Home Care U - $20M in 20 Years—How a Home Care Sales Team Manages Over 100 Active Referral Partners (John Neagle)

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

John Neagle, Director of Sales at HomeWell Care Services of New Jersey is here to talk about how they built and manage a massive referral network. We'll unpack making lasting relationships, finding aligned incentives, generating a steady pipeline of leads, and evolving sales strategies with a growing team.Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

welcome everyone to home care you a podcast by care switch i hope everyone is having a great week it's great to be back with you thanks for tuning into the show here at the top i just want to ask if you are enjoying this podcast please leave us a review wherever you're listening i know we've got people on spotify and apple podcasts and youtube etc i really appreciate all the support and the love and the listenership of this show. And the only thing I really ask in return is that you leave us a review or share this episode with a friend or a colleague on social media or via email. It's great to spread this education as far and as wide as possible.

So one other thing, if you are enjoying the show, I also want to remind you that we've got a newsletter called Campus Times, where we actually put out more resources and more links and more information similar to this podcast in a monthly newsletter. So you can go to careswitch.com slash subscribe to get that monthly newsletter to your inbox. Campus Times, keep an eye out for it. It'll come out actually again this week. So I'm really excited for today's session. I've got a new guest here with us today, John Neagle, the Director of Sales at Homewell Care Services in New Jersey. Last week I had the owner Lou Romano on with me to talk about scaling this franchise from zero to 20 million over the last 20 years. And I figured it was fitting to

have their director of sales join me as well to talk about their large, sophisticated sales, heavy organization and strategy and processes. So I'm excited to have you on today, John. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me, Mary. I'm very excited as well. I know this might be getting you out of your comfort zone a little bit, but that is okay. I'm glad that you're up for the challenge today. Before we talk about sales, your referral partners, qualification, all of that good stuff, I want to give you just a couple of minutes to introduce yourself. Talk to us about your background, who you are, what you like to do outside of work, and then maybe your journey to HomeWell. Sure. So my background is actually not in healthcare, but it is in sales and business

and service as well. So growing up, I was always an entrepreneur. I was always selling something. I was always exposed to business. I have a degree in marketing. And after college, I actually decided to take a little bit of a life detour. I joined the Marine Corps. I was a logistics officer. So I learned to manage large teams, to include training and readiness. I learned to operate under time and budget and resource constraints and to always get to mission accomplishment. So today I've been with Home On Out for six years. And I started as a rep out in the field, calling on referral sources and speaking with families. And today, like you rep out in the field, calling on referral sources and speaking

with families. And today, like you said, I manage our sales department here. Amazing. I forgot about your Marine Corps background. I think that's really relevant. Like you said, managing large groups of people, a lot of logistics, a lot of coordination. So it's only fitting that you found your way to sales and are doing a very similar, but different thing today. Before we get into kind of the meat of the conversation, I want you to give a lay of the land of the sales infrastructure at HomeWell. Can you talk about how many offices you will have, how many reps you're managing, and what

kind of like the internal team and breakdown looks like? Yeah, absolutely. So we have three office locations and each of those locations has a field rep or a marketer that's calling on referral sources in that territory. Those reps and those referral sources that they're calling on and all the clients that come from them are supported by an inside sales team here at the office that I work out of in Hackensack, New Jersey. So we've got the three marketers, and then we have four reps that are responsible for really everything that takes place from initial inquiry call through closing of the sale. So we've got folks that answer the phone, and we've got ones that actually go out and

meet with the families and close the sale. We'll talk a little bit more about kind of the roles of each of those later on here. To kind of paint the full picture, will you tell me about how many referral partners you all are working with across the state of New Jersey? About how many partners, maybe total partners, about how many you've come in contact with or have on your radar? And then maybe about how many active've come in contact with or have you know on your radar and then maybe about how many active partners you all are working with sure so we've got about 700 or so referral sources in the library if you will we are actively calling on about 110 of them

and this this year so far we have about 170 that are actively referring to Hobal. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think when people maybe hear that six or 700 number, that seems wild. But in a state as active and as dense as New Jersey, I think having hundreds upwards of a thousand partners isn't unrealistic. But then you mentioned maybe about 100, 150 that you're working with actively. About how many referrals are you getting from these partners monthly?

