These 2 Daily Habits Will Increase Your Team’s Sales Results

Senior living conversion rates hover stubbornly around an average of 10%. You've got plenty of leads. How do you convert them to satisfied residents? Making time each day for two simple yet incredibly valuable activities—as a sales team—will drive results with the prospects you already have. Keep in mind that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel; you’re adding air to the tires.

Daily Habit #1: Plan for Advances Using a Top-10 List

At the heart of Prospect-Centered Selling® is a deep respect for and understanding of where the prospect is emotionally. You can’t rush someone into readiness. But you can create conditions that help them move forward, one small step at a time.

That’s where daily planning sessions come in.

Every morning, spend (ideally) an hour gathering your sales team and (ideally) your executive director. It’s not a casual check-in; it’s a collaborative, creative working session designed to help you plan advances for your 10 most promising prospects.

Your Top 10 prospects aren’t necessarily the most recent inquiries, but instead they are those where your guidance can have the most impact towards “ready to buy.”

In these sessions, you’ll:

• Review the Top-10 Prospect List. These are prospects who’ve shown emotional signals, curiosity, or engagement, but could use more support in their decision. What don’t you know about them? What have they always valued, and what’s important to them right now?
• Discuss readiness. Where is each person in their emotional journey? What are they resisting, and is there something more to their concerns? Note that the answer is almost never the size of the unit or location, but an underlying fear of change.
• Plan specific, achievable advances. Determine a next step that would bring the prospect closer to being ready to buy. This could be a personalized note, a clarifying conversation, a well-timed invitation, or a thoughtful follow-up that helps them feel seen for the unique individuals they are.

Don’t use this time to focus on scheduling tours, preparing units, or securing deposits. Instead, plan for movement—forward motion in the prospect’s decision-making process. And remember that not all advances have to be “big.” Sometimes, just helping someone talk candidly about their fear of change, or opening up in some other way, is a meaningful step towards a closed sale.

Daily Habit #2: Learn and Share Something New

Finding out more about a prospect is always a good move and a useful objective of planning sessions. But if you want to help others grow, you need to be growing yourself.

The best sales teams are not only focused—they’re curious. They commit to learning something new each day: about their prospects, their own selling style, or new strategies like those taught by the experts at One On One Sales Academy. These aren't experimental ideas—they are field-tested and consistently proven to increase occupancy.

Here are a few ways to bring this habit to life:

• Read More as a Team: There are many valuable books that can support better engagement and sales in senior living. Commit to reading a chapter, say, each month as a group. As a starting point, we recommend David Solie’s How To Say It To Seniors, and of course, It’s About Time by Sales Academy Founder David A. Smith.
• Share a Sales Insight Daily: At the beginning or end of each morning meeting, have team members share something they’ve recently learned—whether from your monthly book, a podcast, LinkedIn, or if you’re Sales Academy Members, a Master Class.
• Enroll in a Planning Lab: Another option for Sales Academy Members is to book a Planning Lab session, which helps your team not only advance your current prospects but also gives you strategies for making the most of daily planning sessions yet to come.

Improve Future Performance by Starting Now

Daily collaboration and learning makes a big impact on sales performance. It helps your team stay agile, emotionally attuned, and ready for the next opportunity to connect or advance. These habits—daily planning for advances and daily learning—aren’t “nice to haves.” They are the foundation of a high-performance sales culture.

Start tomorrow with a whiteboard, a quiet space, and a Top-10 list. Review it with your team. Ask better questions. If you’re a Sales Academy Member, share what you’re learning and explore ways to bring those strategies into your daily sales routines.

As Sales Academy Master Michael Miller, President and CEO of Primo Solutions, says, “We need to be reminded that it's the little things that make the biggest impact. It's the small things done consistently that always trump the big things done occasionally.”