Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Maximizing Success in Home Care: The Benefits of Tailored Sales Training (2 Hrs)
Ready to unlock the secrets to thriving in the world of home care sales? This episode promises to equip you with cutting-edge strategies and insights that will help you stand out in a competitive market. From mastering the unique dual role of business development and direct consultations with seniors, to understanding the power of tailored sales training programs, we've got you covered. Learn the importance of on-the-ground marketing efforts and how to effectively set and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to achieve your goals.
Discover the key to hiring success in the home care sales field. We delve into proven tactics for distinguishing yourself from competitors, handling rejection, and overcoming objections, all while highlighting the gratifying aspects of the job. We discuss the ideal qualities of a top-notch candidate, such as authenticity and sociability, and share advice on crafting compelling job ads. Plus, we explore the benefits of micro-class methodologies for sales training, where intimate settings foster genuine sharing and collaboration, boosting both personal and professional growth.
Building strong relationships and trust within the home care industry is crucial for long-term success. Learn effective strategies for booking assessments, managing large family dynamics, and setting realistic expectations for home care services. We share tips on overcoming objections and handling delicate situations, like convincing reluctant seniors to accept assistance. Our episode also covers balancing multiple roles within home care agencies, effective networking, and strategic planning to boost revenue growth. Get practical tips for optimizing LinkedIn and Facebook to enhance your professional branding and marketing efforts. Tune in and transform your approach to home care sales!
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
So thank you for joining us. This webinar everyone is the one we did in Florida for Home Care Association of Florida. We did a whole half day actually workshop on maximizing success in home care sales, the impact of tailored training. We're going to narrow it down to two hours today If you can't stay for the whole time. We appreciate you being here for as long as you can be and thank you to those of you who came in early.
Speaker 1:I know you're going to get a lot out of this and I yes, I will send out the replay and also, I will send out the replay. And what was the other thing I was going to tell you? I don't remember. Oh, so, during the webinar, what we're going to do is we're going to use the Q&A section. So you see the little Q&A in your. We're not going to use chat or use Q&A. So if you have a question as we go, please type it in before you forget. And then, when we stop for questions, we're going to stop about halfway in before you forget. And then, when we stop for questions, we're going to stop about halfway. We'll do all the questions that have come in over the course of Dawn talking and then we'll move on to the next section. So Q&A will be about halfway through, so type those questions in All right and Dawn.
Speaker 2:So I'm Dawn Fiella. I have been with Approved Senior Network for about two and a half years now. Before that I was I like to call it in the trenches of home care because it feels that way. There are days where you feel like you're in the trenches, and so I worked for Home Instead Senior Care for 10 years. We were the number one office, went to convention every year, helped you know, show people, other offices how to do the marketing there and some sales. And more recently I worked at an independent home care agency and we were able to grow the private pay business from 200,000 to 3.5 million in under four years. I did develop.
Speaker 2:We have a training program. Some of you who are on here now went through our training program, so we're going to talk about the methodology behind the training program. Some of you who are on here now went through our training program, so we're going to talk about the methodology behind the training program, why it's working, what you know, what are you looking for when you're hiring a marketer? We dig into lots of KPIs, lots and lots of things, so hopefully you're going to enjoy all of that. The focus is small groups and accountability, and you know it isn't fluffy.
Speaker 2:It's not a lot of. You know. We're not promising a lot of things that aren't going to happen. We've had I don't know how many people go through the class I think we're over 40 by now and by week six they're getting referrals and it's going really well. So it's been working. We're not going to dig deep into that, but we're going to talk just in general about training for your marketer, the kind of people to look for KPIs, lots of great stuff. So I hope that you I hope you enjoy it, valerie.
Speaker 1:I'm up. Okay, I'm Valerie Van Boeven, the founder and co -owner of Approved Senior Network. We've been helping home care agencies market their businesses since 2008. So that's a really long time, gosh. And it says focus on online marketing for home care agencies from 16 years. We're almost at 17 years, oh my gosh. And that's my LinkedIn. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm going to talk about that later in the webinar, but if you see me, there's only one Valerie Van Boeven. If you can get part of my name spelled out, you'll find me on LinkedIn. And also, george is listening. George is the co-owner of Approved Senior Network and he is also here listening to Dawn, because this is super fabulous. I'm glad everybody's here.
Speaker 2:And also please connect with me on LinkedIn if you see me too. All right, so the overview we're going to talk about the uniqueness of the home care sales role. It is a very unique industry. It's unique for SEO, it's unique for being out in the field. Everything about this industry is unique. So we're going to talk about the actual sales role, the reason we do micro class sales training, core components of effective home care sales training, developing relationships with professional referral sources, building strong relationships in the home care sales role, identifying key performance indicators, goals and steps to accountability, integrating in-person marketing and online efforts. And then we'll have some questions and answers right before KPIs I think it is, and then we'll get into the rest of it and we'll have more questions and answers at the end.
Speaker 2:So the uniqueness of the home care sales role why, what's different about it? Why is it unique? The whole approach of this is different. First of all, your private pay business we'll talk about first where does the private pay business come from?
Speaker 2:70% of your private pay business is going to come from the feet on the ground. Marketing efforts that's what we're talking about today. The sales role. It's a two-part role. This is where it seems a little bit different, a little bit more unique to me. We are this marketing person. I'm just going to call them marketing for the sake of home care. That's typically what they're called In most companies and the companies I've worked with.
Speaker 2:It's a two-part role. They're doing business development, which is where you're just out, trying to get those referrals and growing the business. Part of it like where the business is coming from. You're developing the business. The business part of it like where the business is coming from. You're developing the business. The second part of the role is the sales and that's the direct consult, of selling of services to seniors and their family. It's two hats right, and the hats are on and off all day long and it can be a tough role to fill.
Speaker 2:I struggled in the beginning finding the right people that could do both of those things and be able. You know you're out marketing, you're in a SNP, you're with a social worker, you have one hat on and now you're going to go down, even down the hallway right there in the skilled nursing facility and meet with the family. The hat changes because you're moving from business development to sales and it's a totally different kind of thing that you're doing. So it's important to understand. It is a very unique role and it's important, if you are looking to hire somebody, that you're looking for someone that can do both of those things. I remember in the beginning it probably was more about my ability to hire the right person than the people. But in the very beginning, when I started hiring people for this role, I had to have two different people because I couldn't find someone who could do both. But that might have been more about my ability to find the right people. So I had someone that was doing all the business development and somebody else doing all of the signing of the jobs. It's better when you can find one person to do both, mostly because when someone refers a family to you, they want for you to be the person. They trust you, they like you, they know you and they want the marketer to be the person to sign them up. So either way, it is a two-part role and the success in this role hinges on the ability to build and maintain long-term relationships with referral sources. We're talking strong, foundational relationships, not a one and done. They know you, they trust you, you're an expert, you're their go-to. That's the kind of relationship If something bad goes down, they can ask you to come to their office, tell you hey, your caregiver was here doing bedside sitting and she fell asleep and it was an overnight awake and you should be able to bounce back from that. If you have a strong, deep relationship, they should feel comfortable enough with you to even bring that up in the first place. So that's what we're looking for. They also need to have the ability to build trust with referral sources, seniors and their family. So it's both the relationship and the trust Understanding the home care sales role.
Speaker 2:So this role definitely comes with some challenges. A big challenge that I've seen, especially since I've been working with lots of home care owners across the country, is the lack of training for their reps, the lack of setting strong foundational goals for them that are measurable and we'll get into that in a little bit. Holding them accountable that can be very challenging and difficult for owners to do. And then mentorship with training and I found this through the years. It's not enough to say I'm going to go to this conference this weekend and I'm going to get trained how to do this and I'm good. It just doesn't work that way. It takes a lot of go try what I said and come back. Go try again and come back. Now, go do this and come back. They need a lot of back and forth mentorship because you can't set them up for all the different things that could happen, the objections that might come up, all the things that could go on in their day to day in one weekend or in one sales training. It's not a one and done, it's ongoing. I would say it took about 90 days to get my marketers really up and running and had enough of that back and forth that they felt confident they could stand tall and overcome an objection right there on the spot. So those things the training, the goals, accountability, mentorship have to happen.
Speaker 2:There are three different types of people coming to our classes and just entering this field. One is someone who has sales experience but they're new to home care. They need training. They still need sales training. People that are in home care already maybe they're a scheduler, maybe they've been in recruiting and now they're going to be your marketer, they still need training. They don't know what to expect out there. Referral sources are not the same as caregivers, they're not the same as clients and family members. They're different and the role is different and the way that you interact with them is different. And then you have people that are new to sales and the home care industry. Absolutely they need training, right, because they don't know either. So training again isn't a one and done. Expectation and goals must be set and accountability and mentorship will be what leads them to success.
Speaker 2:Some of the other challenges in this role is the home care market is saturated in some areas of the country. I know that in Arizona it's pretty saturated. We have hundreds of home care agencies here, literally hundreds and hundreds of them. You have to differentiate yourself from your competitors and the sooner you can do this with your marketer or have your marketer come up with what they've seen out in the industry. This should be a group conversation in your company.
Speaker 2:How are we different? It is that differentiator many times that gets you past the gatekeeper and even gets a social worker to talk to you. I can't tell you how many times my marketers have said I walked in and she said she's already working with five home care agencies and she doesn't need another one. She doesn't need to talk to me. Well, she does. If you're different, so you have to be different. It has to be a real reason. It's not my caregivers really care or my caregivers will go above and beyond. That's not enough. It has to be meaty. It's got to be a real strong differentiator. We do give a differentiator in our classes. It's working great for the people that are using it. You have to be different Because when you say, yes, I understand you're seeing five other home care agencies, but did you know we do this? This is what we do and this sets us apart and I would love the opportunity to share this with you. I only need 10 minutes, whatever it is that is going to get you past the gatekeeper and get you to talk to that social worker.
Speaker 2:Training and differentiation can really help you handle rejection and overcome objections. So that is a big challenge and this is the fear, the fear of rejection in sales. It's big, it's big and nobody wants to feel it. Nobody wants to go through that. And the second thing is the overcoming objections. If they've been trained well and they've been given the If they've been trained well and they've been given that. These are the possible objections that could come up, and this is what you say when it comes up, before they even go out into the field.
Speaker 2:They're prepared. They have the tools that they need to handle the rejection and overcome objections. So with the right training, there's going to be less rejection and they'll already know what to say if an objection comes up. So those are the three main things lack of training, markets are saturated, so you must differentiate yourself. And handling rejection and overcoming objections those are the biggest challenges I've seen in this role.
Speaker 2:The benefits of being a home care sales role is it's impactful work. If you find the right person, they're going to love the fact that they are doing good in the world. They're changing things for people. Seniors want to be at home. Bit by bit, they're helping seniors stay in their home and it's important to them. It matters to them that they're doing something that makes them feel good and it's good for the world. Professional growth should be important to them as well. The financial piece of this also needs to be important to them. If they're going to drive you to the next level, that needs to matter to them. But you don't want someone that that's all they care about. They need to feel that impact and that they're doing something good in the world. But it's okay to get paid well to do that. That's what I've always said I'm making a huge difference and I'm also getting paid for doing that. That's a win-win in my book.