Just kind of ballpark about how many referrals are we talking? We average about 144 total referrals a month. It's about 36 or so a week. Okay, great. And qualified versus unqualified, is that 144, 30 a month? Are those typically qualified or it's kind of a mixed bag in that? So we average about, on average, about 25% of the leads that come through are unqualified. So in a given month, we can usually disqualify about 25. And that number has been very consistent since we started tracking it about three years ago. You know, it deviates a couple percentage points, but 25 is a steady bet. Okay, awesome.

Let's take kind of a walk down memory lane of your history at HomeWell. You mentioned how large this referral network is. When you joined the team, you know, six years ago, was all of this infrastructure in place or have you helped kind of build it up and get these numbers to where they are today? Or was it pretty similar size years ago? So the initial build out of the referral source list really predates my time here. Almost been open now for 20 years, but it's definitely evolved over the past few years. Under our old system, we never could have gotten it to this level because when I joined,

the marketer was also the one who handled the inquiry call and the nurturing and the closing. So there just wasn't enough time to get to this many places. So we've evolved our system to enable us to reach more referral sources. Can we talk about those different roles? I want to kind of start into that already. You mentioned the people that are out in the field and then the people that are back in the office. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the roles of each of those and kind of where the line is, like where the handoff is between those? So our marketers are responsible for generating new opportunities, finding and qualifying new

referral sources. They're responsible for nurturing their sources, getting to them at the designated frequency that's required. Their goal is to generate leads, generate referrals. The handoff really happens at the inquiry call. We actually try to generate leads, generate referrals. The handoff really happens at the inquiry call. We actually try to have our marketers coach the referral sources to give our direct office number. So that way, when that client, prospective client calls into the office, they can speak with somebody immediately. Under the old system, they'd call the field rep and that rep would probably be in another meeting or doing a presentation and they wouldn't get that immediate service. We wanted our prospective clients to be able to speak with

somebody immediately. So that is where the handoff happens. And then it turns over to an intake specialist, which is somebody that's just going to have an initial phone call with the client, qualify them. Are they the right fit for us? Are we the right fit for them? Can we meet their needs? And if so, we want to move that referral to the next step, which would either be an in-person consultation with one of our, you could call it a closer or a registered nurse and a sales rep to actually go out and meet with that family. Or if there's an imminent need, that inside sales rep could actually close the sale over the phone. Yeah, that's perfect. I wanted to talk about where then the next handoff,

which is the inside sales rep to say the nurse or whoever does the assessment. Can you explain that a little bit more? You said maybe there's the opportunity to close over the phone, but sometimes it goes to the home where the nurse is present there as well. Correct. So we have a couple of different capabilities. We do have a registered nurse within our sales department. That just gave us a little bit more flexibility. We didn't have to wait for one of our RNs to be available to go meet with the family.

So by having that nurse inside the department, she's able just to go out and talk more in depth about services, develop a care plan, give exact pricing based on clinical needs. She's not available. We have another sales rep that would actually go out in conjunction with a registered nurse to do the same thing. We believe in meeting with our families. It's a very personal business that we do here. And it allows us to understand their expectations from us as an agency. And it also gives us an opportunity to determine exact pricing. We don't just have a blanket price that covers every client. We truly base our pricing and our care plans on that client's specific needs. Yeah. Lou talked a lot about the personal touch,

like the intimacy with the family and how important that is, especially even in the sales process, developing a really strong, deep relationship with them. Over the phone, you can do some of that, but in the home is where that really comes to fruition and getting that relationship going. I want to ask about when another kind of like defining line, which is like closed one, like when do you all consider the business closed? Is that at the time that an agreement is signed? Is that at a verbal agreement over the phone? Is that when the first shift is worked? What is the actual like definitive line of when the deal is closed technically? For us, closed means a first care law update. A caregiver showed up at the home and actually

worked a shift. There's a billable shift in the system. We don't go by the service agreement just because a lot of things can happen between the time that an agreement is signed and the schedule start date can happen. Great. Yeah. I just wanted to clarify that because I think every business approach is that a little bit different. But I have heard you all speak about this, which is that that first shift, first care log completed is really when the deal is closed because there's so many steps leading up to that. But that is like the definitive line, like care has started.

The first shift has been completed. So I think that's great. Let's go back. I'm already leading you astray here. I know you asked how off the cuff I'm going to go and here we already are. So bear with me. I want to talk about back to the referral partners, you know, this massive list of people to manage, a lot of relationships, etc. And so I want to get back to that of finding these partners and finding the right fit partners. What does that look like? How have you all whittled down the list of 700 to 100? What makes this 100 the right people for your business?

