Unlock the secrets to elevating your home care agency's sales and marketing strategies as we unveil the transformative Continuum Sales Mastery Circle, the latest evolution of our Home Care Marketing Mastermind. Join Valerie Van Booven, Dawn Fiala, and Lisa Marsolais in a dynamic discussion that promises to arm you with the tools necessary to thrive in today's competitive landscape. With a focus on creating a more interactive community, we're setting sail on a journey toward fostering rich dialogues and shared experiences that will embolden your marketing efforts and nurture growth.
Wave goodbye to the static ways of Facebook groups, and embrace our vibrant new home at homecaresalesforum.com, a haven for real-time interactions and a rich repository of specialized video content. This episode serves up a sneak peek into the forum that will soon become your go-to for crafting weekly goals, maintaining robust referral relationships, and striking the perfect harmony between in-person marketing and strategic drop-offs. Get ready to enhance your on-the-go marketing toolkit with resources designed to fine-tune your approach and cultivate a supportive network rooting for your every stride.
Dive into the nitty-gritty of transforming lofty annual goals into achievable weekly milestones with a focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), courtesy of insights from our seasoned hosts. We traverse the varying terrains of healthcare marketing, from qualifying potential referral sources to devising tailored strategies for diverse economic demographics. Whether you're marketing to skilled nursing facilities or balancing Medicaid versus private pay clients, this episode is laced with actionable wisdom. Discover how to carve out your own path to success in the intricate web of healthcare sales and marketing, ensuring your business not only keeps pace but sets the pace in this ever-evolving industry.
Unlock the secrets to elevating your home care agency's sales and marketing strategies as we unveil the transformative Continuum Sales Mastery Circle, the latest evolution of our Home Care Marketing Mastermind. Join Valerie Van Booven, Dawn Fiala, and Lisa Marsolais in a dynamic discussion that promises to arm you with the tools necessary to thrive in today's competitive landscape. With a focus on creating a more interactive community, we're setting sail on a journey toward fostering rich dialogues and shared experiences that will embolden your marketing efforts and nurture growth.
Wave goodbye to the static ways of Facebook groups, and embrace our vibrant new home at homecaresalesforum.com, a haven for real-time interactions and a rich repository of specialized video content. This episode serves up a sneak peek into the forum that will soon become your go-to for crafting weekly goals, maintaining robust referral relationships, and striking the perfect harmony between in-person marketing and strategic drop-offs. Get ready to enhance your on-the-go marketing toolkit with resources designed to fine-tune your approach and cultivate a supportive network rooting for your every stride.
Dive into the nitty-gritty of transforming lofty annual goals into achievable weekly milestones with a focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), courtesy of insights from our seasoned hosts. We traverse the varying terrains of healthcare marketing, from qualifying potential referral sources to devising tailored strategies for diverse economic demographics. Whether you're marketing to skilled nursing facilities or balancing Medicaid versus private pay clients, this episode is laced with actionable wisdom. Discover how to carve out your own path to success in the intricate web of healthcare sales and marketing, ensuring your business not only keeps pace but sets the pace in this ever-evolving industry.
There we go.
Speaker 2:There we go, there we go.
Speaker 1:Well, everybody, welcome to the 2024 Home Care Marketing Mastermind. We changed the name a little bit. We're going to talk about that. It's now the Continuum Sales Mastery Circle, which is a mouthful, but we are going to talk about that a little bit. Ease everybody into it. We'll still call it Mastermind for a while, but for 2024, we're changing things up and we're adding some new products and services. So as we go along this year, we're going to let everybody kind of ease into the new routine. We're still going to meet about every other Friday and we still have our same Mastermind. Some of the things we talked about might be a little bit different and we want you guys to participate With that.
Speaker 1:Let's go to the next slide. All right, how's keeping? We just want you to keep your lines muted unless you're talking. Share stories, experiences, tips. We really want to make this more interactive this year. We want you guys to participate with us. It's not just about us blah, blah, blah, blah. It's really about your experience and how we can help you Make recommendations, ask questions and tell us what you want to know. We have a great idea of what everybody's biggest frustrations are, but we really want to hear from you. So, whether you send us a support ticket or talk to us here in the chat. You can always chat with us. Maybe Lisa can say hi to everybody in the chat. So if you do have a question and you're not in a place where you can talk, you can just unmute your line. You can just chat with us in the chat. Lisa just sent everybody a little hello, so you should be able to see that little pop up on your screen there. Okay, next slide. All right, reintroductions. Don Fiella, why don't you go ahead and start? Okay.
Speaker 3:So I'm Don Fiella. Welcome to our 2024 Mastery Circle Mastermind. As Valerie said, we're going to move into that slowly, but it's exciting. We can't wait to tell you about it. I have been in home care for almost I don't know 20 years or so. I have been in sales. I've been in marketing. I've been recruiting retention. I've been an operations manager. I helped grow the last independent home care company from about 200,000 in private pay a year to just under 4 million and under 4 years. So I've been in your shoes. I know it's challenging. It's also super rewarding work and I want to thank you all for what you do for seniors every day. Lisa.
Speaker 4:Hey, am I unmuted? Yeah, hey, I too have been in home care forever and ever and have worn all hats, because you can never stay in one lane in home care, I feel like, and so I'm just happy to be here Love what you guys are doing. I'm here to support you any way I can Make sure we're participating in all of our programs and, yeah, I'm glad you guys are here, woohoo.
