How to Implement Change in a Changing Economy With the New Economy, we need a new approach to sales in senior communities. Executives and Marketing Directors need to up their game as never before and new strategies and approaches have to deal with the new economic realities. Business as usual is just not going to cut it the decline in occupancies and the rise in attrition are trends we must confront. But how do we create lasting change in our staff? In ourselves? To be honest, it takes more than one seminar. How many of us have been in the room with a dynamic, exciting speaker and have felt completely energized and motivated by their message? And how many of us have walked out of that room and gone right back to our old unproductive habits in a few weeks? Adult behavior is difficult to change, unlike a child's. I can change my 3 year-old son's behavior in a week or a few days with maybe only a few tantrums along the way - because he's still developing and his mind is completely open to learning. Most of us grown-ups, in contrast, have set ways of doing things that are difficult to shake. We develop patterns and it's difficult to break out of them. That's, why when I began coaching professionally, it was incredibly exciting for me. Before that, I had been a speaker, giving talks all across America, for ten years. It was satisfying, but I had no idea if what I was doing had a lasting impact. Then, at a client's seminar, I realized that people only retain 10 or 20 percent of what they learn from a speaker and that lasting change was rarely part of that picture. Coaching people on a weekly basis, however, provided that lasting change and was much more gratifying to see. When the management of an organization rolls out a new motivational strategy to spark the staff, it often fails to catch any fire whatsoever. Again, people aren't wired that way they don't implement new behaviors just because of a memo or a conference. They return to their normal work environment, where they're bombarded with their usual day-to-day tasks and don't allocate any energy to change so the time, money and effort put into that program can be completely wasted. That's why I firmly believe coaching works and is definitely worth the investment. Why? Because (a) it holds people accountable and (b) it reinforces the training and turns it into habit. It generally takes 3 to 4 months to change adult behavior and that requires a consistent effort to turn the corner. Our coaching program includes a weekly check-up over six months where we hold our clients accountable to the changes we've discussed. That accountability is crucial without it, people drift back to their old ways of doing things because no one will question them. Change can be hard and why do it if you don't feel like you have to? The answer is that change is incredibly necessary right now to combat fear and the perception that the economy is not going to improve. If you are implementing new strategies internally, you must have weekly sessions for at least 3 to 4 months to ensure those strategies are actually being carried out. After that, you can back off to once every two weeks if you see that the staff is actually taking the change on board. My company now offer two levels of coaching executive coaching, where I work one-on-one with owners, operators, CEOS and C-level executives; and marketing coaching, where my sales team works with the marketing director and their staff. In both cases, our objective is to obtain real verifiable results. Our approach is to drive the sales strategy to increase occupancy and revenue and we've been incredibly successful with it. It's an investment on our clients' part that we make sure pays off for them because if you don't get the results we promise within the timeframe we discussed, we continue to work with you at no cost until you do. Change is hard but it's far from impossible and once it's accomplished, the results can be truly mind-blowing. Copyright (c) 2009 Traci Bild
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