By Brent Roberts, Sherpa’s Product Manager
If you could build your senior living community technology platform “dream team,” how would you do it?
As any coach would likely agree, building the best team starts with choosing the best players for each individual position. Recruiting players in “bundles” (like buying a printer/fax/copier machine) might help complete your roster, and might even get you a strong player or two. But it won’t give you the MVP performance you want for every position you need to fill.
The same is true for the myriad technology platforms used by senior living community operators. Our complex, multi-faceted industry requires not just one, but an entire team of platforms to manage all aspects of an organization. From sales to healthcare to maintenance to billing, each aspect has its own set of metrics, workflows and behaviors. To run the most effective operations in each area, it stands to reason that you’d choose the technology platform built from an expert understanding of that area.
There is no “I” in team. (Or in technology.)
Your tech “recruiting” job doesn’t end with picking the top platform players. You also need to make sure they can perform together as a team. That’s why technology integration is so important. It’s what makes communication between platforms possible, so that they can play together like the all-star team you want.
We play well with others. In fact, you could say we’re made for it.
At Sherpa, we love being part of all-star senior living community platform teams. So when we created our sophisticated CRM technology solution, we did more than build a best-in-class platform based on our proven (and transformational) Prospect Centered Selling methodology. We also designed a library of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that allows our software to communicate with any other software platform you might be using.
So we’re not only an all-star player; we’re also a terrific team player.
“Sherpa is more than prospect-focused; it’s platform friendly,” says Chief Strategy Officer Pedro Soares. “The ability to integrate is part of its DNA, making the industry’s strongest, most prospect-focused CRM tool also one of the most cooperative.”
Integration brings better together.
Why is integration so important to Sherpa CRM? Because we don’t want operators to sacrifice strength in one area for a technology team that links all areas. For example, if you’ve chosen specific programs for their strengths in areas such as senior living property management or EHR, you can easily add Sherpa to your technology roster. Our best-in-class CRM capabilities will fit right into your existing system, through an integration interface that allows us to send valuable demographic, contact and census directly to other platforms, simply by recording a prospect deposit or sale in ours.
That makes our rich Life Story profile information a valuable asset to your organization, well beyond the selling process. Elizabeth Girling, Executive Director of Balfour Senior Living at Stapleton (and Sherpa CRM believer) agrees. She adds, “Sherpa is not just a marketing tool. It is a form of communication for our community. We utilize that tool for the move-in process; we utilize the tool for our concierge staff; we utilize it for our nursing staff. […] We can go back and look at the Life Story; it helps us align with our residents and our vision and our mission of what we’re trying to do and who we’re trying to serve.”
Prior to a sale, Sherpa also communicates well with marketing automation programs so that information on sales qualified leads and active prospects can be shared and used to improve the process of engaging potential new residents.
That’s how a top technology team should work—as a united force for communication, efficiency and effectiveness. Because when your technology platforms play well together, everyone wins. Especially your prospects.