Yeah. So I can actually use... Pretty cool. We have a real life example here. We opened up a new territory about a year and a half ago now down in Ocean County, New Jersey. It was a totally foreign land for all of us. We didn't know any of the communities there, any of the facilities. So we truly did start from scratch when building out this list of potential referral sources. So I can take you through the steps that we took for developing that and qualifying that. The first thing is when you're building out that territory, we want to determine the breakdown of referral source. So we like to be heavy on the SNFs because those facilities have an imminent need. Those people are going home this week,

and they have a high level, they're high acuity patients. They need our services. We also love assisted livings. The folks that live in those communities have the resources for services, and they have a need as well. And then of course, you sprinkle in a few preferred partners in the hospital, geriatric care manager, home health hospice, and elder law attorneys into the mix as well. So that gives you the core of your list. And then from there, we got to start making a list. So in New Jersey, on the Department of Health website, you can actually search by referral source type. You can sort by funding source. So we're looking for private

pay. We're looking for Medicare, even though Medicare doesn't cover our services. Those that are on Medicare, it's generally assumed that they have some level of resources to afford services. And then from there, we hop on medicare.gov to help keep trimming this list. Medicare.gov, you can search by facility. You can search and you can find the number of beds that they have. You can search for their quality rating. We're looking for high quality facilities. All right. And now we get to the point where we need to be boots on the ground to qualify these facilities. So consulting our local rep who had some knowledge of the territory, what preexisting relationships does she have? What does she know about some of these facilities or communities? And then from there, it's getting

into the buildings and you're starting to ask questions. What's your census? What's your breakdown of Medicaid beds versus short-term rehab beds? On medicare.gov, you can find the readmission rate and you can work backwards to determine how many high risk patients are kind of in and out of this facility in a given week or a given month. All right. And then it's just, you got to take a chance. You got to do trial and error and you chip away at it. And we're still doing that a year and a half later. We're still refining our list. We reevaluate just about every quarter. We continue to trim it down until we have our core list, which now for each territory is about 35 referral sources. It's a competitive market that you're in. You're talking about building

out this new hub. It's competitive though. And so these referral sources have a lot of reps walking in, asking for business. What have been some of the tactics to differentiate yourselves from a lot of the other people that are asking for their business? Absolutely. It's really all about signature programs. So for us, our bread and butter is transitional care. It's our go home well transitional care program designed to reduce readmission. That is really what sets us apart and what makes these skilled nursing facilities in particular want to refer to our services because it's going to result in the best outcomes for them from a business standpoint, as well as for their patients. How are the numbers, like are the stats, you know, you have the Go Home Well program and I'm sure you will have like your own readmission tracking and rates and numbers. Do the numbers convince them or how much of it too is just this like personal connection that maybe you have with the person on the other side is, you know, people say, you know, you want to do business, you do business with people that you like and people that you trust. I'm just curious in your perspective, do the numbers do the talking and they believe and trust that? Or how much of it too is just building kind of a personal relationship with this person? It's definitely twofold. You

know, some care about numbers more than others. Even some key roles within each facility care about numbers more than others. An administrator really cares about a readmission rate, maybe a little bit more so than a director of nursing or a social worker. Some people want different things. And part of our qualification process and really getting to know that account is figuring out what each person wants from us and what type of value we add for them. So it's definitely a mix. We're all about customer service. I'm sure I know Lou spoke about that last week. So it is definitely a good mix of solid customer service, solid relationship building, but

also outcomes. And we really believe numbers do the talking. So when we can actually go in and show how many readmissions we've had, which so far this year is zero, by the way, I'll throw that in there. How many falls do we average? We don't just go in and talk about, hey, we're experts in fall prevention. We actually show that for every 10,700 hours of care that we provide, there may be one fall. So we have the numbers to back up what we're going in and saying. And between that and the customer service, it's usually enough to get an account on board. Yeah, I think that's great. And I'm glad you referenced two different roles

within their business care about different things. And so you have to know exactly who it is that you're speaking to and what motivates or drives them or resonates with them. You mentioned driving value back to them. And I think the numbers do that. The customer service does that. How you all are going to care for their client speaks to the value drive back to them. Is there anything that they're ever asking in return other than just delivering on your promises? Is there anything else that you all can do to go above and beyond for them or anything else you can like give them in return? Everybody wants her pearls. So, you know, and it's interesting because we're, we're in the business of home care. We're in the business of keeping people at home. So we tell people it's not going to be a one-for-one referral relationship.

