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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®
Home Care Marketing: Getting Past Common Challenges with In-Person Sales
How can we redefine home care to ensure a seamless experience for both clients and caregivers? This episode promises to transform your understanding of managing client relationships and caregiver safety. Journey with us as we unravel strategies for building trust, overcoming communication barriers, and differentiating your agency in a competitive market. Our dedicated team members, Lisa, Dawn, and Annette, share their wealth of experience, while Valerie's expertise in online resources continues to guide us, even in her absence.
Explore the intricacies of safety regulations in home care with a focus on navigating the legal landscape across states like Arizona and New York. We delve into the art of value selling, emphasizing the benefits of personalized care over cost concerns, and provide solutions for handling pricing objections. Learn how predictive investigation can prepare caregivers for home visits, ensuring they're informed about potential challenges and ready to meet client needs with confidence and care.
Celebrating caregivers is a crucial part of our journey, and we share inventive ideas to show appreciation, from National Caregiver Day festivities to unique spring-themed marketing strategies. Discover how to foster a positive and engaging environment for caregivers and clients alike, and leave with actionable insights to enhance your home care practice. With our forum's resources, never miss an opportunity to stay informed and connected, enhancing your impact in the home care industry.
Continuum Mastery Circle Intro
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
everybody's days. This is only our second Wednesday, but they seem to be pretty good for most people. Yeah, okay, yeah, so we'll see. Fridays, um, really are a great day to pick up last minute discharges. That's part of why we moved it, and then other people just said it was a hard day for them. So we'll do Wednesdays until unless we get a lot of people saying they don't like it. But we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome, welcome everybody. I guess, lisa, you want to do the stuff all the stuff Of course.
Speaker 3:Okay, here we go. The housekeeping Hi everybody. Housekeeping lines muted unless speaking. Share stories, experiences, tips. We do want to hear from you, ask questions, make recommendations, you can. You don't have to put your hand up. You can just say hey, excuse me, or send it in the chat, which I just sent. A chat. Happy Wednesday. Here is the chat. Tell us what you want to know. Reintroduction. Since I'm already speaking, I may as well.
Speaker 3:I'm Lisa Marcele. I have been in home care forever and a day. Love home care. I've done all of the things imaginable within home care, worn all hats. My other love was marketing. I worked in a newspaper when it was still cool, before the internet came in and changed it all. So this is the perfect place for me to be. I've been here two years. I feel like, yeah, a little over two years. A little over two years. Love what I'm doing, love to be a part of the journey with you guys and have my hand in home care still. So I'm here. If you're in programs with us, you'll see me a lot, and if not, it's okay. You can reach out and ask questions. But I'll pass that over to Dawn Fiala.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. It's great to see you. Thank you for joining us Again. We've moved from Friday to Wednesday. I think everyone's gotten the message and hopefully Wednesdays are going to be a good day for everybody. So far, so good. I've also been in home care forever. I don't like to always tell the years because then you know how old I am. Anyway, I've done sales, marketing, management, operations manager, done all of it. It's hard to stay in one lane in home care. Lisa usually says that I'd love to grow the private pay side of the business. If I had to choose my favorite part, that would be my favorite piece of it Helped grow the last company from like 200,000 in private pay to 3.5 million in under four years. So we share some of that here with you. We have a sales training program that Annette runs where we teach you all of the things. So you'll see bits and pieces of it here in Mastery Circle. And so go ahead, annette, you're up, then we'll get started.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, I know lots of you 20 plus years, I'll say so, aging myself but I've been in home care and I most recently for about seven and a half years as a home care agency, as a marketing manager, and I teach the sales training classes here at ASN and I just love what I do, teaching everybody the tips and tricks of how to get those private pay referrals. Welcome everybody and happy Wednesday and.
Speaker 2:Valerie is co-founder, or co-owner and founder, of Approved Senior Network. She's an RN. She couldn't be with us today, but she does all of our amazing online stuff. She's a wealth of knowledge in that area. And then we're the feet on the ground. The rest of us All right, so we're going to go and get started. First, though, we're going to talk about how to watch the meetings you missed. Lisa, we'll go through that with you quickly. We want to know. There is a, if you don't know, there is like a portal where you can go in and watch meetings that you miss. So Lisa's going to go through that and the app and all that good stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so log into the forum here. So if you want to watch anything that you've missed, or just to go into the forum and explore, you go here to homecaresalesforumcom. Your username is your email address that you used when you signed up with us and your password is whatever was emailed to you at that time. If you don't know, you can just hit the forgot your password feature and it will look something a little like this you see, it's a little rebranded for 2025. And next slide, please. All right, so logging into the forum. Let me make my screen bigger so I can not squeeze there. Okay, so when you log into the forum, you're going to get this page here. There's the discussion.
Speaker 3:There's the learning and you can even see all the people that are involved. But you're going to want to go to the learning, so if you click on learning, it will go to boom. You'll see these little squares here and now. I believe you'll see 2025, 2024 may be gone. Or you may see two different little squares here Go into 2025. You may see two different little squares here Go into 2025. And if you look down just a little further, you can see. Actually it looks like last week's or the last two weeks is already updated in here under January 2025. I think we just maybe grabbed the wrong slide.
Speaker 2:Yeah we need to grab it.
Speaker 1:We actually click on 2025. Yeah, we just clicked the wrong slide, that's right.
Speaker 3:But you can see all of 2024 replays as well too. You just scroll down and it gives you the month, and then, when you click there, you can see all the different meetings there as well. You can go and you'll see the slides. There will be links within as well as the video. All right, mobile version Collab app how to use it, what it's for, and it's collab with a K. Mobile version collab app how to use it, what it's for and it's collab with a K.
Speaker 3:So if you have an iPhone, you would want to use this link here to go ahead and log in. It'll look just pretty much like this, like it would on any iPhone, right? And then if you have your Samsung or whatever, your Google Pixel, you can go here, click on this link and go here to add this to your cell phone, and all those links will be in the replay and on the forum. So when you get into the forum from your mobile, it'll look just like this. You'll want to again go to Home Care Sales Forum and then join group, where the arrow is Join group. You don't need to manage, just go to join group and it will look like the next slide. It'll look like this, where you can talk with other industry professionals, other marketers, owners, see what they are doing out in the field, ask us questions. Annette's in there all the time posting and answering questions and then we'll go into lots of different things in here and you can talk with lots of different folks. If you look at the bottom of the of any of the little screenshots, you see there's different pages there. So there's the homepage discussion, learning. If you want to grab any of the mastery sales replays or videos there, you can go there to get to that portal part of the portal as well.
