Home Care U - Sales Strategies for 2025: Referral Marketing, Rate Setting, and Closing Tactics (Steve Weiss Pt. 2)

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

2025 is around the corner and year end planning quickly becomes goal-setting for the new year. Steve returns to talk about establishing goals and expectations for a new year—specifically, we'll highlight long-term sales goals, establishing and increasing rates, and tactics to help you close more leads.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 U. I'm your host, Miriam Allred, Head of Partnerships at CareSwitch. It's great to be back with you. I hope everyone's having an awesome week. Again, this is a podcast hosted by CareSwitch, an AI-powered operating system that replaces your agency management software. It's my pleasure to bring this education and these great guests to you week after week. I hope everyone's enjoying the show. So without further ado, I am excited to be back for part two with Steve Weiss, the president and CEO of Home Care Evolution, otherwise known as Steve the Hurricane. We had an incredible session last week about strategic planning and year-end planning. Here we are, October Q4. A lot of people are hopefully summing up this year and starting to plan and prepare for

what's coming. And Steve, I think you shared a lot of really great nuggets about all sorts of different aspects of year-end planning and budgeting and building out those KPIs and holding your team accountable. And so I'm excited to continue the conversation today in the topic that is really your wheelhouse, which is all things sales and referral marketing. So before we get into the weeds on the topic, for those who didn't catch the first episode or again, meeting you for the first time, give us a quick introduction and background of yourself and maybe throw in a couple of maybe personal elements. Tell us a little about your family or your hobbies or your interests outside of your business. Awesome. So thank you so much for having me again, Miriam. It is a pleasure.

Today, I'm actually in my office. Last time we did this, I was in my home office. Still got the giant hurricane on the wall, but this is a much, much bigger hurricane here. That's a six-foot hurricane behind me. And I just, I'm honored to be here. You know, again, today we're talking about sales and marketing, and this is my favorite part of scaling home care businesses. You know, home care evolution and all the things that we do to help people scale their businesses. This is the part of it that gets me excited because it's, you know, let's make money. Let's convert people into paying customers. Let's grow the business. So I'm absolutely excited about it. My background briefly is I, oh, I was a business

development professional at a home care company in 2005. From 05 to 09, I grew the company from a $600,000, $700,000 a year business to a master level business doing over 5 million annually. The owner of that company made me his business partner. In 2011, we sold that company for several million dollars. I stayed on with the company that bought us for the next 12 to 15 months. And after helping them scale and grow, that's when I started Hurricane Marketing Enterprises, DBA, Home Care Evolution. For the last 12 years, we have literally helped over a thousand agencies around the globe

internationally and of course here in the United States scale their businesses, helping more than a million seniors get the care that they need and helping our clients grow their revenues by billions of dollars. So it's very exciting. And something personally about me, I am a husband and 15 years now, and I have a father of three children, 14, 12, and 10 years old. They're just the light of my life. And something that I'm really into is boating. So if I'm not in the office or at a conference, I'm probably on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. Amazing. And you're located up in New Jersey, correct? Yes, I'm located in New Jersey. I spent a lot of time in Florida. And last week,

or two weeks ago, I was at a conference in California and I went boating in the Pacific Ocean while I was there. So if there's a body of water, I'm going to be in it on a boat. Amazing. I'm not going to lie. I love following you on social media and getting a glimpse into your personal life. Your wife and kids are beautiful and your life looks as electric and exciting as your profession here at Home Care. So thank you for that introduction.

I hope that I'm not introducing you to most of the people listening, but if I am, it's honestly my pleasure. Follow Steve on LinkedIn, on Facebook. He's got a Facebook group. Tell everyone a little bit about your Facebook group in case they're not a part of that yet. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, Home Care Evolution, you find us on there. There's so much stuff that you can connect with us on social media. Facebook is definitely one. LinkedIn is another one we're real strong on. And then don't forget to check out our YouTube channel, all right? Home Care Evolution, the Hurricane Marketing Enterprises YouTube channel. For the last 12 years, I've created over 700 videos that are posted there on all things scaling your home care business. So chances are, if you're going through something, experiencing something, you don't know how to overcome it,

I probably did a video giving you the solution on it. I think your content library is bigger than anybody else's. And I agree, you and I were talking about podcasting a webinar before the show. And I think people gravitate towards education that they can learn on their own time. Podcasts, YouTube videos, perfect example where people can go and consume at the time and the place that they prefer. So definitely check out that YouTube channel. So many great resources. I've been working with Steve for years and continue to be amazed by just the level of the quality that he brings to these events and to this content. And again, you've worked with

over a thousand owners at this point in time. And so clearly, you know, some secret sauce and you got some tricks up your sleeve to really help businesses grow. So let's talk about your background a little bit more when you were working in the agency. Again, you were in the business during the crisis of 08 and we can draw some parallels to how difficult the economy was then and now. And so what impact did those referral marketing relationships have on you being able to scale the business at a really difficult point in time? Yeah, it's so interesting when I think about it and I look back over it. And in the last 25 years, you know, the economy is tough today. The economy is in a little bit of a different state where there's less unemployment than we had in the early part of the century today.

But the price of everything is really high today. However, having had an agency during that economic downfall where people didn't have the incomes, unemployment was like 12%, 14% during that time. And people, they weren't spending money. It's as simple as that. Think about the housing market at that time. Like today, you can't touch a house, right? You can't get a house without a bidding war and everything else. Back then, you drive down the street, half the houses are for sale, right? And we had to bail out the car companies. We had to bail out the banks and everything else. That's how bad the economy was during that time.