We can't give you one for every that we get. If we could do that, we wouldn't be very good at what we do, which like I said, is keeping people at home. Anytime we have an opportunity to connect a client of ours to another professional, we absolutely do it. We have very extensive relationships across the industry. So we definitely believe it's kind of part of providing our clients with a concierge type service, connecting them with other resources that could benefit them. And then that in turn, that helps us as well because we're giving back to different referral sources. Another big thing is having a little bit of fun. We love to have fun here at HomeWell.

One way we can do that is with our referral partners, whether it's sponsoring an event for them, taking them out, having a good time, getting to know them a little bit outside of work. That definitely helps in building the relationship and also helps to create value for them. Yeah, let's go down that path a little bit about like initiatives, you know, is it events? Is it lunches? What are what are what works? Well, and I know you talked about kind of the different referral types, SNPs, assisted living, geriatric care managers, hospitals, what what initiatives work well, maybe for each of those? Or is it kind of blanketed, like lunch and learns work great for all of them? Or have you found specific initiatives or events that work well with different referral types? So we have what we call four, four activities. There are four activity types that really yield great results for us. The first being a presentation. Your time spent on an account is useless if they don't know, if they don't really understand what

you do. So that's a five, 10 minute presentation over lunch that helps to kick things off. We love to sponsor events. That's great at skilled nursing facilities and at assisted living communities where maybe they don't have such an extensive budget for things for their communities. We're able to help out in that way. We love having fun outside of work, whether it's going to dinner or happy hour or to a ball game. And then there's just the standard breakfast and lunches, whether we like to set up for meetings when in the skilled nursing facility, they're speaking about who's going home and when and who's in the building. We want to be top of mind for that. So sponsoring something like that is definitely

helpful. The thought that I'm having comes back to budget. You mentioned 100 active partners, talk about sponsoring lunches, events, all sorts of things for that many partners. It gets really expensive really quick. And I'm sure the question that's always top of mind for you is ROI, you know, as what we're spending, you know, bringing back referrals. Do you have like a set, maybe annual budget for each partner or is it always in flux because things are changing or how do you budget and a plan for this many events for that many partners? So we, we give each of our marketers, they have a budget and it's really up to them to manage it properly. And I definitely, I can help support that,

but it starts with them and they're usually very good about managing it properly. The budget is appropriate that you can do one of these event types at every community in a given year. And then of course, yeah, it's measuring ROI. We track every dollar that is spent at every community in a given year. And then of course, yeah, it's measuring ROI. We track every dollar that is spent at every account and what results from a revenue standpoint, from a referral and from an admission standpoint. And if there's not ROI, we stop spending at a certain point. Let's talk about the maintenance of these referral partners. So, you know, speaking to probably the marketers out in the field, the most important thing with these people is in order to get a steady flow of referrals, you have to stay top of mind

for that referral partner. And you have to maintain that relationship. You have to work at that relationship. It's not that you went into the presentation and asked for the business, and now they're referring you 10 clients every week. That's just not typically the reality. And so you have to maintain those relationships. What does your approach to that look like? How many touch points are there? How often are they going into that office to bring them a coffee or relight that relationship? What does that just maintenance of these referral partners look like for your marketers and for the whole team? Yes. So communication and consistency are key. I would say in-person at a minimum once per week. It also depends on the potential of the referral source. High volume discharging,

skilled nursing facilities require maybe more touchpoints than an assisted living community. But generally speaking, weekly in-person is great. And then in terms of other touchpoints, literally as many as we can possibly think of. Too many touchpoints is no issue. Whenever we get a referral, the communication is not constant, but it is, again, consistent. Thanking them for the referral and update for every step of the way throughout that inquiry process. And the most important is after the fact, letting them know how their patient was doing. And that kind of goes with our Go Home Well program. We like to celebrate our 0% readmission rate. So anytime we have somebody graduate from our Go Home Well program, we're back there at the referral source, letting them know the readmission window has