Speaker 3:And then this is fairly new, but we thought that it would be a great idea to have everything that we talk about in one place. So here it is. You don't have to buy stuff from here. This is just. We did the legwork for you. If you are going out in the field and taking leave behinds out, there are lots of these cute little giveaways to take as well, and you don't have to really go search. We've again done all the legwork and you can just go to homecaremarketingnewscom slash store and click on the links and everything that we go over will be within those links and you can buy them from there if you want. It'll take you to the Google or, sorry, the Amazon links mostly Amazon links, but and you can see, you have October, november, december, evergreen, but right now we have January, february, march obviously, and you can do that and go there and buy all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, thanks, yeah, is that it? That's it, that's it, we're gonna. We're gonna get busy with the other stuff. I do want to announce we are doing a giveaway. We do a giveaway every time you have to physically be here. So there's lots of you on this call.
Speaker 2:Today we're giving away leave-behinds for March, so all the March leave-behinds that you see today. If you say you want to participate, we will put you in a drawing. But there's a party up. If you participate, you have to promise to send us pictures of what you're doing with the leave-behinds, of you out in the field delivering them, or what they look like and what you're doing, so we can share them with everybody. So please type in the chat yes if you'd like to be in the drawing for the March leave behind.
Speaker 2:So we're going to take the leave behinds and we're going to customize them for you. We're going to put your contact information name, phone number, colors. If it makes sense to change the color Some of them are green because it's St Patrick's Day we're not going to change that. But if it would make sense to change the colors, we'll change the colors to your company colors If you're interested in that. Again, put yes in the chat. If you can't find the chat, let us know we can help you. It's lit up right now with the number 15 there, so it must be a lot of people saying yes.
Speaker 2:So that's exciting, and we get those out to you fairly soon or fairly short. It's usually pretty quick that you get them. What we do is we give you a link to a Google Drive and then you have access to all of them and you have editing access to change them if you want to, but most of the time they don't get changed because they look exactly the way you want them to. And I think do we have pictures of whoever won in January? Guys, I don't remember who that was. We need to reach out to them and get pictures.
Speaker 1:I think on the form. Yeah, I'm having a blank right now. Who it?
Speaker 3:is? I think it was Carla yeah we'll need to add her pictures.
Speaker 2:I think I remember seeing a picture too. Okay, guys, so for today, the agenda. We're going to do an overview. Last time we did an overview of common sales challenges in home care with referral sources and I thought that's not where it ends.
Speaker 2:We also work with clients. It's a totally different hat, and if your marketer or you as the owner are going out and getting referrals from referral sources but you're also selling in the home to the clients, it's a totally different hat. Some of the things are the same and some of them are very different. So I thought this was an important enough piece to talk about. So this is more about when you're talking to that adult child on the phone, when you're in the home doing the assessment, when you're providing the services. So we're going to talk about understanding client needs, building trust with potential clients and their family members, navigating pricing concerns I hear this a lot and it can be a difficult thing to navigate Overcoming communication barriers, differentiating your agency from competitors that was a topic we talked about last time when it came to referral sources. You also need to do it with clients, addressing availability and scheduling challenges and maintaining a long-term client relationship.
Speaker 3:So if you have any questions again.
Speaker 2:Feel free to put them in the chat. Lisa and Annette keep an eye on that and they'll bring them up as we go through. All right, so understanding client needs. We understand from a big, broad view what these clients need, right? They need home care, they need help with bathing, they need help with meal prep or transportation errands, medication, runners, all that stuff. We know that. But everybody's not the same right. Everybody has different physical needs and different preferred hours that they're looking for.
Speaker 2:When you're thinking about the physical needs of a client and you're doing the assessment, you really need to be thinking about all the way through. So if we're going to be bathing them, you need to see the shower. You need to see are they hiking a leg up over a side of a bathtub? Are they capable of hiking a leg up over the side of a bathtub, or is there a step in shower that has a really small lip? You've got to think about all of the physical needs that this client may have and what could come up.
Speaker 2:When the caregiver walks in the door, you almost have to sit there as if you are the caregiver. This person has a walker. You need to go ask to see the bathroom. There's nothing wrong, and I know when I first started and we were having issues because I hadn't seen the bathroom, then the owner came to me she said do you think you could just go see the bathroom while you're there? And I thought, oh my gosh, that seems like a very strange thing to ask to do. But it really changed things when I did ask to see the bathroom. Sometimes there's a wheelchair that won't fit through the door. What are you going to do? Sometimes, again, the lip, the bath you're getting into a bathtub and not just a little shower. So those problems need to be addressed prior to the caregiver getting in there, because when the caregiver gets there it can blow up. You're too far gone. Maybe mom has waited for a shower for five or six days. Caregiver's there, everyone's excited, mom's finally going to get a shower, especially mom and then it's not going to work because the wheelchair won't fit through the door or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:We have to know this stuff prior to service starting, preferred hours and caregivers. So the other piece of this that can be challenging is I've had clients are like we want the caregiver to stay until 11 o'clock at night, or we want the caregiver to start services at four in the morning. A lot of caregivers aren't going to do that and so knowing that going in is going to be important for you to, it's hard because you want to explain to them 4am. I can probably find one caregiver that'll do that, but there's not going to be a backup plan if she's out sick.
Speaker 2:And so you're part of your job when you're doing that assessment is making sure they understand when they're picking hours that if they're picking something that's outside of the norm, if you even allow it, you may not even allow it. That if they're picking something that's outside of the norm, if you even allow it, you may not even allow it. But if they are, that's going to limit their caregiver availability. It's going to limit our ability to cover that shift if there's a call off or somebody's sick. So I always try to guide the hours a little bit if I could. If they need a shower and they're a morning shower person eight o'clock is a good time, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, those are good times. Before that with caregivers can be challenging. I don't know if Lisa and Annette have anything to add to the physical needs and understanding those.
Speaker 1:I would just say you know exactly what you said about the checking the house out in the bathroom. Excuse me if somebody was coming from rehab or the hospital. We really tried to. About checking the house out in the bathroom Excuse me if somebody was coming from rehab or the hospital. We really tried to go see the house before because even though they tell you everything's great, sometimes you might walk in and it's a disaster or, like Dawn said, they can't fit into the bathroom. So I think it's really important to try and see the house prior. Maybe a neighbor could let you in or a friend, but we really made a point of that because we wanted to make sure when they got home everything was successful At the very least go the first day of service with the caregiver, so that it's not up to the caregiver to problem solve that Also just seeing them ambulate, seeing those things, seeing how mobile are they I think that was really important too.
Speaker 3:And then to see the setup of, like you said, the bath. That's a disaster waiting to happen if someone has to hike their like you said, hike their leg over the lip of the tub. So getting them a shower chair, the one that goes all the way over the bench, versus the doing anything like that yeah, I think it's very important to see and reassess if there's any changes too and go back in and see how do we need to set this up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think too, when you're completing your assessment I don't know if you have a form or whatever it is you are doing and maybe you're doing the scheduling yourself, but stepping away from that form for a second and reading it with new eyes, because I would fill out like Hoyer lift shower. I would be clear. And then the schedule is like how are we going to shower them if they have a Hoyer lift? And usually I had a great explanation. But making sure that what you've written down makes sense to someone that wasn't at the assessment, that's going to be really important too.