And yet, we were able to go from a $600,000 business to a $5-plus million business during that time. And that is because of what you just said. It is the strength of the relationship and our referral partners. The economy, although it does play a factor in people affording care, the economy does not factor when people get sick, when people need help. Let's think of someone having a stroke. The stroke itself does not care what's going on in the world. That person had the stroke, they got the stroke, and they need help, and they need that help now. It doesn't matter what's going on, right? It's one of those things that that's why people said that our industry is pandemic-proof, right? People still need care. It's recession-proof. Why?

Because people still need care no matter what's going on in the economy. But what we have to do now is we have to set ourselves apart from our competitors. Everybody is investing money in SEO. Everybody is investing money in pay-per-click ads and Google AdWords. Everyone is investing in artificial intelligence. So if I'm in a marketplace with 100 competitors and everyone's putting money in the same boat, we're all going to get the same kind of results. Where can I be a differentiator? What can I do differently? I can outwork my competitors through the referral source relationships that I have. I can develop a relationship through being reliable, dependable, showing up on time,

and truly converting the referrals that are sent to me in my company. And that's going to allow me to outwork my competition. So if I were to take you back, Miriam, to 2005, 2006, 2007, right? In 05, I came on, I didn't have a healthcare background. I have a sales background and a ministry background. That was my, I did not, I don't know anything about healthcare at that time. The acronym ADLs, Activities of Daily Living, I thought that was Lou Gehrig's disease

for like six months, right? So I don't know anything about healthcare, but I knew sales and marketing. When I came on the scene, everybody was referring this company right at home. That was my biggest competitor at the time. And over the course of the next six months going into 2020, I'm sorry, 2006, everybody went from referring right at home to referring right at home and CareChoice, which was my company.

By 07, we were the number one referring company. And then they referred Right at Home if we couldn't handle it. So it took me a solid 18 months, two years to develop the relationship to outwork my competitors and get the referrals coming my way. But the results are we grew the business by almost 10 times the revenue in that four or five years. And we did so during the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. I'm really glad a couple of things that you mentioned. You mentioned the word recession proof. I think that's why there's so much attention on home care right now and so many people entering this industry because they know it's a recession-proof business. And so in the last 20 years, the volume of businesses in every market has gone up pretty substantially. And so it's as competitive as it's ever been. And I'm also glad you mentioned it took you 18 months to two years to develop really strong

relationships and to start winning business over other preferred providers of these referral sources. I think that's a really important distinction. It's just how long it takes to develop rock solid relationships that turn into a steady stream of referrals. One of the questions I want to ask you, you talked about people investing money in online marketing, sales approaches. Do you think it's essential for,

in order for a business to become successful and scale maybe that 5 million mark, they have to have referral marketing? Or have you seen any businesses that can succeed without it? Is it essential? Or are there ways to maybe sid can succeed without it? You know, is it essential? Or are there ways to maybe sidestep referral marketing or no? So I'm going to say it's essential if you really want to scale it big.

You don't have to, you can, not to downplay it, okay? Because I don't want to downplay what it is to generate a million dollars. But you can kind of stumble through generating a million dollars in revenue in home care just with Internet leads. You don't have to do direct referral marketing to generate a million in revenue. But if you want to get to five million dollars, if you want to get to master level status, you're going to have to have that as well. I don't know a single master out there that I've been working with that doesn't have some type of relationship at referral partners. They all have relationship with referral partners. Maybe not everybody in the area, but they definitely have relationships at either hospitals, rehabs, LTACs,

you name it. They have some kind of a relationship reputation where the people in those organizations are sending referrals plus the internet digital way of generating leads. So I'm not saying don't do that. What I am saying is if you really wanna scale and grow, do that and direct referral marketing.

I always called it for the last 12 years, even before artificial intelligence was even a thing, I always call it the one-two punch. You have the internet digital marketing, which is going to bring a steady lead flow in paired with direct referral marketing. That's the one-two punch that gives you leaps and bounds in revenue year after year after year. I love the one-two. And I completely agree. I've seen the same thing. Like you mentioned, you can get to that $1 million, maybe even that $2 million with kind of a scrappy sales strategy where it's all kind of piecemeal. But really to hit those larger milestones, that 5 million up to that 10 million mark as a business, you have to have a strong referral marketing approach in your business.

I want to throw a plug in here for the magazine, right? I have this magazine for those who don't know, homecareevolution.com backslash magazine. You can access the digital magazine for free. So it's a free resource, but there's an amazing article written by one of my clients who is a master level business. And he talks about how the business was doing $11 million, 100% private pay, $11 million in 2021. In 22, they did 15 million. And in 23, they did over $20 million.