passed. Who else do you have just like that, that we can help? And we usually start off the year like that as well. Kind of reflecting kind of reflecting back on this year. These are the clients that you sent home with us. This is the outcome. Let's do this again and even more so this year. I'm assuming a lot of that, the digital communication takes place via email, correct? Obviously, you can go out and visit them in the office and have these conversations, but it sounds like there's probably a lot of written communication that's taking place over email. Is that fair? A lot of email, a lot of texting. But again, any opportunity,

especially at an account where maybe we're struggling to get into a little bit, if we have an opportunity to go there and tell them in person rather than email them, we do that because that's your ticket inside the door, especially if you're at a hospital, which is very hard to get into. If you get a referral or we have an inquiry call, we really want to get that assessment because that gets us physically into the hospital. Let's talk about getting qualified leads. I think part of the name of the game in sales is it's easy to get a high volume of leads. Once you do the work and create the funnel, you can get a lot of leads. But really, at the end of the day, you want qualified leads. How are you ensuring that these partners send you qualified leads?

How are you ensuring that? What does that look like? So again, it goes back to tracking every lead that comes in, whether it is qualified or not. We want to capture those that are not qualified and we want to capture the reason why they're not qualified. If we find that one referral source in particular keeps referring us a client that's outside of our service area, we want to be able to go back to them and explain, hey, thanks for these five referrals last month. This is why they didn't pan out. This is what we could do a little bit differently to make sure that we're able to help those that you're sending are wet. We would not be able to do that if we did not track every call that comes in.

It also comes back to forming that account list. If you've identified the facilities that you know have your clientele in them, we know that there's opportunity there. And it's trying to figure out, you know, why are we not getting that opportunity or not. And it probably, you mentioned finding the partners that have your clientele there, but then it's also probably part of that like initial relationship building is explaining to them, detailing out your qualification criteria so that they are sending qualified leads. And then it's repeating that conversation based off the leads that they send, if they're good leads, if they're bad leads, if they're okay leads, just continuing to refine in their mind who the right fit people are. Would you mind sharing what that qualification criteria looks

like for you? Is it a long laundry list because you have been around for so long and you know exactly who you're looking for? Is it kind of like six to eight criteria? What does that look like? We try to keep it as basic as possible because as you just said, these referral partners have dozens, if not hundreds of other vendors coming in every week trying to get an opportunity to work with them. So you can imagine it's very hard for them to keep track of who does what and who wants what type of patient of theirs and

who can help what type. So we try to make it very simple. It's about six to eight points. And we're really just trying to drive home, who do you have in the building that has functional limitations? Who do you have in rehab right now that you're discharging that has not met their goals yet? Who is a fall risk? Who has Alzheimer's or dementia? So those are just a handful of the basic clinical qualification points. But then also the big one is who has the resources to pay for this privately? A lot of referral sources we find need to be reminded of it as a private pay service. We're not covered under Medicaid. We're not covered under Medicare. A real big differentiator for us over the last year or so has been we are a credential

provider through the VA's Community Care Network. So really any veteran that is passing through a facility or community, we want to be put in touch with because they are eligible for a benefit that is hugely valuable and they just don't know. Back to just like the competitive nature here. It may not be uncommon for them to confuse you with another agency or, you know, like, I don't know, not forget about you, but just like there's a lot of relationships, a lot of people, a lot of faces. Like it's just a lot for them to keep track of. Are there any other like creative ways? I'm thinking of like swag or something that you all do to try and like really stand out

as a company to these referral partners. Any creative things that you've done or tried that have failed, that have succeeded? I mean, Stanley was a big hit this year, wasn't it? Yes. It was Stanley making impressions. So we did these for social work month. Those were a big hit. And we are in everything that we do, we are all about quality. So Stanley was a quality name this year. So we do quality swag. But again, it's consistency with our sales reps. There's a stat

out there. I don't know. It takes eight to 10 touch points or something like that before somebody really remembers you or is really willing to give you an opportunity. So we are getting in front of these accounts every week, consistently try to get there at the same time every week so that they almost just become programmed to expect it. And it usually helps. We also put our marketers' faces on collateral so that they can associate the face with the brand. So without giving away too much secret sauce, I think that's it. Yeah. No, that's great.

I think the word that you're saying too is like quality. When it comes to the swag or the collateral, you want to put your best foot forward there, but then also just the quality and the consistency of those visits every single week at the same time. There's like a meaningful interaction there. I think probably one of the things that you're referencing too is sharing an update about the clients. These people, like we're all in it for the clients at the end of the day and their satisfaction and their happiness and their health.