Speaker 2:And I have had two people in my years that were wheeling mom and dad mom one and dad totally different homes in the Hoyer lift up in the Hoyer all the way to the shower. This is not a safe move and your company shouldn't be liable or be doing something like that. That's again another reason it's important to get in there and see for yourself what's going on, because when that caregiver gets there and they say, oh yeah, we just wheel our mom in the Hoyer all the way to the shower, the caregiver is not going to know what to do and they know that they shouldn't do that right. They know that's not safe. So we don't want to put the caregivers in any kind of position that's going to make them feel unsafe.
Speaker 3:Right, set them up for success. Christina has a question about scope of care and I wasn't sure if she wanted to ask now or I just wanted to make sure. I addressed it.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I think this is something that maybe Dawn and Annette we could discuss later. Recently and maybe we could touch on it here a little bit, because I do think it has to do with this so within the past month and a half I've gotten four referrals for people under the age of 35. And they've had disabilities. It was cerebral palsy, one was MS, one was 34 years old. Who was who had dementia? It was alcohol induced. So I was just wondering if maybe you could touch on that and how to assess, because my scope of our, my scope of work, is not, it's geriatric, so maybe we can go into it and, like I said, I don't know if it has to do with this. You were just talking about assessments and I'm not sure what any of that. I don't know how to market that, I don't know how to convert that into an assessment and then an actual client. And then how do I set up something where I know how to train the caregivers on these new things?
Speaker 2:So you have to decide as a company with clients like that, especially if you're comfortable. It depends on their weight and if they're weight bearing at all. Some of them it sounds like they aren't weight bearing at all. Are you comfortable with a Hoyer lift? Your state laws say you can use a Hoyer lift in the home and then you have to make sure that you have trained. We had a Hoyer lift in our office and we trained everybody. Every caregiver that came through was Hoyer lift trained. Did they all pass? No, if they didn't pass Hoyer lift training then we would not send them out on a Hoyer In Arizona. It's very interesting and it's hard sometimes to get the caregivers to understand this. If you're in a skilled nursing facility in Arizona, you are not allowed to operate a Hoyer lift one person. It has to be two. But in the home we can do a one person. So getting the caregivers to understand that was okay. It was very it was a very difficult hurdle to jump.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's two people here. We have to use two people. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if you're comfortable, the Hoyer lift, it's legal and all of that. You just need to make sure that their Hoyer lift they know what they're doing. Every Hoyer lift it's legal and all of that. You just need to make sure that their Hoyer lift they know what they're doing. Every Hoyer lift can be very different to our Hoyer lift. In the office we found the one that most people were using but there could be very different ones.
Speaker 2:So anytime we had a Hoyer lift client, we made sure a QA, our quality insurance person they were all CNAs. They were very well equipped to train in Hoyer. We made sure they were at the client's home first day of service with the caregiver to make sure that they knew how to operate that Hoyer and we witnessed them. We showed them and we witnessed it.
Speaker 2:And the client may or may not like all of this because it's not fun for them, but we need to make sure they're safe and we need to make sure you're not liable for something terrible happening. If you're comfortable with the lawyer and the wheelchair that goes into the shower through the door and all of that and we can do like a slide board, that's where, like Lisa was talking about the benches on the outside of the shower and then they just slide along into the shower if they're capable. You really have to go in and assess and make sure that they're capable of doing all of these things to the level that your caregiver can provide and that legally within your bounds as a home care agency in your state. Okay.
Speaker 4:So maybe, yes, it does, it definitely touches on it, and then maybe Annette, or you, whoever wants to, we could follow up. I just I wanted to show you an example of the lead and the level of care that they need and, potentially, how to convert that. Like I said, there's just a lot more to this question and I know I don't want to take up any more time.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah we can certainly do that. We can Thank you. We had, we had lots of clients. We had two college students that were quadriplegic and we we took, we got them ready for school, we did the bathing, we did all of the things. So not all of our clients were senior, most of them were, but we did have some clients that needed more care, a higher level of care. Annette, did you have something to say?
Speaker 1:I was just gonna say I'm in New York and it's. I listened to all of you and you're so lucky you can do all those things. But we could not do horror lifts, lifts, very strict here. But we mainly took care of geriatric older adults. But we did take care of some. We had college students, some people in their thirties, forties. It was rare but they were people that were within our scope. We didn't, we weren't able to take somebody that was immobile or but, christina, we could talk, you can give me a call and we'll we could talk.
Speaker 2:I can talk to her too if it sounds like our states might actually maybe you better do it. Don, yeah, more in line if you weren't able to handle those things you might not be able to. I'm happy to call you christina, we can thank you.
Speaker 3:Okay, we also had a preferred. We were a preferred provider for spinal cord injuries at the va, and so we've dealt with a lot of those 18 and up.
Speaker 2:So yeah, this might be a good person to talk to too. It sounds like her and I have the same experience with that. So, yeah, we're happy to do that. But I appreciate the question because it helps people see how you have to delve in and really see how is this going to work out? Are we going to be able to take this client on or am I going to bring this in and my scheduling team's going to absolutely freak out? Because they do that, because they have to staff it and they have to stand tall behind the services and know that they've done a great job.
Speaker 2:Okay, so balancing personalized care with operational constraints Care needed must fit into the skill set you have on staff. So we just talked about this Again. If you don't have caregivers that know how to use a Hoyer lift, then you can't really sign up clients that require a Hoyer lift. If you can't do that in your state anyway, then don't. But we had, like I said, we had lead caregivers. They were working a specific amount of hours, so 20 hours, 30 hours, 40 hours.
Speaker 2:We had all different kinds and we would pay them whether they worked or not, and they would get paid the 30 hours or the 20, whatever the what we agreed upon, they would get paid for those hours, whether they worked or not. They agreed upon, they would get paid for those hours. Whether they worked or not, they always ended up working. But they would do our fill-ins. They would go in on a quick call off. They had the skill set to do anything and everything. They could walk into any home. They had the right personality and make it work and they would go on new jobs with caregivers. If there's a lawyer lift, if I had a call off, that's where they would go. If I had a quick start, that's who would go until I could find the appropriate caregiver if you don't have lead caregivers.
Speaker 2:I think, lisa, what you had a different name.