And the strength of it came from direct referral marketing. He's got four full-time marketers. It's written by the sales manager who's working with Melissa, who's one of our coaches. And the content he puts in here in managing a sales force to grow by $9 million, to grow by $9 million, right? Not do $9 million, grow by $9 million in two years is outstanding. And it's all from their direct referral marketing efforts. Amazing. Amazing. Can I ask what business that was or what market they're in? They're in New Jersey and they cover pretty much the northern part of the state of New Jersey and it's a home well. Okay. I was going to say for those listening, we have them

on the show, Lou Romano and John Neagle. We had them on the show a couple of weeks ago to talk about scaling their sales organization and what that looked like. So I'm glad you mentioned that. I thought it was the home well team in New Jersey. So shout out to them and John Neagle, we had on the show a couple of weeks ago that talked about expanding and solidifying their sales process. And like you mentioned, scaled $9 million in a matter of a couple of years because it was so strategic, so methodical, and then they were executing on this really tight process. So glad you shouted that out. Let's get into the weeds a little bit

more. A really important part of sales is rate setting and rates. You mentioned while you were in that sales role years ago, your rates were higher than anybody else in your market. And rates get a little controversial. That can be part of your differentiator. You might be the lowest in your market strategically. You might be the lowest in your market strategically. You might be the highest in your market strategically. Let's talk about just how businesses should establish their rates. And also on the last episode, you mentioned wages grew really quickly during the pandemic, but rates struggled to catch up. And what implications

is that having for owners today? Great question there. So first, I'll start off with the experience of when we were charging rates. So my rates were always among the highest in the marketplace, right? And the reason for that was not just it wasn't like a greedy thing. It was a profit margin thing, understanding profit margin, operating at a 20 to 22 percent profit margin. We're talking net profit after all expenses. Having that 20, 22 percent net profit makes the business valuable. It allows you to reinvest in the business. It allows you to make a turnkey if you want to sell it to somebody else.

It's going to get your maximum return on investment. There's a whole bunch of factors that go into having a 20% profit margin, whereas most agencies today are operating between 7% and 10% as per the latest benchmark study. Now, so that was why our rates were where they were. The other aspect of it and why our rates were the highest in the area is because we also believed in paying our caregivers more than everybody else and hiring based on experience. So a big part of my marketing effort came down targeting a specific type of a customer who, which crazy as it sounds, I didn't coin this phrase until long after I had sold the business, right? But when I look back over all the things that I was doing with my direct referral marketing efforts, I took care of patients who were the sickest patients with the greatest needs. They needed

a lot of hours. They needed help every day of the week. And they didn't just need me to get through a weekend. They needed me for the rest of their life, which could be six months, a year, 18 months, et cetera. So I found high need long-term clients. Now in today's term, I call that client a nerd, right? You've probably heard me talk about this before. A nerd is somebody with a great need, elderly, with resources, and they're either dementia or disabled. So they have dementia or they're disabled. That's what NERD is the acronym for. And I teach my clients how to find these type of folks. So when you have somebody with a great need contacting you who has the resources, who's disabled or they have dementia, they're going to sign up. They're going to get 40, 56 hours, 84 hours, maybe 24, 7, 168 hours a week.

And they're going to use you for months and years. That's how you scale the business. Now, to the point of the price, that's somebody, think about the end, right? The need. Somebody with a great need who needs that much care. You can't just send a caregiver right out of school to that case. You've got to send somebody with experience. You've got to send somebody that knows what they're doing.

So because of that, we were hiring caregivers that had years of experience, at least a year, at least 12 months experience, that we hired to go into these medically complicated patient houses to provide care. As a result, when somebody has experience, you have to pay them more. So we had very strict hiring practices, but we paid more than everyone else. We also had care coordination, which is a totally different service line, but it's basically a field supervisor that's coming out every seven to 10 days, which is three times a month, four times a month to check on that patient and support the caregiver to make sure that they're able to manage this medically complex patient. So when you think about those two things together, that justifies charging more than everyone else because it's not apples to apples.

It's apples to oranges, right? And so when I would sit down with the patient and I would talk to the patient and their family and they would say, Steve, you're $4 an hour more than the guy down the street. My response was, yes, we are. And if you want, you can go with the guy down the street. But if you go with us, we're going to take really good care of you because your mother has a lot of needs and she's not your typical home care client. So do you want us to move forward? Yes or no? And I would smile and shake my head. Yes.

And I'm telling you, Miriam, 19 times out of 20, because my closing ratio was 95%, 19 times out of 20, when I had that exact objection come back on $4 more than the guy down the street an hour. And I told him what I said, their response was, no, no, no, no, no. We want to go with you. I just had to ask because it is significant. And I understand that. And it is significant. But this is something that a great golden nugget, right? This is a saying. I've been saying it for 20 years now. A good product isn't cheap and a cheap product isn't good. We didn't have the service failures that most agencies have because we took better care of our caregivers financially and supporting them with the

managerial level of the care coordinator that I talked about. So it's almost like another saying we've all heard of the best offense is a good defense, right? So in order for us to be able to deliver on all the things that we're promising, we had operational practices that no one else did. That's why we could charge what we charge. So essentially the way that I always viewed it, and I tell my clients this, the ones that follow what I'm saying, and this is why they're successful and why they scale and grow. They're not the cheapest in their market. Many of my clients are the top price in their market, but their marketing effort brings in the nerds and the nerds have such a great need that when my clients are bringing in

caregivers with experience, which costs more money, they're able to deliver a service that their competitors can't. And that's why they're able to grow. And that's how they're able to scale and grow, right? Best offense is good defense. And that's exactly what's happening. So I gave you like a long winded answer there, but I really drive home quality of care and get what you pay for, right? Be selective, pay the most, but then you can hold accountable to your caregivers. Hey, listen, you can go work somewhere else. We're paying you $25 an hour and everyone else is paying $22. Everyone else is paying $21. So if I'm paying you $25 an hour, this is our standard. If you don't meet the standard, you can go work somewhere else for $4 an hour or less. if I'm paying $25 an hour, this is our standard. If you don't meet the standard,

you can go work somewhere else for $4 an hour or less. But I'm charging that to the client because I'm getting a superior quality product and I'm holding my caregivers accountable to delivering on it. Great, great information. One of the common pitfalls or maybe slippery slope in sales is discounting those rates. And I love what you're saying about you get what you pay for. That's the same in home care as it is for any other product or service that we're buying. But I think one of the common sales tactics is discounting those rates. And we even see that in home care, you know, sales teams making exceptions and discounting their rates. What's your mentality there?