And so, you know, when these marketers go back out, it's also giving them, they can be armed with the information about the clients, about the referrals and say, Hey, you know, Mrs. Jones is doing great here. It's like an update on her. And I think that probably goes such a long way with them is really, let's talk about, I'm just curious about like training and supporting your marketers, kind of your whole sales team. So you're responsible for these people and their metrics and their success. How are you training these reps? Did a lot of them come with sales experience, with healthcare experience, or are they all kind of from different backgrounds and how do you train them up to be really successful in their roles?

So our team as it stands right now, actually, nobody has a home care background. I'd say about half have a sales background. Our marketers definitely have a sales background. That is really important. When you're evaluating candidates to fill roles, not everybody in sales needs to be a salesperson. In fact, some really shouldn't be. So we found that some of our best salespeople on the intake side, the ones that are actually interacting with clients and their families, it's maybe best that they're not too salesy. People don't want to be sold. They want to be heard and understood, and they want to know that their needs are going to be met. On the marketing side, though, you need somebody who is consistent, a little bit aggressive, not afraid to hear no. And that usually is well

suited by a salesperson. So in terms of training, everybody on the team gets the same training for the most part. Obviously, the different roles get a little bit more emphasis on certain things, but everybody is really cross-trained to perform everybody's function. And that helps us in a situation like last week, we had four people on summer vacation, but everybody else, including myself, was able to kind of step in and take calls, meet with families, get in front of referral partners, because we all have a shared mission. We all understand the mission and everybody's able and willing to kind of jump in and pitch in to get to mission accomplishment.

Let's talk about the intake team. Because like you just mentioned, they're not necessarily salespeople by trade. Maybe that's a little bit to their disadvantage in some ways. Your current intake team, as it stands, are those people that you have promoted from within from different roles or what are their backgrounds? Where have they come from and what makes them good at what they do? I'm just curious if there's any parallels or commonalities for those people. One has maybe a background in assisted living. One actually does have some home care background, not necessarily in home care sales. Another worked in a school and another is a registered nurse.

So very diverse backgrounds. All of them are what's most important, caring and compassionate people and sincere people. Like I said, people who really, really want to help and are able to stop and listen and understand what the client is saying. Awesome. And you mentioned the marketers out in the field also come from kind of a variety of sales-related backgrounds. Have you ever strived to hire people that have pre-existing relationships that would be advantageous to their role?

Or are you okay finding someone that maybe doesn't have any pre-existing relationships that would be advantageous to their role? Or are you okay finding someone that maybe doesn't have any pre-existing relationships with these SNFs or assisted livings and being able to coach them up and get them comfortable and confident out there? Have you ever tried to find people that already have those relationships or is that not high priority for you? We've tried a mix of things, but we found it's just not the highest priority. The highest priority is finding the right person, somebody with a work ethic, somebody who can hustle, who wants to get the job done. The rest can be taught. The relationships can be found. Those can be made. We have a lot of, just in 20 years in business, we've got a lot of

pre-existing relationships that our reps can leverage, but it's not the most important thing to us. What's most important is really their personality, their drive, and their work ethic. Great. Yeah. I'm just curious because again, every business is a little bit different. Some new business owners want to find someone that has those pre-existing relationships. So they're not starting from scratch, but in your case, yeah, maybe it's more the skillset, the personality, the abilities that speak louder than the existing relationships. And at every stage of business, you have to kind of make those judgment calls and identify what's kind of the right decision at the right time. I think too, is that in our industry, there's so much turnover. So somebody could come on board and have pre-existing relationships, but that relationship could be done two months later.

So if you're putting too much weight on that, you may be putting your emphasis on the wrong thing. That's a really good point. Can you share about compensation? A lot of people, I don't know if you're in any home care Facebook groups or kind of in the chat, or a lot of people ask about how to compensate marketers and intake reps. Are you willing to share not necessarily like specific figures, but just like how the compensation structure works for the different members of your team and what has worked well? I'm sure like most compensation things have evolved over the years and you kind of try

and test and work things out. But what has compensation look like for your team? So when you're developing a comp plan, I think you really need to find what motive... Everybody's motivated a little bit differently. Everybody needs a little bit of a push in a different area. Figure out what that is and you can motivate them with compensation to push them a little bit more. So it's okay to have different comp plans for different people. I don't think that there is a one size fits all across an organization. So without getting into numbers or anything, I think that's my big takeaway is figure out what motivates each individual and how can you use comp to give them a little bit of a push to do what you need them to