Speaker 1:I'm Valerie Van Boeven, a registered nurse, the founder and co-owner of a Pref Senior Network, and although I played many, many roles and worked in many different facilities, institutions on all levels, from discharge planner, icu, nurse, you name it I've probably done it in my lifetime. I'm about I always tell people I'm 200 years old in nurse year. So there's nothing you can say to me that will shock me. I'm pretty much nothing that you can show me that would shock me at this point either. So I'm sure you all imagine that I don't do patient care anymore. I haven't done that in many, many years because since 2008, it's been all about a Pref Senior Network and we've been helping home care agencies market their services online for that long, and Dawn and Lisa bring for the last couple of years, have brought a very good addition to our team and to all of you in helping you learn more about being effective salespeople in the field. So that's everybody All right. All right, so you can't do this today, but I want you to. We're going to be talking about this a lot coming up, so logging into the forum. So what we've done is we're going to take down the Facebook group not today, but we're going to take down the private Facebook group we have and we're going to privatize our communication here. And we have a forum. You can go to it if you want to see it, but you can't get in because I haven't let anybody in yet. But homecaresalesforumcom is going to be the URL you're going to go to. This is different from what you would go into before to see all of the past videos. It's now going to just contain the 2024 stuff. For those of you who've been with us for a long time, you still have access to the old stuff as well. But the forum is going to be a combination of things. It's going to have a place where you can ask us, like in real time chat with us, and also you can chat with a group. You can chat with you know, anybody. You can ask questions. We're going to try to make it interactive as much as possible, and one of the things that I know about this is really hard to get people to engage in a forum, whether it's Facebook or anywhere else. It's hard to do. So can you go to the next slide? Oh, you can keep going. That's kind of what the login looks like.
Speaker 1:We'll get more into this. This is us just testing the forum so you can kind of get an idea of what's going on here. But what you see at the very top of this is we have a discussion area, which is us talking to each other, talking to you, and so you'll be able to do that in real time. But then there's also a button that says learning, and that learning button is what's going to take you to the Continuum Sales Mastery Circle video. So everything we do, just like last year, just like the year before, everything we do is recorded. All the handouts will be available there. But you have to come here to the forum to see that, get that and talk to us, and we want to keep this interactive. We're probably gonna have to give away some prizes, ladies, to keep people interested.
Speaker 1:So the best way to kind of stay interested in all of this and to be able to engage is if you can do this from your phone, not just your desktop. So if you can go to the next screen. Oh, that's what? Yeah, just keep going there. So this is kind of what the inside looks like, but I'm gonna show you guys a way to add this to your home screen and to add it to your phones. So I'll do a little video for everybody and send it out to you.
Speaker 1:But what we really want you to do is add. Add the app to your phone, and there's a video. Oh, I did a video. Look at me, there's a little bitly link there. Add the app. We want you to do that and we want you to be able to just quick, on the fly, find that logo on your desktop or on your phone and be able to chat with us. Keep going.
Speaker 1:Is there another slide after that? Oh, that's what it looks like on my phone. So see, little H, I can go over this in the video. But there's the home care sales forum right there. So that's on my phone and you guys can see that You'll be able to do that too. So right now nobody can get in there. We're still gonna use the Facebook group for another week or two, but once we start inviting you, you'll start getting emails, invitations to join the forum. We want you to do that and then we'll look at it in real time together during one of the masterminds so that we can all sort of look at it, see how it works. But I encourage you, once you get that invitation, to log in and just at least say hi to everybody, and so we can all start talking to each other. The more you use it, the faster you'll be at using it. So okay, go ahead, my part's over.
Speaker 3:So what I love about the forum is the questions. So I know, as a marketer, when I was out in the field, well, I didn't really have anybody I could ask because we were a new franchise way back in the day. But my marketing people when I was a sales manager, I just went into that sniff and this is what she said and I don't know what to do now and I don't know if I can ever go back there. Like they told me they have enough home care companies. Whatever the case may be, they would text me what do I do? They would be frozen right.
Speaker 3:So that's what the forum is for. It's for you guys. You're out in the field, you're stuck, something's happened and you need a quick. What do I do? This happened last time I was there. Do I go back? All of that? I've been there five times. I get to see somebody. What now? That's the purpose of the forum too. I mean, there's also learning. But those would be the types of questions and I think it's great because it's done in group format and so everybody can kind of learn while they're reading what everybody else is doing. So that's kind of the point of that piece of it. So I'm super excited about this for everybody involved. Okay, moving on, so the agenda for today.
Speaker 1:New.
Speaker 3:Year New you. We're gonna talk about holding yourself accountable. We get this a lot from. I get this from new owners. I get it from owners who have marketers under them and they're having trouble holding them accountable. What does that look like? We get a lot of people requesting accountability. How can I hold myself accountable? How can I make sure we hit our numbers? And so we're gonna talk about that Marketing, business development, weekly goals.
Speaker 3:How often should you be marketing face to face versus drop offs? When you're out in the field, who should you see? We're gonna take a virtual field trip so that you can qualify your leads, your people that you're gonna stop and see, and we're gonna talk about how to set up your weekly route. And then Lisa's gonna go through some leave behinds. I think she's got January through March done, so we'll go through all of that today. And again, if you have any questions, you can use that chat feature. It looks like there's a lot of people, a lot of chats going on there already and we'll answer your questions as we go.
Speaker 3:Okay, so, holding yourself accountable to the goals you've set. It's January 19th. Have you set goals, first and foremost? Have you done that yet? If you haven't, it's time to do that.
Speaker 3:And it's important to have goals, because it's kind of like I'm gonna drive to Disneyland but I don't have a map to get there. Right, I mean, that's what you're doing if you don't have goals set. You have to know that how I'm gonna get there. I wanna hit 700,000 in private pay this year. Okay, that's a great statement, but what is the steps? What's the map, what are the directions to get there?