Are there room for exceptions to discount your rates? Or should you really hold the line and stick with your standard rates? Never discount your rates. I'll say it nice and boldly like that. When I look back over my seven years where I had my agency and then the last 12 plus years being a consultant, every single patient that I discounted the rates on ended up being the most nightmare client ever. And I almost feel like it's beyond the price. It goes beyond the price. It's almost like if I bend the rules now and give this person a discount, it sets a standard or precedent that we're flexible and you could do things the way that

you want to do it. And then they always become the nightmare. Every single time I ever discounted the rate, that patient was the nightmare patient. That was the one that always called after hours. That was the one that always had an issue. And I was always changing caregivers. And it was a revolving door. And it was a nightmare.

Every single time I gave a discount, that person was a revolving door and it was a nightmare every single time i gave a discount that person was a nightmare and i find pretty much the same thing goes straight across the board for my clients today instead it's all about building value right and so i i like to use car analogies because now that's something we all can relate to. If I can give you, you could go and buy a Ford, you could buy a Toyota, you could buy a Honda. You know what you're going to get in quality, you know what you're going to get in price, you know what you're going to get in service now if i could give you bmw mercedes-benz lexus level quality but the price of a volvo which is more than a ford more than a toyota more than a honda but i can give you that that premium quality at a higher than your base price, that's value. And it's, are people spending more on the Volvo than the Toyota and the Ford? You bet they are, but they're getting the BMW, Mercedes, Lexus quality. That's value. So I teach my clients to create the value through the service that they're offering

and then sell at the rate that you should. If your services are superior, you should be charging more for it. And when you do, it's logic to the client because they're like, wow, I'm getting all of this value for this price, even though it's more than everybody else, I'm getting this top tier value for an affordable, reasonable price that makes sense. Yes, I'll sign on a dotted line. That's how you do it. And there's sales processes too, but to answer your question, that's how you do it. Stick to your price, create the value and sell on the value. Another thing I used to say too is, you know, I can't do anything on the price, but I can guarantee you, if you go with us, you're going to be happy you chose us and you're not going to have the headaches that you would with some other company. Do you want me to go ahead and set this up for you right now? The other point that I want to add to this with rates is keep it simple.

I see large businesses with several service lines and several payer sources. Rates can get complicated as you grow and scale naturally, but keep it as simple as you can. I've seen some businesses that they detail out their rates so much to where they have 30 to 50 rates. And naturally, there's just a lot of room for misinterpretation and creating those exceptions to the rule. Another pitfall is you've got these clients that are grandfathered into old rates. A sales team may see that and think, okay, that's our minimum because of people that have been grandfathered in. But I love what you're saying. Do not discount your rates. Know your value, uphold your value,

and sell your value, and hold yourself accountable to these rates. The next question I want to ask you is about adjusting rates. I think there's been resistance for owners and operators to increase their rates. I think during the pandemic, people learned the hard way that they had to increase their rates to keep up with wages. What's kind of your standard for increasing rates? Is that annually? Is that every other year? Is that built into contracts? How should people be increasing and adjusting their rates consistently? So every agency I work with has something different on it. I'd say one agency that I really liked the way that they do it in their contract is they have it in their contract

that the rates will adjust every six months. And I like that because it's fair. So if six months come and you don't have to change the rate, you don't change the rate. If six months come and you're fine and you have to pay caregivers more and you're just to stay competitive and give the raise to the caregiver doing the work, if it's the same client, same caregiver relationship, you got to stay competitive there. So it's just built in there where at're at six months. We do a review of the price and we raise it accordingly if we need to. So that is a model that I found has a lot of success. And this is a nine plus million dollar agency that I'm talking about. And that's something that I would say, let's stick with that. I'm helping a lot of my clients build it around that. So this way,

it gives you the flexibility. So if you did a raise today and here it is October 3rd, and then all of a sudden the economy really shifts and is different and it's March of next year, you're kind of stuck at that rate that you raised in October until October of the next year. But if you have it every six months, you have the flexibility of adjusting it accordingly when you need to do so. So that's a model that I find is working with a lot of success and that's what I recommend. I really like that. I really, really like that. Just buffering in the flexibility and not tiptoeing around it. Your clients are probably reading those contracts and they may have questions about it, but be clear on what your expectations are

and what you're going to do regarding rates. Because again, we saw wages increase so quickly and people weren't keeping up with their rates. But the KPI, the measurement you talked about before is net profit. If your net profit is slipping because you're paying more and you're not charging more, your net profit's going to slip. So you really have to keep a strong pulse

on that net profit to make sure your wage and your rates are increasing in parallel and it's not getting out of balance. And that can happen in a six-month time period. Like you said on the last session as well, that everybody's asking for raises. Your caregivers, your office staff, everybody wants raises. And you don't want to say no, but you need to be prepared to be increasing your rates proportionately to make sure, again, your net profit stays where it needs to be. So any other tips, advice, things that you want to say on rates before we kind of shift gears a little bit? No, just make sure that you're

charging accordingly because that net profit that you talk about, and I know we talked about this last week, but that net profit is so important because when you have a 7% net profit, and this is as per the benchmark study, right? The average agency had a 7% profit. And that was before the owner's salary. That means that the owner is basically living off of that net profit as their income. And on a million dollars, it's $70,000. That's 7% of $1 million.