Speaker 2:A variety of responsibilities this is not the kind of job for a person who wants to sit at a desk, check in, check out. They have 10 tasks they do. They're the same tasks every single day and they need that consistency. They need it to be the same every day. This is not for somebody like that. They will not be able to do this job. Someone who loves a challenge and loves the variety of responsibilities, one they don't even know what their day is going to look like. Somebody who likes that this is perfect for them. It's a surprise. It's a surprise. The whole day I was going to do X, y and Z and now I'm over here doing A, b, c and that's okay. They like that. It keeps them motivated and energized. They're out from behind a desk. Gen Z does not want to be behind a desk a lot of the millennials don't want to be behind a desk.
Speaker 2:That's perfect for this role. And someone who likes to socialize, like I, like to socialize with certain people and there are days where I'm just like I'm. I'm done, I don't want to socialize anymore. They have to like to socialize at work, enjoy the networking, enjoy meeting other people at work. So those are the benefits of the home care sales role the right personality.
Speaker 2:Who to hire? It starts with your ad If you're looking for someone with experience in this role. They know this role, they know the industry. When they're looking for a new job, they go to Indeed and they look under home health. That is where I would look. That is where I placed my ads and the headline that you put. That's the first thing they're going to read and if it's not good, they're just going to keep scrolling. Be sure not to mention things like the sky's the limit or unlimited income. Salespeople don't believe that anymore. We've been burned. When you're in sales, everybody promises you the moon, the stars, everything, and it doesn't pan out. So those kinds of headlines are not gonna attract. And it might attract somebody, but it's gonna be like the used car salesperson, which is not gonna work either. So a good headline, community liaison, feel good position with great earning potential, something like that.
Speaker 2:You're talking about the fact that they're doing something really good for people and they're going to make really good money doing it. That's the two main components of this person that you're looking for. The qualities that you're looking for is somebody who's warm, authentic, humble, trustworthy. That piece of it is important because that's somebody that the social workers and skilled nursing facilities are going to connect with and that's somebody the families are going to connect with. They need to have those things. Social workers take a lot of the same classes as psychologists do. They can see an icky car salesman person walking through the door. They can. Within a second. They're like Nope, they're in it for the money. They don't care Really, they just want money. They're pretending to care. No, I'm not referring to this person, they'll see through it. So that you really need to find someone who's warm and authentic, trustworthy, humble. But they also need to be driven. I've hired people that have all the compassion and all of the warmth and all of that, but they're not driven. That person who's warm and compassionate might be good with the social worker, but they're probably not going to be able to close a cell with a family because they don't want to take the seniors money. They don't want to. They're just not comfortable doing that piece of it. So it's.
Speaker 2:I've called these people unicorns. Honestly, I have in the past, because I hired again two different people for this role before. I had to have two separate people, so finding it all in one person can be difficult. But if you know what you're looking for and you add, you know you write the ad in a certain way, you're going to get what you're looking for. They need to be dependable. You're going to give in a little bit on something right. This is a hefty list of what we're looking for.
Speaker 2:So what you might lose out a little bit on is detail and organized. These people like to fly by the seat of their pants, run from one place to another, make friends, network. They're really good at all of that, but are they good at tracking it? Not always, and if I have to give up a little bit on that, what I'm going to do is give them a handicap. I'm going to give them a CRM that's going to help them track everything quickly because they have this much time. It's much better that they're spending their time out in the field, networking, meeting people, talking to social workers, setting up lunch and learn. That's all really important.
Speaker 2:The tracking is just as important, though, because you as an owner, those referral sources belong to you. If something happens to your community liaison, you know they quit, they walk off, they have to move out of the country. I don't know. You should still have everything. You should know who they saw last, where they are in their relationship, have they referred? What is the social worker's name at Desert Cove? I should know all of this. It's my information. So having a CRM that's going to be easy for them to use is going to be really important. We have one. It has a mobile app they literally can run.
Speaker 2:I always train my marketers when you're in the parking lot before you leave. You enter that step into the CRM before you leave that parking lot and you enter a task so that you remember to come back next week. You have to continually do that before you leave the parking lot, every time you do a stop. If it's fast, easy for them, they don't have to go home and do it all at night after working a long day. That's the way to go, so make that part easy for them, because they're probably not going to be organized and detail-oriented. It's just too much to ask.
Speaker 2:Maybe, after getting all of these other things right, they do need to enjoy a challenge. They need to be flexible. Their day is never, probably ever, going to go the way that it's planned. Ever, ever, ever, probably. Especially if they're successful and they're they're making those connections Everybody's going to be counting on them. They're going to have social workers calling them all day. Hey, hey, hey. Remember that lady I was telling you about. Her daughter just walked in. Is there any way you can get over here now to talk to the daughter, cause she's not, she didn't stay long and she's leaving town. Is there any way you can do that? You're doing solids for people all day long. That's what ends up happening if you're good and they like you and you have relationships and they know they can count on you.
Speaker 2:The flexibility is crucial. If I'm on the west side of town, I'm doing marketing, I get that call and I have to run out to the east side of town. You never say, well, no, I can't come today, of course you're going to drop everything and run over there. Of course that's what you're going to do, and so it's you. They have to be OK with that. There are people that are like I'm making these 10 stops today, I'm doing it in this order and nothing is going to interrupt that.
Speaker 2:That's not going to work. That is not going to work in this role. And then I've always talked about being pleasantly persistent. We are not able to be strong push sales in this role with the referral sources or with the families. It's just being pleasantly persistent and we'll get into how they start to trust you and all of those things. The other thing they need to be able to do is to be able to defend and bounce back. It's important when you're interviewing somebody for this role, that you ask them about a time that they were trying to sell something or something happened and they had to defend themselves and keep that relationship going, and that'll that'll show you if they're even if they can answer that question. That that's going to show you their ability. I did enter or added there Are they're going to get the?
Speaker 1:video. Right, they may not get the slides, but they're going to get the video video yep, the video for sure. Okay, we do okay, we do have one question, if you want it, oh, okay go ahead um, can you share what the current base salary and commission structure would be for marketers and I? You may answer this later, so so I'm not sure if you want to do that.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, so you know it varies across the country. What I can tell you is, let's just say, the average income for someone you know, maybe with a degree in sales, maybe their average is like 85, something like that. I'm just going to throw a number out there. I would probably pay in the 60s salary and the rest of it would be up to them to make up a commission. I don't want them to be comfortable. 85 is kind of comfortable, at least where I live. That's a comfortable you know I don't really need. I mean, of course you want to make more, but I don't really have to make more Like that's a comfortable amount of money to make. So I'm going to start someone at 60, maybe 62 and get them to build the rest of their income from commission. I don't want them to be complacent. I don't want them to be comfortable. I want them to be working towards more and if they work towards more and they see what happens, the reward that comes and that they can continue to build, that really motivates them too, and I don't want them to miss out on that opportunity. If they're comfortable, they may never push themselves to the next place and see what's really possible. So that's what I would say to that.
Speaker 2:Okay, I did put some one-liners for the ad job description. I won't read through all of them If you are going to get the video. We have a lot to cover and I say only two hours, but it is a lot. We've got a lot to cover. So I think I have two slides of one-liners for the ad job description. You could put it in the job description, you could put it in the ad. But these are the things that I put. If you want to attract the right kind of people, then these are the kinds of things that you would want to put in your ad.
Speaker 1:You can you can also take a picture. Go back one slide and also take a picture with your phone, if you'd like. Oh yeah, I'll leave it here for just a screenshot of it or make sure there's one slide and here's the next one. And Jocelyn asks a follow-up question what would the commission be?
Speaker 2:So the commission I've always tied commission to the book of business that they brought into the company and I, you know, I would say three to 6% of what they've signed for the first while the client is with you for the first year, is a good, a good amount. That way, if they're signing 24 as their commission goes up and that's good for the business too and if they're tied to that client for a year and something's going south, you can always call them back out. Hey, you know the adult daughter is really unhappy. Could you give her a call and see if we can save this job? They're going to be more apt to do that because they're getting commissioned. Still, my marketers would go see my 24s. They would just go visit them and bring them flowers just because they didn't. They didn't want it to end. I mean, 24 commission was good commission. So I tried to tie the commission to their book of business, the jobs that they brought in that they signed.
Speaker 2:All right, micro class methodology for sales training. Why are we doing small classes? Why don't we just pack them in? Why don't we have 50 to 100 people in the class? Because it just is too big. We want the marketers to let their guard down. We want them to say the things. You know. I went in there and she told me she just didn't like the way that our company behaves. And the last rep was terrible. Or I did something really embarrassing I called a social worker a nurse. We want them to be able to share all of it and if it's a huge class, they're just not going to do it. That's a big piece of it. We want, we need their authentic self in the class so we can help them. The instructor also really gets to know the students. If you know intimacy, we're very intimate with our classes. We can pull a student aside or meet with them.
Speaker 2:I know Annette met with somebody today about a lunch and learn. They were very nervous. We teach two lunch and learns that are wonderful, but they wanted just a little more detail before they went to the lunch and learn. So she met with them. So we do some one-on-one assistance for people who need it. I had someone that had a lunch and learn get scheduled. She got in front of the social worker. She's like oh, I'd love you to come and talk to us, but we hadn't covered lunch and learns yet and so she was scared to death. She booked it, brave soul. She said, sure, let's do it next Wednesday. And she left that sniff and call me oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. So we move sniffs up. Now we cover sniffs in week four. It used to be like week seven or eight. We moved it up to week four because people are getting in faster than we expected. So you get that one-on-one assistance.
Speaker 2:There's attention to detail. We know the classes and we send a survey out in week three to see how everybody's really feeling. And sometimes they'll say we'd really like you to emphasize this. And so we will. We'll go in and change the slides around for that class and emphasize something that maybe we didn't, or maybe we add it from now on to all of our classes because it's a great idea. So we're very engaged with our classes because they're small. We also provide feedback to the owners.
Speaker 2:There's been two times now that Annette was doing the training and she's like you know, these two people, they're just not marketers. They're not going to be marketers no matter what they do. It's just, it's just not going to happen for them. And so I'll call the owner and tell them and they'll say well, and I'll tell them why. I mean, one was really really shy and just was not going out because she was just too scared. The other one just didn't care too much about anything. So anyway, when I called the owners they were like that's exactly what we were thinking. We were worried about that. Thank you so much for letting us know. We're going to look at hiring somebody else. So you know that you get a second. I guess you know they got like two, three eyes, more eyes on them, more people talking to them, engaging with them and seeing kind of the same thing. We had another one whose rep wasn't getting out there and seemed nervous, but she wasn't scared or shy, she just seemed nervous about it, and so they had another marketer. I'm like just have them go out together for a while, let her see the other marketer in action, and that'll help build her confidence too. And it fixed it. It worked after that.
Speaker 2:So there's lots of things that can be done and we're there to help for that. We also celebrate wins together as a group and losses as a group. We're there to support each other. If, you know, something happens, it's earned trust. They have trust in us. They trust each other. Many of them stay in touch after class is over, because there's no competing, there's nobody from your area in the class, so they're in contact with each other and sharing ideas. Still, class is well over because it is such an intimate kind of earned trust environment. There's more sharing and learning from one another.
Speaker 2:So we teach them. Okay, this is what you do with SNFs, this is what you bring with you, this is what you say Go, do it. Go to five or 10 this week and get it done. And everybody comes back and shares their story, their challenges, the successes, and they're hearing what's happened with everybody. And I think that's really powerful, because not only did they get to see what happened to them, but there's five other people they almost experienced the same thing and if they didn't, they're seeing what else could happen and how to handle that. If it wasn't a good thing, it was hard to overcome. We do a lot of role playing and practicing too, which we can do in a small group, so that's why the small classes works really well for us.
