Search for the secret to successful senior living sales, and you’ll be inundated with videos and articles shilling secrets & tips, offering cheat sheets, and selling blueprints. Ask Google, and AI says the secret to sales boils down to three factors:
- Understand the customer’s need
- Build trust
- Provide value
Boom! Now you know. But how do you put this well-intentioned, vague advice into practice for your specific community? Sabal Strategy knows one of the secrets to sales success: custom MicroModeling® reports. Leverage the critical information embedded in your report, and your next campaign can become a success case study.
Where Details Matter
For the data wizards behind the proprietary science of a MicroModeling® Report, details are at the heart of its success. It all began with a young guy in a mailroom. Steve Godwin dreamed of making his career as a musician. As a young man, he toured as part of a band (keyboards). The unglamorous part of the job was lugging in the speakers and all of the necessary paraphernalia to set up, playing, and then breaking it all down. Again and again. After a long six months on the road, he made a career pivot in Nashville, landing in a mailroom that handled a million pieces of direct mail a year.
As Steve proved his worth, the company entrusted him with all of their direct mail lists. Since this was back in the 1980s, we’re talking old school spreadsheets. But he began working with a team from Deloitte to combine the various lists and computerize them. The team began by working through the logic statements necessary to manage 250,000 pieces of mail per quarter. Then the National Change of Address (NCOA) was activated. By the late 1980s, Steve and the team had 1,200 bytes of code creating their first national database.
That experience led to the realization that while he could build a national model for a single retailer, all markets are different. While national models are useful for certain things, local models could offer more value, even for a national company. He knew that what works at the local level depends on specific local demographics and social factors. By reflecting that local level data, his database model was the solution. And MicroModeling® was born.
54 Versions and Counting
Steve and Scott Travis, have been working on refining and improving data in order to better serve their clients. Steve describes his partner as the genius who takes his ideas and actually makes them work. Together, they are committed to continually taking apart and revising and refining their work in order to better serve their clients. Listening to him speak about the work, you quickly understand this isn’t just a job, it’s a calling to serve.
That’s just one reason why Steve estimates they’re on version 54 of their tool, which is intended to make life a little better for the marketing teams using his model.
Their team works with approximately 20 different verticals across the US, from a luxury car maker to national banks. But these data scientists are more than just number crunchers. “They use their skills in problem solving, coding, and statistics in order to understand why people do the things they choose to do for each industry and vertical,” Steve explains. “Each custom MicroModeling® Report helps us understand who the audience is, what they look like, and what they choose. This information helps the sales team understand how to speak to their audience, what visuals are most effective and which segments exist within the larger group.”
A Deeper Dive into Data
A custom MicroModeling® Report begins with factoring 475 lifestyle variables to determine applicable data points for the audience. But the data gathering doesn’t stop there. Drilling down, 4,600 Super Variables™ are reviewed and analyzed. Super Variables™ are the combination of two individual variables, which further refines the ideal audience. For example, they might use net worth + income or net worth + cat owner as unique super variables for a certain model. Drilling down even further, they refine the Super Variables™ results into a specific spatial level of geography to create a unique geo grid for the ideal audience in a custom report. In fact, they are far more specific about geography than the US Census Bureau. The US census publishes their data samples in terms of 317,000 census block groups. A census block group is a cluster of census blocks within the same tract sharing the first digit of their census block number. MicroModeling® comprises 3.4 million block groups. It’s far more granular and specific.
Micro to Macro Success
A MicroModeling® Report is a unique tool offering multifaceted approaches to identifying the ideal audience. Each customized report brings a unique set of circumstances to life, capturing the essence of an individual market. After all, having a net worth of $100,000 in Aberdeen, South Dakota has a different value than a net worth of $100,000 in La Jolla, California. By partnering with Steve and his team of data scientists, Sabal Strategy has benefitted from all of this science. With our deep and specific understanding and knowledge about the senior living industry, the senior living MicroModeling® data is even more accurate and effective. And as more of our clients choose this product, Sabal shares the results with the data team so they can continue to refine the formulas for optimum results.
The value of this tool lies in how it:
- Differentiates the demographics for each location or market
- Highlights specific audience lifestyles
- Incorporates detailed geography into the model:
- Calculating the distance people are willing to travel
- Understanding geographic barriers people face
- Understanding the competitors in the city, larger market or region
Can you see how understanding all of this, and having it presented in a detailed report can help your sales team achieve success? Instead of blanketing a ZIP code, you can surgically target an audience ranked by decile. By targeting the top 10% or 20%, you’ll spend less and convert at a higher rate.
Are you ready to supercharge your marketing team? Maribeth and Angela would love to tell you more about the value of a custom MicroModeling® Report and how it can make a difference for you in your next senior living marketing campaign.