Speaker 3:Gosh, if I can remember, Sometimes we call them senior caregivers, but lead caregivers, I can't even remember. Yeah, lead caregivers.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, if you have a handful of them, that's a great idea to do all the things we just talked about and having them go to make sure that shift gets off on a good, especially if it's going to be more involved like that All right, building trust with potential clients. So establishing credibility as a reliable home care provider is going to be really important. Part of that is on the expectations that you set during that assessment. Be realistic. They will guide you into oh, I had this home care agency and they never showed up and the caregiver wasn't qualified. They will lead you into wanting you to say your care is going to be perfect. I've sat through so many assessments where they're trying to get me to say, oh, none of that's going to happen with us. We're fabulous. Don't ever say that because you're not fabulous. You're dealing with human beings right On both ends. The seniors are human. They're not happy about this most of the time. They don't want the caregiver there most of the time. And the caregivers are human. They have children, they get sick, they get cars that break down. Some of them just aren't reliable and we don't know that until they don't show up on this client that you're sitting in their living room right now. So set realistic expectations. Don't promise perfection because it doesn't exist. Make sure they understand that you have a backup plan if something were to happen. If they're bringing up to you how another company messed up over and over again, you can say we don't like to have that happen. It doesn't happen that often, but if it did happen, we will take care of it. Being an expert in this industry is going to help you with both referral sources and clients to do that. Sometimes it's just your language, typically in this situation, or I have found that when you say words like that, they know that you've been through this before, this isn't the first time, and when you have expertise in this industry, they trust you more, and so using words like that will help.
Speaker 2:Strategies for overcoming skepticism or hesitation. Perfection doesn't exist. Just let them know that the buck stops with you. It stops with you. We're not perfect, it's not going to be perfect, but if something happens, I will be here. I will be here. I will take care of it. You can always reach me. That's what I would do. That was my strategy. I was the marketer, community liaison, whatever you want to call me. I would tell them. I'm not going anywhere. This is your new contact. It would be the scheduler, but I am not going anywhere. You will always be able to reach me If you have any issues at all. I'm not the person you call for scheduling, but if you have any issues, concerns at all, I'm always going to be available to you, that's.
Speaker 2:You guys have anything else to add for overcoming that? No, probably said the same thing. Yeah, pretty much so. Yeah, and I can tell you the scheduling team didn't always like that. The family was calling and telling on them, because that's what they do. They call and say, carrie, we're called out again. I tried to reach scheduling. They didn't call me back. They're doing a million things. Right, we're all busy. They could reach me because they would text me. Scheduling wasn't on a texting basis with them, so if their phone rang they might've been on the phone with the caregiver. They couldn't answer. So I would always explain that to them. You can't reach scheduling because they are on calls all day long. You texted me and I'm happy to help you.
Speaker 2:But yeah, scheduling is not always happy with the fact that they're telling on them a lot. They don't like that. But it keeps the client, so it is the way it is. But always redirect them. Oh, this is. You want to change the caregiver for Saturday? Please call scheduling or I will have scheduling reach out to you. You want to redirect that? You can't be involved in every aspect of their care.
Speaker 2:You're not going to have time Right Navigating pricing concerns. This is a big one. It's important to that. You are communicating the value of your care and trying not to talk about the pricing of your care. Of course you're going to talk about the cost, but don't focus on that. Focus on the outcomes, how it solves a specific problem and improves their situation.
Speaker 2:The adult children don't always live in the same area. Mom and dad do same state, even the peace of mind that they're going to get from this, your company coming in. There is no price tag. What, what could that? Could be a thousand dollars a day, like more than that, like it's peace of mind. And for the adult, for the senior, when I would be sitting with them and the adult child is telling mom's never going to do this, she's not going to do this, she just won't do it. You can come and talk to her. I don't know how many situations. What I would say is to mom and dad do you remember when your daughter and the daughter sitting right there was a child and how you would worry about her when she was at school or you would worry about her when she went to a friend's house? This is how your daughter feels right now. She's worried about you and she needs to know that you're going to be okay and because of the fall or because of whatever is going on, she's concerned and so she's just asking for some peace of mind. This was a great thing to say during the assessment and you could just see the worry from the daughter's face disappear and then the mother go, aha, like the light bulb would turn on. So this is a great, great kind of thing to get them on the same page.
Speaker 2:But value selling is like this Instead of saying this is how much it costs per hour if they're stuck on pricing, this is how our care improves safety, independence and overall well-being. You're value selling instead of cost selling and it changes the outcome. So focus on how much better things will be. If the situation is mom's not eating and she keeps falling because she's weak, then you're going to talk about the caregiver is going to prepare healthy meals that mom's likes. Does mom have some old recipes that a food that she really used to like that the caregiver can make for her? She'll be. She'll have energy now because she's eating healthy meals. Daughter won't have to worry because she knows mom is eating healthy meals. So your value selling instead of focusing on the costs. Any questions about that? I keep seeing the chat light up, but it might still be people saying, yes, I don't know.
Speaker 3:There was a question about how flexible it should be with pricing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so with pricing. I usually was there more, lisa, I'm sorry, oh no, you're good Okay.
Speaker 2:With pricing. I don't usually give like a flat. It's $33 an hour. I always give a range. It can be from this amount to this amount.
Speaker 2:I really need to sit down with mom and dad, mom or dad to give you the actual price per hour, because there's a lot involved. I don't know what kind of caregiver I'm going to need, I don't know what the skill set, and then they'll say, oh, she's really easy, she's really easy, it's going to be fine. I'm sure we're going to be the cheaper rate and I would just say that, okay, that's great to hear, but I still really need to assess. I've had people say that to me before and I get in there and it's not easy. And I've had people say she's going to be so difficult, she can barely stand, she can barely walk. And I get in there and she can stand and she can walk. So we can't just go off of. We need to see for ourselves the situation and then we can give you the price. I hope that answers that one. Okay, so handling objections and concerns about affordability. So I have changed the hours and days so that their weekly cost or monthly cost is less, rather than changing my rate.
Speaker 2:When you start lowing. If you have a range say you're 33 to 37, and you're going to charge them 33 or 34 instead of 37. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about your 33 to 37. And they're saying I want 31, or I want $32 an hour. I don't. Instead of doing that, I would change the hours and I would address the concerns I have about changing the hours. We can change the hours to this, but then mom's only going to get bathed twice a week instead of three times. Is everybody okay with that? That might be the conversation you have to have.
Speaker 2:When you're quick to lower your rate, the value of your services start to go down in their eyes. So really think long and hard about that Now. If they were thinking they needed 12s and now all of a sudden they need 24s, maybe it's worth it to you to take it down a buck an hour, because now they've picked up more hours. You have to make that decision yourself. The last company I worked with we didn't have a 24 hour rate, but the company before that we did have a 24 hour rate and it was cheaper than our hourly. That's something to think about too. That's different than bartering your hourly with someone who's not upping their hours right. Address their emotional needs. Talk about the daughter and how she's worried about you. Talk about the fear maybe mom has at night going to the bathroom by herself. Maybe she recently fell going to the bathroom. You want to make sure we're fulfilling those emotional needs. Address the peace of mind again and you can work within a reasonable budget.