Speaker 2:All right, the core components of effective home care, sales, training, empathy and expertise are the key things when you're dealing with a referral source and with the families and the seniors, you have to be empathetic and they have to see you as an expert in home care. Those things have to come down. It just comes down to that. Empathy opens the door to trust and expertise invites them to step through. Empathy and expertise will strengthen relationships with clients and the families. It promotes trust, collaboration and it results in a solution.
Speaker 2:So I've got a couple of case studies. I won't go deep into them Again, we don't have a ton of time but Alicia's father recently died. He was her mother's primary caregiver and Alicia lives out of state. So Alicia's calling me and this is what she's telling me. Okay, so I'm just going to give you that Another case study we're in. I think it's the next slide, a couple of slides from now we're going to dig deeper into these. Another case study Sarah's dad recently fell. He broke his hip. He's in a skilled nursing facility and he'll be discharging in a week.
Speaker 2:These you can see that you must have empathy when working with these clients, with these prospects, adult children right, because this isn't. You know, my car broke down. These are people, these are lives. You have to be empathetic and they are wanting. The adult children and I know many of you have talked to lots and lots of adult children want some. They're in crisis. To us it's a little crisis, right. I mean, we've been through this 100 times with hundreds of clients. It's not so much crisis for us, for them they're in crisis. They are in crisis. Mom and dad have been in charge. They've called the shots my whole life. And now now, what? What do I do? Dad is gone Like what. I don't know what to do. Or my strong father who's been on the roof and fixing tiles and just done everything. My hero has broken his hip and I have to help.
Speaker 2:I'm in charge. They are in crisis. So it's important that you have empathy, you stop whatever you're doing and give them 100% focus, and that you're an expert. They want to take mom, dad and hand them to you and say, please, help me with this, fix this for me, please. And in order to do that, they need to know you're an expert and they need to know you really, really care. So that's going to be the focus of these trust building exercises Service inquiry focus in these trust building exercises, service inquiry To book a service inquiry, you're going to need the empathy, the expertise.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I've always called it the 10 second connect. You need to connect with them emotionally within 10 seconds and I know that's like what I mean. It sounds very strange, but it's very easily done. If Alicia called me and said to me my father recently died. He was my mom's caregiver. I live out of state right away I would probably even interrupt her. I am so sorry to hear that, alicia. That's so difficult and your mom's going to need to build trust in somebody else to care for her. I completely understand what you're going through right there. I'm empathetic. I've I've built trust with her. I completely understand what you're going through Right there, I'm empathetic, I've built trust with her.
Speaker 2:She knows I've been through this before because I you know I understood the fact that she's going to have to trust somebody else to take care of her. Now Same thing with the broken hip. She calls and she says my father broke his hip. I'm so sorry. In situations like this it can be so difficult. When they get home it's really hard to bounce back from a broken hip. Again I'm empathetic, I'm expert, I've showed expertise. So in that 10 second I've connected with them and I've told, I've shown them that they can trust me because I've been through this before and because I really care, those two things have to happen very quickly in the service inquiry. Because I really care, those two things have to happen very quickly in the service inquiry. The only thing you're trying to do in that service inquiry is book that assessment.
Speaker 2:Don't get ahead of yourself. Okay, I need another job. I have to have five signed jobs this week. I'm only at three. This needs to be the other one you can't. Don't get into signing the job. Don't try to sell them anything yet. Just get the assessment booked, that's it.
Speaker 2:If you change that to your focus when you're on the phone with them and you take it in bits and pieces. We'll book the assessment, I'll go out and then I'll sign the job. It just changes the pressure when you're on the phone and really you need to sit in front of them anyway to really know what they're going to need. And so sometimes it's difficult because they want to tell you the whole life story. I've been through this a million times, you know so.
Speaker 2:When they say well, my father can walk still, but they think he might need to use a walker after, they're not sure. Well, we can establish that at the assessment. Well, how much do you think it'll cost if you have to bathe, or do you think he's going to need help with bathing? We can establish that at the assessment. Keep bringing them back to the assessment when I come out to the home to do the assessment. We'll be able to. We'll be able to establish that. So it can be very difficult with some of them to keep, you know, getting them. I'm not saying the phone call needs to be 10 seconds because it's not going to be and you need to come off as being caring, compassionate. You don't want to be so fast that they just don't think you care at all, but the idea is get the assessment book and get it booked for today. I don't care what you're doing. I'm in the area. I could be there at three o'clock today.
Speaker 2:Does that work for you, because if you put it off for three, four days, three or four days from now, dad's going to think he doesn't need care or another home care agency has stepped in and is going to sign them up. Sometimes they can't meet with you right away, and that's okay, but you should try to meet with them today if at all possible. The assessment you need to reestablish your connection with the caller. At the assessment I have been in assessments with 15 family members. Oh my goodness, you walk in and the whole family's there and they're all waiting to hear what you have to say. And half of them want mom to stay home and want a caregiver.
Speaker 2:And the other half said nope, I want her in assisted living. I'm sick of worrying about this. Dad's gone. She needs to be in assisted living and it can be a tough, a tough thing to do, but reestablish your connection with the caller. That's going to be really important when you sit down. You know Alicia, I understand and you know. Give your condolences to her mother. I'm so sorry your husband passed.
Speaker 2:If you know his name, use his name. I always use their names when you're on the phone with the inquiry. Get as many people's names as you can. So when you walk in you have the names you know. As we talked on the phone. You know, I know your husband was doing everything for you. We, you know we have wonderful caregivers that can handle this and we're going to talk all about that.
Speaker 2:So reestablish that connection when you get in, because everybody in the room now needs to know that you have empathy and you're an expert in this area. So connect with everyone in the room, be honest and set realistic expectations. I cannot stress this enough. We're in sales and you know everything's wonderful and bright and shiny. It's going to be wonderful. We can't do that because this is home care.
Speaker 2:It's not going to be perfect, because we're dealing with human beings and you don't want to say it's not going to be perfect, but you're going to tell them. You know we're dealing with real life people. We can do the very best we can. What I can promise you is that we'll fix it If anything goes wrong. If there are any problems at all, you will always be able to reach me and I will always be able to help you resolve it.
Speaker 2:And so don't set expectations. Like you know, we're the red carpet surface and we never make mistakes and we're the best company out there. It just you can't. This is not a product. This is not, I don't know, a washing machine Like this is people. You're depending on other human beings to care for another human being, and human beings are not machines. We're human beings and we have sick children and we have emergencies come up and we have a parent who's going to scream at the caregiver every time she walks in the door like it's not going to be perfect. And so if you, if you think it might be perfect, then then please think about it, cause it's just it's not realistic to think that it's just going to go. You know, perfect it's not going to be roses and honey, valerie.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, we have a question along this line, and that is for our company assessments. Oh, for, our company assessments are completed by the RN. What happens if we can't book the assessment for that same day?
Speaker 2:I think it would depend on how the adult child sounds. Some of them want it to be today because they want this problem solved and you're going to really have to. I don't know like I would be worried that they're talking to other companies. I mean, I guess I would try to find out how they found out about you. If it was a social worker that you know only refers to you, maybe I'd let it go a couple of days. If they found you on the Internet, I would absolutely get out there. If it's not that the RN can't go, somebody else maybe needs to go, because if they're online they're obviously looking at other companies.
Speaker 1:You're not the only person online in your area, so it probably would depend on how they found out about me and then I would go from there depend on how they found out about me, and then I would go from there In that case, maybe having a per diem RN on staff that you could call if the other RN isn't you know. So they're only working the hours. You know somebody part-time, maybe a stay-at-home mom, somebody who could fill in when you know your RN is going to be busy all day with visits or something else. So, yeah, making it happen. And then you know, that brings me to this, which is not a question on here, but if you have an RN who's doing the assessments, that's fine, but that RN also needs to understand that they're still selling the service as they're doing the assessment.
Speaker 1:So whoever that person is, can't be wham bam. Thank you, ma'am. They need to be a very compassionate and not salesy, necessarily, but they need to further that trust and not be a negative nudge when they walk in the door. They need to be a very positive influence on that family and a very reassuring. Positive influence on that family and very reassuring. So I would say that in some states maybe that's mandatory. I think there is some mandatory stuff in different states, but with an RN like every 90 days or something like that Georgia, tennessee. So anyway. Just having said that, they need a little sales training too, perhaps not to make them sales people, but to have them further that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think too that there's something to be said about whoever talked to them on the phone being that same person coming in Cause again. That adult daughter is hoping to God that you can convince mom dad to accept this care, and she chose your company because there was something about you on the phone that thought, okay, mom will listen to her, dad's going to listen to her, and then if somebody else shows up, that can be disheartening too. So I know it is probably the rule in some places that it needs to be a nurse that comes in and does that. But to Valerie's point, who is a nurse?
Speaker 2:Not all nurses have that bedside manner sales ability. They really are kind of black and white and they have to be. If you're in an ER and you don't follow the rules, black to white, someone could die. So, like I get it, you have to be black and white. But sales is not black and white, it's gray, red, purple, like you're bobbing and weaving and trying to figure out the best way to make this work. It's not. It's not black and white. It'll never be black and white because, again, it's people. So I'm not saying a nurse wouldn't be good, but there is something to be said about the person on the phone being the same person that follows this all the way through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's from the top down and making sure your team is in sync with the, you know the mission, vision and values you provide and that when you walk in the home everybody's speaking the same language and being that reassuring person. Rns are task oriented and they're very scientific and clinically driven, and so you know it doesn't matter if it's an old nurse like me or a young nurse. They can get wrapped up in the five other tasks that they have to do today, and this is just one of them, and so they don't have their game face on. They are there to do their job and leave, and it can't be that way. I have a couple of other comments. Greg says that we have an RN do assessments, but our marketer does an evaluation separately. The evaluation is the meeting with the client and family to explain and answer questions, which is very nice. That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very good. Okay, All right. So then recommend a schedule you fill will meet their needs. Again, you're the expert.
Speaker 2:This is where some of the marketers I've learned struggle a lot, is they, you know? If you know someone needs to bathe three times a week, I mean that's the most we can get seniors to bathe most of the time and we need to do bathing. That schedule should be a minimum of three times a week. Right, like you have to arm your marketers with what does a schedule look like if a person has a hip replacement, has Alzheimer's, has whatever it is? Because they're expecting the marketer to put the schedule together. Are they always going to do what you suggest? No, because seniors don't want as many hours as we know they probably need, but you have to start somewhere. They're expecting for your marketer to say, based on everything I've seen, you need services at least three days a week because of bathing and we're also going to be doing X, y and Z, so probably four hours a day, three days a week. They're expecting that, and so that's kind of where the marketers I've seen them fall off and also asking them to sign.
Speaker 1:You know now okay, we've done this whole song and dance.
Speaker 2:We've got it down.
Speaker 2:How do you get them to sign? We can start on Wednesday. If the agreement is signed today, I can get that out and we can get that completed now. That's it. It doesn't have to be hard or uncomfortable. They need the service. There is an agreement that needs to be signed, and I used to say too if you want to start on Wednesday, it's Monday. I really need to give my team enough time to find a really good caregiver for your mom. So if we get the agreement signed today, I'm able to give them this and they can start looking for that caregiver. So that's a great way to get the job assigned.