Speaker 3:That's why goals are so important. So start with the end in mind. I've always kind of started with well, what do I wanna bill in private pay? And your goal, the goals to get to that end in mind. That billing, or whatever your end in mind is, must be smart, meaning they need to be specific, they need to be measurable, they need to be attainable, they need to be reachable and they need to be time-based. So every time you make a goal, make sure that you're fulfilling that criteria is being met. Break your goals into smaller weekly goals. In order for you to hit your numbers, you have to be looking at them often, weekly, because if you wait until the quarter is over or you wait until six months have gone by.
Speaker 3:It's gonna take a lot if you're way off track to get on track. If you're looking at it weekly and you're off just a little bit, okay, what can I do to make the number next week? What can I do? What can I add? What can I change so that I hit my numbers? And if you're hitting them weekly, then you're gonna hit your goal at the end of the year. You wanna create some KPIs and you wanna check in weekly to assess and react to what you're seeing. So what is a KPI?
Speaker 3:We've talked about this before, but I you know, it's great to repeat this stuff because people do forget, and we just want this top of mind at the first of the year. Kpi is a key performance indicator. They're critical indicators of progress toward an intended goal. So goals and KPIs are different. A goal is the outcome you hope to achieve and the KPI is the metric to let you know how well you're doing working towards that goal. And so what you're really watching is your KPIs throughout the week. And so what are the weekly marketing, business development, community liaison they're called all kinds of different things. What do those goals look like? These are the goals I've used for years and years for a full-time person in the field that's doing the marketing. They're marketing full-time. They're signing clients. These are the weekly goals. They should be able to make 40 to 50 stops a week. Out of those 40 to 50 stops, 15 to 20 of those stops should be face-to-face stops. That means you're having a conversation, eye contact with the referral source. If you're doing this effectively, then you should start getting.
Speaker 3:It can take up to six months five to seven referrals a week from these efforts up here. If you're consistent, you have to be out there. You have to be consistent, you have to be seeing the same people and you do need FaceTime with all of them every month when the service inquiries come in. The phone calls come in about your services, from your field efforts, maybe from the website, from leads that you're buying. Whatever the case may be, you should be able to book 70% of those, turn them into assessments. So you take 10 calls, seven of them should be booked. You should be able to sign 90% of your assessments. You have 10 assessments this week. Nine of those should be signed. That should be a 90% signing ratio.
Speaker 3:If you're doing all of this consistently everything here you're hitting your percentages. Everything's going well. You should have four to six signed jobs a week. Now, the four to six sign jobs comes from everything. This is an advert, this is leads coming in from agentcarecom place for mom. Maybe you've got some Google ads, maybe you have website leads, people reaching out to you from Facebook or your other social media and your marketing efforts. You should be able to sign four to six jobs a week. With all of this combined, you should figure out what is your weekly run rate If you wanna bill $700,000 in private pay next year or $2 million in private pay next year. Whatever it is. Divide that number by 52 weeks we have 52 weeks in a year and that will give you your weekly run rate. That should be the number you're checking every single week.
Speaker 3:If you're not hitting it, something's wrong up here. Okay, if you're doing the 40 to 50 stops and 15 to 20 of those are face to face, and you're not getting five to seven referrals a week, something's wrong up here. Maybe you're not seeing the right people, maybe you haven't qualified that, maybe you're not asking for the business. Something's wrong up here. If you're doing all of this and you're getting five to seven referrals a week but you're not signing four to six jobs, maybe you're booking ratios down and you've got to work on getting that assessment booked. Or maybe you're not signing at 90%.
Speaker 3:Are you the expert when you're in that room? Are you the expert when you're on the phone? Do they trust you? So there's a lot that goes into these numbers, but when you break it in this way, you can see where the falloff is. If you're not hitting your numbers, if your weekly run rate you're not hitting it, you know that right now. Do something next week to change it, and the next week and the next week, look at it every single week. You should be tracking this every single week for yourself. If you're the owner for your marketer, if you have marketers out in the field for you. Do we have any questions about that, lisa?
Speaker 4:No, but just wanted to add set the expectation of what you're going to accept as leads to as referrals, because we can't take. If you take, if these people think that you are okay with two hours here and there, then that's what they're going to send you and then you're not going to make your weekly run rate, You're just not going to get there. So just make sure you set the expectation when you talk to them and if you want to do a favor here and there, let them know that too, that this, okay, I'll do that this once. But you know, I just really think setting that expectation for that relationship to build is really important.
Speaker 3:That's a really good point, and something else that I have added in the past over here. Another thing to track. You don't want to get carried away with this. You don't want to be tracking 20 things a week. You don't want for your marketer to have to track 20 things a week. It's just too much.
Speaker 3:But, as at least this point, you also need some big jobs, right, you need to mix it up a little bit, and so it might be that you're doing all of this and you're getting four to six sign jobs, and they're all really small, and so you're still not going to hit your bill, your weekly run rate. So you can add, you know, out of these four to six jobs, I want, I expect for two of them to be 12s or 24s or 30 hours a more week or so you can add another line item to this about a bigger job or longer lasting jobs or something like that. And anytime, my weekly run rate. We were not hitting it Alright, so I was afraid I was watching this daily. I'm kind of a psycho, but I knew I would. I would like okay, we did this much billing the last two days. What is that going to make a week to be. I mean, that's where my head was and I taught my marketers to watch it that way too.