do. I take it that the marketers versus the intake team, their compensation structures probably look pretty different. I am curious though, is there performance-based compensation for both of those teams? I'm sure that's pretty straightforward and obvious for the field reps, like there would be any kind of traditional sales role. For the intake team though, is there also a layer of their compensation that is performance or outcome-based? Yes, performance-based. I think in sales, everybody needs a little bit of a performance-based outland. Yeah, I was just curious because the intake team could, yeah, it could not be. You can just kind of pay people salaries that are fair wage for their role. But I think in home care, there's just a lot of opportunities to pay

potentially everyone in the office, some sort of like performance-based compensation, because everyone's roles are tied to numbers or metrics or outcomes. And so, like you said, it depends on what motivates people. Everyone's motivated. A scheduler has a different motivation than a marketer, than an intake coordinator, than a nurse. But at the end of the day, you're all working towards the same goals. You can break those goals down into metrics. And so just in general at HomeWell, is there kind of a push for performance-based compensation or is that pretty closely tied to just like the sales work? I have to be honest, I don't really know across other departments how they are compensated. I can just speak to what goes on here within sales. There's definitely

a performance. I think for folks that are interacting with clients and you need them to close a sale, I think they need to be motivated to do so. And you want to motivate people to outperform their targets and their goals. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's great. That's great. I think, yeah, there's a lot to be said about compensation, but I think one of the underlying messages here too, is just having an open conversation with your sales reps, with your marketers, with these people, finding out what motivates them, what pay needs to look like for them, and then just letting that be kind of an ongoing conversation to make sure their needs are being met. I want to ask you about like challenges or headaches, you know, like what keeps you up at

night in your role? I don't know if that's too personal to ask, but what is it that stresses you out in your role today when it comes to managing the sales team and managing these referral partners? Well, the performance of the sales team, which is a major contributor to the performance of the company, all starts with referrals. So what keeps me up at night is if and when we're not hitting our referral targets. That's hugely important. And that's something that we are, we're always trying to figure out this balancing act of how do we not have a slowdown? If hospitals are slow and SNPs are slow, we can't be slow. So we're trying to find that balancing act of how many

different of each of the referral source types do we need to be calling on to maintain a steady, consistent stream of referrals coming in here in the office? I'd say that's one of the biggest, you know, that's one of the biggest pain points for me. And you're keeping a pulse on that. You're looking at the numbers, you know, you're looking at the spreadsheets, keeping an eye on all of that. What does that then translate into? You know, say one month, like you're feeling all of this stress and does that then translate into? Say one month, you're feeling all of this stress and all this heat and the numbers aren't looking good. In your mind, what do you go out and do? What does that look like? What does that translate to?

So you'll usually feel the effects of that the following month. If we have a slow referral month, we're going to have a slow admission month, probably the next month. What does that make us do? It makes us think critically about what can we do differently next month? What can we do differently next year? How do we need to revise our strategy? Always got to be thinking ahead. You can't be thinking just today because what happens today is really in the past. We got to be thinking ahead and always developing new sales strategies, new tactics, coaching the reps, getting out in the field, figuring out

why are we having a downturn? Are we saying the right things? Are we asking for referrals? You don't get what you don't ask for. If you're going around to referral sources and you're just dropping things off and hanging out and shooting a breeze, you're not going to walk out with referrals. That's one of the most important... That's like step one. It's slow. Are we asking for the sale? But it's good to repeat those things. If someone's been with you for months or years, you figure a lot of that is second second nature. Like they know those things, but it's easy to get lax. It's easy to shoot the breeze. It's easy to lose sight of some of the most important fundamental things. If someone's been in the role for a long time,

this might also be kind of a, I don't know, uncomfortable question. A lot of times in home care and in business, it's easy to bring on the wrong people, to hire the wrong people. And nobody likes to fire people. That's not an easy thing to do. But I would take it in your six years, you've maybe had to let people go or brought on maybe the wrong people. Any experiences that you can share about just how you went through that and what the outcome

of maybe bringing on the wrong person, but letting them go and it being a good thing or moving them to a different position, just kind of the flux of your team and what you've learned? Yeah. So something that's really important to me and I know really important to the company, especially the leadership, Will and Laura, we want to know that we've given everybody a chance and we've given them everything that we have as leaders to help coach them through their employment, give

them the resources that they need to be successful. And until that happens, we don't really get to the point of letting somebody go. Has it happened? Absolutely. At the end of the day, it's usually mutual, quite honestly. This just wasn't necessarily the right fit for them. It's a demanding job. It's not for everybody. And sometimes it just takes a little bit of time for everybody to figure that out. But we will do everything that we can to give them an opportunity to be successful.

