When one door closes, open it. It’s a door. That’s how they work! ~Bowling for Soup
Candice Yagmin is a thoughtful, funny, and determined woman. She’s a senior living marketing executive, entrepreneur, strategist, wife, and a mom. Some might describe her as a steel magnolia. But all clichés aside, she’s the founder of Rally, a boutique senior living agency. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, she began consulting on projects and before she knew it, she had founded a small-by-design agency delivering big results for her senior living clients. How did she do it? Well, we asked, and Candice answered.
The Secret Sauce
We’ve lost count of the number of brands claiming their team is like a family. Nonsense. Most companies focus predominantly on their bottomline, unless it’s a company that means it when they say family and personal time is an actual benefit. And at Rally, they mean it. They are a fully distributed team working from home. Masters of their own time, their benefits package includes “personally designed flexibility” where associates must meet the demands of the job but they also have the flexibility to drop the kids off and pick them up, be there for aging parents, take a walk, or work-out during the traditional workday. No formal PTO process required; it works because there is mutual trust.
It helps that the team knows each other well, after many, many years of experience with one another. It also helps that they make time for breakfast meetings, fantasy football, and happy hour get-togethers routinely. They also make a point of in-person meet ups at conferences and yearly gatherings for a deeper dive into strengthening their bonds. The result is a unique team, one which enjoys one another and working together with their clients. And the reason it all works is their fearless leader, Candice.
Multi-skilled Experts
When she built the team, Candice deliberately chose strong individuals with skills in more than one area. While each person has a specific strength, together they bring something that’s more than its parts. Their focus is what’s best for the individual client and their budget. You won’t find any cookie-cutter solutions here. As she points out, the senior living sales cycle can be long, so we don’t always need to accept the fast answer. Because each client is unique, their approach needs to reflect that.
Knowing = Trust
Just as each member of the Rally team is an expert, they also know when they need outside expertise. They take pride in being able to choose the right partner to handle something for a client. They’re not locked into using the same one for all clients, and they accept no financial incentives in exchange for their recommendations. And when they need modeled data they can trust, they turn to Sabal Strategy.
Candice trusts using Sabal’s MicroModeling Reports over the limited and outdated approach of relying on ZIP codes, age, net worth, and income. She’s seen the proof that applying resident modeled data to list purchases delivers smarter results. They ran a marketing on the move campaign for an Oregon community that relies on feeder markets to maintain high occupancy. The Sabal modeled data identified strong prospects who matched the resident profile living in Hawaii and California markets, areas the community has historically drawn from. The modeled lists for each market were sometimes half the size of the previous lists the client had been using. And, while the Sabal modeled lists were more expensive, the smaller size meant significant savings for print and postage. More importantly, the smaller Sabal lists delivered comparable RSVPs as the previous mailings with fewer no-shows.
Identifying the Right People
Sabal takes pride in delivering data that identifies the right people for each client. Candice recalled a campaign for an urban Texas community with multiple high-rise buildings. One building was older and the apartments were smaller and priced lower. Most of the community waitlist preferred to wait for newer, larger apartments in other buildings. Rally and the client began the campaign believing they should focus on single people with fewer assets. That hypothesis proved false. The Sabal MicroModel list identified people who had the same assets as those who were choosing the newer buildings. The new residents for the older building were just willing to move now. “They were the right people,” Candice said.
What sets Candice and the Rally team apart is they understand people’s need to feel like they belong before they will choose a community. Rally focuses on quality over quantity as they track results, not minutia. When asked how she defines success for herself, she paused, and then began to describe goals for her team, not just herself. She loves being able to pull a rabbit out of their hat by saying “we can do that” when a client asks for something new, different, or challenging. She wants her team to feel empowered to offer smart, cost-effective custom solutions. She loves when they are having good conversations with clients, delivering thoughtful explanations, and offering new ideas to solve old problems.
Making a Difference
As we wrapped up our conversation, Candice mentioned one last example of how Sabal’s MicroModeling Reports made a difference for her clients. Two communities, about 20 miles apart, in the Albuquerque area, were modeled. Key lifestyle differences highlighted in the reports gave the marketing team a headstart on designing lifestyle events to introduce each community to the right people. For one community, they invited prospects to a presentation from the New Mexico Museum of Space History designed for space and science lovers. But for the other community, they offered an area walking tour led by the president of the Chamber of Commerce for people who love to walk for exercise. Being able to split the over-lapping market based on the types of people attracted to each community ensured each target audience was unique and right for that community.
Recognizing that one-size-fits-no-one, Rally is making a name for itself in a highly competitive market. A focus on fun, client satisfaction, and authenticity aren’t just Rally hallmarks. They’re a terrific way to describe Candice Yagmin.
And if you’d like to learn more about what Sabal brings to the table, give us a shout. We’d love to work with you to find the right people for your community.