That's not exciting, right? A $2 million business's $70,000. That's 7% of $1 million. That's not exciting, right? A $2 million business is $140,000. That's okay. It's not bad. But for a $2 million business, that's not where the business should be profitable. There's nothing to go around. But forget about the owner's salary on it. If something catastrophic happens if you get a lawsuit which happens in this we're taking care of people lawsuits happen if you you you know a disaster happens you know I've had client I had a client whose bit was office burned down there's this deal the hurricane just came through and there's regions around the country where people have decimated right now those are catastrophic events and if the business is at 7% as the profit and then a catastrophic event that we can't

predict or plan for happens, that's a business that's going to go out of business. You're going to close your doors because you're not going to be able to weather the storm. Whereas a 20% profit, that gives you the abundance so that you can live your life, but also have resources to weather storms that will happen. You know, something that I heard years ago, my pastor said, and I forget the exact source, but the average adult in their life will experience 32 major life changes throughout the course of their life. 32. Some of those are positive changes like getting married, having a child, graduating school, starting a business. And some of those are positive changes like getting married, having a child, graduating school, starting a business.

And some of those are negative ones like going through a divorce, losing a loved one, closing down the business, losing your job, et cetera. The list goes on and on. So it's a guarantee that you're going to have something happen every two to three years. If you're not able to weather those storms financially because we're not operating where we should, you shouldn't be operating that business. That's the whole point. That's why we got to have at least a 15% profit margin so that you can weather those storms

that will happen. It's a guarantee. Really good points. I'm glad you're driving this home. That's what I wanted to accomplish. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about closing. A few minutes ago, you said your close rate was 95%. I think people listening to that probably, you know, raise some eyebrows or have some questions because that is, in my experience, not normal and not the

average in this industry. So I want you to get more granular on closing tactics. I'm assuming you work with a lot of owners, operators, but also sales teams and sales reps that are out in the field that are closing these referrals. What are some of your words of advice for getting really good at closing deals, closing these referrals specifically? So I could literally talk for like four hours on that. And there's so many trainings around this. It's really having a system. It really is having a system and a sales process. A process where inquiry has to progress from phone call, web inquiry, however the inquiry is, you got to get on the phone at some point and speak to that person to get an idea as to what's

going on with that patient. Again, with the direct referral marketing effort, I want to go back to the nerd, right? The nerd is the type of target customer. So with the direct referral marketing, I'm really honing in on bringing in an abundance of that type of a client. So then I got to speak to that person because I can't just send anybody into that house. This is a medically complicated patient. So I got to get that inquiry process down. Once I get the inquiry process down, the next step has to be go out and physically meet this person. Because again, this is a medically complicated patient. So we're not just sending somebody in to do a bath twice a week.

This is somebody who needs a lot of help, a lot of hours, and they need it long term. That's worth going out and meeting the person face-to-face for a consultation. On that consultation, there has to be a flow. There has to be a process. I'm going to try and explain this as best I can in like a couple of minutes because it is lengthy. But you have to go in. You have to build a little bit of rapport. Get some relationship going with the person. Then you have to explain your company, who you are, how you do things. Literally assess the situation. Then you have to make a plan on the spot to provide care for this person based on their needs. And Miriam,

I'm going to be very straight with this. This is where most agencies fail. The agencies that fail go in and give the patient what they're asking for on services. No, they need a bath visit. So I'm going to give them a bath visit twice a week. That's what I'm going to sell them. That's wrong. If somebody needs a bath visit twice a week. That's what I'm going to sell them. That's wrong. If somebody needs a bath visit, a shower is a pretty easy thing. I took a shower before I came in the office this morning. I hope this morning you took a shower or maybe took a shower last night before you went to bed, right? Shower is a pretty easy thing to do.

So when I would go in and I would sit down with the patient who's asking for the bath visit, I would be like, well, if this person can't take a shower, what else are they not doing? If they can't take a shower, they're probably not driving, which means they're missing doctor's appointments or having a hard time getting to the doctor. They're having a hard time grocery shopping and running errands and all of that. They're probably having a hard time keeping their house clean. They're probably having a hard time cooking meals. They're probably having a hard time doing basically everything that a caregiver does because a shower is a pretty basic thing to do. So when I go in and I assess the situation, yeah, they're asking for a shower, a bath visit. But I'm going to assess the situation and then I'm going to come up with a plan. In my experience as an agency owner who have been doing this for seven years, who has helped over a thousand patients, I'm going to assess and determine that this person needs help, let's say five days a week, eight hours a day,

