Why it’s time for a new senior living sales playbook

By Amy Reinholds on October 21, 2025 in Senior Living

White paper: Inside Your New Senior Living Sales Playbook

A lead stages strategy is reshaping sales in senior living. Senior living providers are throwing out the old sales playbook, engaging prospects and seeing faster move-ins.

In our latest white paper, two providers share the data and show how this new approach outperforms the traditional sales journey.

What are lead stages?

A flexible, data-driven approach defines steps in the prospect journey to show where people are in their decision-making process. Then sales and marketing teams can respond with the right message at the right time — from inquiry to tour to decision.

Each stage is defined by the prospect’s actions and supported by real-time data across the customer relationship management (CRM) and accounting systems. Unlike traditional “hot, warm, cold” model, lead stages reflect a modern, prospect-centered sales journey.

What’s inside the white paper

Understanding a prospect’s stage leads to stronger engagement, faster decisions and higher occupancy. Jaybird Senior Living and SRG Senior Living are seeing the difference a smarter CRM strategy can make:

An eight-day decrease from first contact to move-in for Jaybird Senior Living
A 17% increase in inquiry-to-tour conversions (92%, up from 75%) for SRG Senior Living

Jaybird and SRG use RentCafe Senior CRM, which allows flexibility for the successful lead stages approach.

The Senior CRM team compared the results of clients who were using lead stages and those who weren’t. They found those using lead stages had 10% higher lead-to-move-in conversion rates.

To get all the details, read our free white paper.

Lead stages in action

For SRG Senior Living, this approach has been “a game-changer in our marketing,” said Allie Goodwin, VP of sales.

“Every single lead that we have gets targeted exactly where they’re at in their journey.” People who inquire about an SRG community will get very different marketing than someone who is in the decision stage.

At Jaybird Senior Living, president Justin Wray said that the strategy has made a tangible impact when combined with Senior CRM. “With Yardi, we’re able to adapt to where our users and prospects really are in their journey,” he said.

“We’re not just saying, ‘This is a cold lead.’ We can actually say, ‘This is where this individual is in their journey.’”

Both Jaybird and SRG found that using lead stages in Senior CRM is configurable to their business model. This flexibility means teams can align sales and marketing efforts and reduce manual work.

With integrated tools like Senior CRM and Voyager Senior Housing, teams can synchronize data across operations, marketing and accounting. They have one connected view of every lead. A unified workflow means fewer manual updates, greater transparency and a sales strategy that scales when the business grows.