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VOICES: Jennifer Dixon, Founder and CEO, JD Solutions Group

This article is sponsored by JD Solutions Group. In this Voices interview, Senior Housing News sits down with JD Solutions Group Founder and CEO Jennifer Dixon to learn how sales teams are shortening the recovery timeline in senior living. Dixon also shares insight into her own sales coaching methodology, explaining what leaders from each part of the organization can do to help fill the pipeline.

Senior Housing News: Jennifer, you’ve spent your career in senior housing, and you founded JD Solutions Group in early 2020. What experiences do you draw from most in your role today?

Jennifer Dixon: There are many different experiences that inform how I function in the company today, but growing up with a big Italian-Irish family had the greatest impact. I spent a lot of time around my extended family, and they taught me so much about the tendencies and perspectives of The Silent Generation.

My mom was always a proponent of female entrepreneurship and financial independence for women. She worked in direct selling for a lingerie company, so I spent much of my youth at sales meetings and sales trainings.

I used to sit in her office listening to her coach salespeople on how to build their businesses, and that exposure laid the foundation for my own career in sales. I put myself through college by managing retail stores, and I eventually transitioned into senior living during the Great Recession. It was a tough time because the industry dropped suddenly from healthy pipelines to a complete halt. My first experience with this was in a sales director role with Country Meadows Retirement Communities in Pennsylvania.

Since then, I’ve served in every type of sales role, both within senior living companies and on the consulting side. My sales coaching and training in senior living supports community and corporate level teams as well as executive leadership positions.

I’ve personally trained over 1,000 communities, and I’ve coached about 360 communities to improved occupancy, revenue and NOI performance. Those are things that I’m really proud of.

Tell us about JD Solutions. What is its mission and how does it approach that work?

Dixon: JD Solutions is a sales coaching and consulting company with a simple mission to solve senior living occupancy challenges. When I founded JDSG in February of 2020, I had no idea that occupancy challenges would be top of mind for everyone in senior living almost 30 to 60 days later. Resolving occupancy challenges was my mission before the pandemic, but aligned nicely with the needs that everyone was experiencing.

I believed I could improve sales performance while also teaching organizations to value the prospective family experience. That is important because sales training is reflected in the approach sales directors use in the prospecting process.

I didn’t want something that was scripted or unnatural — I wanted salespeople to be the best version of themselves by taking a solution-oriented approach.

I’ve also had a lot of success by aligning owners and investors, sales professionals and operations specialists, and then teaching them how to work together. There’s really no way to solve occupancy challenges without aligning all of those key players.

What is the difference between strategy and coaching, and what draws you to coaching?

Dixon: On a basic level, strategy is being able to put together a plan that helps you achieve your goals. I’m drawn to coaching because I have so much primary experience selling in the field, and I understand the pressures sales directors face daily. I’ve worked with adult children and prospective residents, and until you sit in front of families and understand what reservations, needs and concerns they have, a strategy will not be effective.

When you combine good business strategy with consistent coaching, that impacts performance. As a coach, I can offer expertise to support that synergy.

Why do you draw the distinction between training over 1,000 communities and coaching 360?

Dixon: Training is essentially the introduction of new or updated content. At best, it can get people motivated and create a foundation for learning new skills. Coaching focuses on sales execution — it’s the implementation of those skills that impacts results.

It takes anywhere from six to twelve months to recover a community, depending on the severity of the situation. When you combine proven sales best practices, custom sales training and performance sales coaching, you can close the gap and shorten the timeline. Training alone offers no guarantee that information will be implemented in the day-to-day.

You focus on NOI not ROI. You’ve said that specifically. Why is that?

Dixon: ROI to me can be nebulous, and very subjective. For better or for worse, data can be organized to paint a picture we want to see. I use NOI because I want my clients to have clear, actual concrete measures of progress. I want them to be confident that our program is delivering the results they want, whether they’re measured in move-ins, occupancy growth or profitability.

Maybe they want to increase their top line revenue. Maybe they want to get more than what they’re asking for in a particular unit or level of care, as opposed to battling everybody to the rock bottom lowest prices. Whatever their goals, NOI aligns everybody in the organization in a tangible way.

What are the best two to three small steps that an operator can take to boost occupancy and NOI?

Dixon: I think there are two big opportunities right now. The first is investing in your executive directors and helping the executive directors be more confident and comfortable managing sales and being a sales coach themselves. If you can provide your executive directors with the best practices, resources and tools to succeed, that support will pay off significantly.

The second is focusing on local, unpaid referral partners. When you look at the post-acute world around the community, there is a lot of potential for partnerships in hospitals, health care systems, rehab centers, churches and so on. You have to elevate those partners to build lucrative relationships, and that starts with making it a priority for your sales team.

What is your favorite customer success story?

Dixon: A good deal of my time is focused on helping sales directors guide families who are stuck. That’s such a big part of coaching. We plan and we practice our approach, and it is a win when a sales director runs with it. There’s nothing more gratifying than getting a phone call or text from a sales director who was able to help a family move forward. Nine out of 10 times, they take that same critical thinking and apply it to the other families they’re working with.

Those are the events that fill the pipeline. Those are the things that drive sales forward, revealing real-time learning and growth. I look for daily wins as a measure of success, because if no one’s picking up the phone and letting me know that it’s working or not working, then I’m not successful. When I hear about their wins, that’s huge.

Entering this year, no one knew what to expect. What has been the biggest surprise to you in senior living, and what impact do you think that will have on the industry for the remainder of the year?

Dixon: There was so much resilience among the seniors who we’re working with. The resilience of those prospective residents provided a beacon of hope as everyone struggled to adapt to the changes.

Before the pandemic, senior living sales was known for its high turnover. It has always been difficult to attract new talent, but now that we know growing sales performance is the key to recovery, there is an opportunity to change that notion.

These are high-visibility positions in the communities, and they’re high financial impact positions. We need to stop treating them as task-focused roles and invest in continuing education focused on critical thinking and emotional intelligence. Focusing on the growth of your sales directors is the key to a quicker and more lucrative recovery.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JD Solutions Group was founded in 2020 with the mission to empower investors, owners and operators of senior living communities to grow their sales teams to their fullest potential. To learn more, visit jdsolutionsgroup.com.

The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more — shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@agingmedia.com.

The post VOICES: Jennifer Dixon, Founder and CEO, JD Solutions Group appeared first on Senior Housing News.

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