right? Because they have somebody weekend, a son or daughter is there on the weekend. After doing that assessment on that consultation, this is the plan that I'm going to, I don't want to say pitch, but for sales terminology, it is pitch. I'm going to pitch this plan. Why? Because this plan will accomplish one goal, keeping mom out of the hospital, keeping mom home for the rest of her life. That plan is what mom needs to keep her home forever. And then I ask the family what they want me to do. It really comes down to those steps in the process. And that's important because when I do that, and I'm telling you, Miriam, when I say 19 times out of 20, I'm not kidding, 95%, I would do just that. So here they're thinking 12 hours a week, 20 hours a week. And then I sit down and I assess the situation. And it's almost like a total care

because it's a nerd, right? It's a nerd. I did my part getting the right type of referral. And when I walk in there, the family's like, this makes sense. This is what we thought. And then we set up the care and then mom is able to stay home in her house, which is where she wants to be literally for the rest of her life, however long that may be. And many a times it was a year, 18 months, and then mom would pass away. And the family was sad that they lost mom, but they were so grateful that she didn't have to move into a nursing home. So grateful they didn't have to sell the house. This is where mom won.

That's fulfillment. And I think that when agency owners and business development professionals really understand that, and when they go in, and again, people say, well, how do you know the person really needs that? Well, are you the agency owner? Isn't this your business? When you walk in the house, you should know and be able to identify a client's, a patient's needs, especially more than they are. Because the patient and their family, chances are this is the first time they're ever going through it. Maybe second time. But this is what we do every single day.

So who's the expert? You know, I always use an analogy of, you know, a plumber, right? If a pipe breaks in my wall in my house and I have to get the pipe fixed, I'm not a plumber. I'm not a contractor. I don't have any idea. I'm not going to say to the plumber, well, you got to do this to fix it. No, you're the plumber. I'm paying you for your expertise because this is what you do every day. And you're going to tell me it's going to cost $15,000, right? And I'm going to be like, oh man, $15,000. Well, a pipe

burst in a wall in my house. I got to replace the entire wall and everything involved, but it is $15,000, right? It's more than I wanted to spend, but that's what it costs to address the need. The same thing with us. It's more than they want to spend, but that's what it costs to solve the problem that the need is presenting. And you stick to it. That was like five minutes there, but in the essence, in the end, that's what we have to do. That was impressive. I think that overview was perfect. The thing that I want to come back to, at the very beginning, you said it's good closing all comes down to having a system, having a process. And you just condensed a really important process.

But the thing that I want to point out is most likely every business, there's room for improvement at different steps of this process. The one that I maybe think is that you explained it on the front end, which is identifying what was your nerd is actually identifying your right fit client. So many businesses are casting such a wide net that they are getting referrals of all different types of clients. And some of those are ones that they're not best suited to serve. And so I think the first step in this process in this system is actually the most important, which is getting very clear of the types of clients that you are best suited to provide services for. That makes everyone's jobs and lives easier. It makes the referral partners

lives easier because they know who to refer to you. It makes your business teams lives a lot easier because they know exactly who you're best suited to serve. And down to the caregivers, they know the expectations of these clients that they're going out to serve. So I just want to call out the first step in this process. Identifying your right fit client is probably the most important. But then you talked about the intake, that over the phone conversation. Then you talked about the assessment, the in-home assessment, developing that care plan. And then like you said, you are the professional. You are the expert. You know what these people need. You know how to interpret their wants and create a plan based around their needs.

So my call out to people listening to this is take a hard look at every step in this process, laser in on these individual in on every single step of the process, creating a really strong system when it comes to closing. Yeah. And that's what we do with our clients. Like when I look at the conversion ratios of my clients, the ones who are crushing it, it's exactly what you said. I help them start off with the referral generation of identifying the target customer. Even when the internet leads come in, every person that contacts you is not your target customer. There will be a lot of people that you will say, we're not the company for you. We're not the company for you. We're not the company for you. And that's okay as long as you have a steady flow of referrals coming in and you have your target customer. But when you identify the target customer from the inquiry, you have to go out and meet them. Because again, this is a high need

client. You're not going to sell that over the phone. And you don't want to sell that over the phone because this person has a lot of specific medical, I keep saying medically complex. That's true. Even though we're non-medical, right? Private duty, non-medical, we're sending a caregiver in. It's still a medically complex patient. You have to know what you're getting involved with. Because again, not every patient we meet is going to be somebody we're going to send the caregiver in, right?

But once you do those two aspects of it, then you really sell the patient what they need to stay home. And the patients and the families, they understand that. They understand that you're being genuine in your delivery. That's why they move forward, even though it's more care than they asked for, because they understand this is what they need. Because when you're going through it again from your experience, you're sitting down and I could say, well, you know, son and daughter,

your mother needs care every day, you know? So if you want us to come in and just do a shower and we do that, who's going to help her with this? You're probably doing that, right? You're probably doing that, right? You're probably, and they're sitting there, they're shaking their head. Yes. And it's like, all right.

So instead of you coming over and doing for mom, if she has the resources, we'll do all that. And then when you come over, you can come over and just be her daughter and spend the time with mom because mom only has a little bit of time left and make those memories and have those moments and be with her. We get to provide that for people. And I'm getting passionate. I'm getting emotional. I can already feel like my energy, you know, I'm putting out this vibe right now, but that's what used to happen on these consultations that I'd have with people. And it's a truth. And that's, that's why I do what I do every day because it's, it's, it's, it's selling the person what they need. So they have the quality

of life that they, they worked their whole life for, you know, like Miriam, one day you and I, we're going to get old. People don't drop dead anymore. There's a good chance that you and I are going to need care someday. I don't want my kids coming over, having to give me a shower and take care of this and that.

