Wireless polling.

Keypads encourage candor in stakeholder forums

A RECENT STUDY BY CONTEMPORARY SHOWS THAT ABOUT 65 percent of assisted living providers, CCRCs, and other multilevel facilities plan to spend more on marketing this year than they did in 1999 ("Strategies and trends," November 1999). Despite this, nearly one-third of the respondents said they don't have a marketing plan.

Focusing on tactics before coming up with a plan is putting the cart before the horse. And coming up with a plan before knowing the environment you're operating in, will only lead to a "me too" marketing strategy in which you copy what your competitors are doing or run with something you picked up at a conference.

Get feedback

Step one of the planning process, therefore, should be to conduct an environmental audit, marketspeak for soliciting feedback from a variety of stakeholder groups in your community about your facility's image, competitors, and the best ways to fulfill consumer needs. Stakeholder groups include your own employees, current and prospective residents, benefactors, referral sources, and community leaders such as legislators, hospital CEOs, and your local council of churches.

One of the best ways to understand how stakeholders see the environment and your facility's role in it is to hold a series of "feedback forums." To encourage candor, consider using an audience response system. This wireless keypad technology will allow participants to anonymously tell you what they think. Used correctly, it can be a tool to take the pulse of your stakeholders quickly and accurately.

Here's how it might work: Assemble 40 of your staff members at the end of a shift for about 30 minutes to complete a task of "strategic importance to the organization." A facilitator should explain that they will be asked to answer multiple-choice questions or to indicate their level of agreement with particular statements. Up to 50 different questions can be asked and processed within the allotted time. Questions can range from, "Which of the following facilities is our closest competitor?" to, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are our residents?"

Tailor your questions to the particular stakeholder group. Ask clergy how much of an influence they are on seniors seeking answers about retirement living. Query prospective residents on "which facilities they consider the best, given what they've seen and heard." Ask current residents what word comes closest to describing your facility.

The results are relayed to a laptop computer and simultaneously displayed on a screen, enabling you to conduct an open forum. The more time allotted to the forum, the more in-depth the discussion. By combining the survey results with the more freewheeling comments, you should have a fairly accurate view of your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and obstacles.

Holding six forums in one and a half days costs about $10,000, including keypad rental, facilitator, refreshments, and consultant travel. The alternative would be to employ one or more of the following methods which are either more time consuming or more costly:

* Focus groups. Figure on two with residents and two or three with employees. Time: two months until final report. Cost for professional facilitator and report: $3,000 per group.

* Mystery shopping. Send someone to each competitor to pose as a customer. Time: 1 to 2 months. Cost: about $5,000.

* Prospective resident study. A market research firm calls on your prospect list and quizzes them about your sales pitch and about other facilities they've visited. Time: six weeks. Cost: $15,000.

* One-on-ones. Hire a professional to talk with community leaders, clergy, and referral agents. Time: at least a month. Cost to do 25: $15,000.

Even if you think one stakeholder group is more important than another to your marketing efforts, it's a mistake to ignore anyone, and wireless keypads can be a quick and cost-efficient polling method. They promote candor and, along with with a free-form discussion, will give you the data you need to work up a situation analysis, the cornerstone of any marketing plan.

Michele Holleran is a principal of Holleran Consulting, York, Pa., a provider of marketing, strategic planning, and resident and employee satisfaction research.

Organizing a feedback forum

* Ask several people from your executive team to brainstorm a list of 10 to 15 key stakeholder groups.

* Identify one or two individuals from each stakeholder to help you recruit participants for a forum.

* Assign your facility's "marketer" to organize the forums. This person will determine locations and refreshments and send invitations/confirmations to participants.

* Line up a consulting firm familiar with wireless keypad technology to facilitate the groups.

* Rent the wireless keypad technology. Some consultants provide it as part of their facilitation services.

* Print out the results of the electronic polling. Audiotape and transcribe the open sessions.

* Write up the results of each group and an executive summary of all the groups, analyzing such topics as: competitors, perception of facility, demographic shifts, and key influencers.

* Armed with this information, create a situation analysis--the foundation of every marketing plan.