Speaker 3:So we would go hit. We would go hit the streets with 24s. You know we do 24 hour home care. We're experts at it and this is why and this is what happens on 24 hour home care and this is why we're so much better at it. If you need big jobs, you have to tell people that you do that kind of work and that your experts in 24 hour home care or 12s or maybe rehab people discharge from rehab were really really good at post care. Whatever the case may be, you got to go after those big jobs if you're not hitting that weekly run rate. So that was a great point, lisa. Thank you for that. All right, how often should you market? Every referral source that you have should be seen every eight to 10 days.
Speaker 3:I know that some of you are like oh my gosh, are you kidding me? That seems like overkill. I get it. I understand that, but you have to convince them you're consistent and you're reliable in order for them to trust you, so you have to be there often. Marketers and home care come and go. They really do.
Speaker 3:When I started in this industry, I was at home instead my first executive director that I saw my very first day he came out and he's like I'll spend some time with you, but I know you're going to be gone in a couple weeks. That's what he said to me and I thought what are you talking about? And he goes oh, the turnover is terrible. And I said at my company and he goes no, all of you people, you're all the same. You come and go. So so they don't. They don't believe you're going to be around. You know that's a piece of it. So being consistent and being there every eight to 10 days, it doesn't mean you're going to get a face to face every day. A face to face is exactly how it sounds. That's once a month.
Speaker 3:The drop offs happen in between and a lot of times when I draw, if I just had a face to face with someone eight to 10 days ago, I'm going to even ask to see them the next time I go. I'm going to leave something for them. I'm not going to bother them. I don't want them to think that every time I come in the building they have to come talk to me. They're not going to like that. They don't have time for that. So if you just had a face to face the next few times it's a drop off. You know you're going to leave something behind, so leave it at the front. I've always, before I leave the parking lot, call, email or text the person, letting them know I dropped something off for them before I leave the parking lot Because, as Lisa said, in home care we're wearing lots of hats and it might be that you have to go run and pick up a wheelchair and drop it off somewhere in the next 10 minutes. So don't leave the parking lot until it's done, just don't do it.
Speaker 3:Just train yourself.
Speaker 3:I'm going to enter all my stuff in the CRM right now, everything that just happened. I'm going to set a task for myself for the next 8 to 10 days so that I remember to go back and I'm going to let her know that I dropped something off all before I leave the parking lot. You don't want the day to get ahead of you Face to face. If you do a face to face, you get a face to face. You want to cover the lead behind talking points to the person. Maybe you're dropping off something about 20-fire home care and about how you specialize it and you have special caregivers that do your 20-fire home care. Whatever the case may be, talk to them. You should have talking points that you're going to cover that are on the lead behind so that they understand and if it makes sense to ask for the business, do it. Do you currently have any patients that will need home care when they discharge or ask them about their census? How's the census?
Speaker 3:I always gauge whether we should be busy or not based on the parking lots. Sounds crazy, but if I pull into a rehab and there's nowhere for me to park, I should be busy. I should be getting some referrals out of that place. You look really busy. What is your census? Oh, my goodness, you must be so busy. They know, you know, right, they know that you know that they're busy. Hospitals packed, assisted living at their all. Parking lots are big and busy and packed. You should be busy, so that's another tell-tale sign that things should be moving along for you. Who should you see? Just in general hospitals, if you can get in, that's great. Sometimes they will do a brown bag lunch for you know where you can come in. Or you can do an in-service or a lunch and learn for their case managers. I have found that smaller hospitals, of course, are much easier to get in.
Speaker 3:Here in Arizona they have rehab hospitals now. So it's not really a rehab, but it's also not a hospital. It's like a combo. They're popping up on every side of the valley here and we're able to get into those. So if you can get into a hospital, they're probably the best referral source. The second and these aren't really in any order, but the second where we got most of our business was short-term SNFs. So the short-term SNFs, the rehabs that only do rehab, and then the ones that do short-term and long-term it looks like I'm missing a word here, so I'm sorry about that. So there are SNFs that have short-term and long-term in them, and then there are SNFs that are just rehab and so both of those are equally good.
Speaker 3:Independent living communities, ccrcs, which are the Continuing Care Retirement Community, so they have assisted living, independent living, memory care. Sometimes they have a skilled nursing facility in them as well. Buildings that are just straight memory care are good. Adult daycare, senior centers, home health, hospice, durable medical equipment, fiduciary churches Lisa, do you have anyone to add to this?
Speaker 4:No, I think that's really good.
Speaker 1:Okay, care managers if there are care managers, which? Well, there are a lot of independent care managers, you know, elder or life care managers, care managers that work independently in the community.
Speaker 3:That's good. I did geriatric care managers yeah, that's a good one. Elder long, elder long. So you know there are a lot of journeys are good, yep, poas, like all, are. I thought I meant to say I'm trying to think of the word now.
Speaker 1:Estate planning.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 4:Yes, doctors offices just like doctors offices and like like PCP offices.
Speaker 3:Doctors offices are really good in senior living areas, I have found, and they like a free lunch and so they'll say, sure, come on in and talk to us, and they might be or though, and deal with some seniors, but if you can go to a senior living area that has homes right there's, you know we have some lakes here, we have some city here, it's, it's home. They're all like privately owned homes within a senior community. It's like five square miles, six square miles, of just seniors living there and they have lots and lots of doctors offices and Dennis and renal care and all those places right there that those are great doctors offices to hit Absolutely. Thank you, nina, for that.
Speaker 1:I think the specialty doctors are good to you know, like she just said, the orthopedic surgeon, the knee and hip replacements, the kidney doctors, renal, you know anything that's. You know even neurologists. You know those are folks that are seeing a lot of seniors and that's a good specialty. Doctors are good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right. So, lisa, are there any we need to look at?
Speaker 1:We have a lot of questions. Yeah, I have some questions.