When my kids come over, I still want to be their father. I want to hear about them. I want to see my grandkids and everything else and let a caregiver help me out. I worked my life to prepare for this final stage. Now I'm going to enjoy or not enjoy, but reap what I sow. And that's what it is for our patients.

You know, and again, not everybody can afford it. I understand that. I really do. You know, and for Medicaid agencies that are listening out there, there's a balance that we have to have into giving them what is provided as per Medicaid. But even still, a lot of Medicaid waivers. My mother is on Medicaid. She is 56 hours a week from a caregiver coming out to the house.

And Jennifer is her name, and she's fantastic. So it all comes into the delivery and, again, the consultation. My mother is medically complicated. The owner came out and met with my mom, found all the needs and then assigned the caregiver based on my mother's needs from that initial assessment, that initial consultation. We have to do that for all of our patients. Thank you for tying it back to the root of what we're talking about here. Sometimes, you know, even myself, I get carried away in the numbers and the metrics and the situation and really put together a plan of care that will help them live the dignified lives in their homes that they're aiming for. And so I love that you brought it full circle. And you and I, you're right, we're humans. We have parents,

grandparents, neighbors in our community that need this level of care. And so here we are talking about sales and about closing, but it really does come down to the people that we're serving and the lives that we want to help them live and the way we want to help them age in their home. So I appreciate you sharing all of that. In just our last few minutes, we've talked about data and KPIs a few different times here, but I do want to give you a couple of minutes to talk about specific sales KPIs. A minute ago, I was talking about lasering into each part of this process. A really good way to know where your weaknesses are in your sales process is tracking every step of the process. Intake to assessment, assessment to close, close to first shift. There's all of these steps in the process. And so it's really important to track every part of

the process. What is your take on what metrics to track when it comes to sales and getting really tight on tracking? Definitely, you have to track your inquiries and where they're coming from. So it's not just your inquiries that are qualified, because a lot of people get caught up in, oh, well, you know, people, oh, my conversion ratio is 90%. We convert, you know, whatever. And I'm like, wait a second, did you count your non-qualified leads? The ones that were out of your service area, not, not financially qualified, whatever it is, you have to count those in that mix. Why? Because something that you're doing, whether it's direct referral marketing, relationships or paying a tech company for support digitally, something that you're paying money for generated that lead. So you have to track it, even if it's non-qualified.

Once you do that, then that'll really give you a good understanding as to where your business is coming from, which will allow you to be real profitable. Because at the end of the year, you can say, all right, well, I'm putting money in these 10 different buckets, but only four out of these 10 are providing any type of return. And then another two are providing some return, but these other four are not. I can cut those four, right? And maybe save that money and increase my profits or allocate those funds into the other six that we're producing to make more leads come in. So that's the first part of it. Second thing we have to do is track our assessment ratio. So the inquiry comes in.

Once we qualify the inquiry, the next step is to get that assessment to go out and discuss services. What is our ratio from phone call or inquiry to getting the assessment? And then the last ratio we have to check is what is our sales closing ratio? When I go out and do a consultation, how many of those people actually start care? That was the 95% that I had. I actually remember one time I laughed because I think about it. There was an entire quarter of a year. It was June, July, and August. And I went the entire quarter of the year without having a no sale. And then

in September, my first consultation that I went to, I had a no sale. And that one consultation bothered me so much. It was like, what did I do wrong? I haven't had a no sale since May, right? Like it was nuts. But that closing ratio should be 80% or better. If I'm going to do five consultations to discuss services, four out of the five should sign up and start care with us. If it's anything less than that, we're doing something wrong and we have to improve upon it.

The nugget that I just took out of what you said is tracking your unqualified leads is probably as important as tracking your qualified leads. I think that's just a call out, something that just stood out to me in what you're saying. Of course, we want to track and monitor and progress the qualified leads. But those unqualified leads, like you said, you're spending money to get unqualified leads and you need to drill down there. Where are you wasting money to get unqualified leads? They might even be coming from your referral partners. That's not uncommon. Your referral partners aren't clear on your right fit client and they are passing you unqualified leads, that right there is a problem that needs to be solved. It's probably easier to fall into that trap with online leads. It's

not always easy to get exactly what you're looking for when it comes to online leads. But again, are you wasting money? Are six out of 10 of your online leads unqualified? You're wasting money there. So again, just really good nugget right there to pay attention to your unqualified as much as your qualified because you're probably losing money there. Yeah, it's huge. That's something that I'm very, very strict on with the Elite Academy clients that I work with, my top clients. I'm very strict on their referral tracking and their inquiry tracking because exactly that. And if a referral source, as you said, Miriam, is sending you the wrong type of referrals, you can go and have an in-service lunch and learn. You can go and talk to the people

making the referrals and help them to identify it. But if you're not tracking it, you don't know. And then you're spinning your wheels, wasting your time. You're like, well, I got, I got 20 referrals this year from this one account. We only signed on one client, you know, and that's not good. But if you track it, knowing that, you know, out of those 20, yeah, 17 of them were not qualified leads. That means I have to educate my referral source better on who to send to us, when to send them to us, how to make the referral, and it goes on and on and on. And that's all referral source development. I want to throw maybe a little curveball in here. There are a lot of businesses that struggle to find good sales reps and good marketers. I am hearing that more now than I ever have, where there's a lot of turnover with caregivers. We

talk about that. There's a lot of turnover in the office. And sales is just a profession where there's more turnover than maybe other roles in the office. What, in your mind, makes a good sales or marketing rep hire? What do you look for? What should these owners and operators be looking for? So I keep referencing the magazine, right? I actually wrote an article in here called Hire the Ultimate Business Development Professional, right? And I think that your questions are on point.