Speaker 2:Traditional sales skills so sales techniques with empathy and understanding. So basic sales. You have a prospect, who's referred, you're building rapport, you're understanding needs, you're asking questions, you do your presentation, you overcome objections, you close the deal. Those are the steps. It's not that different here, except that we are doing more with the empathy and there's probably more understanding going on too. So let's say you are selling a car and we're working on number three understanding needs and asking questions. Those questions might be something like are you going to take this car on trips? Is this going to be your car to drive to work? You know it's really, really cold in the winter. Do you want seat warmers? Like what's their deal? Like what matters to them? Is it mileage? Is it the cost of the car? Is it the bell? Do they want all the bells and whistles? Like you have to figure out what that is so that you can give them that and you know what kind of car to, to show them right, like that's. That's what the understanding and questions look like. It's a car. There's not a lot of empathy going on.
Speaker 2:If you're going to book an assessment with Alicia and her mom remember, alicia is the one whose father died and her mom is now living alone and her father was her caregiver it's going to be very different than selling a car You're going to. You're booking the assessment with Alicia. Alicia, I understand now your mom is alone. That's going to be really difficult for her and challenging. She's going to need somebody that is with her that she trusts as much as she trusted your dad. It's going to be difficult, but we can do that. Let's. Let's meet with. I want to meet with you and your mom and talk about her needs and what about how did her husband care for her? That that, what are the things that helped her the most? What were the most important things? I really would like to sit with you and spend some time and really understand the situation so I can find the appropriate caregiver. What does Wednesday or what does it later this afternoon, look like for you? That's how you would book the assessment with Alicia. It's very different than selling a car. I'm just trying to show you like the empathy that's involved versus selling a product and selling the service.
Speaker 2:If you're selling a computer and we're looking at number five, we're overcoming objections. Some of the objections you might get selling a computer is it fast enough? It's too expensive, there's not enough memory. You know this is the old model, I want a new model, but I don't want to pay that much money for a new model. Those are kind of the objections For assessment with Sarah and her dad.
Speaker 2:I'm sitting in front of them and he broke his hip. I don't need, I'm not. I'm at the. I'm at the sniff because that's where we sign jobs. We sign dogs at the sniff. We don't wait until they get home. I'm at the sniff and I'm talking. I don't need anybody. I've been doing this my whole life. I've fallen before. I don't need help, I'm good.
Speaker 2:And Sarah's looking at you like Don, come on, you got to help me here, like I got to go to work. I can't be with him. He doesn't want her there either. And let's say his name's Bob. Bob, I understand. You're a strong man. You've been your whole life. Everybody depends on you, including Sarah.
Speaker 2:But you have broken your head. It's not the same as what's happened in the past. This can be very serious and I know you're doing great here at the SNF. I talked to PT. They think you're doing great, but when you get home it's going to be hard for a few days. The furniture is lower, your bed's lower, the bathroom's further away. Trust me, I've been through this a lot. You're going to need some help for at least a few days. I know you don't want the help. Nobody wants the help. You're not the first person to tell me they don't want this help. Of course you don't want the help, but I promise you you need the help and with a hip injury, we have to be really, really careful. When you get home, you can't bend more than 90 degrees. You can't sit certain ways. You need help, so that you do not re-injure yourself and land right back here. You want to come back here? No, you don't want to come back here. You just need a caregiver for a few days and then he'll do it. So it's very, very different. So I just want to make sure everybody gets the empathy piece of this, because we're dealing with human beings.
Speaker 2:Importance of referral sources. Identify the key referral sources in your community. So we all know hospitals are wonderful. They're very difficult to get in. Things have really changed with hospitals. They're hiring companies to vet home care agencies to put them on the list. It's a whole thing. I have found, though, here in Arizona, we have rehab hospitals popping up everywhere, and I think, if I had to guess, the hospitals are losing some income sending people to rehabs before they go home. So they've come up with these rehab hospitals which brilliant idea. They're on the same campus, same parking lot, typically as a hospital, or maybe across the street, and they're under the same umbrella as the hospital, like they have the same banner care or whatever it is. They have the same name, but they're letting us in. They let you walk into the rehab hospitals. It might be one or two floors. Everybody's going home. They're all rehabbing.
Speaker 2:So if you look for rehab hospitals in your area. They're popping up all over here in Arizona, I'm hoping. I'm guessing it's probably the same across the country. Skilled nursing facilities are an excellent place. That was my number one hands down referral source Independent living communities or senior residential living areas, where they're all in homes in a residential area assisted living communities, memory care, home health agencies, hospice agencies, geriatric care managers this is just a group of them, probably the top group that I would go out to market to Three aspects of developing relationships.
Speaker 2:To build trust and credibility, you must know your industry. You must know your offering. You need to understand the role of the person that you are trying to get referrals from. What does their day-to-day look like? We teach this in the training class. If you don't understand their role, you don't know how you fit into the role. You don't know how you're going to go in there and make their life easier, make their day-to-day easier. You also need to use their language.
Speaker 2:I remember years ago I was in a skilled nursing facility talking to a social worker and I was giving her follow-up someone that she referred to me and I said, yeah, that client, mary, that you referred to us, she's doing really, really well and I saw her whole face change and I said what's wrong? And she goes client. And I said, yeah, and she goes. That's patient. She was really insulted that I called her a client because that's business-y, that's money-oriented, that's dirty language. They don't like it. So even when you're talking about your clients that are in their homes that you're taking care of, they are patients.
Speaker 2:When you're standing in front of a social worker, a nurse, pt, ot, do not call them clients. They don't like that. So you do need to use the language, the person that you're talking to. You need to go back consistently every eight to 10 days. I know that seems like a whole lot. I promise you it's that often. Are you going to get a face-to-face every time? No, should you expect a face-to-face every time? No, one face-to-face a month. The rest of it you are dropping things off and if you don't have things to drop off.
Speaker 2:You need to figure that out. We provide all of that stuff in Mastery Circle. We have a program where we create them for you and mail them to you. A brochure and a business card is not enough to drop off every eight to 10 days they're going to tell you I have your brochures, I don't need any more brochures. You have to be creative and even your leave-behinds can differentiate you and make you look different and like you really care and you're going the extra mile. Another way to develop relationship is to have effective communication and follow-up.
Speaker 2:If referred, stop on your way in to see the patient, to see the social worker or the director of nursing if it's assisted living, to see the social worker or the director of nursing if it's assisted living. Stop by and see them on the way so they can tell you a little bit about what to expect when you go down. And they're pretty good about it. Dad doesn't want the care. Daughter says he has to have the care. He can be grumpy and mean, or he threw something at the nurse, I don't know. They're going to give you the skinny before you go in there and it's good for you to have some background information. Stop by, see them or email them or call them with the results of the assessment. I would stop by, but I'm not going to take their time. If I'm spending a lot of time with them they're not going to refer. They feel like every time they refer they have to spend a half hour with me. They're not going to refer anymore. So sometimes I would do a quick. I had like little cards, that thank you cards or post-its, you know, signed for three days a week. They said we can start whenever you need us to, whatever. We can start as early as tomorrow, whatever it is, so that they have some feedback. It can be an email, phone call also, but make it quick. They do not have time to talk with you for a long time. A thank you note for a referral. Anytime somebody refers somebody to you, give them a thank you note. Every once in a while I'll add a cup of coffee or a cookie or a brownie, something to go with it. Not every single time do they get something. They should get a handwritten thank you note every single time, even if it didn't turn into a job. Because they tried, they referred. It didn't turn into a job, that's okay. Thank you for trusting me with your patients. I appreciate that, so they should always get some kind of thank you from you Also providing value and support to referral sources.
Speaker 2:Come to the facility to do the assessment before the discharge. That social worker wants to know that this is handled. They start working on discharges the day somebody's admitted A good social worker. That's what they're taught to do. A piece of this is home care. If they know that when they tell you they send you a referral, it's going to be handled and it's going to be handled quickly, like while they're still in the facility, that is beautiful for them because they can check it off the list. They've got lots to do. You're only one piece of this discharge plan. They might have to order a walker or a wheelchair. They're on new meds. They might have to get doctors to sign off on a bunch of stuff, Like you're one small little piece and I can tell you we have interviewed lots of social workers. If you're in our sales training you have to watch all these interviews.
Speaker 2:I am shocked to hear that they will give a referral to a home care agent who never gets back to them, Like they never hear from them again, and it's frustrating because then they don't know what to do. Well, did they get my message? Are they working on it? Do they have somebody? Are they going to come? They don't know what to do because they referred it to you. Did they send it to somebody else? Because you didn't respond. So I am shocked to hear that that's happening.
Speaker 2:But it was a common, common conversation. All of them said something to this nature. So communicate with them. If they say to you, I've got a referral for you, I'm on it, I can be there at two o'clock. Do you want me to stop by and say hi on my way through? Like no, be very communicative with them. Offer to communicate with the family about discharge. As it gets closer to we know that discharges can move some from time to time. They say it's going to be this day and they move it up three days. Offer to say hey, I've got to call the daughter anyway. Do you want me to let her know her mom's discharging Wednesday instead of Friday? Some social workers want to do it themselves, but you can still call the daughter, but some of them will go. Yeah, you've got it. Thank you, Go for it. I love that about you. Thank you, Some will want to do it themselves, but some appreciate that Be available to them when they need you.
Speaker 2:Give them your cell phone and act like nobody else gets it. You know like I really want you to be able to get a hold of me quickly. I can see that you're very busy. You've got a lot going on. Here's my personal cell phone. Text me anytime you need anything. I will be here for you. That really speaks volumes to them. Do we have a question, valerie?
Speaker 1:I see it lit up. Let me unmute myself. Okay, I'm speaking with a potential client whose wife is still in rehab with no discharge order yet. I've offered twice to visit them there, but the husband said he'd call me once they have the discharge order. I don't want to seem pushy. Should I try to convince him to let me come in, or should I just wait? Do you know the?
Speaker 2:social worker and and if you don't, I would find out who the social worker is for his wife and I would talk to the social worker. You don't need to let the husband you know you're doing any of this and just say I understand. You know they called me. I'm assuming they called some other way and didn't come to you through the social worker and so it's a great opportunity for you to get to know the social worker. The social worker is going to want them signed up before they discharge, so she might be able to. She might say to you she's going to be here a month. We don't know. I mean, most of them are not there a month, but who knows what the situation is and she might agree with him. We need to wait. But she might also say thank God, somebody's on this.
Speaker 2:I have been trying to get this man, you know, to do this. I think he thinks she's going to get better and need nothing. That's what he thinks and that's what he's hoping for. And a lot of times the husbands especially want to be able to be that person for their wife and don't want somebody else coming in because they're supposed to take care of her. But in many situations. They're just. You know, there's transfers involved and bathing and all the things. It's a lot for another person to handle, especially as they're aging. Okay, all right.
Speaker 2:Yep that's it. We will move on to the next one, the five pillars of successful relationship building, five impressions. And we go into this deep in our sales training. I found through the years there are five impressions that need to happen before a referral source really can trust you enough to send you a client. And you know it used to be that we could get in front of referral sources. We saw them all the time, you know, because there weren't as many, they weren't interrupted as much all day. Right now it's home care agent after home care agent. They're just flooded with people Back in the day, you know they might see one or two people a day and that was it.
Speaker 2:And so I would count my visits and, okay, this is impression one. First visit, I'm going to build trust with them. That's going to be my goal today and we go into how to build trust in impression one. And then the next time I got to go see them, we would work on building confidence. Right, it was every visit. The way things are now we don't get to do that because they're just too busy.
Speaker 2:If you have a lunch and learn, many times all five impressions can happen during the lunch and learn You're spending 15, 20 minutes with them. If you're actually teaching them something of interest that really shows you care and you get it like. You understand home care, you are the expert. You can move through impression one through five in one lunch and learn and you're good, you're set, you're good to go Lunch and learns are super powerful, but you do need to be teaching them something about home care.
