boomers are healthier and have different expectations for retirement, compared to their parents and grandparents. Andrew Carle, who coined the term “university-based retirement community,” identified that seniors seek active, intellectually stimulating and intergenerational environments — qualities that are inherent to college campuses. 

A HIGHER EDUCATION RENAISSANCE

Lindsey believes that the 65-85 age range is not about winding down but, rather, a renaissance. Supporting this, the highest proportion of entrepreneurs are between 55 and 64 years old, showing a trend toward retooling and applying skills in new ways. Additionally, many people over 65 feel about 20 years younger than their actual age. To engage this demographic, products and services should meet their functional needs while reflecting their youthful self-perception.

THE BENEFITS OF INTERGENERATIONAL CONNECTIONS

The benefits of intergenerational connections are profound. For young adults, engaging with older generations enhances civic engagement, boosts entrepreneurial skills and builds self-confidence. For older adults, these connections reduce social isolation and improve quality of life, along with offering physical benefits, such as better balance, increased strength and reduced risk of falls. 

Varsity’s Roundtable is a weekly virtual gathering of senior living marketers and leaders from across the nation. For updates about future weekly Roundtable gatherings, submit your name and email address here. 

 

With the right channels and the right content, social media can be an invaluable tool for any organization, especially when combined with a targeted and strategic paid social media plan. But creating and implementing that plan isn’t always easy. For many groups, including senior living communities, social media is a challenge that marketing teams struggle to take full and proper advantage of.

That struggle can undermine your marketing efforts and leave your community without one of the most important and powerful marketing vehicles in your toolbox. The key to success is outlining a channel strategy that accomplishes your goals, using each channel appropriately to reach your target audiences, and then putting a team in place to bring those strategies to life.

Have a dedicated social media manager

The first step in any social media program? Assigning a team member to create and implement your community’s social media plan. A dedicated social media manager will not only oversee your community’s social media strategy — and adjust that strategy as needed — but will also be tasked with the day-to-day duties of content creation for each channel, the posting of content, and engagement with fans and followers on each channel (an important task typically known as “community management”).

Know your competitors

A formal or informal audit of competitor communities will yield invaluable insights that can be used in your own social media plan. What channels are your competitors on? How often are they posting? What are they posting about? The answers to those questions can be used to fine-tune your social media strategy. That audit should be conducted during the initial planning stages, but feel free to keep tabs on your competitors on a regular basis.

Choose the right channels for your community

Each channel has its own advantages. Women are more likely to use Instagram and Pinterest, while Facebook has an older user base than Instagram. LinkedIn has a higher income base. Each one has unique advantages when it comes to reaching different audiences, and knowing your audience will help you decide which channels to use to reach that audience.

Don’t spread yourself too thin

If you have a limited amount of time to spend on social media, spend it on the channels that are most effective at reaching your target audience. It’s always best to choose one or two channels and create great content for those channels, instead of spreading yourself thin by doing mediocre content for four or five channels.

 

As part of a recent online conference held by Careers to Love PA, LeadingAge PA’s effort to help communities find team members, I conducted a webinar on online reputation management. Here’s a recap of the top-line thoughts I shared. I hope you find these tips helpful in enhancing your community’s image. 

The internet is the first source of information for many consumers. And because so much of what we know and learn about a retirement community is housed online, that means your community’s reputation is largely composed of the information and reviews found on the internet. That’s why having an active online reputation management program is important.

What is Online Reputation Management (ORM)? 

There are conversations happening almost every day online about your community. Some are positive, some are neutral and some are negative. ORM means getting involved in conversations to position your community in the best possible light. It can take many forms, including the management and monitoring of online reviews.

In the end, ORM is about creating balance, counteracting misleading or inaccurate opinions in reviews and allowing your community to put its best digital foot forward.

Effective online reputation management starts with a four-step program.

Step One: Monitor your reviews

The first step in any ORM program is recognizing the importance of reviewing and responding to reviews of your community and then putting into place a process to do those reviews on a regular basis.

There are two ways to conduct those reviews:

• MANUALLY – You can scour the many different websites that collect reviews on a regular basis. With more than a dozen potential sources out there – including Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Caring, Senior Advisor, Zillow and many others – manually reviewing can be very time-consuming.
• AGGREGATOR TOOLS –The easiest way to track reviews is with an aggregator tool like Reputation.com (which is what Varsity uses). Reputation.com streamlines the process and allows communities to track, manage and respond to reviews from one platform.

What we like about Reputation is that it allows you to set up alerts so that you get an email when new reviews are posted about your community. With one click from the Reputation interface, you can post a response to that review.

Step Two: Respond to your reviews 

If the first step in an effective ORM program is monitoring reviews, the second step – not far behind – is responding to reviews. Unfortunately, it’s a step many communities don’t always take.

The most important reviews any community or brand can respond to are negative reviews. There are two reasons why responding to negative reviews is vitally important:

1. It allows you to have a one-to-one conversation with a dissatisfied customer and directly address some of their concerns. They might not EXPECT a response from your community, but giving them one could go a long way toward making them less angry and may even prevent them from leaving other negative reviews in the future.
2. It allows you to tell your side of the story for people who might be reading the reviews. You also want your community to appear compassionate and trustworthy, and a genuinely caring response will accomplish that.

Bottom line: Responding to negative reviews is just good customer service. Addressing the concerns of unsatisfied customers shows that you care for your residents and you care about how your community and its employees are perceived.

Step Three: Solicit positive reviews 

One of the most effective ways to offset negative reviews and boost your community’s online reputation is by actively soliciting positive reviews from satisfied residents, their family members and employees.

To get those positive reviews you need to put a requesting system in place that asks for reviews on a consistent basis.

You should include requests for reviews in emails sent to community members, via signage in key places or casually in face-to-face conversations with happy residents and their family members.

Make sure to ask for honest reviews. Never try to coax reviewers into providing a positive review or submit a review that’s counter to their actual experience. Let potential reviewers know that you value their feedback and will use their input to help make the community a better place.

Step Four: Make changes in response to negative reviews  

Most negative reviews have a kernel of truth to them. The final step in your community’s ORM program is to take a hard look at negative reviews and make actual changes at your community to address those reviews.

Those planned changes can be noted in your community’s response to the review. The changes will also help create a better living environment and reduce the likelihood of similar negative reviews in the future.