By optimizing senior living sales leadership blended with prioritizing dining and lifestyle offerings, Beztak is primed for future growth as the company continues occupancy recovery, according to Executive Vice President of Senior LIving Jason Kohler.
The Farmington, Hills, Michigan-based real estate and property management company operates nine communities across the All Seasons luxury independent living and Monark Grove market-rate senior living brands.
In 2024, Beztak is expanding multiple All Seasons communities, including a 24-unit addition onto its Birmingham, Michigan urban luxury community alongside an expansion to its All Seasons community in Ann Arbor with 80 additional units, Kohler said.
“Outside of organic growth, we’re solely focused on occupancy development with our continuing operations and also expense control,” Kohler said during a recent interview on the SHN Transform podcast.
With rental income up nearly 20% this year compared to 2023 and occupancy across the portfolio, the company also aims to start construction on a new-build community in Florida while renovating existing properties. To differentiate the All Seasons brand in its markets, Beztak relies on its dining, lifestyle and programming to draw in new residents to the point the company hired a corporate director of intellectual and artistic planning.
“Every day is a challenge in dining because you’re really serving the same residents day after day and you’ve got to make it new and interesting and we’ve had to mix it up a lot in our dining program and do a lot of action stations and chef specials,” Kohler said during the interview. “It really does separate us because if someone is interested in pottery, art, improv, classical music, all those types of things, we have something to offer and we put our money where our mouth is.”
In improving Beztak’s senior living brand, Kohler highlighted how the company helps build empathy among sales team members and contrasted with behavioral insights on employee personality tests from Real Strengths. The short personality quiz gives insights into selling style, communication type and service strength and can help inform how sales staff are trained, Kohler said.
“What we look at is selling style because what we found is that our successful salespeople are motivators versus facilitators and motivators just meaning they take more of an influencer approach to selling where a facilitator is helping someone along the journey and they go at their own pace.”
Highlights from Kohler’s podcast appearance are included below, edited for length and clarity. Subscribe to the Transform podcast via Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud or Google Play.
On Beztak’s year ahead
We hope to get a community out of the ground this year. We’ve got a 24-unit addition onto our All Seasons Birmingham in downtown Birmingham, Michigan and we hope to break ground and get going on our expansion in our Ann Arbor campus. There we currently have 200 luxury, independent living apartments and we look to add 80 units of assisted living there.
Outside of organic growth, we’re solely focused on occupancy development with our continuing operations and also expense control which is probably the same across the industry. Two key performance goals for us is to grow that occupancy and control those expenses. We are laser-focused on that this year.
So far out of the gate, we are doing well. Rental income year-over-year is up 19.8% [approximately] which is amazing. We’re on target for total income year-to-date as well. I think our efforts in the occupancy arena are paying dividends and expense control [measures] are also going well.
Coming out of 2023 and into January we had some unexpected staffing labor that trickled into January with timing of payrolls and holiday pay and things like that which crept into January which impacted January’s expense numbers but we’re on track for February and we’d like to be on track for March. So I think our measures are hitting the mark.
On succeeding in a challenging devlopment market:
All of the industry is just these micro markets and so I think we’re just looking to maximize our current assets in the markets and in where they are.
So Birmingham, Michigan is an example. They’re 95-plus percent occupied with strong rental rates, solid team, amazing leadership and an award-winning community. If we have the ability, why not add 24 new luxury apartment homes and capitalize on that. We’re looking at some of those what might be seen as smaller opportunities to strengthen what we already have versus going outwardly.
It’s not about the number of communities. It’s not about the number of units under management. It’s not about chasing a 10 10 or top 50 designation or anything like that. It’s really more so about going a mile deep versus a mile wide and we have great communities in good markets. How do we make them better and better and better every year?
We are looking to do a new development in Florida and we’re always looking at opportunities. As we look out, there’s a lot of opportunities coming across all of our desks and we say no to about 99.8% of those but that’s for a reason. It’s do we have the bandwidth, can it be something that we really want to own? Is it something that we really want to operate? Is it in the right market? Can we support and service that well? If we have hesitancy on any of those fronts, or even more, the answer is ‘no.’
A focus for us this year is improving what we have and doing some of these additions to the communities that I think will strengthen them in the marketplace.
On Beztak’s occupancy growth in 2024:
It’s gone very well thus far. I think we’re quite pleased with what we’ve seen. I know there’s been a lift in the industry and. Ido think we’ve put in a lot of work and effort to position ourselves to capitalize on that through platforms and processes and sales training and getting the right talent in the right seats. We’re seeing the fruits of our labor. I think we’re riding that trend a little bit in the industry. We’ve had occupancy gains with one exception and that exception is relatively flat and is a market issue.
A flood of inventory has come into a relatively small market in a short period of time over the last five years so it’s a dog-fight over there. I like where it’s going and I feel really good about our team and I am very optimistic about where the industry is heading, especially in the near-term over the next handful of years. I am bullish.
On the growth of the All Seasons luxury senior living brand:
Our All Seasons brand is the brainchild of our partners of creating a community and environment they would desire to live in. We really focus on dining and programming as well as customer service. We’re firmly committed to providing an amazing dining experience and it’s the highlight of a resident’s day and it’s a challenge.
Every day is a challenge in dining because you’re really serving the same residents day after day and you’ve got to make it new and interesting and we’ve had to mix it up a lot in our dining program and do a lot of action stations and chef specials. We are constantly changing the menu and bringing vegetarian items and themed menus. We really try to go over the top with our dining experience and to plate presentation and service.
We have a corporate director of intellectual and artistic planning. She’s amazing and really puts on spectacular events and programming and brings world-class musicians and plays and theater to our communities. We live stream those to our other properties and we have an artist in residence program. The list goes on and on. It really does separate us because if someone is interested in pottery, art, improv, classical music, all those types of things, we have something to offer and we put our money where our mouth is.