Speaker 2:If I have somebody like, oh, we can't afford, like they're just blown away right when I sit down and tell them what I think the hours should be and what the cost should be, and you can just see their blur, they'll even say there's no way we can do that. Then I will say how much can you afford a month? And it has to be reasonable. If they say $20 a month, obviously this is not going to work out right. It has to be in a reasonable amount. If they give you an amount that they can spend, divided by your hourly rate, then divide that by then you get how many hours a month you get. Divide that by the week, you see how many hours a week they can take and work within their budget. And we tell social workers we can work within their budget, a reasonable budget. You don't have to say I was a social worker.
Speaker 2:Sometimes there are people that fall between the cracks. They don't qualify for Medicaid and they also can't afford private pay, and it breaks my heart. I hate that, I really hate that. But there are some that are going to fall between the cracks. In that case I will ask them do you have any children that help pitch in? Are they willing to help pay for this services? I wouldn't ask the child right there on the spot and put them on the spot, but that might be an option too. Sometimes the family members will pitch in.
Speaker 3:We used to also have. I used to bring out little calendars, blank calendars. Sometimes the family would come up with kind of something where, okay, what we want to do, we're going to be here for this timeframe, but we need you guys for this timeframe, or some sort of variation. So I would write it out for them so that they could see it, get a visual of what this looks like as far as you're going to take all of this time, and then we would get more of it, because they would see it in front of their face Wow, I have to work, I have to get kids to soccer, I have to do oh my gosh, I'm going to be here doing this, and that way it really helps create a visual too for the time, and a lot of times it is a budget thing, but then when they start to see the time that they will be spending doing that versus living their lives, it makes a difference too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a great idea and a lot of times they will, and I've said that to them. Well, if this is what you can afford, maybe a family member can do this, or maybe a neighbor can do this or something. There's somebody else, and when the kids see that, sometimes they'll pitch in, or sometimes mom or dad. What I hear more often than not from the adult children is my mom has money. Don't let her make you think she doesn't. She just doesn't want to spend it. That's usually and I see Annette shaking her head that happens a lot. That doesn't mean you consume it as the money, but most of the time I have found it's like we go from. They only want three hours a week, and now they're like oh, that sounds really good, let's do 30 hours a week and I'm like where did that come from?
Speaker 3:You just told me, you didn't have any money, so you just never know.
Speaker 2:You don't know and you can't always tell by their home or the way they carry themselves. I've had very wealthy people living in a small three bedroom house from the 60s that hasn't been updated, and that's probably why they have money. They haven't spent any money. I don't know, I have no idea how any of that works for all the different people, but you try to work within a reasonable budget. Sometimes it's easier for people to take their money from the month and spread it out, and that calendar is a great idea too, that Lisa just shared.
Speaker 3:The ones who had the money are usually the ones I ended up having to wait and collect as well.
Speaker 2:I've had two 24s, why I had to literally go out and pick up a check every week. Yeah, wild.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Overcoming communication barriers. Ensuring clarity is conveying ensuring clarity and conveying services and benefits. So be very transparent. And I like to say to them I'm being very transparent with you the time, like you want us to be here at six in the morning, I can probably find a caregiver that'll do that. But if she's out sick, I don't know what. You have to leave for work. We need to talk through this. Let's talk through this a little bit more and see if we can come up with something that works better.
Speaker 2:Don't over promise. I know we want to get this client signed right. It's important. You've grown your businesses. We want to get them signed, but don't over promise to do it because it'll backfire every time. If you're concerned about the schedule they want, explain the possible outcomes and your concern with these outcomes. If that daughter they're living together and a daughter has to leave for work at 6amm and she can't leave until the caregiver gets there, we all know that's going to be a problem. We all know, unless you're physically going to go, do that yourself, we know that's going to be a problem. You're going to have one or two and that and Lisa, would you agree? 6 am, even 7 am yeah, it's early.
Speaker 1:We had a few caregivers that would go early, but then if that person called in sick it was hard to find somebody else to go at 5 or 6am.
Speaker 2:So, yes, okay write this down, it's just hard, and you'll find the caregiver that's willing to do it. But then, boy, she calls out sick or something happens, you know. And so if you've said, if you really want 6am, we'll make it 6am, just know that your caregiver the one person we have calls out, it's going to be a struggle. And if you're okay with that, fine, and I've signed people up like that and they have been okay with it. With that, fine, and I've signed people up like that and they have been okay with it. And they have figured out some other situation, something else to do that day. Or until we get somebody there, they have a neighbor run over and sit with mom. As long as they know ahead of time, nobody gets upset about that. You just have to be very clear. Practicing, predictive, investigating sounds so, so high tech, but I do, boy. When I'm sitting in that house I am looking at anything that could blow up.
Speaker 3:Anything and everything.
Speaker 2:You have to ask if they have a cat. There's many caregivers that will not go to home with a cat. I love cats myself. They just won't go. They're allergic, they're scared.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the case may be. So if I see a cat bowl or a food bowl on the ground and I ask them if they have a cat or dog, I'm going to say, wow, I see a food bowl. We have to know, because you guys, if you think, oh, it'll be okay, it won't be okay. That caregiver is going to get there. No one told them there was a pet and now there's this huge dog when they walk in the door that they hid from you. So you do have to be a detective. And if there are cats, what are you doing about the cat box?
Speaker 2:A lot of caregivers don't want to change and Medicaid in Arizona doesn't allow the caregivers to change the cat box. Private pay we did, but we had to tell the caregiver and they had to be okay with it, and not all of them were okay with that. So try to think about all the things that could go wrong. I hate to be a pessimist, but you don't want the caregiver to have to problem solve any of this. You don't want the caregiver to think we hid this from them so they would accept the job, because that's what they're going to think. They're going to think you knew there were eight cats in this home. You just didn't tell me that's what they're going to think, even though maybe we didn't know. Annette, I see you have something to add.
Speaker 1:I was going to say for some reason we just had so many caregivers that would not go with cats because of allergies or people, but also sometimes I would go to a house and it just smelled like smoke and I knew they smoked but they weren't smoking and nothing was around. So I had to say, do you smoke? And they might say no, and I go, I smell smoke, because we had caregivers that really would have a hard time going to if they there was cigarette smoke. So you have to ask. Sometimes they don't bring it up and you have to ask those questions and while it might be uncomfortable for you to ask and difficult for you to ask.
Speaker 2:It's going to be much better coming from a salesperson, someone who has that personality, to play it off as not super serious. Then it's going to come off from a caregiver that walked in and has said I don't want to be around smokers. And here we are and is upset about it. That's going to blow up. So much better to ask us. Also, I've went into homes in the winter here and it's not that cold. I'm in Arizona and they've got the heater on 90. I can barely breathe in this house.