Speaker 2:They care about your business, they want to know about your business but, honestly, they're probably not going to sit down just to hear about your business. You need to be teaching them something about home care, helping them to understand something about home care that they don't already know. And we give those to you in the sales training class the things that they don't know and the lunch and learns. So impression one is building trust in person and online, and Valerie's going to talk about marrying your feet on the ground to your online presence. That's part of what she's going to talk about Building confidence in person and online, building camaraderie. Camaraderie is just like you and social worker. You're in the same industry.
Speaker 2:You're in the let's get seniors better industry. You're both in the same industry. You happen to be an expert in home care, she's an expert in social work. That's what's got to happen. That has to happen. And you're working together to get stubborn Bob with the hip replacement to come home with the caregiver right. That's camaraderie. And the adult child's helping you to prove you're reliable.
Speaker 2:That's if you're reliable, then your company is reliable. If they know they can depend on you, then they know they can depend on your company and this is another reason why it's so important that you come back and do those assessments. If it's in the actual building, so if they're in assisted living, that director of nursing is going to want you to be the person to meet with their resident in a skilled nursing facility. Social worker's gonna want you to meet with the family, the patient in the building and then ask for the business. One thing that's so scary for salespeople is to ask for the business, because that's where the rejection nope, not doing it, don't want your services that rejection comes in and it's scary. We are not really asking for the business in the business development side of this.
Speaker 2:When we're working with our referral sources, we are just directing a referral. When you look at it that way, it takes all the fear away. They have to refer this patient somewhere. This person can't go home alone, can't go home with their spouse, who also needs assistance. They're going to refer to home care anyway. Why not to you? That's all you're doing is directing their referral. So it's not as scary as maybe selling something else where they can say nope, don't want your service, this person needs you, they have patients that need your service, so you're just going to direct the referral. Oh, we're halfway through Any questions. We've answered some as we go.
Speaker 1:We're halfway through Any questions. We've answered some as we go. Yeah, we've. No, no, we have. I mean, if you want, if you have any questions, yes, we are going to send the replay out to everyone, so you don't have to ask that question. We, I promise you we will. But if you do have questions about anything that Dawn has talked about so far, please type them into the Q&A section not the chat, but the Q&A section and she will certainly answer those questions.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think if there's anything that we had talked about in our other meeting, that might have been a great question for you, but you've answered most of them, I think. To me, knowing who to hire and what traits to look for and some of the pay options is really good information. I find, I think, that just listening to you all talk about this and you and Annette and Lisa that hiring the wrong person for this job is is half the battle. That's the problem. Yeah, so, and and a lot of I also I think is good to mention a lot of the owners of these of home care agencies, um, big or small, go through this training themselves and they learn a lot about how hard this job is and the demand on their time, and so I think that's a real eye opener for agency owners to understand how challenging it is, if they've never done it before, to be in that sales role.
Speaker 1:And I think we do have a question If I'm going to be the marketer, what quality traits should be most important for the office? If I'm going to be the marketer Okay, so you're, maybe you're the owner and I'm going to be the marketer Okay, so you're, maybe you're the owner and you're going to be the marketer what quality trait should be most important for the office or operations manager and how to build a good incentive structure, a good sorry, a good office or incentive structure for the marketer.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm not understanding For the office or operations manager.
Speaker 2:So the office and operations manager typically gets a percentage of revenue, which is why you need to look at it. You don't want to give all of it to the marketer and then there's not enough to kind of go around. But I think a percentage of revenue because they are running the whole show. They're watching everybody and making sure we have enough caregivers and the caregivers we have are staying and we're doing a quality service. And they're making sure the scheduling team is staffed out ahead so that you can take quick starts and you can. You can start like right now, and you have a bunch of caregivers available for call offs and your caregivers are loyal to you, and you have a bunch of caregivers available for call-offs and your caregivers are loyal to you. And they're also making sure that marketing is doing what they're supposed to be doing, so that it's just all. It's a lot of pieces, lots of moving parts, and the operations manager is having to keep them all in line. So usually a percentage of revenue and I don't really have a percentage off the top of my head and it's ongoing revenue. It's not, you know, with a marketer, it's their book of business the first year. It's just the ongoing revenue. Sometimes I've been paid where when we hit this level, you get this bonus, and when we hit this level in revenue, you get this bonus. So it could be a percentage of revenue or it could be big pops every time the revenue bumps up to the next level. And I would say your operations manager needs to be driven and have that. I don't know if they need to be salespeople, but they need to understand that piece that they're going to train the marketer. They need to understand the importance of that and they need to be driven themselves if they're going to get every department, every person in that building, to be moving in the same direction at the same time after the same goal.
Speaker 2:It's not an easy thing to do. A lot of juggling. You feel like you're hurting cats half the day. It's not, it's not easy. You've got upset caregivers and you've got to make nice with them and it's just. It's just a lot. And so you know the goal at the end of the day, revenue is moving from here to here and they hit that mark. They either get a bonus when that happens or they're just getting a percentage revenue. They need to have something to gain from that, you know. So that's always been a piece of my job too. I had commission also as an ops manager.
Speaker 1:Okay, we have another question. Our agency owner wants to have people participating in multiple roles. This is going to be difficult because the employees that are expected to help with marketing are fully expected to continue with hiring, EVV, employment chart, compliance, answering phones being the face of the company for any in-office visitors, and more. What advice can you offer here? How can we present that marketing does require a full-time focus? Hallelujah.
Speaker 2:This is really hard in home care. In home care, everybody's wearing a million hats and I thought, well, as we grow, we get bigger. Surely I'm only going to have one job to do, because there's going to be all these people working here. Home care is lots and lots of hats, unfortunately. But marketing does require full-time focus. If you can be full-time Now there's just growing pains, right? You know, when I started at Home Instead, we were a small office that were only like four or five of us at the time, maybe three, and I did have to do a lot of other things. But as you grow, they have the money then to put another level of help in. So there's going to be times where you're juggling more than just the marketing. Marketing and signing together is really can be a luxury that that's all you're doing in home care really.
Speaker 2:And I've been the person that had to go pick up the wheelchair at the medical equipment company because maybe somebody forgot that they needed it. Right, well, you're out in the field, can you go get it real quick? Well, yeah, I'm out in the field, but I'm marketing. Like, really, I have to go pick up and I've done it. I've gone and picked up the wheelchair and brought it. I've had caregivers. We need this caregiver to stay five more hours and she's starving. Can you just go pick her up lunch and bring it to her please, because you're out in the field? Yeah, I'll do it, like I'm not happy always to do it, but I know that at the end of the day, if we don't do the caregivers in a walk, we're going to lose the client. I signed up the client So-and-so, referred the client. It's going to get back to her and eventually she's going to quit referring. So it's all interconnected and so we are all doing lots of things. But I do think that the owner does need to understand that you get a momentum going when you're marketing. You start getting that momentum, that relationship starts to build and then if you disappear, it's kind of all for nothing.
Speaker 2:I would go on vacation for a week. The next week when I came back my phones would be dead and I mean I had solid relationships with these people but they didn't see me for a week because I was out of town, dead. The next week it took me. It would take me a week to get things going again and I mean I would kill it. On Monday I would go out to as many people as I could so that by the middle of the week things are happening for me again. So I get what you're saying, definitely understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2:If you are wearing lots of hats and you're not able to be consistent out in the field, I would pick five SNFs and be consistent with them, or pick however many stops you think you can make a week with all the other things that you're doing and be consistent with them. And I would probably pick skilled nursing facilities. Make sure they're not over 80% Medicaid. I think we've talked about that before.
Speaker 2:If the SNF the beds in the SNF they've got 100 beds, if more than 80 of those beds are Medicaid patients, there's probably not private pay that's going to come out of that building. There could be some occasionally, but not a lot. So make sure that you're qualifying the ones that you are going to see. But pick a number that you can be consistent with and the idea is to tell the owner like this is what I'm going to do right now, to be consistent. It's super important to be consistent and as we grow, my hope is that we can find somebody to do this part of my job so I can be out there more and I can get more referrals, and so that's probably the approach I would use.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have a heart to heart with that owner and say if this is your expectation, then these are the changes we need to make, because there is no way I can do. I can decrease everything a little bit to fit it all in. Or you can have you know there's got to be some give and I can say coming a little bit to fit it all in. Or you can have you know, you know there's gotta be some gift and I, and I can say, coming from an owner's perspective, a lot of times you, the owner, does not realize the amount of time it takes to do a single task. They have no idea what the thing that you're assigned to do, how long that takes you every day. They just don't know because they're pulled in 5,000 directions themselves. So sitting down and saying this is how long this is taking me and there is no way that I can do this, this, this and this and be effective. I need to narrow my focus or whatever. So, yeah, they just sometimes just don't even.
Speaker 2:And with some owners you kind of have to prove yourself too. That's why I say pick five or six, whatever. And then when those referrals start coming in, you can say look, if I could do this times five more places a week, times 10 more places a week, imagine what could happen, because I'm only going to five right now and look what's happened. But you have to be consistent to get those five to refer. It's better to be consistent in less places than to just throw wildflower seeds everywhere and just hope that something grows.
Speaker 2:It's just in this industry, it's trust and relationship building. So throwing all those out there and hoping something happens doesn't work. You have to water, fertilize. You know you got it. You've got to continue to nurture the relationship. So it's better to have less places and be consistent and grow those relationships. And when those start referring, you can say to the owner I've been doing this for a month and a half, two months with just these five and look what's happened. If you could get this part of my job to somebody else, I'll go pick another five, and now we'll have 10 places that are doing this. So that's how I would address that.
Speaker 1:The next question is I'm the relationship manager for a brand new privately owned home care company. What is the most important thing to do? First thing to do to get known in the community, so to get started.
Speaker 2:You want to get your feelers out there. I would probably go to a couple of networking meetings. You know they have them in assisted living buildings, sometimes group homes, sometimes they're in a SNF, and I would probably just to get your the feel out there, right, and then you know, start looking up SNFs, assisted living, all the places, and then just start build your route sheet and start going. But I probably would hit a couple of networking meetings.
Speaker 2:You don't want to spend your whole life in networking meetings. They don't always, they don't usually generally turn into referrals. Usually what you're doing there is networking, which is just meeting other people like you in the industry hospice reps and home health reps that you can market with and you can ask them questions about the industry. It's more that in the networking meetings, but it would be a good place for people to know hey, there's a new home care agency in town. I'm your gal, you know. They usually let you get up and talk about the agency. Everyone gets like two minutes or something. So I think that would be a good place to start and then get out in the field.
Speaker 1:The next question is is Monday really a good day to be out in the field? I run into a lot of oh, they're in a meeting right now.
Speaker 2:So it depends on where you're going and you'll learn your referral sources. Most of my social workers were in meetings on Tuesdays, I don't know why. So Mondays were good for me with SNFs, inassisted living Mondays were not good. Memory care Mondays were not good. So you just kind of have to figure out in your industry, your neck of the woods, what what's going to work best. I can tell you that admissions social workers like they leave for the weekend, they come back and they have new patients that are just here, right, and now they have to figure out. Well, who are they? What are they going to need? They're working on discharge. So it might be that Mondays wouldn't be good for a SNF my SNFs again, it was Tuesday mornings that they were tied up in meetings. So you know, I guess it just depends on your area. So you do want to find that out. So if they're telling you that, then Mondays don't sound like they're going to be good for you.