If we are going to hang our hat and be an industry leader in those aspects, the resources have to be there and our partners are unwavering and amazing at allowing us to just spend what we need to spend, hire who we need to hire and make it amazing. All Seasons is more upscale and luxury and it’s mostly independent living in our communities.
I can’t thank the ownership enough for creating beautiful communities and having healthy budgets to deliver an exceptional experience. All Seasons was recognized as U.S. News and World Report best senior living communities… An independent third-party, Grace Hill, does these satisfaction surveys and every year recognizes their top 100 and they issue Kingsley Excellence awards for resident satisfaction and I couldn’t be prouder that all of the All Seasons communities were recognized. Our Birmingham community won first place in the entire nation and it’s a tribute to that team and to the partners and what we’ve created. It’s just amazing.
On how the last four years have shaped tech integration in senior living sales:
I think that the pandemic really pushed forward your online presence with virtual tours. You had no choice, but that was a good nudge. Having the ability to be on the website and do a self-guided tour, I think that is here to stay and that’s money well-spent. We’ve got a lot of data behind that on our reports that show how many views and the duration of those views and conversions from those views. I think that’s a worthwhile investment and that’s here to stay.
Home visits, once a really scary part of the pandemic, have become increasingly important because if people didn’t want to come to us then doggone it, we were going to come to them. I think that’s also here to stay. A home visit conversion ratio is much higher when you can be invited to their home on their turf and there’s just a level of comfort that comes with that. That’s really a bridge builder.
The pandemic caused all of us I think to take a look at how we present ourselves online with online reputation? How’s our website look? Is it easy to navigate? Do we have calls to action? Do we have leads captured? What does digital followup look like? None of that is going away. I think that it’s more important now than ever. Your website is your curb appeal. It really is. I took that to heart and that caused me to go back and reevaluate our websites and sit down with my digital marketing manager and say, ‘how can we make this even better/’ That was motivating and
On how Beztak uses data to inform senior living sales teams:
I don’t mind giving away secrets. It’s an open book and the difference is what do you do with it? I think what you are referring to is probably my controversial stance at the conference on empathy and I didn’t expect the feedback that I got from some of those statements, all positive, really good feedback.
Empathy and I think we all agree it’s important that our sales members have empathy. It helps build rapport and trust and it’s really helpful to understand what someone is going through and where they are and try to meet them where they are at.
You can do that by exercising empathy and the question that came up at the SALES conference was, empathy can be learned and I think I took that stance because of the medical profession. I shared a little bit of history at the conference on that but there’s some history there with me on that. It is something that has to be taught because the more medical training that one is given, the less empathy they seem to exhibit and…it can be taught so let’s dive into the heart of it.
It’s really through didactic learning, constructive teaching in meaning. When we give everyone a behavioral assessment, personality assessment, and it’s called Real Strengths. It’s 10 minutes to take and it’ll give you three different things: your selling style, your communication style and your serving strength. What we look at is selling style because what we found is that our successful salespeople are motivators versus facilitators and motivators just meaning they take more of an influencer approach to selling where a facilitator is helping someone along the journey and they go at their own pace.
So that sales process from inquiry to move-in can be extremely long with a facilitator where motivators influence and move the sale forward. Motivators by nature are not highly empathetic and we know empathy is important as so what we do is we try to take motivator selling styles and have them work on their empathy.
Going back to that didactic learning methods, it’s listening to phone calls, shadowing on the tours and debriefing afterward and asking really deep questions on what the person heard and having them put themselves in their shoes.
How do you think that they feel? What do you think they might be going through? What do you think some of the struggles that they’re having are? How do you think that their family feels? So you’re asking all of these kinds of deeper questions to your sales team members to have them put themselves in that person’s shoes and it’s very helpful.
Role playing is another method of doing this and so what they found through this research is that if it’s just one directional, if I am just telling you how to be empathetic, you’re not going to have the benefit if I roleplay with you and I asked you deep, open-ended questions where you have to respond putting yourself in that person’s shoes. That’s what we try to do in our training and that’s the root of our person-centered selling approach and that’s empathy. What we look for in salespeople is motivators and competitors.
On staffing:
We’ve seen improvement across the board as far as a comparison, 2023 to 2022. We eliminated temp agency across the portfolio in 2023 so we’re excited about that. We made wage adjustments, approached our recruiting, training and onboarding a little differently and made a concerted effort to eliminate temp agency in the communities. That’s our goal is to keep it out in 2024 and to do that we’ve had to make sure that we’re being proactive with filling the positions right now. Knock on wood, we’re in a really good position.
We have a really good team of executive directors. We have a great team of department directors in all of our communities, we’re not struggling necessarily in any one area. I think we’re in a really good position, but we’re not taking that. I think now it’s how we stay where we are and so it’s more about maintaining but not passively maintaining, it’s really about a proactively proactive approach to maintaining what we have right now.
We’re constantly looking at wages, benefits, the recruiting and how those recruiting ads are worded and who we’re looking for. If you have a roster of the best talent, most talented executive directors have an ownership mentality, know the business, are passionate about the company, the community, the residents, you’ve got 85% of your problems licked right there.
On outlook for the senior living industry:
In the last couple of years we’ve seen a lot of upheaval. That’s a strong word but we’ve seen a bit of that. I think we’re going to see more of that here in the next couple of years before things settle down. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing…when you see turmoil, you see bankruptcies, you see a bunch of changes in management companies and operating companies shutting down live like we’ve seen. It’s not good for any of us… I love the occupancy growth across the industry and we’re moving all in the right direction and I’m bullish so I am super excited about 2024.
Companies featured in this article:
