We don’t do this very often, so here’s the scoop…Every other week we meet on Zoom for “Home Care Marketing Mastermind”. We have a great group of home care agency owners and marketers who participate. Some watch us live, and a LOT of our members watch the replays. This is a paid group- it’s for our clients and their staff. It’s also for anyone who wants to join us for $57 per month. And let me tell you, that is a BARGAIN considering what we share! We asked our members – what are YOUR BIGGEST questions about home care marketing? Here are the results!
Home Care Marketing: AMA (Ask Me Anything) Part 1
TRANSCRIPT:
Well, it is time to get started. So you have just Lisa and I today, Valerie off today. So I’m going to be manning the people coming into, it might be a little much in the beginning, but we’re going to go ahead and get started. Today is going to be different. We are taking questions. We have a lot of questions that were submitted. I don’t know if we’ll get through all of them today. And we also want those of you that are here a chance to ask and talk and share your feedback and share your experiences. And maybe you have something to add to one of the answers for some of the questions. So it’s going to be totally different today. Nope, it’s still beeping at me.
Don’t be shy. We want to hear from you.
We definitely want to open the floor and have you guys talk. So I think, what did we agree to? We’re going to raise our hands, Lisa. Is that how it’s going to work?
That would probably be the most organized way to do it, probably. Or just you
Know how to do that.
Or if no one’s talking, then of course I think I just wouldn’t want people talking over each other and pss our chat isn’t really broken, but I’m just saying that so that we can
Want people to talk.
Yeah, we don’t want chat. We want you guys to talk about life, what you’re doing out there and your experiences,
All the great stuff. So we’re going to start with a slide with questions and then we’re going to answer the questions and then we’re going to open it up to see if you guys have any more questions about that or if there is another question that you might have, because those of you that are here, we want to engage and have you communicate and get something out of this as well. I dunno if we’ll get through all the questions today. If we want to do another one down the road, we can do the same kind of, we’ll see how it goes. Learn as we go For the portal, if you guys want to get into the mastermind portal, you want to go to www home care marketing mastermind.com. You do need to put the WSS in there. The getting in is your email address is your username and your passwords, whatever we sent to you.
You don’t remember the, forgot your password feature works very well. It’s much better than many that I’ve used in other systems.
So today we have question time, so we’re going to go ahead and get started. I don’t have any idea how long this is going to take. I don’t know if we’ll get into the handouts or not.
We’d like to review them usually we’ll just kind of see how it goes.
So to start, one of the first questions that came in, we did put these kind of in order, is talking about assisted living.
How to decide how often I should visit assisted living that’s not in a C C R C. How many times in a given month?
I would say you should be seeing everybody every eight to 10 days. But if you have lots and lots and lots of contacts and you can’t get to everybody every eight to 10 days.
Assisted living for me, and I don’t know if Lisa will agree with this, but for me, assisted living was good. It wasn’t bad. It’s just that rehabs and skilled nursing facilities were a much better referral source for me, both different companies that I worked for.
So I would probably, if it were me, would decide if I was spread thin and I had too many contacts to see every eight to 10 days, I would probably put assisted living once a month, maybe twice a month, unless it’s someone who is referring and has given you a lot of business obviously. I don’t know Lisa, if you would agree with that.
Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the questions down further too talks about, well, they say they already have people, and so that’s one of those things that you have to overcome too.
But I mean if you have someone like you said, Don, that’s already referring to you great or need backup for their staff, great. I think about once a month or I mean as often as you can get out there, if there’s a need to be out there, you want to be smart about your time too,
Right? And for the assisted living facilities, they will say, we already have staff, we already have people. They don’t have enough people for that one-on-one, for the new resident that’s moving in, who’s not going to activities, who’s leaving their room, who’s just not comfortable at all.
They don’t have somebody that can get that person to come to activities and sit with them in the dining room or whatever it needs to happen. Many times people are super social and they move into assisted living and they just get super quiet. They’re uncomfortable. They don’t know how it works. And so having a caregiver with them, their first week or two moving in to help them get out of their shell can be really helpful. So that’s usually how I start with assisted living. I start with that scenario. I also talk about you have to give people examples.
This is what we do, this is what we do. You have to give them real life examples. What have you done in the past with, and if you haven’t done anything with assisted living, you can use these two examples. One is the new resident and the other one is somebody’s discharged.
Just like they discharge from skilled nursing, they’re discharged home to assisted living. A lot of times they need more care than they can get in assisted living. You have to be careful how you word that. You don’t want to insult the assisted living, but they’re not a SN F, they’re not a rehab and they don’t many times have the staff to take care of someone with as much care as they’re going to need when they discharge from a snf. So that’s another example of where you can come in and help somebody in assisted living too.
Should I spend more time marketing in nursing homes?
I would say the nursing homes, sn rehab over living. In my experience, that’s been a better referral source for me. I mean, I love those discharges. They almost always need big hours when they discharge home. And if it goes well, hopefully they’re going to keep you. What landed them in the sniff to begin with. We don’t want that to happen. They fell in the shower and don’t that to happen again. So even when they get better, they should at the very least have somebody there when they shower. So it gives you that opportunity to also have a longer time with them. Does anybody have anything to add about the assisted livings? Anything that would you agree? Or is assisted living your number one referral source?
Right?
You don’t have to Ray, you can just speak up if you want to unmute, you can just speak up if you’ve had experience or anything to add to this. I’ll keep going down the list, but feel free to interrupt. I don’t know about a free c r M software. I’ve used Salesforce, I’ve used Playmaker. They’re very expensive. They’re very involved. We do have a free C R M that comes with our home care sales and marketing program and I believe you can purchase it separately as well, but it is not free. Free, but it has been customized to home care. So it is a pretty good C R m, but I don’t know of any that are free. Anybody on here know of the free C R m?
Would you be able to give us the link to your C R M program?
Yeah, I can send a link for, we have some demos. I believe you can always schedule a demo with us, but I do believe we have some demo recordings. Who was that? That was Sharon.
Someone said a free C R M that they know of is Notion. Notion soap, and if your microphone doesn’t work, you can type. We can read through the chats as well if that works.
What should I have in my marketing bag when I visit?
So I have a link to one of something that we talked about, things that you should have in your car. I mean, this isn’t necessarily the marketing bag, but these are things that would be good to have in your car at all times because then you’re not running back and forth to the office for things and maybe you stock up your car once a week. So 50 business cards, 50 brochures, 10 brochure racks. So those little plastic racks, if you bring brochures to assisted living n f anywhere and they don’t have somewhere to put ’em, there’s a good chance they’re going to end up in a drawer somewhere.
So I always put mine in a brochure rack when somebody was new and I would stick my company logo on the front of it so that they knew that that’s where my brochures went. So give them the way to hold your brochures. Always staple your business card to your brochure as well. 50 of your weekly handouts. So those handouts that we’re creating, you should have 50 of those in your card any given time. Five copies of each senior specific training. So we have caregiver quick training guides, Alzheimer’s, chemo, all. There’s 13 of them. So you should have five copies of each of those in your car tape. A small stapler so you can attach your business card to treats and brochures. Two client intake folders or whatever it is that you need to sign a client. You should have at least two of those in your car.
You could walk into a SNF and they could just tell you to go down the hall and sign somebody up. So you need to be ready to do that. Maybe five extra service agreement forms. Sometimes they’re starting to complete that and the wrong person is filling it out or the wrong person signed it. They have a P O A I had that happen. So extra service agreements, maybe some business cards of your scheduler staffers, the person who’s going to be their contact ongoing. A box of thank you cards, the small ones, because you do want to thank your referral sources. Even if they send a referral that doesn’t turn into a client, you want to thank them. So a thank you card, a box of thank you cards, a box of pens, a couple of highlighters and whiteout. Anything to add, Lisa, that you would add to your car?
I always had little giveaways in those. I have, gosh, I wonder if I have one here. I had these little heart stress balls and little things like that and I would actually keep bins that I could kind of pull out. And my trunk was super elaborate. This is where everything is and everything was very organized to where I could just grab it and go, including any one sheets for every different thing and all of that. So yeah, swag. Fred calls it swag. Fred calls it loads of swag.
I always had little bottles of hand sanitizer with our logo and phone number. That was the swag or post-its. I also had Post-its with our logo and phone.
Yes. Yes. Really pretty. I still use it, actually I should, but I’ll show you really quickly. These are really pretty. I’m going to block the logo of whose it is. I don’t know if you can see that, but it’s this really pretty nice notebook and we had a ton of them and they’re expensive, but they were really nice to have people love those. And I would see people using ’em all the time. Yeah,
That’s a good idea. Anybody else have anything? Yeah, somebody new. It’s nice to have that swag for them for sure. Anybody else have any thoughts or ideas on what to keep in your car? Nope. Okay.
Keep watering your car for yourself too as we forget to do that. Drink in the restroom.
Someone’s talking. Keaton.
I was wondering what should I have in my bag when I go visit the referral?
When you go in? Okay, so the actual bag, I would say the brochures, the giveaway that you have that you’re using right now, your business card. I think the things that you mentioned, I used to carry a client folder in my bag when I would walk in because maybe if they did send me down the hall, I could sign them up. Maybe one of the quick caregiver training guides in your bag. Just some things that you could share with them. Usually though, I had a theme every week.
This is the week I’m going to talk about discharges. This is the week I’m going to talk about. And so that theme, I would have whatever I needed for that theme in my bag also. So I mean, I think you’re on the right track with the business cards and flyers and maybe extra giveaways. Maybe you’re going into a sniff and there’s usually three people that you leave stuff for. I would always have a couple extra just in case they were standing and talking to somebody when I walked in the building. Or there’s two people at the front desk today and not one. You want to be prepared for that. You don’t want to give something to one person and not somebody else.
Right? Yeah, I agree. I would always just kind of replenish my bag as my personal marketing bag when I would walk in anywhere up to five of each of the things that I had to offer, including the one sheets and things like that.
Thank you.
Yeah, you’re welcome. And any kind, we’ve talked several times about having your differentiator.
What makes you different than other home care companies?
And that’s something if you could have a sheet on how you’re different that you would give to anybody new. There is. When you’re in a building, the hope is you’re going to see new people each time you go. I mean, you want your regulars there, but it might be nice to go talk to PT while I’m in the snip. Maybe I got past the gatekeeper and I’m back there. I can walk through the holes and I see the PT office. It’s good to have those differentiators in your bag because you might run into somebody new when you’re there. So that’s also something else to keep in there.
And I think that’s important too because it’s not like this is brand new to them. They don’t know what home care is. So explaining what you do, I’m home care. Okay, yeah, they get that. But what makes you different is huge.
Yes, it’s very big. And that can help you to get in the door too. You don’t know about our company because we do this differently. This is how we’re different. That’s what they want to hear. Everybody knows what homecare is now.
Home Care Marketing: AMA (Ask Me Anything) Part 2
Transcript:
Best day or time to visit assisted living?
It really depends on the assisted living, and that’s something that you’ll find as you’re out running to the SSNs assisted living is that they have meetings, they have weekly meetings, and so depending on if you keep going there at the same time, the same day and they’re always in a meeting, you’re going to figure out, well,
I’m not coming back this day in time again, I can tell you Friday afternoons are probably not good. Even in assisted living anytime after three o’clock, I have a hard time rounding anybody up after three o’clock in assisted. I don’t know why that is. In sns, I usually can find somebody, but in assisted living, I don’t know where they go. That’s been my experience. I don’t know Lisa or if anybody else has had that experience, but any mornings seem to be better for the marketing, for assisted living for me.
Yeah, I agree with that. I have had a couple of times when in the afternoon, but I mean I think there’s usually a change by three 30. I think someone else is coming on or someone’s leaving or something like that. But definitely find out when their I D G or their all hands on deck meetings are and they have different meetings. Find out those times don’t go during lunch because they probably worked hard all day and want their lunch and find out what time that is. But yeah, make sure when those meetings are so you’re not showing up at the wrong time every time and ask that question. Don’t be afraid to ask when are your, because you’re going to need to know that anyways. I want to get to that I D G meeting or at all hands on deck so I can talk to them at some point with everyone in the same room. So get that information from whoever you can.
Who should I spend more time in connecting with the administrator, social worker, DON?
If I don’t know who actually refers out. So if you’re in assisted living, usually the person who refers out is the director of nursing. That person is working, they’re doing the meds, they’re organizing all of the hands-on care in assisted living. So the director of nursing would be the main contact in assisted living. If you’re talking about a skilled nursing facility, S N F, rehab, nursing home, that would be the social workers. They’re the ones that are going to be, but that’s not to say that other people can’t also refer to you.
They certainly can, but I would say those are the primary people. The administrator, I didn’t usually start with the administrator. They’re usually behind closed doors. I mean, I guess it depends on the kind of administrator there is.
The executive directors in assisted living seem to be pretty open, more so than I would say an administrator and a SSN f. That’s been my experience. Assisted living in general tends to be more open and receptive and easier to get into than a skilled nursing facility or rehab and when to stop or break up with an assisted living from not getting referrals.
I don’t know that I’ve ever really broken up with one. I might move them in my rotation. It might be every other month, it might be every quarter. And I’ve just kind of decided after just hitting it hard and going and going and just nothing’s happening.
They’re not offering anything. I’ve asked to come to their meetings and it’s just don’t feel like anything. I’m getting anywhere. But you don’t ever want to completely give up because one change in director of nursing, that person leaves and the whole building is open again. That’s how I look at it now. If you had a great relationship with that director of nursing and she was referring all the time and now she leaves, you’re going to start all over again. So it can work both ways, but when I don’t have a good relationship or sometimes I go in the director of nurses, we don’t need it, we’re good and she’s just not listening. If they leave, I’m like, yes.
Start. It’s a new beginning, a new start. Let’s hope this new person coming in is going to be wonderful. And if somebody ever does leave and you do have a great relationship, find out where they went. The hope is they’ve landed somewhere else in your territory and you’ve already broken in. You already have that relationship established. Yes.
Amen. That’s the best. I
Think we’ve got a couple people trying to chime in. Go ahead,
Would you recommend speaking to the D O N at A S N F, like a typical nursing facility?
Yes, I would recommend that. I would probably start with the social workers, but yes, you want to infiltrate any building that you’re in. And so if you’re in the SS N F, it’s great to set up a lunch and learn and service where everybody can kind of be there. It’s not always going to happen that way, but yeah, you want everyone in that building to know who you are and what your services are. So yeah, director of nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, every single person that you can talk to, not all in one stop. I mean you can’t spend an hour there. They won’t like that. But if you do ever get a chance to see a patient in there, sign a client up in there or one of your clients lands in a n, go in and take advantage of that time and go talk to the director of nursing about your client. Go talk to them, pt, ot, about them, about discharge, get really involved. They love to see that. Keaton, you had a question?
Yes, sorry. So do you visit and you’re not getting referrals, do you kind of talk to them, Hey, I’ve been visiting so many times and I’m still not getting referrals. How you kind of figured out what’s the reason behind it or you kind of not bring up to them?
I don’t typically bring it up to ’em. I don’t usually say, well where are the referrals or why are you referring in a sn? If someone has been referring and then it stops, then I feel comfortable having that conversation. But in general, I don’t talk about the referrals with them until started to refer. I just talk about the services and I talk about do you have any new residents moving in that are having a hard time fitting in that aren’t coming? I talk about what we could do to help. Do you have anybody that’s discharged and they need a little extra? Do you have anybody that needs help during dinner? They need someone to help them eat or whatever the case may be. So I do it more like that than actually asking them for the referral. How about you, Lisa?
I agree for sure. Just asking questions and then asking questions, but leading, do you need this? Do you have someone who needs this? Yeah,
That’s what I found to work the best. Okay. So does anybody have any questions about anything else that’s come up? I thought we would ask in between slides if there’s anything else you want to add to this. Your own experience completely opposite of ours. That’s quite possible. I mean, everybody has a different experience out there.
I think that’s another thing that if anyone, I didn’t hear anyone, but another thing that you can use is a lot of the times these people that are referring to us don’t know what it looks like on the other side at the person’s home.
So especially with hospitals or anywhere that they’re being discharged to home, that’s a great way. You don’t want a readmission. You want to know what this looks like. I’ve had hospitals actually override the fee and we create programs to where I’m going to get this person home and the hospital, if the person doesn’t have money to pay for, the hospital doesn’t override and pays for this hospital to home type of situation where you go, you make sure that they’re safe, all of these things. So I feel like if you’re listening to when you do get in front of them and you’re listening and you can come up with ideas that will help them and that’s another differentiator.
Not just, Hey, I’m home care and this is what I do and all the normal stuff. They know that already. But finding out ways and being comfortable enough to just ask that question, what do you guys need? Where are you lacking?
In anything? In anything. And maybe I can figure out a way to customize that for you. What HO care is, right? You customize for people, so why can’t you do it for your referral sources too and customize that to them, to their need.
That’s a really good point.
What does a compensation structure look like for caregivers?
What criteria do we use to evaluate caregiver pay increases, training programs for caregivers, and how do you reduce the isolation they fill in the field? Wow, this one’s loaded. I can’t tell you. They do feel isolated in the field.
They’re heart people. The good ones, they really care about the seniors and they that sense of community. And then we send them out to a client’s house all by themselves and they do feel isolated. So communication is going to be key. Really, really important in keeping them from feeling isolated, reaching out to them. I would say their first 90 days, you should reach out to them every single week in some form or fashion.
Texting works great, and after that, every month, birthdays, anniversaries, they need to hear from the office, they need to feel connected to the office.
That’s going to be a big piece in retention. As far as the compensation structure looks like for caregivers, we always paid based on what we were charging the client and what Medicaid reimbursed us.
And so we would have one caregiver. She might be making $16 an hour with one client, 17 with another and 18 with another. And so that’s how I’ve always done it and it’s based on what we’re getting paid. They get half. I mean that’s just how we’ve always done it. As far as raises and that kind of thing goes, it would be based on how many hours they’ve worked.
We did give them raises and bonuses. We did bonuses more than raises. So if they stayed with a specific client for a lot of hours, what we need, we need them to stay with one client.
The clients need that. They need that consistency.
They don’t want a bunch of different caregivers. So if a caregiver stayed with a client, I don’t remember how many hours, I think it was a hundred or something, they would get a bonus if they stayed with them. If their client died or something like that happened, then of course they’re not responsible for that. But then we would put them on another client and we would just continue adding those hours as if it was the same person. So we did do a lot. I don’t know, and Lisa can speak to this, we did do a lot in raises. We did more bonuses and we tied that to the action that we needed to see from them. I don’t know. Lisa, how do you feel about that question?
I mean, you can look at it another way too. You can do a level one, level two, level three style of structure, but the caregiver based on what they can do or what their abilities are. I would look at it like that too, just depending I guess on how you want to build that.
And then you would have your senior caregivers or your lead caregivers that would be available too. So you could definitely tier that to where they have something to look forward to or something to. It makes them feel like they are growing in their career in the industry, giving them something that strive for.
Definitely. But we would give a lot of bonuses just kind of almost like bribing them to go to work sometimes. But I mean it works and sometimes they just need a little extra for gas or whatever. And those are things that you have to look at too. Yeah.
Okay. And the training programs, so we trained in the office and so we would do the phone interview and then we would schedule them for orientation training. And we did skills training too while we did orientation. So we would train them in transfers. We would train them in bedside pan, we would train them in turning someone, we would train them in Hoyer wheelchair and then we would check their Hoyer, change their wheelchair train, all of the things.
It’s kind of like levels what Lisa’s talking about. It didn’t affect their pay, but they could go on more jobs if they got past all the skills. And that opened them up to more work. And so that’s how we did it. And then we would mark in ClearCare or whatever, they passed all of these different skills so they’re safe to go on these types of clients. And so that’s how we did it. We also did common sense training in there too. And there’s a lot to be said about that as well.
You go to your client’s home, she didn’t answer the door. Usually she does. What do you do? You need to make sure they understand they’re supposed to call the office. They don’t just leave. And so you do need to go through some of that piece of their job.
We also went over universal precautions, how to take gloves off all of that, especially when covid hits. So you can go deep in the training. It depends on what kind of clients you have as to how involved your training needs to. You’re going to take Hoyer clients, you’re going to have to show them how to use a Hoyer. And we never started a Hoyer job without somebody being in the home with that caregiver to show them that specific Hoyer because it’s terrifying for them.
In Arizona, if you work in a snf, you have to have two people to operate a, and then we send them out, one person to operate a Hoyer. So they freak out if they’ve ever worked in a facility that they’re going to be doing this all by themselves in somebody’s home. And the Hoyer in your office doesn’t always look like the Hoyer in their client’s home.
This is true. They’re like, what? And then there’s the sit to stand and there’s lots of variations. So we had caregivers out in the field. We also had quality assurance people out in the field and they were all CNAs. And so anytime we had a Hoyer job starting, or a client turned into a Hoyer client because of something that’s happened that first shift, that lead caregiver or the QA person would be with that caregiver to show them how to use that Hoyer to make sure and not leave until it was done. So I hope that answers that question. Does anybody else have anything to add to this? What are you doing for training?
So I just have a question as far as when you first hire the caregivers, I wanted to know if it is required for them to be a C N A S T N A or have any specific training before they can work?
It depends on your state and what the state requires. In Arizona, there’s really no regulatory.
Home Care Marketing: AMA (Ask Me Anything) Part 3
Or agency over non-medical home care. So no, they don’t have to be any of those things.
Now, if you’re contracted with Medicaid, they have to be CPR R first Aid certified, they have to be tb. There are some things that they have to have gone through, but it’s mostly background and the cpr, first aid,
The background, definitely. I mean, you could do companion care and not have any experience. Other than that, we used to reach out to retired school teachers. I mean, this was our targets for people who we just needed employees and we’re thinking, okay, it’s summer. Who’s not working right now? We need caregivers.
Teachers that are on vacation may be great for companion care. And so of course you have to do your due diligence, interviewing the background checks and all of that. But think of people like that that could work summer or Christmas breaks or when other people are taking off. These people might need extra income.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good, and
Then another thing with the caregivers, helping them to feel a part of things. We used to do caregiver days and we would kind of celebrate them in the office. They had to come in and they would get little goodie bags, and we always had, in one of the places that was at, we always had, our office was always open to them to come get waters, come get snacks, things like that before their shifts, and they would just come and kind of talk with us, hang out for a few, and then get on their way to whatever they were doing. So I think that any way that you can make them feel a part of the team like that too, if you have staff in the office, that’s a great way. Have an open door policy where you guys know each other and you build a rapport and they want to work for you and they want to work hard for you and they want to do a good job.
I think that’s good. Yeah. We have, oh, go ahead Sharon.
I’m sorry. So you had mentioned making sure you do the background checks and everything regardless of the caregiver’s background or how much experience they have, which I understand, and I was just wondering if you do the background checks with each person that you hire, or can they bring their own background checks with them that they’ve purchased previously before?
We want the most recent, so I would usually run them now. I used a company, I think it’s called Background checks.com, and the more volume you had, the cheaper it was per caregiver and we had a lot of volume, so I don’t know how expensive it would be for less volume, but they could do the background. We got it back within an hour, and that was wonderful because I don’t want to pay for a background if someone’s not going to show up to class or training. So I didn’t run the background until they were in my building. I didn’t want to pay for it. So you want the most recent background you can get, even the fingerprint clearance card. You can run that through, have it rerun through, oh, what is the name? I can’t think of the name of it. You can rerun it without a charge and make sure that it’s still clear because someone can be walking around with a fingerprint clearance card and have had a felony, but they still have their card on them, so you need to run that through the system again, and you just do a search on it and make sure that they’re still good, because just because it was good once doesn’t mean it’s still good.
So you do have to check all of those things and you’re going to want the most recent background check. I just like running my own just in
Case. Yeah, for sure. Hundred percent. Because you’re responsible, you’re a hundred percent responsible for that person. You’re putting them in a home where we don’t have, there’s no time clocks. There’s no cameras that you can see viewing them. I would definitely run that myself, and
Especially if something did happen and the adult children ran one and found something later on and you had some old one that they handed you that could put you in a lot of trouble.
Yeah. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. John says, check with your liability insurance provider. I know Selective has a contract with a background check company at a great discount starting at 16. My average is 23 per background check. Oh,
That’s great.
Yeah. So
Your liability insurance provider. That’s awesome.
Yeah. And then Courtney says, do you feel that hiring A C N A can be competitive pay with a home care company versus them working within a hospital?
So I don’t know if the pay would be, now this is the thing when you’re hiring, when you’re signing the client that it always starts with a client for me, and they say, we want someone really skilled and not anybody can transfer my mom. And she’s really difficult and she may or may not be, but they want a C N A period. That’s what they want. You need to charge them more so you can pay the C N A more. So charge more, make sure your salesperson marketing person has room that they have that authority to be able to charge more when they feel like they need to. Because you don’t want to have to pay the C N A more than you pay your regular caregivers and you’re getting the same pay or the same, you’re charging the same the client than you do all your clients.
So charge more. So if they’re really pushing for a C N A and they really want one, and CNAs are making 18, 20 bucks an hour, charge ’em 40 bucks an hour. I mean, you’re going to have to do that to be able to pay the C N a. The way I would get CNAs to come. We had CNAs for our leads and for our QA quality assurance people, I would say to them, get connected to your clients. Because in a hospital, they’re being all over the place. They never feel that connection. And many people get in this field to help. They don’t want to push paperwork. They don’t want to run from one angry patient to another angry patient because there’s not enough staff. So that’s how I sell against that too. It’s you’re going to get to know your clients, you’re going to have a relationship with them. You’re going to really make a difference in their lives. So that’s how you can sell against the hospital piece of it. I know if that was part of your question or if it was more about pay, I hope I answered it. Does anybody else have any,
Make sure you have work for them. If they are even thinking about the hospital or somewhere else that they can get a more consistent, you know how it goes, then they will leave and you’ll lose them. So just make sure you have work for them too.
True. That’s a good point. Yeah.
I’ve lost many people. I’m going to, Courtney said, thank you, by the way. That was great feedback. I need consistent. I need more hours. I’m going to go here. I’m like, wait, you didn’t talk to me. Tell me you need more hours. What do you need?
Which is another reason to be communicating with your caregivers often because they’ll tell you stuff if you ask them, but if they’re off doing their thing and you’re doing your thing, they’re not going to come to, I’ve been so blindsided by caregivers through the years, someone who I think’s off and happy and doing well, and they just, Nope, I needed more. And you didn’t give them, well, I didn’t know that. The scheduler, nobody told me. So you need to have a lot of communication with your caregivers for sure. Oh, we’re on the role play.
Close mouth does not get fed. Exactly. Have to speak up
Role Play!
I would love it if you guys would do a little role play of what you say back and forth with the gatekeeper and social worker and a few different people, including some of the pushback you get and how you respond.
Okay. I guess I’ll be the salesperson. I guess. Let’s set the stage. I’ll walk into a sniff. You want to be the gatekeeper? You put your headphones on. You’re making
I’m okay. Oh, girl. Hold on. I see somebody coming. It looks like a marketer. Geez.
Oh, lovely. And that’s exactly what they think. Probably. Okay, Lisa. All right. I’m going to put my marketing cap on.
Oh my goodness. This is too funny.
Okay. Hi, I’m Dawn with Approved Senior Network. How are you doing today?
I’m great. How are you?
Good, good. And what is your name?
My name’s Lisa. Good morning
To you. Good morning. How long have you worked here, Lisa?
I have been here just a few months, actually.
Oh, okay. Great. Yeah, it’s a great facility. I’ve been in here several times. I’ve met with the director of nursing, Sandy. She’s really, really nice. Have you had a chance to meet her yet?
Oh, Sandy, yes. Yes, I have. Actually. She just walked by like four minutes ago.
Oh, Mr. Well, I haven’t had a chance yet to meet with Julie, the social worker, and I wanted to talk to her about our company. I provide home care. I’m sure you know all about it, and you know what it is, and you don’t need to hear the whole s spill, but we do things very differently. We have a backup plan when caregivers don’t show up to the home. It does happen time to time, and we have a great backup plan that I would love to share with her. Do you know if she has a few moments?
Oh wow. I wouldn’t even think that caregivers wouldn’t show up to the home. You know what? I know that she is booked all morning. Do you want to leave me something?
Yeah, yeah. Here’s my brochure and my business card. Is there a good day you think that I could come by or should I just try to pop in another time?
You know what? I have learned that today is one of the worst days.
Not Fridays. I’ll not.
Yes, they just have meeting after meetings. Sandy, when she walked by, they were actually late to a meeting. But I think if you come on Tuesdays, Tuesdays is probably a really good day. Seems like to me anyways.
Okay, great. I will do that. It was wonderful meeting you, and I look forward to seeing you ongoing.
Oh yeah. Well, me too. Yeah, stop by anytime.
Okay. Thanks, Lisa. Okay, thank you. So that’s a sniff and I don’t know, do you want more role playing? Was that helpful for anybody?
I mean, I think it could go everybody. Most people like to help, right? So if you made it seem like, can you help me? I need X, Y, Z. People always, they want you. And if you’re friendly and you want to talk to them and you make it a little bit about them at first. So I think good job. I wouldn’t have even, I would’ve been like, duh.
You have to acknowledge them. Yep. You have to acknowledge that gatekeeper, they are important. They may not seem important, but they are super important to your role and what you’re trying to accomplish. Do we want to do, does anybody have a situation they would like us to role? I, we’ve got a chat here.
Gatekeepers are key. They sure are. For sure, for sure.
Okay. Also, what’s the best response for a new agency trying to break in? Should they not let people know they are new? How do they skirt around the number of years? So if you’re new or even if you’re new marketer, I don’t usually get into that unless they ask, how long have you been doing this? If you haven’t been at it long, but you’re a nurse or you haven’t been at it for long, but the home care owner is a nurse or a social worker, lean into whatever experience they’re experience
In the company, the business, the owner, yourself, whatever. Lean into that. If you’re asked, I wouldn’t probably bring it up if you’re not asked. Breaking in is that differentiator? Like I shared with Lisa, what makes you different? Everybody. And when you say to them, I know you know what home care is, I’m not going to get into all that. They’re like, oh, thank God she gets it. If I have to hear what home care is, one more. That’s what she’s thinking. Just like Lisa said, oh God, there’s a marketer coming. That’s how they feel. True. She’s not wrong about that. And you can see it on their face, and you’ve got to really spend time with that person, get to know them, ask them something about themselves and then tell them why you’re different and why the social worker needs to talk to you. We’re not the same and this is why. So the differentiator, the market’s saturated. You have to figure out why you’re different, why you’re different, and they have to hear that from you. And you’re more aptt to get back behind that gatekeeper when they find out, oh, they have a backup plan. Caregivers don’t show up. They don’t, like Lisa said, they don’t know that that’s what happens. Yeah. What the heck? A dreadful picture of that either. But having the backup plan makes you different.
What if you’re going into the facility, you have no idea who’s the D O N?
You can ask the gatekeeper that stuff. Sometimes I will call ahead as if I’m an adult child. I start six, seven, my phone all the time, call people all, and I will just ask, what is the name of your social worker or who’s the director of nursing? I will just get that information that way. Sometimes I’ll go in and the gatekeeper maybe isn’t there, or there isn’t somebody at the front or somebody’s up front that shouldn’t be. I’ll just grab a bunch of business cards and then I have their names too. So I do it different ways. If the gatekeeper’s somewhat receptive and I’ll just say, I haven’t been able to stop in. I was down the street. Who’s the social worker here? Or I grabbed the card. Oh, so Julie’s a social worker. Do you know if she has any time? It’s always better to go in knowing the names. It just makes you look better. But sometimes you are at a corner. We have some corners in Mesa. You could see 15, 30 places in a matter of 10 minutes. I mean, if you ran boom, boom, boom. I mean, they’re all clumped together and you just think, I haven’t been in there yet. I need to go in there. So you could call from your car and get the names, or you could just, it’s okay to ask that question too. I just think it’s better to be prepared if you can be.
Thank you. Are there any other role playing that anybody would like to see?
Okay, we will keep going. How do I sell my private duty services to assisted living? I think we covered that a little bit with you’ve got a new resident moving in that needs help. You have somebody discharging that’s going to need more assistance than they have the manpower to handle.
They usually tell me they have AIDS on site and provide the same services. So yeah, they do say that we’re good. We have what we need. We don’t need that. Something else that we work against in Arizona, and maybe other states are this way too, if you are doing hands-on care in assisted living, you have to have an assisted living certificate. You have to have gone through special training. It can be expensive. You have to have this certification. So then how do you work in assisted living?
Right now, our hands are tied because our care rivers don’t have that. So then you offer to help in other ways. So someone who’s discharging into assisted living from A S N F, maybe they need some hands-on, right? Maybe they need the assisted living people to do that. And it depends what the hands-on is too. It gets very detailed, but you can help with other things. You can go get her food from the dining room. You can help other residents wheel them to dining. You can be staffed for the assisted living, be hired by the assisted living and be staffed for them. During covid, we did that. We still saw the meals. We brought people to dining. We brought meals to people’s room. We did all of that so their staff could do all the hands-on. So there’s that piece of it. Then on the other side of it, you can still be there to help someone feel comfortable in their new living situation. You can still be there for the meals and activities and all of those things and help them feel like they’re a part of the community. Is there a better way to provide any value to them or their clients? So I would say that would be the value. Lisa, do you have anything to add?
That definitely is the value, and then you can get into any bad marks or falls and things like that. I mean, we can help prevent those things if you want to get into that too. Just I guess the conversation you’re having, balance that out. But fall prevention is huge. How many people fall because there’s not enough staff to make sure that they do that. Trust doesn’t remember that they can’t just get up and walked and they’ve done that for years, just got up and walked. They don’t remember that. And that was a lot of the times a good selling point for us. You don’t have falls, I don’t have. Patients are living in the facility with big bruises on their faces, and that helps the adult children too, the ones who get called and have to rush over. And so I think that’s a good selling point as
Well. And that brings up overnight care. We did a lot of overnight.
Oh, I think she’s talking to someone else. So we did a lot of overnight services in assisted living for the risk of falling. So overnight they do have somebody there, but they’re not in everybody’s room. If somebody needs help getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night or they pop up and forget that they can’t do this by themselves, that kind of thing. Then the overnight care, we did do some overnight care and assisted living for that reason.
Sitter services and overnight. Yeah.
Yep.
Alright. What are some inexpensive activities to do with facilities like rehabs and SIFs now that we are entering into the colder months and how to properly plan a quarterly to six month calendar events? So we did get into, so you’re saying activities though. So the pumpkin in October, we have pumpkin decorating. You can bring a bunch of little pumpkins into assisted living into a sniff, bring the decorating. You’re not going to carve the pumpkin. That’s way too involved and you can set up a time to sit with their residents and the activity director, invite the social worker. If it’s a S N F, invite the director of nursing if it’s assisted living and help their residents decorate their own little pumpkin, three four inch pumpkin. You can play scary music. You can bring Halloween. Another fun thing that I’ve probably two, three times a year is cookie decorating.
Just go do bunch of sugar cookies from grocery store, bring all the stuff to decorate, sit the residents down and decorate the cookies and then they get to eat them when they’re done. That’s always a fun, easy activity anytime of year that you can do. We had another one where we planted, we bought little cactus, we’re in Arizona, little cactus, and then we bought these little pots and they transferred them. I mean by the bottom, if they were covered and transferred them into a pot and then they got to paint the pot. I mean, we’ve come up with all kinds of planting wildflower seeds or little seeds of flowers into a pot with them, and then they can paint the outside of the pot or just decorate. We’ve come up with all kinds of activities and when you do stuff like that, it’s helpful. I mean, they like to see that you’re involved and it’s more than business to you.
You’re enjoying this time with their residents and it helps them too. I’ve also called bingo a million to times. Yes, lemme do B Saturday trick. Bingo, do trick or treat bingo. I’ve done lots of bingos through the years and they just like to see you pop in for an hour or two and maybe it’s a Saturday here and there calling Bingo. It keeps you in front of their mind and you look like you’re caring person. It’s not about the referral, it’s about this is your passion. This is what you care about ultimately. And that transfers over into your services. In their mind, they’re thinking, my goodness, she’s in here on Saturday calling Bingo. She was here Wednesday doing cookie decorating. Like this gal really cares. And then that’s, they’re going to think they must do a really good job with their caregivers or their clients. We use C J I S. What is that, Fred? I’m not sure what that is. Are you muted, Fred?
Oh, it’s Samaya from Samaya to Fred.
Oh, Fred. Oh, Fred. We use C J I Ss. I don’t know what she’s talking about. Oh, the background company. Okay. Maya was saying that. Okay, sorry about that guys. Okay. I thought she was talking to us how to properly plan a quarterly to six month calendar of events. It is good to be planned ahead as much as you can. I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten to six months with all that’s going on in home care. Even if you’re in the marketing side and that’s all you’ve got. That’s a lot. You’re signing clients, family members are calling you all the time. You’re running into skilled nursing facilities. You have events at night and assisted living opening up. I mean, there’s just a lot going on going on. I’ve never, if you get to six months, hallelujah.
I want to see it. If you get to six months, I too,
But I have done the quarterly.
Yeah, every three months I think is, but six months is awesome. I think I’m ready for change with six months too. Be ready for some change. So I think maybe three months is good at a time.
John Good is saying we buy a few backgrounds for photo booths. We print them at Walgreens, add our sticker on the background and do a mini theme party. Sometimes we do ice cream. Love it. Ice coffee bars. That’s a great idea. That’s a really fun activity. I like that. That’s very cool. Okay, so we do try.
Can I share something really quick? Yeah.