Speaker 4:Actually, let's see, someone asked what platform to use to track your marketing visits and I guess that would be you know what we use, but there's yeah we have.
Speaker 3:We have Spark CRM. We have customized it for home care, for marketing for home care, and we've shared it several times in in mastermind. If you know, if you want us to, you want to see what it's about, we can meet with you and show it to you. We do have some demos to, I believe, on our website. I have you sell sports. I have used playmaker. They're very deep, they're very involved, they're very expensive. So you know when, when I saw our CRM, when I started here, I was like this is amazing. It's very easy to use and there's an app for your cell phone and we customized it also. So that's what I would use. Obviously now, now that I've seen ours, I didn't see that before I worked here. So, anyway, that that's what I would say to that question.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we didn't even have one when I was. You know it was, we had well sky and that really didn't do justice for marketing. So, yeah, I really like our CRM that we're using now. It's awesome. I wish I would have had it way back when, especially the mobile app. Another question this goes back to the face to faces. Should there be an idea or ratio of face to face meetings? Stop buys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say I don't really have a ratio, but out of the 40 to 50 stops a week, you want the 9 to 10 of them to be face to face. So and then you want everyone to get a face to face at least once a month. So kind of tracking each referral source. You know how long has it been and what I kind of saw. The reason I got to the way I got to that number that they need once a month is because the referrals would start to slow down. You know my best referral source that would start slowing down and I'm like gosh well, I guess I haven't seen her for a couple months. You know her face and so I kind of like through the years, the monthly seems to be the right amount of time. If it's more than that, they get kind of annoyed unless you know there's a reason.
Speaker 3:I mean if they're calling you in because they have a patient down the hall you know that's a face to face, but they've kind of asked you to come in to do that and that'll happen. I mean, I had some people I saw every single week because they were sending me people and I, you know, you course you want to go into the skilled nursing facility to sign the client up for care and you're going to check in with social worker when you do that. In that case you're seeing them more often but they're initiating that. That's different than you just kind of popping by.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there was some people I saw weekly too, and I brought them tiramisu lattes because that's what they liked Nice, nice lattes, blended lattes. They were delicious, and Paulette suggested for the slide before this, geriatric doctors. And then, okay, tammy, for the doctor's offices in the senior community. What should, what should we look up? Or is there like a guide, or like a medical guide?
Speaker 3:No, so if you go to this really like it's really kind of cold calling, I mean that's, that's how I did it, you're in that senior living area. Like I said, sunlakes is one that's here I just drove in. I mean, right, when you drive in, it's doctors office doctors, office doctors office and they have their own.
Speaker 3:They have all the doctors, all the kinds of doctors, all those specialty doctors are within their community. I even went to see Dennis because there were seniors all day long and sometimes people need help. After that they had their own renal care, they had their own postdoc. I mean, they had their own everything. It was kind of like college, you know when you go on a college campus and they got like everything they need right there. That's how the senior communities are.
Speaker 3:So I would just go, just go and just plan on, you know, dropping off brochures and business cards to everyone. Will they all work out to be a referral source? No, probably not. But some are very open to it and very happy to have met you and to know that this exists and that you know that you're going to come and help. When they have a patient they have to send home, who maybe doesn't qualify for home health right, but they need something. So a lot of people fall in between the cracks there. So that's a good way is to just physically go to the senior area and just start making stops, and most of them are closed at lunch. So plan it accordingly Start in the morning.
Speaker 4:Any more? Yeah, so back to what size of weekly hours. Would you recommend a full time marketer, as opposed to the owner doing it?
Speaker 3:So it's just 40 hours. What did you say? How many hours?
Speaker 4:Yeah, the whole 40.
Speaker 3:I mean, if they're out signing jobs too and I really recommend that your marketing person is also signing the jobs I mean, I know some of you have a nurse and you want the nurse to do it and I get that and maybe that's the way it should be. But if they're asked to come to an assisted living building or a skilled nursing facility or rehab, they want that marketer to be with the family. Absolutely, they want us. The reason they're referring is because they have a relationship with that marketer. They trust the marketer. So if it's in somebody's home and they're going to go do the signing and you prefer your nurse to that's, that's great. But if it's at that facility, your marketer should be doing it.
Speaker 2:So when they?
Speaker 3:do they're signing jobs, they're probably not also going to get 40 to 50 stops done, Like you have to kind of think about that. You know, if they're out signing a job that's going to take a good hour, maybe hour and a half, to kind of take care of all of that, so then their stops will probably drop a little value. You have a question or comments?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I wonder if Jim's question is he says at what size of weekly hours would you recommend a full time marketer, as opposed to the owner doing it. Maybe he means how much are you billing weekly? Oh, so what size is your agency in billing hours when you know you now need a full time marketer? Like when should the owner stop pulling around with this?
Speaker 3:I think it depends on the owner. So some owners are good with marketing, they like marketing, they want to do the marketing and they're happy doing the marketing. So I would say I would hire someone in the office to do recruiting, staffing and all of that stuff before I hired a marketer. But then you have some that are only marketing because I have to, I hate it, they don't want to ever do it again, and so in that case, because you can't do all of it forever, so eventually someone needs to be in the office all the time and somebody else needs to be out in the field. So you have to decide which am I better at? Which do I like better? What am I more comfortable with? If you're killing it in the marketing piece of it, hire someone in the office to do the recruiting and the staffing and all of that. As far as what hours you need to do that. Like I don't you know, I don't know what your rent is and all of that. Like you're going to feel when you need it because there's no way you can handle all of that as one person for very long. I mean I know when I was at home. Instead, when I was hired, we had about 30 clients already and she already had a marketer before me, but I was their second marketer. I mean they were big clients Back then we were able to sign 24 is much easier and they lasted longer too. So it's really it really depends on you know your expenses and that and your budget and all of that. But you are going to need to decide do I want to be in the office or do I need to be the person in the field? Because at some point someone's going to have to be in both places. I hope that answers the question. I don't have the exact number of billable hours you should be at. I think you just feel it out of necessity more than anything. Perfect, any other questions? No, okay, so we'll move on.