Speaker 2:How is the caregiver going to be up on her feet running around and doing things when it is 90 degrees in the home? So I'm going to address that too. I'm just going to say it's a little warm in here. Do you always keep it this warm? And then I'm going to have to say do you mind if we keep it at 80? When the caregiver's here, she can get you a blanket or help you put on a nice sweater. Would that be okay with you?
Speaker 2:Anything over 80, it's going to be really difficult for the caregiver to clean or do whatever they're supposed to do. So, as uncomfortable as it might feel to you to have to bring these things up. If you don't, it's going to come up anyway. I've just, I've tried, I've thought, oh, it's probably just a hot day, it'll be fine, and that job starts and I get the call. Don, did you know it was 90 degrees in that house, so it's going to come up. So just deal with it right there. They also cannot smoke when they're on oxygen in the house. People, they just cannot. Nobody in the home can be smoking when there's oxygen in the house. That seems like a common. I can't tell you how many caregivers I've had call me and say, hey, the caregiver's smoking. I'm really uncomfortable. Yeah, you are.
Speaker 2:Oxygen. You should always ask everyone Are you, is anybody in the house on oxygen Cause it may not be them, it might be their husband, wife. And if they say yes, okay, there's no smoking right. I'm just making sure and they look at you like you're crazy. But after being in home care all these years, it's not a crazy question, I promise you. So that's a predictive investigating Just eyes open, ears open, checking everything the whole time you walk in. You need to find out who lives there.
Speaker 2:If there's a house full of people like the caregiver isn't going to like that probably if they're all living there and they're all expecting their laundry to be done and they're all expecting her to prepare meals. If there's five, six, seven, eight people living there, you have to address the fact the caregiver is here for the client. Now, if she's going to make lasagna that everybody can share, great. Is she going to make tacos for everybody? Probably not. Is she going to make individual meal sandwiches for the whole house? No, is she making a pot of spaghetti? That might work, but her responsibility is to the client and her hours here are going to be addressed to this client, their laundry, their everything. If there's a ton of people there. You're always asking who lives here. Anyway, it should be on your assessment form. I don't mean to sound, I'm just trying to give you all the things that could go south so that you don't have to go through that. Yes, differentiating your agency from competitors. We did this on the referral source side. We've got to do this with our clients to highlight your unique selling points specialized services and staff credentials. So lead caregivers could be one. Caregiver training how you train them, what you're training them in Supervisory visits is a great way. Alzheimer's, dementia training Maybe you have 24 hour caregivers that you have trained in 24-hour care. This means they've learned all the things Personal care, what could go wrong in the middle of the night, what are they supposed to do while the client's sleeping, like all of that. Maybe you have a discharge package. You have to differentiate yourself from your competitors and I don't know about you, but it used to be back in the day when I would come talk to a company or a family about home care. They had never heard really, they didn't know how it worked really. Now they've been through the ringer with several home care agencies, so they are going to know what other companies are doing. Maybe their mom has Alzheimer's and you're doing a special Alzheimer's training. They're going to pick you because of that. Those are the kinds of things that you should be pointing out and think about doing to differentiate your company Addressing availability and scheduling challenges.
Speaker 2:Aligning caregiver availability with client needs. Before I would go on assessment, I always talked to the clients and booked the assessment and if I knew that they were needing specific hour because sometimes they'll just say to me, oh, I've got to get to work by this time or something like that, if I feel like they're going to sign, they like me and I got enough information I might start checking the roster before I even leave. Who do we have in that area? I would get with scheduling hey, I'm going out to Chandler, this is what they need, and out to Chandler, this is what they need, and it's probably going to be four hours a day. What times are going to work with the caregivers we have out there, especially if it's a hard to staff area? Chandler can be tough. Scottsdale is tough, where I live, so before I would even go out, I would say, based on the phone conversation, it looks like a four hour a day job. What should I make the hours what's going to work. And then when I get to the assessment I can say I've got three caregivers that you know that typically work these hours. Would that work for you? So sometimes you work it backwards instead of the other way. So checking your roster before you even go out can be helpful with that, matching those, those client and caregiver needs, managing expectations around last minute requests or changes.
Speaker 2:So what I would do because they, now that they're in the system, so say they become a client, they're once a week and that's it four hours once a week telling them that it's a great way to sell. Now that you're in our system and we know who you are, we know where you are, you can call us if you need services another day, maybe just one week, or daughter whole family's going out of town to a wedding. You can't go, and now you're going to be all alone for a week. So you want us to come more often. We can do that because you're a client. You're going to be on, you're going to be somebody that we're going to staff sooner than maybe a brand new client. So that's a way to sell it. But still, again, you need to be transparent and have realistic expectations. But there is a benefit of them being in your system. For me they had more of a priority than maybe a brand new client because they were already in the system. We didn't have to go out and sign them. If a long time has gone by since you've seen them, somebody should go out and assess because things can change. So I would definitely do that. But if you're seeing them once a week and now they want a whole week of 24s, they can do that because they're already in the system. So that's part of how I would sell.
Speaker 2:I would say because you're in the system, you can add hours to. With a phone call we need a couple days notice, but with some phone calls, talk about cancellations as well and how that works. We got to with some of our clients because they were canceling so much. We would say not to all of them, but we would say if you don't give us a 48 hour notice, we're going to have to charge you, or you don't give us a 24 hour notice, we're going to charge. We didn't do that right off the bat with everybody because emergencies happening. This is senior care. We know that things are going to happen, but we did have some particular clients, just a handful, where we would have to say to them if you cancel without a 24-hour notice, we're going to have to charge you because it's just too hard for the caregiver. They're going to quit that client anyway because they're not getting any hours. They're canceling all the time.
Speaker 3:A couple of questions, and this one has to do with exactly what you're talking about now. But Tammy asked what about changing the day of service?
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, not today, but I'd rather they come tomorrow, and there's a couple of different things with that. But how would that be? Okay? I would try to do that and be flexible. Again, if they're doing that all of the time, they're going to lose. And I would tell them your caregiver has been told that they would come on Tuesdays from this time to this time. Their schedule works with that and they've arranged their life to make that work. If you continue to change, you're going to lose this caregiver that you love, because they have lives too.
Speaker 2:Maybe the day that you want to this week they're doing something, because why wouldn't they be doing something? Or maybe they have another client, so anytime they wanted they were changing all the time or they wanted to change. I would always talk about their caregiver and then sometimes they'd say I talked to the caregiver about it, she's available, and that drove me nuts, because they're not supposed to be talking about scheduling with their caregiver. So we try to keep them from doing that, but we can't always keep. My caregiver said it was fine, she can come tomorrow instead, and I would say Okay, we need to be in the know and I understand you're alerting me right now, but that needs to come through the office and then we will check with the caregiver. So that's great for this week, but the next time please call your scheduling team and we will get with the care. We don't want the caregiver to be put in a pressure-y situation where they feel like they have to say yes.