Aaron. Yeah, that's great. What about managing conflicts or challenges with referral partners? I'm assuming over the years and with hundreds of partners, conflicts or challenges can arise with these people as well. Does anything come to mind of a challenge or a conflict that maybe a marketer or yourself has had with a referral partner and how that was dealt with? Because it's not always perfect and easy and clean, like conflicts arise, I'm assuming. So anything come to mind in that sense? Well, we're really fortunate here that

we have enough depth across our organization to really have the right people in place to handle any type of situation that could come up. So being accountable and owning up to mistakes, I think is huge. And it's a great opportunity for us to show a referral source that we are accountable and that this is not a perfect business. It's not a perfect industry. It's a very tough industry to work in, but we have the experience and the people in place to work through those types of conflicts. If there's ever been a conflict, I can think of some in particular. One strategy is to use turnover as an opportunity.

Maybe there's conflict with an administrator or an employee for whatever reason. It's okay to put that account on pause and go find another one. There's plenty out there and wait for there to be some turnover. That's an opportunity for a fresh slate, clean slate to get back in there and to give it another shot. Yeah, I like that. Using turnover to your advantage. I mean, turnover is so common in healthcare, in home care. But I think, yeah, what you're saying is like there's turnover at these other offices, at

the SNFs, at the assisted livings. And so you may go back to that partner three months later, six months later, and it could be a different face with a different personality and a different, you know, motivation and being able to use that to your advantage and get back out in front of them. I think that's great. We're coming up on time here. What motivates you? What keeps you going day in and day out? Obviously, sales is a demanding, hard job, let alone managing a large sales team at a growing, scaling home care business. What excites you? What motivates you to keep going? What motivates me is seeing everybody in my department succeed. And at the end of the day, I feel good going home knowing that everybody's doing well and they're achieving great things.

And I want that for them. I want them to be successful. I want them to be promoted from within. And then what else motivates me? My family. You know, providing for my family, for my wife, my kids, and giving them the best life that they could have. So that's what gets me up every morning and gets me here.

And yeah. Let's end with what advice. So a lot of owners, operators down to sales reps will be listening to this, but thinking from the perspective of other sales leaders, what advice would you give them? You've been in it for years and you've experienced the highs and the lows like anyone would have, but what advice would you give to other sales leaders that would help them or motivate them or just what advice would you impart to them? Whether it's managing referral sources or managing your intake process or managing your sales reps, track the data and go where the numbers tell you to go, or do what the numbers tell you to do. Numbers do not lie. They tell a story, they show trends, and they help you make informed management and sales decisions.

So you can develop KPIs for just about anything in sales and track them. Too much data is never a problem. Better to have too much than too little. But the numbers are always something you can fall back on and help you to make the right and the most educated and best decisions possible. Yeah, that's great. John, thank you. Thank you for sharing a lot of good insights from you today. And I know you're talking about the spreadsheets and the KPIs. We didn't go too much into that today, which I think is okay. But I maybe want to just tee you up here at the end and say, John is a busy guy, but I know you all at HomeWell have a lot of other business owners come and kind of mentor and shadow you. And so I would say at the least anyone listening to this

can connect with John on LinkedIn, reach out to him, ask him questions. And as he has time, he'll be able to respond to those. Again, I know you're busy, John. So don't want to tee you up for too much, but I know you have a lot of wisdom and insight. It would be my pleasure. Awesome. Well, thanks for being here, John.

Great conversation. It's been my pleasure to interview you, Lou, last week and you this week and talk a little bit more about just the success that you all have had at HomeWell in New Jersey. I think you are really kind of a model for what a large, sophisticated, but really compassionate and high quality home care business is. And I think a lot of people will take

some good insights away from these episodes. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Mary. It was fun. Appreciate it. Thanks. That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch,

the first AI-powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.