Speaker 3:So before you are out marketing and sometimes this happens as you're out marketing, like when you stop in those doctor's offices, the senior living area you've got to qualify. I mean and that's just in sales in general you need to qualify these places that you're going to. So these are the things that you're looking at when you qualify Does the referral source patients? Are they interested in home care? Are the referral sources patients? Do they have the use for your service? Do they have a budget for your service? And we're going to look at that too.
Speaker 3:If you're going to skilled nursing facility rehabs and you find out that they're straight Medicaid or they're over 80% Medicaid, they're census, that's probably not going to be a great place for you to get private pay business right, and so you have to think about the budget in mind. The people that are on Medicaid typically don't have the budget for private pay. Is your referral sources? Are their patients currently at a point of needing services? Maybe they are, maybe they're not. These are things you have to find out.
Speaker 3:And is the patient adult child, is it dead? Or who's the designated decision maker? It can be frustrating to go into a skilled nursing facility and meet with the patient, the senior, and then it's the adult child who makes all the decisions, and that happens a lot, because a lot of times they landed there by ambulance, right, or they were at the hospital and now they're at the SNP. They don't have their purse, they don't have their wallet, like they're just everything's butchuffled, and so getting that adult child's information from the social worker, from the senior themselves, so that you can coordinate all of that, there's a lot of coordinating and project management when it comes to this whole thing and so you know they may not have their purse, you may not be able to get that deposit or get them on there that piece of it until the day before they discharge or something like that.
Speaker 3:So there's a lot of planning and stuff that goes into that. But you do want to get that adult child involved as quickly as you can, even if they're out of state. You know your mom's in the skilled nursing facility. I just met with her. A lot of them have asked me to do the appointment on FaceTime, done that. I've done three-way calls when I'm in the facility where the adult child is just on the phone on speaker and we're doing the assessment. So you've got to really be able to think on your feet and just kind of fly by this in your pants. Sometimes it's just the way that it works.
Speaker 3:So we're gonna go on a virtual field trip. This is a Medicare website and I've already pulled up the provider services tab and you'll have the slides so you'll be able to have this link. The way that you can qualify anyone who's paid by Medicare is listed here. They get graded by Medicare, they have audits, all those kinds of things. Non-medical home care they're not on here, because that's not how you're paid. It's private paid mostly. Home health is on here, though, so I usually will go into nursing homes, including rehab services, and I'm gonna put in my zip code and I'm gonna go see all of the skilled nursing facility rehabs in my area. They even map them for you, which is nice if you're putting your route shape together so you can kind of go in order.
Speaker 3:These are their overall ratings, how many stars that they have, and so what I like to do is go in and just kind of take a look at who they are, what they're doing. So they get rated in three areas health inspections, staffing and quality measures, and you can go into the measures if you'd like. If you're wanting to do some staffing in some of these SNPs, provide caregivers for them or workers for them. If you see that this rating is low, you can go in and find out why. If they have like a one star, maybe they need some staffing help, right. So that gives you a little indicator of maybe this isn't, maybe this is Medicaid, maybe I can't get any private pay out of here, but the facility might pay me to help staff, and we did this a lot at my last company and so this is a great place to get kind of an idea of where they are, their staffing, and as you go down you can see how many beds they have. You can see if they take Medicare Medicaid. This company takes both.
Speaker 3:I wish these were broken into percentages so that you would know. You really should find this out eventually. If they're over 80% Medicaid, you can still go there. I wouldn't make it an eight to 10 day stop. It'd probably be a one-some-month stop. Up to you. Are they located in the hospital? There's some other information in here, down here at the bottom.
Speaker 3:Consider this when choosing nursing home so you can use these guides. Give them to the adult children sometimes. Sometimes it works the other way you have a senior and you're caring for them in their home and now they have to go, or they ended up in the hospital because something happened. They're sick, they have pneumonia, they have to go to rehab. You can go in here and look for a nursing home for them based on these ratings, because you also need to be a resource and in that case you could print out a guide to choosing nursing home to help the family. So this is a great resource page for you to be a resource to your clients as well.
Speaker 3:So let's go back to this one. I'm familiar with WellSprings Therapy Center of Gilbert. They gave us a lot of 12,024s. They have a pretty good rating. When I go into theirs I can see that they only take Medicare. Okay, that's a goldmine If you go in and you see someone who only takes Medicare. I mean the other home care companies are gonna be in there too, because they know that they only take Medicare as well. They only have 32 beds. It's small, but we probably got a 12 or 24 out of them at least weekly. They didn't last forever and ever, but so if they're straight Medicare, that's a really good sign.
Speaker 3:That's a place I would be in as often as I could. I would wanna build that relationship and really work this one. So this is part of how you can qualify. Should I be going to these places? Should I not? If they're straight Medicaid, probably wouldn't go very often, unless you think you can do some staffing for them. So that is how I would do that you also can see. I've also found that this is a little bit better than Google Like, because when I go into Google and do a search. It's got system living in there, it's got memory care and it's got all kinds of it's all Mishmash here. This is straight skilled nursing and rehab facilities and it's all of them. So it's a great tool. Any questions about how to use this? It makes sense for everybody.