Speaker 1:Redview asks how does tailored training for our sales team and caregivers at a home care agency align with and reinforce our specific marketing positioning strategy?
Speaker 2:How does tailored training?
Speaker 1:We don't know what your specific. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Strategy is. I mean it definitely needs to align with your marketing position. You do need to make sure that it aligns. I mean, our strategy was always to just grow and we have our goals set. And so the training you're right, they do need to align. I probably gosh, looking at it. I probably started with each department's goals. I mean I started with the revenue that I wanted and then we would go. I'd go to the department so what does this department need to do to help hit this revenue? What does this department need to do to help hit this revenue? So I would set the revenue first, then every department would get, I would figure out what they need to do and then probably the rest of my marketing positioning strategy would be based on that. I don't know if I'm answering your question, but that's kind of how I've looked at it and we'll get into that a little bit with KPIs too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe knowing what the and I think, dawn, you have something that you privately share with people who are interested in training. It's a video that goes to the curriculum of our training program. Don't you have something like that? So reviewing what is in the curriculum might also be helpful to know if it is going to align with your specific strategies.
Speaker 2:Well, it's all about private pay growth. So if that's what you're into, it's going to align. I mean, if you want to do straight Medicaid, probably not going to align with Medicaid. It's all about private pay and growing the private pay revenue.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think that's it.
Speaker 2:Okay, identifying key performance indicator, kpis, goals and steps to accountability. You need to know your numbers, folks. Knowing your numbers is a crucial to achieving your goals. Could you bake a cake without a recipe? I mean, my mom can, but most people probably can't, grandma's probably. Could you put a puzzle together without a picture on the box, without knowing at all what it's supposed to look like the finished product? Could you build a house without a blueprint? No, no, no. It starts with the end in mind. You need to set goals Understanding your current sales metrics.
Speaker 2:Are the metrics you are currently tracking helping you achieve your revenue goals? Are you hitting your goal? If you're not, maybe not. Maybe the answer is no. Maybe you're doing perfect and you're good.
Speaker 2:Consider the contribution of each of the roles in your office to revenue generation overall growth. Your salesperson marketer is not the sole driver to your revenue. They're just not. It's a team effort here and we're going to get into that. I'll show you what the others should be doing too. There are actions each role can take to increase your revenue, and incorporating revenue generating tasks into weekly routines can effectively boost your overall revenue. Quick tips to increase revenue New private pay business can help increase revenue, obviously Increasing billable hours with current clients.
Speaker 2:If your caregiver is saying, hey, I'm doing overnights three days a week and when I come back it looks that I can just tell she's worn out, the house is a mess, she needs more hours, we need to react to that. Hold on to your scheduled billable hours. If a caregiver calls out sick, train your schedulers to say your caregiver is out sick today. We have somebody that will be there within an hour. Don't let them ask do you still want care today? Do you still want us to come? That's like you're going to lose your billable hours and this happens fast. When I started tracking this, I was just so sick to my stomach. Hold on to the scheduled billable hours that you have. Offer a replacement. Replacement's on the way. Replacement will be there in an hour.
Speaker 2:Keep track of your billable hours weekly. Are you on target? If you are sitting at a thousand hours this week, are you keeping track of it weekly and are you looking at next week? I always lived with one foot in this week and one foot in next week. On WellSky. They've got a live view of your week of clients and their hours and you can see on Monday what it looks like. If I'm at a thousand billable hours on Monday this week, what does next week look like? Oh, it's at 1200. That's awesome. Keep checking it every day. If it's below a thousand already, you got to do something right now, in this moment, to get that bumped up so that next week is growth. You want every week to be growth week. You want to move up, up, up up, and you've got to be watching it weekly to make that happen. Shop your competitors. Are you charging enough? Star, six, seven, call them. Find out what they're doing. Pretend to be an adult child and see what they're charging. Do they have packages?
Speaker 2:Do they have a discounted rate for 24s. Are they doing live-ins at a cheaper rate than you're doing 24s? Whatever it is that they're doing, you need to know so that you're competitive in the marketplace. Check in with past clients. Take good notes. If a client has died, that needs to be in your notes somewhere. You don't want to call and check on a past client who's deceased that you knew was deceased, I guess. I mean sometimes they are gone. Check in with past clients. How are they doing? A lot of times I would call. I'm so glad you called Gosh. You must be psychic. We were looking for your number yesterday. You will be surprised at how much you can gain by doing that. Reach out to all of your leads, new and old.
Speaker 2:You never know what's going on anymore. We talked to you. I talked to you last March. Oh my gosh, I want to go out and see my mom. She doesn't sound very good. I'm so glad you called. Maybe you can come see us when I'm there in town.
Speaker 2:Setting sales goals Step one set your annual goals. Step two break your annual goals down to achievable parts. Step three steps to reach the goals. You need the steps.
Speaker 2:Goals should be smart, meaning they need to be specific who, what, when, where, why. They need to be measurable. They need to be attainable. If you're sitting at I don't even know low numbers and you say to your marketer we need to hit 2 million by the end of the year, is that if the goal is set too high and it's not attainable, the marketer is not going to try. It's just not realistic. So it needs to be attainable, relevant and worthwhile and timely. You've got to put like by this week, this is what's going to happen. Like it has to have a deadline or a timeline to it, measuring performance. So set at least one goal for each of your departments or functions of your business.
Speaker 2:Remember to be smart with your goals. So if I set my annual billing goal. I'm going to break it down to a weekly run rate. So you just divide the annual by 52. My marketer so this is a marketer's with my sales rep goal. They know the annual billing goal. I've broken it down. This is what needs to happen to hit that revenue goal.
Speaker 2:On the marketing team, they need to make 40 to 50 stops a week. 15 to 20 of those are face-to-face stops. This is a full-time marketer Eventually from doing this. It's not going to happen overnight. Rome wasn't built in a day. Five to seven referrals a week will start coming from these efforts. Eventually they have to build relationships for that to happen. When your service inquiries come in, 70% should be booked and 90% of your assessments should be signed. You'll be getting three to four signed jobs. If this is what your marketer is doing a week Now, what will revenue look like? Well, it depends on what kind of jobs they sign. If they're tiny jobs, not real high. If they're 24, it's going to be high. So it can really change based on the kinds of jobs that are assigned.
Speaker 2:So the difference between a goal and a KPI key performance indicators are critical, key indicators of progress towards an intended result. A goal is the outcome you hope to achieve. The KPI is the metric to let you know how well you're doing working towards that goal. So to improve any aspect of your business, set a specific goal and track it weekly with key performance indicators. So this is a sheet I've used for years and years.
Speaker 2:Remember we talked about it's just not marketing that is helping you hit your revenue goals. These are marketing's goals. If you want to hit 1.5 million, your weekly run rate would be 28,846. This is what marketing needs to be doing every week to help you get there. Does that mean that you can only hit 1.5 million with one marketer? No, that's just a general number. If you want to go over that and you have one marketer, maybe you add a KPI over here that every other week I'd like a 24 signed. We know that 24s aren't permanent. They don't last forever. They might last for a couple of weeks. You should be constantly replacing your 24s. You should always be on the lookout for a 24. In our mastery circle we did a three-part series of how to get a 24-hour client when do they come from, how do you get them signed and the importance of replacing if you know that it's coming to an end.
Speaker 2:Maybe Mrs Smith is going to move into assisted living and everybody's aware of that in two weeks you need to be looking for another 24 before Mrs Smith leaves, and so you're always on the lookout for 24. So you could certainly add that as a KPI. Your scheduling and staffing team needs to be able to do three to four quick starts a week. This is again when you're signing three to four jobs, right, when the marketer is out there. Many times the social workers test them and give them little tiny jobs or they'll say, oh, you can start anytime. Well, how about tonight? That's how they test them. That's how they know they're the real deal. Your scheduling team needs to be ready to do that, and they can do that by being staffed out 48 hours and 72 hours on Fridays 50% of the 70% of the week. What that means is when you're a smaller company, you get a job that comes in six days a week. You staff the whole thing. You just sit there and get it staffed. As you grow, it doesn't work like that anymore. As you grow, you're staffing Saturday and Sunday, and then I'm going to staff Monday, wednesday, friday, the next day, like you're not staffing the whole thing out because you don't have time to. It just doesn't work that way anymore. So when you leave on Wednesday, being staffed out. 48 hours means that every job Thursday and Friday are already staffed out. 48 hours means that every job Thursday and Friday are already staffed. There's nothing hanging out there that needs to be staffed for Thursday and Friday. Are you going to have call-ups? Sure, probably, but everything is staffed, and on Friday, everything is staffed through Tuesday morning, so that allows them to have freedom to work on call-ups. It allows them to have freedom to do these quick starts, and the quick starts happen on Fridays a lot, so really, they really need to be staffed ahead. Missed shifts less than 10% of our shifts should be missed, because it just upsets and irritates people when that happens, and so always send a replacement offer to send a replacement Lost clients again, this is a higher volume office. Less than two to three clients lost, and this is, you know, from a revenue standpoint. We're counting deaths. Yeah, absolutely, because it's billable hours.
Speaker 2:We're also, though, talking about people that left because they're upset, they're mad we did something wrong. You know, if a caregiver is calling out or is late two, three days in a row and no one has complained to you, to the scheduler, they're upset. They may not be verbalizing it, but they may be on the phone with another home care agency right now. You have to address these things even if they don't appear to be upset. The marketer could call the adult child and just say, hey, how are things going? I hear your mom, you know, and then the daughter gosh, your caregiver has been late three days. Then you're going to hear about it. You don't have to call and ask about it, but if they're upset you're going to hear about it. So being in tune with that's important.
Speaker 2:Also, scheduling that department it's important that they are watching for the caregivers doing good things. They get upset with the caregivers. Right, they're calling off, they're saying that grandma died, they're tired of the excuses. They're saying that grandma died, they're tired of the excuses. So I always had my caregivers or my scheduling team watch for good things that caregivers are doing. So they would send me three to four good things that caregivers are ads.
Speaker 2:Caregivers coming in from ads, interviewed eight to 12 and hired four to six Caregivers that are hired within the last 90 days need to be contacted weekly. We have a system where we do that automated for you here. They need to hear from the office every single week and it's not. Can you work Saturday? Where's your TV? Where's your CPR? It is, how was your first shift? How did it go? Stuff like that to retain?
Speaker 2:And then caregivers that have been there longer than 90 days need to hear from the company, at least once a month, some personal something. It could be a birthday, it could be an anniversary. They need to hear something. This is what when you break the sheets down. So for marketing, they are simply tracking. Here's what they're supposed to do. This is what actually happened every single week. If you're keeping an eye on your run rate every single week, if it's supposed to be 28, and I'm at 17, I need to do react to that. I need to do something right now. What can I do right now, in this moment, to start moving this needle up? Because if I wait till the end of the quarter and I'm not hitting 375, it's going to be really hard to make that up in three quarters. So this is why we're watching these numbers every single week. Any questions?
Speaker 1:I'm muted. There are no current questions, but this is again a chance to ask questions about KPIs. If you have any questions about what Dawn just talked about, it's a lot Most people ask the question. Can I have that sheet?
Speaker 2:We do get that. We do get that a lot. Not a lot of people like the whole numbers KPI goal thing. I don't know. I love it because when you hit and you crush your numbers that feels really good. So but if there's no questions, we can move on to Valerie.
Speaker 1:All right, that sounds good, let's do it Okay.
