YourTour Success Stories: Trinity Oaks
Trinity Oaks - a senior living community based in Salisbury, NC
Background: Trinity Oaks is a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) opened in 1993 in Salisbury, NC, just north of Charlotte. The community has 167 Independent Living residences, 38 Assisted Living residences, and 125 Skilled Nursing residences. Engaging with The Vectre through YourTour has made a significant impact on their sales process according to Lorie Aldridge, Director of Marketing and Sales for Trinity Oaks.
Challenges: Trinity Oaks is an operational community with no expansion efforts at the moment. On the heels of COVID, like most senior living communities, Trinity Oaks had unoccupied inventory that they needed to sell. The Vectre deployed the YourTour platform in November of 2021 to help the sales and marketing department with a new sales tool to assist their efforts.
Results: Outstanding results and added efficiencies that allow the marketing and sales team to be more efficient. Lorie Aldridge, Director of Marketing and Sales, provides more details in her own words. “When we met in November 2021 to roll out the platform we were in the low 90% due to COVID. In just 6 months, we have since reached 99% reserved and occupied. I feel that was due to using YourTour to engage with the pics and floorplans.”
YourTour allows me to close sales faster.
(L to R) Sydney Holmes, Marketing and Sales Assistant; Lorie Aldridge, Director of Marketing and Sales; Hoyle Koontz, Partner with The Vectre, showcasing YourTour within the Trinity Oaks Marketing and Sales Office.
“Since early November of 2021, we started using YourTour with the large majority of our sales prospects within our sales office on a large screen TV while we’re seated around a table. While it took some time to feel comfortable using the platform, I now feel like I can close people faster by using YourTour. It's really helped as a visualization tool to allow the prospect to understand what they might feel if they move into the community.
I have used YourTour on at least 5 of the 7 recent conversions to seal the deal. The other two that recently deposited were before I had YourTour in place.
About 25% of our current hot prospects are out of town. YourTour helps me tell the story about Salisbury and the surrounding areas. Before YourTour, I would talk about downtown Salisbury and talk about all of our amenities both on and off campus. It's all in one place which makes the story of our community more comprehensive. As a result, I can close them much quicker. I'm able to give them more information in a faster time, but it’s not overwhelming. I don't have to say "Next time you come, I'll show you this or that.” If you have every piece of the story at your disposal through YourTour, why would you want to waste their time to have them come back multiple times if you can close them right now?
I'm saving the prospect extra steps in their own research. I've got everything already at my fingertips through YourTour.”
YourTour saves me time.
A cottage residence at Trinity Oaks
“I recently had foot surgery. I was on crutches and couldn't drive. YourTour enabled me to tour the entire campus with my prospects without ever leaving the office. My crutches and I sat right here in our discovery room and I toured them through the entire campus; however, I did it in a much shorter amount of time. My typical walking tour lasts about 2.5 hours. Discovery takes about 45 minutes on average. Tours generally take about 1.5 hours to walk through our buildings and drive around our cottage neighborhoods. Utilizing the interactive map, I could spend about 30 minutes touring them through YourTour and showcasing areas that they’re most interested in. I believe it gives them a better understanding of the community because they are engaged, they’re seeing our residents through photos and videos.
YourTour is sparing me from having to coordinate with residents to show apartments all the time. Typically, we have our ‘go-to’ residents that have beautiful, clean apartments all the time, but they can be difficult to schedule. Now I don’t have to worry about that. I can show photos and virtual tours of apartments, and our prospects can instantly begin to visualize their furniture in that particular apartment.”
YourTour helps me make the best first impression.
The swimming pool at Trinity Oaks
“Think about this… our typical tours frequently showcase empty amenities. Sometimes the pool is not in use. By the time I show the pool on most of my tours, the morning water aerobics classes are over and it's an empty space. Most amenities are generally not in use when we tour. YourTour has tons of photos and videos that capture residents engaged in the lifestyle of the community. I show the residents in action and that translates to a better understanding of what our lifestyle is like at Trinity Oaks.
Our resident video testimonials that we integrated into the platform are very helpful and allow me to offset some objections that I typically get. We have testimonials from our team members that I showed to an adult child family member recently and the passion that our team members showed in those videos really resonated with them. Typically on a tour, prospects aren't seeing all of our management team. One prospect said, “I get to hear from the management team and all of the resident testimonials without ever talking with the residents.” So that made a big impact on that prospect.
I just used the Personalized Interactive Brochure while working with a lady from Puerto Rico that is interested in one of our cottages. I walked through the personalization features, which were so easy to do, and favorited the cottage floor plan that she liked plus all of the amenities we offer based on her interests. Everything went perfectly. I sent that to her and she understood the community very well. She said, ‘Wow - I felt like I have toured your community!’”