Speaker 3:So also also Christina, just that. She lost a caregiver like this. I don't know if she either went privately or she was just like you know what. I just don't want to do this back and forth of the schedule changing. I'm not sure what the case, but it was that.
Speaker 4:It was that she would call me. The client would call me and say, can we do Tuesday? And she would cancel that morning. And it happened three times in a row, three weeks in a row. And our really good caregiver, one of our top caregivers, just texted me. When I said, hey, can you do Wednesday instead of Monday, she goes. I can do this Wednesday, but then, please, this is my, my, my notice with her, because it's too, it fluctuates and a lot of the caregivers like consistent schedules, yeah, so I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would I always the very first time. We can do it this time, but you're, you have a risk of losing your caregiver if we continue to do it and they do, they live because they love that client and they want to satisfy them and they want to be there for them, but they can't let their life be dictated.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're we got to keep going. Okay, maintaining long-term client relationships. So regular check-ins with your clients are super important. You're updating the care plan. It reinforces trust. So the first day of shift, within 24 hours, the scheduling team or the market or whoever whoever you want calls in to see how service went. Somebody should also probably be calling the caregiver and see how it went, because a lot of times caregiver on a new client is a new caregiver too. That can happen. So you want to make sure it went well on both sides.
Speaker 2:Supervisory visits like 90 days is good, unless if they're a high biller or 24, you want to go more often and make sure they're happy. If they're hosp, high biller or 24, you want to go more often and make sure they're happy. If they're hospice, you want to go more often. If they're bed bound, you're wanting to go more often. Make sure they're not getting bed sores, they're happy. Ahoy or lift If they have cognitive issues. I would say more than every 90 days, maybe every 30. Because for those reasons it's obvious why you would need to go more often Proactively address potential issues to ensure satisfaction. So anticipate challenges ahead of time. We've already talked about that.
Speaker 2:Check in with the first caregiver, see how it went. Are there, did the care plan match or maybe it didn't did? Is this client nice? Is this client? Let's hear from that first caregiver how it went. Train caregivers to always alert the office when there is a change in the care plan. Maybe I signed up the client and I missed something and the care plan doesn't match. From that day on it's always going to be that it doesn't match unless that caregiver calls the office and tells us actually she can't help transfer. It was terrible. I don't know what Dawn was thinking. Whatever it is, the care plan needs to be changed for the next care. We don't need this to keep happening. And then the adult children and the client are upset because the caregiver again came in thinking this person could transfer and they can't. So always get that care plan changed.
Speaker 2:And that starts with the caregiver Competition. How do you stand up? You differentiate yourself. Strengthen your relationship with the client and family. If you're calling and checking in and alerting the adult child of things, you now have a strong relationship. They can tell you when things aren't going well instead of just quitting because they're too scared to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Differentiate your services while they're on service. So maybe you have a geriatric care manager and all the other home care agencies don't. Make sure they realize that and that they're using that service. Maybe you provide you do call them on the first 24 hours after their first day of service and none of the other home care agencies did Whatever. It is that why they picked you. Make sure that they're getting that.
Speaker 2:Whatever that differentiation is, be a reliable partner. Communicate back and forth with the adult child. Make sure you have HIPAA, make sure they've done HIPAA and that it's okay to do. But alert that. Hey, I just want to let you know the caregiver called your mom had really had a tough day. You might want to call and just check that and she's okay, she's safe, she's not hurt, but she was really sad today. Just thought you'd want to know. They love that. They need that. That's the peace of mind. Guys. Showcase your expertise. Always be showcasing that. If you have a geriatric care manager or it looks like mom's dementia is getting a little bit worse, I'm going to have my Alzheimer's certified staff member, come out and visit with your mom today. That keeps them on service and keeps them from calling your competitors. Okay, lisa, you don't have a lot of time. We can go over a little bit. I'm so sorry it ran so long. Go for it.
Speaker 3:Anyone who asked there's a couple of questions in there. We've already made arrangements, so we'll call you guys after, if that's okay, just so we can get through all of this. Okay, I'm tired, we'll come back, but I just wanted to let you guys know that. Okay, so mark your calendars.
Speaker 3:February 21st is a friday. It's national think a caregiver day. This isn't really a handout or anything. It's just a reminder to you guys and some cute little quick ideas. If you wanted to do something for the caregivers, maybe hold a open house. That's what we did. We had an open house and had food and things to give away Bags like a little care, bags with candy, maybe like a protein bar, water, little maybe pad of paper pens, things like that, little cute things like this. I know that one of them had a nice key chain it was all about appreciation and a cool bag that they can reuse, like when they take to jobs and shifts and everything. So just remember them on that day, all right, so for February we have happy Groundhog Day.
Speaker 3:Don't let last minute discharges cast a shadow on your day. So this one here on the left, you would take out to your social workers and talk about your last minute discharges and how you have caregivers ready to go. This one says our caregivers are prepared to get your patients home safe and grounded within just a few hours. And then, on the right here, don't let a fall cast a shadow on your day. This you can take out to others and just let them know that you are ready to go. With this you can get someone home safely. If they fall in, you'll keep them safe at home. All right, I'm going a little fast.
Speaker 3:Another one healthy heart tips. So February is American Heart Month. Our caregivers can help seniors stay heart healthy at home by helping too, so to relieve stress, by doing a lot of all these other things. I used to love to let people know that we were able to prepare healthy meals and have them ready like on deck for maybe warming up or heating up later. That was such a huge thing that people needed and didn't realize. So I like to incorporate that anytime we can, that, yes, we do all of these things right. We can take someone outside to get some vitamin D healthy, do some exercise, physical activity, healthy meals, all of that stuff. They need to know that this is all kind of encompassing with home care. You can do all these things, constantly reminding them. And if you want to go in and customize, you can. Sorry, the links are at the bottom here. It'll also be on the forum, but there's a Canva link where you can go change everything if you wanted to. And then the Google Doc where you can go in and just customize it to your contact information and logos and then boom, you're good to go, print that out and take those with you.
Speaker 3:Another one, feeling like life just turned up the heat. Don't sweat it. We have trained caregivers standing by to take the heat off family and provide excellent care at home for all situations. I feel like this is talking about just everything that we talked about today. Right, every situation. And not that anyone cares. But it's National Sauna Week, february 20th to 26th. But it's just a different take and I think it just will bring attention to what you're bringing in, what's not the norm. And then again you can customize those for the February leave behinds. For each of them you can use any of these that you want to. Stress balls are really popular, especially heart ones that are Valentine's Day colors, and then the shower steamers. I think that would go really well with the sauna. When they're individually packed, you get those organza bags that tie and you can hole, punch your leave behind sorry, and attach it to your bag the little ribbon there and just take it out. It's a cute little gift and they're going to remember you with all these different ideas, I believe. Just make sure you keep going out all the time. All right, next slide, february leave behind.