Speaker 2:Oh, we might have a question. Oh yes, anonymous, we do not currently track KPIs. How do we get started? So I would start with what you're looking for revenue. What is it that you want in revenue? Break it down into weekly goals and decide what each person in your company needs to be doing every single week to hit the goals that are going to increase revenue. And you know, this is really the meat and potatoes of what needs to happen and be consistent every week. And with this one, you're meeting with marketing. You have a sheet like this for everybody in your office, because everybody in your office is doing something that's going to help towards revenue.
Speaker 2:So I would start with your annual goal.
Speaker 1:I have a question that didn't come. It wasn't put here. I saw this while you were talking in our CRM. Somebody recently talked to you and I don't know if they're on here or not asked about the 40 to 50 stops per week and the text that he or she sent. I didn't. Can you show the KPI slide again? Can you show the KPI slide again? Yes, another question. So the person who asked the question of you is someone you just recently talked to. You'll have to go back and look at it, but she said how did you come up with the 40 to 50 stops per week?
Speaker 2:How did that like? Where did that number come out of the ether? So it's eight to 10 stops a day, no-transcript, that's four stops per assessment. So that's going to lower this number. And what I've seen and you have to expect this as well is if I get my 40 to 50 stops done this week and I didn't really have any assessments, next week should and probably will be full of assessments, and so then you don't get as much marketing done, and so it could get quiet, and so then the next week you're out marketing. So it seems to be this ebb and flow because you're one person right, and so that can happen too. I mean, that's definitely a good question, Valerie.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you show the previous slide to this? This one? No, not that that one, I don't know the previous slide, is there another one? No, this is it. She's just gonna flip through them.
Speaker 2:Get your camera ready quick, um I don't know which one she is, it this one? Just maybe maybe she said she got it. Okay, okay, okay, for a brand new office. How do you suggest we forecast revenue goals for the first few months? Um, I mean it really. I mean I would probably try to start, you know, maybe less, just because you want it to be attainable. You don't want to hit the ground with. You know we're gonna hit 500,000 in two months or whatever, right? So I don't know if you're already signing jobs. You're not signing jobs.
Speaker 2:It's hard, it's hard to know. You kind of need to look at what are your expenses, what are your costs. I mean, it's a really hard question to answer because I don't know your exact situation, right? And so, not knowing that, I would probably focus more on let's do the 40, 50 stops and let's do this for three or four weeks and see what happens. And if you start getting clients and your billable hours, then I would start probably thinking about the revenue. I would probably start smaller. I would start with the chunks first and then see where revenue lands. Oh, I did this solid for three weeks and I got three clients Awesome. Next week let's try to get bigger clients. These were all small. Let's try for bigger clients, and then eventually you'll start to see what that looks like and be able to forecast revenue better.
Speaker 1:So do most companies pick revenue goals out of thin air. Exactly that's another, another.
Speaker 2:I think maybe if you're in a franchise, maybe they have you know, a solid like this is what you should expect in your first year, your second year. Like this is what you should expect in your first year, your second year. I can tell you, my marketer, my last marketer I hired, I can tell you in billable hours in her first year, with less than her, I mean, she was really a killer. Like she was very, very good at her job. She got to a thousand billable hours, I would say in eight months, if that helps. And she was in an area that we had not marketed in much at all. The marketer prior to her just was not very good. It was before I worked there and she said that part of the valley in Arizona, that part of the valley is just not good. Well, that wasn't the case and I didn't believe that. Anyway, I went out a couple of times and got some referrals and I'm like no, no, we could get business out of here. So she got, she did. She got to a thousand billable hours in like seven, eight months and that's that's like killer, like that's really really good. I don't know that I would expect that from anybody, but she was really good at her job and she was new in the industry too.
Speaker 2:More of the point to your visits per day. The average visit with CMs and social workers is about six to nine minutes. I expect my marketers to have a goal of 12 in-person visits per day, with three to four additional touch points. So I mean, if you can get in front of them, yes, that's a good point. And yeah, six to nine minutes, I don't know For me I'm in a different city than you, probably I don't know that I could get 12 in-person visits done in a day because I'm not able to get in front of people that often.
Speaker 2:I mean you get a face-to-face like once a month. That's pretty, pretty normal and a pretty good expectation. Um, so I mean, if they're able to get in front of and have face, 12 face to face a day, that's pretty good. I mean it also depends on their relationships. If these are already established relationships, it might be fun for them. They might like that you're coming in and spending a few minutes with them face to face. If it's not established and the expectation is that I'm going to get a face to face every time, it could backfire depending on the social worker. You know just some of them don't want that, don't like that, don't have time for it. So I mean, if they're able to do that and it's working for them, that's great.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've seen brand new startups tell us that they have hit 500,000 the first year and a million the second year. It's not impossible. If that helps with the, how do you pull that out of?
Speaker 2:the year.
Speaker 1:It really is dependent on your geography and a whole host of other things. That's why it's hard to Right how many nursing facilities they are.
Speaker 2:What your reach is what your territory is and how much upfront money you have too. I mean, do you have more staff than a startup? That it's just them. If you're able to front the staff ahead of time and you're doing all the online stuff the right way, your revenue is going to be higher than a startup that's not doing and can't do those things. So it is hard to come up with that revenue number, but yeah, we have had clients get to 500,000 their first year.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, are we ready to move on? Valerie, you're up. My voice is ready for you to be up All right, I'm up.
Speaker 1:Okay, integrating in-person marketing with online efforts. Let's go. Can you change slides for me? Are we good with that? Most popular social networks worldwide, so let's just talk about this is what I really. You know the point of my slides. It's going to get less boring here in a second, but the point is that all the stuff you're doing out in the field needs to marry up with your online presence. You cannot forget about that. It may not be, you know, for some agencies, I can tell you, it's not very top of mind at all, and for other home care agencies, they almost rely too heavily on the online piece. So there is a fine balance here between online marketing and your in-person, but both of them need to exist and they can exist together. But it is up to.
Speaker 1:This message comes from the top. It's the owner has to believe, or the manager or whoever's the director has to believe, that online marketing is worthwhile in order to make this work. Because if you don't hold people accountable for also posting online, they will just simply never do it. And some people will say, oh, it's just another thing they have to do. You're darn right, it's another thing they have to do. And if, because you hosted your community involvement today with ABC Skilled Nursing Facility and you tag them and they love seeing you the next time and thank you for it, and that relationship blossoms, then absolutely, it's worth having an online presence. So we're going to talk about you know, with all of these, what do you focus on and what do you do? So let's go to the next slide and let's go to one more Next slide.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is just an example of online and offline marketing pairing up, and this is one of our folks that went through sales training, and what you can see in these pictures is that you know just some of the leave behinds they were putting together. Now, all of these leave behinds that they have here most of them, anyway came from what they learned in sales training, and they are. They printed them out, they had them cut and they're ready to roll out the door. You can see bags in the background, and part of sales training is teaching the students how to have something to say every single time they go by and visit, because that gets boring too. They don't need your 10th brochure. They don't need your 10th brochure. They don't need your 10th business card, right? So having something else, some other message, something that defines you, is memorable, but is not giving them a Louis Vuitton purse, is not doing something that is seemingly not okay. These little things really make a big impact on social workers and discharge planners and other folks. So you can see, here we have two marketers. They were visiting a skilled facility. They took pictures of their leave-behinds and handouts for the day and they have taken a map which is also unusual. We're so used to everything being online and sort of plotted out the stops that they're going to make and the places that they think are really important to them in that office. So you know, these are just examples and they took these pictures and then they posted them online and talked about their community outreach efforts, and that needs to happen every single week.
Speaker 1:So let's go to the next slide, and this is where a lot of our folks are posting their community outreach. You know LinkedIn is your business to business networking. You have a professional profile and you should also have a company page. As an owner, as a marketer, whoever it is you're working for today, your LinkedIn profile needs to be updated. It needs to say who it is you're working for today and it needs to, you know, interact also with your company page. I can't tell you how important this is. Linkedin was sort of on my list for a while. They were bought by Microsoft or something and they kind of you know, were out there and not really hitting it. But things have changed. And business to business networking, the extension of that is making sure you're posting on LinkedIn every single time you go out in the community, every single time you do something.
Speaker 1:So from the left-hand side of this slide we can see one of our clients who has a very big impact on his local community. He's been doing this for about five years now and one of the things he does he sponsors Little League events or Little League teams, you know, with his logo on their shirt and all that, our little league teams, you know, with his logo on their shirt and all that. And he's a private independent home care agency owner, brand new five years ago, which, of course, ran into COVID. And then we have some other folks here. You can see one of them, the Maureen McCabe, down at the bottom. It's the Hope and Mo show. I don't know how often they do the or not our clients, but they did this little video. They set their chairs up in front of this rehab center and it was like their grand opening or something. So they sat there and just talked about how amazing it was and you know their experience and noticed that there are no residents, there are no clients, there are no patients in this video.
Speaker 1:But what a cool thing to do to help promote someone who might be a great referral source and just sit and talk about some event they had. You don't have to have people in the video other than yourself. And we have Dale York kind of in the middle. He's a little bit hidden under there. He was talking about a nonprofit organization that he's teamed up with. All of these, including Tipa Snow, who's right there in the middle, are posting these pictures, images and videos, and Eaton the Dog. Of course, everybody loves a picture of a puppy, so this is part of your online marketing Getting these pictures. It doesn't have to be every single thing you do, but it needs to be a very consistent outreach and you know some notification and some. You know something that tells the other organization that you were there and that you appreciated that.
Speaker 2:Valerie, we have a question about LinkedIn. I'm a big believer in LinkedIn and I'm trying to establish my digital footprint. Do you recommend posting on a personal profile or reposting from the?
Speaker 1:company page. There's two schools of thought here. I would say both and the reason I say that is this on LinkedIn nobody wants to do business with your logo. They want to do business with your face and they really want to connect with you and know that you and your following and your information is important to them. So I would do both. I would post on LinkedIn I mean on a company page and I would also post on my personal profile.
Speaker 1:And just remember, in LinkedIn this is not like Facebook where your personal profile has pictures of your dog and your kids and you know well, in my once in a while, like I once in a while, I'll post something a little more personal on LinkedIn. But you know I reserve most of that for Facebook and grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles and all that stuff. On LinkedIn it's mainly business to business kind of stuff. So your personal profile shouldn't be really personal at all a little bit maybe, but it should be definitely professional and it should highlight you as a professional human being and your career throughout the years and you don't have to be afraid to represent and post about the current position that you hold. If you're not the owner, if you're the marketer. Post about that, talk about it and honor it and do good by it, because the next time you're looking for a job, the person is going to look at you on LinkedIn and Facebook and when they see what a nice job you did representing the previous company, they will think more of that, so think more of you. So both company and professional profile. This isn't a Facebook, so we certainly should do that. So this is just a mini case study. What we're looking at is the company page of Home Care and we're looking at what happened to the engagement and the impressions and the metrics over the course of time and you can see how that second little picture, you can see how the engagement and the impressions just went straight up as the more these posts went on LinkedIn, the more engagement and views that this person got. And it's not really about static posts. It's about these pictures with people in them. It is the human to human connection on a professional level that really gets people to look at your stuff. I can tell every time I make a post on LinkedIn if I put a face of one of our people or my face or a video with my face in it or something that has to do with a human being in it. It definitely 100 percent gets more impressions, more likes, more engagement than you know me posting a picture of a slide on a web. So that's what people want to see, even on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Ok, next one, this is another one. This is another one. This is actually us. We actually weren't doing as much with our professional company page and then we started really hammering that company page and I'm going to tell you about a little secret that you can do with LinkedIn. That's pretty cool. It's not really a secret, but I know a lot of people don't know about it and you can see how our engagement and views and impressions just went straight up.