Speaker 4:Nothing, lisa. Yeah, lauren just asked where we can get this, but it'll be on the slide.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you're gonna get the slide deck. You'll just click this Medicare website link when you get it and it'll take you right there. All right, weekly route setup. I've always set my weekly route up. I do it by zip code. And you wanna mix it up? You wanna have some SNFs that you're gonna go see? You wanna see some assisted living, you wanna see some doctor's office? You wanna really mix it up? I would not leave out any SNFs. I would try to see all of them, unless they're straight Medicaid or you find out that they're higher than 80%. So arrange by zip code. So I put it. You can use a CRM and do it in the CRM. That's probably the best way to do it. But if you need to use an Excel spreadsheet this is a few of the SNFs where I'm at I did put a code in here for you guys so that this will take you right to.
Speaker 3:If you had this on your cell phone and you clicked map it, it will take you right to their Google so that you can follow directions. And so if you go into this yourself first of all, you will have access to this. You're gonna want to go file, make a copy and make your own copy. Our system's not gonna let you edit this one. So you make your own copy and you save it and then you're gonna be able to edit that one and to use this code. You just copy paste it and then you're just gonna put your own address right here. It knows the address needs to be in column F. It will know to map it for you. So I hope that helps. So I hope that helps to be a bit to figure that out. I was proud of myself that I did so.
Speaker 3:You can sort this by Zip Code and that's what you should do. And the reason it's sorted by Zip Code one you don't wanna be bouncing back and forth with gas and all of that. The other reason it's sorted by Zip Code is because maybe you get part of the way through your day it's 11, 12 o'clock and you get a call from a SNF and they need you to come see a family, like right now. Or maybe you've got a service inquiry and it's booked and you need to go sign them. Now you drop everything to go sign a job Everything except an in-service. Probably it's important. So maybe it's taking you all the way to the other side of town to go do this assessment. That's okay. We have to be comfortable and be flexible and be okay with that. When you're done with the assessment, you have to take out your little Zip Code locator and you say, oh, I'm in Zip Code 85020.
Speaker 3:Now now I'm gonna mark it here.
Speaker 3:I'm not gonna go back to where it was this morning and finish marketing. I'm gonna mark it where I'm at now, and so the Zip Code locator helps you to do that effectively. You need to be efficient in the field. You gotta see more than 50 stops a week, so you gotta be effective and efficient. So go in Zip Code order and if you get called to the other side of town, maybe you're picking up a wheelchair, I don't know. We do some crazy stuff in home care. If that lands you clear on the other side of town, you get done. Mark it over there. Don't go back unless it's by your house. Maybe, maybe, then it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:All right, unless there's questions. Oh great, leave behind Lisa, you're on.
Speaker 4:Okay, rebecca just said thank you, the map tool seems wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. You're welcome, rebecca. Here we are. So February, leave behind hard healthy tips Again everywhere that we go. We want them to know what we do, anything outside of the box. You know anything we can think of. So I want to let them know in this little handout here that our caregivers can help your patients stay heart healthy at home by helping, you know, relieve stress, prep healthy meals.
Speaker 4:I used to have a lot of people ask about meal prep in home care. You know, can you guys, my mom's eating this and that and it's not healthy. Can you guys please prep meals? And I think that that's a big thing that people look for. Actually, they just don't know. Until you say it, they're like, oh wow, you do that. So this is one that you can take out with you and it tells just a little bit about what you can do for their patients leaving, going home, and there's a camera link down here underneath as well as a Google doc. Again, everything that we give you guys, every link that we give you, you're gonna need to make a copy and create your own when you want to go in and change. You know this call text Valerie. You want to change that obviously to you and put your logo in there as well. Don't have them calling Valerie. Okay, again, another caregiving is a work of heart, because it is.
Speaker 4:This is just another you know, going out and you're, you know, leaving a leave behind. You want to let them know that your caregivers are devoted to your patient's happiness, so I'm letting them know we're going to provide companionship. I mean, it can get really lonely, especially right after the holidays. All the family has gone home and now it's January, february and people are home alone and so keeping them home safe longer all of that good stuff Again, canvaling other doc. Just make copies of that and save it. You won't be able to make, to make changes to our actual document Another February. I think it's all about heart as well. Don't stress we are all heart, because we are. And this one just kind of generic and you can add something to it, but I think it tells a good story and you're just letting them know that you care and that you're coming in to, you know, hopefully, bring some of their patients home safely.
Speaker 4:And then it is Black History Month, so I wanted to combine, you know, healthy heart contributions in Black History as a leave behind. And I just again, I just think this is really cool to bring out and recognize all of the accomplishments here. Canvaling Google Doc link to make copies before you make any changes and you can add these little cuties to any of those leave behind. So there's an Amazon link here for the key chain and the stress balls and I think that you know I just put a little something together here, but you can, you know, create a little basket or take out a bag and give these things away. The stress balls, you can even get something that has your logo on them and you can add the other stuff that you take out daily. You know, little notepads, sticky notes, hand sanitizer, lip balm, all those cool things that you have already in your office.
Speaker 4:March leave behind, national Social Worker Month, so I thought it would be really cool and Dawn added this little box. But you can see that the person there's, the your favorite social workers name, is there. So I just thought that'd be kind of cool to be able to add their name and make it a little more personable, since, since you are seeing these people you know at, you know weekly, every other week, something like that, depending on how often you're going out but I just thought it would be really cute to be able to personalize it and say thank you to them for all that they do, not only the referrals, but just caring for, you know your mutual patients, slash clients and for those of you who might be new to this, social workers are typically found in the skilled nursing facilities.