Rebecca
Six month calendar. Yes. Just wanted to share what we do. So we do plan. We have the yearly calendar and it’s like an Excel. We do it on a template in Excel. I’ll be happy to share it and it really is helpful. It just give us a vision for the year around this time we start planning for next year. Sometimes we do same events that we have done this year. We repeat them next year and it just gives us a vision. The bigger picture, I think like what Lisa was saying, is totally accurate. As we go through, sometimes we have to adapt and eliminate an event or at another event, but I do think there is a lot of value in having a yearly calendar the year before that you can have that vision and you can start planning and help out. So it doesn’t have to be something really complicated. We do it on Excel. We put what our monthly promotion will be, what events are going on that month that we will be doing. We don’t do all the events where events are industry events where events are related to our company, like the birthday of our company, we celebrate things like that. So that help us to not forget important dates as well. So I’ll be happy to share the template if you think it’ll be helpful for other people.
I think everyone would love to see that. I used to put everything in my calendar, my own personal work calendar, and I would have from last year, I would just go back real quick and look what do we do? So I think I like the idea of that Rebecca being planned a year out. Fred says, yes, please share that. So yeah, Rebecca, if you can share that with me, I’ll make sure that it gets out to everybody when Valerie sends this out.
Great, I’ll send it to you. Thank
You. I really appreciate that. Does anybody else have anything to add to this? Okay, we’re doing pretty good. Alright. How can we get our caregivers involved in being pseudo marketers and recruiters? This is a good one. So as far as marketers go, I guess just be cautious. It depends on where they’re doing it. If they’re just out and about, we had our swag, polos and t-shirts and all the caregivers would get one, and we wanted them to wear them out and about and around. Now when they’re working in a facility, a SN F, they had logo wear that we would have them wear, but we were very selective on who we let work in a SN F or an assisted limit. We didn’t just send anybody. We also had scrubs with our logo. So you just have to make sure the right people are being your marketer out there.
So we had a few that were in assisted living and we would get referrals. They’re like, oh, I just saw Debbie. She just walked by and I want her to care for me while she’s here. That kind of thing. You just want to make sure they’re not soliciting for themselves to get more hours for themselves. It should just be that they’re doing such a business that people are noticing and it’s coming up that way. It shouldn’t be that they’re walking around handing out cards and brochures to the whole facility because the facility’s not going to like that. So as long as it’s done, just because they’re just doing such a good job and somebody calls because they’re looking into the services, that’s very different than somebody walking around. I need more hours and I want to work in this building 40 hours a week, and I’m just going to tell every client that’s here all about how great I am.
That’s very different and I have had caregivers do that. So just be really careful about who you send into facilities anyway, because your referral source, they’re getting a firsthand look at how your caregivers behave. And as far as recruiters, we had a recruiting referral program, so if they sent, we had little cards we gave them at orientation. It had a place for their name and it had a place for their friend’s name. When their friend came in after the friend worked, I think it was 50 hours, they both got a hundred dollars bonus. So that’s kind of how they were recruiters for us. And you’ll find that people that are the same hang out together. It’s true. If we got a referral from a really great caregiver, her friend would be awesome as well. If we had one from a kind of caregiver, her friend would be. It’s almost, I mean, I could almost guarantee it. So that’s my feedback. I don’t know. Lisa, do you have some things to add?
Yeah, the only thing I would add onto what you said is that you need to be present also all the time. I used to visit my caregivers and hang out with them in between. Maybe they were bringing the person to let’s say lunch and I would come and so I would be talking with the client and them and just to make sure that everything is going as it should be. Never leaving them just willy-nilly, like you said, just doing whatever they want and more hours privately because that’s not what we want. But I got them badges. They very much represented us well and I made sure that they were a good fit and truth in that where, what is it? Birds of a feather flock together. I had these two in particular that I remember and they were always talking to each other and we were always talking, texting, and I knew everything that was going on more than I needed to know about everything, but constantly and every, Hey, what about this?
What about this? And they were always referring back to me.
And it was great because we had that open communication and I knew that I could trust them. I still dropped by all the time, but I knew that and they were concerned. They would always have something for me like, Hey, I think he fell again and they were here and the facility was here, not us. And I think we need more hours. And so then I call the daughter, and you know what? He fell again and I really think he needs more hands-on. And my two, they’re available. I swear I used to bounce all the same jobs off of these two girls at this one place and it was just the best ever.
Yeah, no, that’s great. When it works out the way, and I would say you’re right with dropping in when they’re in a facility and your marketing person can drop in, they got to go to the facility anyway. It’s a stop for them. It is important. We had a caregiver that was in a facility and she just got really comfortable there. She was working like 35, 40 hours a week there. She started going into their refrigerators in the kitchen, the facility refrigerators. And we told her, you can’t go back there if you do this again. I don’t know what, I can’t even remember why. But she just kept helping herself in the kitchen, in the facility so they can get too comfortable sometimes. So it’s going to be important that you do stop in and they have a supervisor. And in this role, marketing can be their supervisor, just somebody from the office coming in to check in to see how things are going. And it doesn’t have to feel like a supervisory visit, just that they see someone from the office stopping in to say hi, see how things are going. I’m here to see how you are when that’s partly true, but it’s also, are you trying to run the show in this building or are we, let’s just keep things the way they’re supposed to be.
And that’s the same in private homes too. I don’t want one caregiver owning the thing, you know what I mean? So I do like to bounce usually at least two people.
Yeah, that’s true. Definitely. So I think we’re going to have to, this might be our last, we’re right at the time limit here.
Best types of facilities to go to and what time.
So again, I think skilled nursing facilities, rehabs are probably the best.
Valerie VanBooven RN, BSN founded the company after years of working in many different roles from ICU Nurse to Discharge Planner, Home Care, Care Management and more. She wrote her first book in 2003, called “Aging Answers”. After that came “The Senior Solution” in 2009.
Valerie and her staff grew as more home care agencies and senior service businesses realized the undeniable value of being found online.
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