Speaker 3:This one is a little tricky because you are getting cell phone numbers for social workers. This is a game changer for you. It's a little, just a little giveaway. Enter to win a Valentine's Day self-care gift basket. A. You're getting them to come out and get this from you because this is important. They could win the best thing ever self-care gift basket. You can make it whatever you want to. You can spend 50 bucks on it, you can spend 20 bucks on it, doesn't really matter. But they don't know that they're just entering to win and you're getting their cell phone number. So this is really cool. Love, love this idea and you can pair it with. So these are just like a cute little idea, little Valentine's Day cards. It'll really literally hold probably like 10 Skittles, but so it's really cute. This is another way you can use that. Text me with how many Skittles are in the jar? Easy peasy, no one really is going to. Everyone would win, but you're getting their cell phone numbers. So that's what's important, and it makes it a little interactive too, and fun.
Speaker 3:March leave behind, so it is National Social Worker Month. This is like the day right, so you want to go out and make sure that you're saying thank you to all of those social workers that you know and don't know. This could be your icebreaker here. We just appreciate all that you do and we want to thank you for trusting us with your patients. We're getting them home safely and that you continue to give us these patients to get home safely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you only get one month a year to celebrate the sexual workers guys. You got to see them all. This is like the month the month.
Speaker 3:It's a few months to shine and I really liked these mesh letter zipper pouches. I keep saying I'm going to get some. I need to because I just don't know why. I just really like them, but they also come with some sticky labels here. I think this is a good different thing that we're doing this year. And then these cute stickers. These are so very cute. This can go on their water bottles or laptop on these little pouches, you name it. And it's all about social workers and Annette has used these in the past and said that they were just really great. Everyone loved them, wanted to know where to get them, and so now you guys know where to get them.
Speaker 2:And you can go to the marketing store down here on the left when you get the slides and it'll take you right to the store to pick these things up. Every slide that's got stuff has a marketing store. They take you to different months.
Speaker 3:So, anyway, go ahead. I forgot about that. Thank you for reminding me. I forgot that. Was there Another one? So creating partnerships that work for your patients, care plans designed with your patient's unique needs in mind. So they need to understand that too. And then you're taking out. Here's a little creativity, courtesy of change it to your logo, and it is national craft month, so I thought it'd be cute to pair it with a little craft, which is these little diamond painting kits. I have a ginormous Darth Vader one that I love and still haven't finished, but these are so cute and it's so fun. I really like doing these.
Speaker 3:And it's just different too, whether an early bird or a night owl, know who's got your patients covered 24 hours a day. We do. That's who. So our caregivers are trained for all different situations, all different times of the day and all through the night to keep patients safe at home. It's who we are, and so I think that it's important that they know you're not just a nine to five type of thing. This is 24 seven. If they need care at night, if they need someone to watch over them, just to sit or service or just to be there in case they need to get up to use the restroom. You've got them covered.
Speaker 2:I love this one yeah.
Speaker 3:And then just some cute little owl things just to tie in the little theme there, the sticky notes, owl bags you can fill with candy or any other tchotchkes like your pens, hand sanitizer, you name it. And then these cute little guys just glow in the dark and I just thought they were cute. And then we have St Patrick's. So if you're in a pinch, you're in luck. We will get your last minute discharges home safe today, happy St Patrick's Day. So just want to let them know that, again, this is a big one, because last minute discharges can happen all the time, or they were planning it and then it just took forever to get transport or whatever the case may be, or one person to sign off, or even meds. You want them to know that you're accustomed to this. You understand that not everything goes as planned and you are ready to go anytime that they need you.
Speaker 3:And if you go to the next slide, okay, just very simple beaded necklaces. You could actually cut like a little cutout on the top and the bottom to push that beaded necklace through. And there it is. It's your pinch protection. You could also get these cute little boxes. Fill them up with rainbow coins. I just thought that would be really cute too. Any of this would just make someone smile and remember you, april.
Speaker 4:These are new Woohoo.
Speaker 3:Okay. Planting seeds of support helps patients thrive at home. It's national garden month and as an afterthought, I was thinking a garden basket would be good. Get someone's cell phone number for that, maybe enter to win. But right now we're doing this one. Our home care team will put a care plan in place ensuring your patients thrive at home. So again, we just want them to know that you are on it. You will put a care plan in place ensuring your patients thrive at home. So again, we just want them to know that you are on it. You will put a care plan together. When you go out and do an assessment and your caregivers are ready to go, they're prepared.
Speaker 3:These are really cute little papers. They're like they're seeds within the paper. I don't know if you guys have ever seen these, but they're really cute. You soak them and plant them and it'll grow. These really cute you soak them and plant them and it'll grow. These are wildflowers, for example, and you just get the little envelopes here and there's links in the store. Throw your logo on that and maybe add the two or three in there. There's like a hundred in the packs. I just thought this was really cute to watch them grow, just like we want to grow your home care agency and grow your clients and referral bases, we want to vitamin C.
Speaker 3:You stay healthy. So April 4th is national vitamin C day. I used to do something like this all the time, just anytime it was flu season. But I would just take out like a bunch of oranges or cuties with, like, my information. So this is just a step up. But you can also do these emergency hydration packets or like the individual ones. You just shove them in a water bottle and you're good to go. Lots of vitamin C keeps you hydrated. And or you could take out some oranges too.
Speaker 3:I used to love to do that and when I would go in the day when you could actually go to the nurse's station, they liked it. They absolutely loved it because it was different than donuts, it was different than candy, it was different, it was a little more thoughtful. All right, our little fuzzy guy. He's so cute, so last minute discharges got your feathers ruffled. We're ready to spring into action and we're no chickens, get it Cause he's a little chick. But with 20 years, okay, our care team is ready. 24, seven. So that's something you can take out for spring.
Speaker 2:They love a play on words. This is the kind of thing that's going to stick out in their head and remember you and know that you went to these lengths to spring them something different right. And so, then, your services must also be very good.
Speaker 3:Right and just. I thought these bunnies holding onto carrot pens were adorbs so I just wanted to put those there. And then these spring flower sticky notes are just really pretty. Something different, but also something that they can also use at their desk. So loved these Great that's it.
Speaker 2:You did it, and by five minutes after great job. So I know some of you still had some questions. We're going to call you and we're also going to put those questions. Remember, we will call you, but remember we also have the forum. So if you have questions also you can put them in the forum and we can respond there, because that helps educate everybody. We're going to call you, guys, and then we're going to also put the question you asked in the forum, because I think it's good for everyone to see the questions and read the answers, and then you can go to the forum for those things too. So thank you everyone for being here. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Will the slides and everything get sent today or tomorrow? When do we?
Speaker 1:do it, annette. Usually the slides go with the replay, so look for it in the next 24-ish hours.
Speaker 2:Okay, you'll get an email from Stephanie Yep. Okay, perfect.
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