Speaker 3:They are the discharge planners typically. Some of you probably already know that, but just in case, this is beautiful.
Speaker 4:I love this one Good point. And then you know to go with this, of course, all of the things that you have already. You know your bags with your logos and all of that. But these, these little cute key chains and the little bat little like bag actually comes with it. And there was different colors. I included black, gold, pink, silver. Each of those links will take you to Amazon if you wanted to buy something like that and I can't read what it says because my eyes are getting old, but it's down here.
Speaker 3:We appreciate it I was looking at the key chain. May you be proud. May you be proud of the work you do, the person you are in the different chiming.
Speaker 4:It's beautiful. I thought that was so cute. I just it's very cute.
Speaker 3:And you can poke a hole in this here and put tie it to the outside of the back too, which brings it all together.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of out of practice. I'm out of mastermind practice.
Speaker 3:We've been going for a while.
Speaker 4:I've just gotten back into the swing and oh yes, and March leave behind. So I just thought, you know what? What do I want social workers to know? Or you know a discharge planner to know? In a pinch, you're in luck, we'll get your last minute discharges home safe today. So I just thought this was really cool, really really like that To take out and add to anything. And again, like Don said, punch a hole in that, put a ribbon through it and add it to anything. Or if you, if you can print this out on stickies, you can slap that on a bag or or a basket or something. Just remember to make copy before you make any changes and then to go with this Next slide. There we go.
Speaker 4:Just some really cool little things. I mean the beads everyone loves the beads and they'll wear them forever and ever, and that's just really cool. So maybe I was thinking, you know, at the end of the rainbow right? So rainbow colored chocolate coins, you could get those little they're called little cauldrons, but I don't know or these little baskets here, and then I thought that, just adding a little pinch protect, protection. I hand out onto one of you know, one of these when you take it out, one of the necklaces I thought. I just thought it was really cute and they'll remember you, because who doesn't want to not get pinched? Exactly.
Speaker 1:I love this. This is my favorite the pinch protection Love it.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Okay, that is our last slide, folks, so that's what I'm doing. I don't see any questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anybody have any questions or comments? I know that some of you are wondering well, how do we see the replay and where's all that going to be? And I will make sure that everyone has but has all the information they need it, and watch for some invitations in your email. Check your spam. Sometimes our emails go to spam because we have certain links in them that your email system doesn't like, especially if you use that look. But so check your spam and jump mail folders Today's Friday. So if this is on my to-do list to get this rendered, edited and up in all the places, so give me through the weekend to get this up and I will certainly do that, and you will have your PowerPoint presentation available with links to everything. So, yeah, I have a wonderful weekend. I think we have a question.
Speaker 2:I do, hi. So basically everything we discussed, a lot of it sounds like it's tailored towards private pay clients. I'm in an area where we have a lot of Medicaid clients, so should my numbers be better, or should I just be pretty much focusing on the same strategies?
Speaker 3:So do you have? So you have mostly Medicaid clients and you're you're saying, in the area that you're in, there isn't a private pay opportunity there aren't any clients there are, but it's not as many, Most of my.
Speaker 2:The ones we serve are Medicaid, so should my numbers be you know higher, or should I still be using the same strategies and techniques that you're mentioning?
Speaker 3:I would. I would say I mean, are you not servicing either, so you don't have caregivers either in a private pay area? So so you know where there are clients or seniors with higher income levels. Will your carvers not work in that area? Are you in a franchise and you're not able to market outside of the area? I'm just trying to figure out why why you can't go after the private pay.
Speaker 2:So we're not franchised, we're individually owned, and the reason why the private pay is a lot harder because the community they can't afford it. So it's more of the. Yeah, that's, that's basically it. But we we're looking to, you know, branch into other communities where we have clients that can afford private pay.
Speaker 3:And that's what.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, no, but for now I'm saying with, with the Medicaid. Should I be having better numbers or should my goals be still like the targets that we've been discussing?
Speaker 3:So for Medicaid it works differently. You're you're working through their, their social worker. They have their own social worker through their Medicaid program and so the referrals don't work the same way. So you can go to a SNF and they can say, oh, I have a Medicaid patient for you, but that social worker at the SNF is not the one that's going to organize that. That's going to be the patient social worker within that insurance company. It works very different.
Speaker 3:So this is mostly for private pay. There aren't really a lot of stops to make to get Medicaid business coming in the door, if that's what you're asking because it comes in a different way. It doesn't use, it doesn't come in from the referrals the way that this does, the way that private pay does. I would say you know you do want to mix up your bucket of clients, like it's good to have a mixture of Medicaid and private pay. Medicaid seemed to be maybe a little more stable, more steady, any kind of hours, and then the private pay allows you to. You know, you have a bigger margin, you can pay your caregivers a little bit more. So I would probably start breaking into those communities that you're talking about that have those higher income seniors in that area and work these numbers towards that? I don't know my answer to your question. I'm hoping that I am, mark, you are usually work.
Speaker 3:It's just, it just doesn't come in the same way. I was shocked. I was so excited when I got my first referral from a SNF, but it was for a Medicaid client. And I called the office and I'm like I've got a new client for us, but she's on Medicaid and they're like it doesn't work like that, it doesn't work that way, and so I had to train my social workers too. They wanted to give me all their Medicaid patients. But it doesn't work that way. It goes the other. It's from the other side.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, yeah, thank you, you answered it. Thank you Okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right. Are there any other questions? It looks like we've got some chat that I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by just saying thank you, thank you, thank you, oh good, good. Thank you everybody for being here. This is a great group and we'll see you in two weeks and we'll have more information. All right, have a good weekend. Bye, thanks everybody, bye.