Speaker 1:Our visitor highlights. You can see how many more page views we were getting, how many more followers we accrued and inviting people to follow us. That's important. So you have the ability, when you have a company page, to invite people to follow that page. Not everybody will, but it's certainly worth the invite. If people invite me to follow their page, as long as they're a home care agency or some senior kind of business, I will absolutely follow your page. I have no problem with that If you're. You know somebody who looks like a scammer, spammer, and you don't even have a face on your profile. I'm probably not going to worry about you. I don't need that. But I will follow anybody who's in the senior care business because I want to know more about their business and what they do. So the more you do, the better off you are.
Speaker 1:Branding is really important on LinkedIn, so all of your key team members should have a similar banner in the background, and this is on our personal pages. If I were to you know quit I can't really quit because I'm the owner but if I were to quit and move on to another company, then I would want to brand my LinkedIn banner with the new company information. Then I would want to brand my LinkedIn banner with the new company information. So branding and asking your key employees to do this, I think, is really important. It doesn't have to be every single person in the company, but if you have salespeople who are representing you in the field, this is a really nice way to show off more information about them, more information about your company. So don't be afraid to get a similar banner for everyone and really make it something nice. These all have our names on them, so you can see that each one has somebody's actual name on it and their title or what they do. So I highly recommend branding this way, and your company page should also reflect that. I think I'll show a picture of that.
Speaker 1:So here's something I think everybody needs to know. First of all, I would hope that in doing this, you guys would make sure you we talked about this in the very beginning connect with me, connect with Dawn on LinkedIn. We would love to you know, be connected. We're, all you know, striving for the same goals here. And look at how mine is written. Look at how that information under my name is written. As far as I'm concerned, this is the way your profile should look.
Speaker 1:First of all, I start with how many years I've been in this business and then what it is my business does home care marketing and sales. We help home care agencies get more clients, more referrals and hire better caregivers. Home care marketing, expert at Approved Senior Network Marketing that is what yours should say. So if it just says community liaison or owner if that's the only words under there then I instantly think owner of what? Community liaison for who? I need to know more than just your title. Make it, make sense and also use some keyword phrases in there so that other people will see you as well. So do more than just say owner and then you'll definitely so. Dale is our good friend and our client, so I always you know he does, he did this, so this is okay. It says founder and owner at Cardinal Home Care. But here's what I would put over on the right Times five years owner of Cardinal Home Care, located in Fairfax, virginia. We help seniors stay independent in their home. Senior home care, companion care, personal care for seniors. We serve all of them. Call me for more information. I would put a lot more in that little blip under his title. If it were me doing this, this is what I would put Keyword phrases what do we do?
Speaker 1:Where are we located? Who do we serve? What is our phone number? Absolutely, do that. That's on your professional personal profile. All right, business page. So our business page. The banner isn't exactly like everybody's personal one, but it's similar. All of our colors are similar. The branding Again, underneath your name of your company, you need to put the keyword phrases of who you are, and in your cases I'm not local, I'm actually national, so I don't worry about location, but make sure you add your general location underneath this and make sure you're featuring some of your posts.
Speaker 1:So you want to make sure that you're using your company page as much as possible. There's even on this one. It says contact sales. Talk to us about home care marketing. No one really uses that, but it is an option that you can add a little button right there to have people contact you. So definitely use every piece of your profile and of your company's profile to your advantage. Okay, this is my tip and my secret about LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:On LinkedIn, you can have a newsletter and I realize that nobody needs another newsletter. I do highly, highly recommend having newsletters and that should go out to your email base, but this one on LinkedIn is a little bit different. So, first of all, linkedin emails do not go to spam. They go to the inbox of all of your followers, all of the subscribers to your newsletters, and, just like your personal or your company page, you can invite people to subscribe to your newsletter. So we have one called the Home Care Marketing Minute. Some weeks we send out lots and lots of newsletters or not lots, I mean you know a couple maybe in some weeks we don't send out any.
Speaker 1:I am not the consistency queen I should be, but when I send out a Home Care Marketing Minute, it goes to your inbox, if you're a subscriber, and it says from Valerie Van Boeven, if you're a subscriber, and it says from Valerie Van Boeven, you know, and it talks about, like this webinar coming up or whatever, the Home Care Agency's Guide to Social Media Marketing. It'll talk. It'll say that's the title of the email. It's very cool, it's something you should do and all you have to do. Let's say, you do write articles, or you do have articles written on your blog, or you have some posts about your community involvement. Put it in a newsletter, talk about it and, you know, create your little local.
Speaker 1:If it were me, if I were a home care agency, it would say, let's say, cardinal Home Care, serving, you know, fairfax, virginia, or serving Northern Virginia. That would be the name I want, who I am, what I do and the location I serve to be in that little title there. And there's a little thing underneath that as well. So make the most of this. And then you have to invite people. You can invite like 250 people a week or something, or a month maybe, I don't know. Look at all this engagement over here, we've had 19,000 article views. This has only been like, I don't know a year or two, and then you can see how many subscribers we have and that number goes up and down. So impressions, engagements, article views it's nice to see that people are looking at this on LinkedIn, but they're also opening their emails and looking at it and you can even put videos in there if you want to.
Speaker 1:Okay next, so oh, this is just an example. This is what it looks like when it hits your mailbox, so you can see. It says it's from Valerie Van Boeven via LinkedIn, the guide to social media marketing for home care agencies with approved senior network. There it is. It went to 1,700 people. That's pretty good and I know it didn't end up in my spam box. So this is nice. Linkedin, google trusts LinkedIn and it went out through and it hit my Gmail and it was fine, all right.
Speaker 1:So next let's talk about Facebook. Facebook is your community outreach. This is where you know it's. Linkedin is great and it is a community outreach portal, but this is your business to consumer marketing. So one of the people that does almost the best I've ever seen at community marketing on Facebook, and she does not do this on LinkedIn, which I don't know why, but she doesn't. This is her platform of choices, facebook, and that's what she uses.
Speaker 1:This is Christina Ramos. We actually interviewed her. I should make that interview live. We interviewed her about how good she does with all this marketing stuff. I mean, she is amazing. She's in Gainesville, florida, touching hearts at home, and these posts are very frequent and she does the same big events every year. So people are anticipating this stuff from her and they know she's coming with the Krispy Kremes or the pickleball tournament or whatever it is. They know Christina is going to be doing this, and so these are some just people who do an amazing job with Facebook. So, yes, you should be posting on your company Facebook page all the things that you're doing, that you're also posting on LinkedIn, because your consumers need to also see this, not just other professions.
Speaker 1:Okay, next, this is just a couple of others you should. If you're on Facebook, you should go to just go to Facebook and search for Touching Hearts at Home, gainesville, and look at all the stuff they post. Now, this is some things that we post for them. You know, some of it is about Flag Day, some of it's blog posts that come through. We blog post for them, so we do some of this work, but the real star of this show is the person who's doing the sales or the person who's posting to Facebook. She is the real star of this show. It's. Our stuff is educational and nice, but her, her posts really shine through. Ok, let's keep going. I got five minutes. Ok, more Facebook stuff. This is some other stuff she's posted. That's awesome. Keep going minutes. Okay, more Facebook stuff. This is some other stuff she's posted. That's awesome. Keep going.
Speaker 1:Oh, let's talk about the TikTok. Tiktok Some of you hate it, some of you love it. I say start loving it. It's not bad. And you're not giving any secrets away to China. That, you know, isn't that big of a deal. We're talking about home care, right? So I highly recommend getting on TikTok Now, right now. Of course, it's a very young demographic, but if you're a 53-year-old like me and you get on there, you notice that there are other 53-year-olds and 55-year-olds and 60-year-olds and 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds and Teepa Snow.
Speaker 1:Let's go to the next slide. I don't know if I have a picture of Teepa on here. There she is. Look at that. Look at Teepa Snow on TikTok. She has 260,000 followers and 3.7 million likes. So if you don't think that Alzheimer's care or dementia or home care is worth a TikTok, it certainly is. Now, I do not expect that you will have that many likes or followers in your local area. She's obviously national and she's got some deals behind her, but this is excellent stuff and it's worth watching her videos to see what it is she's posting. It's not that hard. Some of it is a little more challenging. There's some skits involved, but it's not that hard. So okay, let's go to the next slide.
Speaker 1:I picked out some home care agencies that I thought were doing a pretty good job, and there are a lot of home care agencies that are doing a fabulous job. In fact, I just watched one. I can't remember what county it's in, but it's a bunch. It's a librarian TikTok. It's a certain library and you know how I mean. That is not sexy at all, but these librarians are hysterical and they do these little skits and they're they've just got millions of followers because they're funny and whatever. So home instead of Stoke. I don't even know where Stoke is, but if you go watch their videos you can see that they do a great job. They don't have as many followers as Teepa Snow, but that's okay, it's, it's great stuff. And they don't just post this on TikTok, they post it on LinkedIn. Just post this on TikTok, they post it on LinkedIn, they post it on Facebook, they post it on YouTube. So you have to use all your platforms when you're doing stuff like this.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go to the next one. Oh, there's us. This is an old picture, but we also have one. It's just Home Care Marketing, or Home Care Marketing Expert. You can Google us and you can see all of our videos that are on there. I just did a series of 11 videos, I think, that talk about different ways that you could make a video really easy and post it to TikTok. So you'll see me even make mistakes and you know, I just tell. I tell you at the end well, that was dumb, or or that ending was terrible, or it was good, or whatever, you know. So you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to have makeup on, you don't even have to. You know, just be professional on your TikTok. Ok, keep going.
Speaker 1:Here's another one CaringTouch Health. They have six hundred and eight thousand likes and seven hundred thousand followers. They have 608,000 likes and 700,000 followers. Home health care provider and adult day program. Now, this is a Canadian group, but they have some fun videos. These people, these folks right here 6.1 million views of this video. I'm telling you that it's funny and it's great and it involves their seniors. Ok, keep going. Total care, home health again 700 305 likes, um, and they do a lot. They seem to do a lot of educational plus other stuff. Totally worth it.
Speaker 1:So this is combining all of your even you can go to the next slide combining your out there, your community stuff, with your in-person marketing. We can take any questions. If you have any questions about social media, that was kind of a fast flash, but I just want you to know your marketers that are out there in the field don't need to keep this to themselves. They need to make other people aware of the hard work they're doing and their community involvement. If you're an owner, same thing this is really worth doing. If you scan that QR code, it'll take you to our home care. Can you go to the next slide? Go to the next one? There we go.
Speaker 1:Conclusion and questions. If you want to learn more about our sales training, there it is. There's a little bitly link or you can scan that QR code and it'll take you right to our sales training page. What's interesting about that page is all the testimonials. In fact, I think there's two more that I need to post right now, but there are video testimonials from I don't know maybe a dozen or more people on there. It's pretty amazing, and so, anyway, it'd be great for you to see what that looks like and how much these people have learned and what really impressed them about the sales training. So I hope you take advantage of that. Do we have any more questions? Boy, we got it right at two hours, right on the nose. Very good, okay, I don't think there's any more questions. I don't think so. All right, thanks for sticking with us for so long. Thank you everyone. Yes, it's a long, big commitment. All right, thanks everybody. We'll be sending this out. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Bye, bye.
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