I keep referencing this issue is because we try to make sure that we are hitting topics that are relevant to right now. So like what you're asking is very relevant to this current issue that's out there in the magazine. And so the things I talk about in the article, and everybody can go and check out the article on their own. But the biggest takeaway that I'm starting to notice is that marketing, we have to stop using the term marketing, Graham. I'm using it with you right now because it's a common term. But really, we have to start calling these folks business development professionals.

When I look at marketing, marketing is a very general, very broad term. But really, we have to start calling these folks business development professionals. When I look at marketing as a very general, very broad term, the responsibilities of this position, when you hire a marketer, most people want to come in and they want to manage your email marketing campaigns, manage your social media channel, send the drip campaigns, manage your SEO and your AdWords and all of that, and make sure you're writing new blogs and creating content. All of that's great, and that is marketing. Yes, that is not what you're looking for. If you want somebody to develop relationships at a referral source, that's a business development specialist, business development professional. This is somebody who's going to get in their car and drive if it's full time. They're going to spend 30 hours out of 40 on the road going to accounts and developing relationships within. That is not a standard marketing position.

So I find that when people are looking to hire someone, you are looking to hire someone with business development skills, not straight marketing, because marketing is too broad. If you hire somebody who's a marketer and they want to do all that digital stuff, that's not business development. They're going to fight you on it and they're going to lack the skills to do it. So find somebody who's a business development person. And here's a bonus tip or a little inside information. If you could find someone who's a road warrior, who developed relationships professionally in an industry outside of healthcare, and they were a champion. What do I mean a champion?

Somebody who won accolades, who made a ton of commissions, and they were great at it in their industry. But because of the change of the way technology develops, their industry went belly up, right? So somebody who sold magazines, somebody who sold newspapers or whatever, door-to-door salespeople. Those industries are dead industries, right? But they were a champion. So it means that they were great at it. They're looking to get into another industry. That skill is transferable to this. They, boom, you can train them healthcare. They have the innate skills to develop the relationships. You just point them in the right, get them some training and they're going to go out there and they're going to blow it up for you.

I have so many success stories of people who hire somebody in this exact scenario and in the next 12 months, that person helped grow the company by a million dollars more than they did a year before. Time and time, consistently that happens. This is music to my ears because you are spot on.

Business development, sales, marketing, they are different roles. They are different functions. And do you see, even I fumble over my words and lump them together. How do you hire sales and marketing reps? Because in home care, those words are used interchangeably

and it pains me, but I use them because every business is a little bit different. They say sales, they say marketing, they call them sales reps, they call them marketers, they call them business development reps. I think that is kind of the underlying issue and we need to solve for that. And I love what you're saying. They are business development representatives. They are multifaceted. They have different skill sets. They have different goals and objectives than what even a traditional sales person would have or a traditional marketing person would have. And so I want us to kind of draw the line in the sand here. These are

business development representatives. They are not just salespeople or they are not just marketing people. They're more than that. And I think in home care, we need to draw that distinction because we're doing ourselves a disservice by lumping several worlds together. Imagine that job ad, someone on Indeed sees marketer, that's misleading. That's not exactly, like you said, that's not what this person is doing day in and day out. They are doing business development. And so we need to be really intentional about the words and the roles that we use. And I love how aligned we are. Your magazine is teed up with exactly the conversation we had last week and this week. And that is incredible.

We're just aligned in that sense. So the timing has been perfect here. I know we're at time here. I just want to give you a couple minutes here at the end to maybe just recap kind of what we've talked about today. Any final advice going into the year end or starting the new year when it comes to improving your sales processes? What is it that you want people to end here with knowing that they can go and implement something that they learned from this conversation. Thank you. I'd say start off with a self-evaluation, a self-audit.

Take a look at all your inquiries. Take a look at all of your consultations. Take a look at your closing ratio. Find out where your inquiries are coming from. Do what we said before, determine qualified, non-qualified, et cetera. right? Start with that. Once you do that and you have your assessment and the numbers never lie, the numbers don't lie. That's like one of my favorite things to say, because you could, everyone could tell me, oh, Steve, my numbers are this, this, and this. And then when they actually research it and then they come back, they go, whoa, they're not right. Yeah. The numbers always tell the truth. So once you do that, then you can figure out all right is the challenge

i need a business development professional to bring in the right kind of leads and then you can hire for that is the challenge we have the right kind of leads and a number of them coming in but we're not going to so that i need to bring in sales process and maybe hire a consultant to help me figure out what is going to be our sales and closing process in the new year. Is it both? Then what do you do first? I would say start with the business development professional to get leads coming in while you then get the sales process going, because what good is having a sales process if you don't have leads?

But again, you have to determine where you are. So get your KPIs calculated, determine where your holes are, if any, and then do accordingly. Now, on the flip side, if my referrals are good and my starts are good, if everything is good in sales and marketing, then I can look to how many cases am I turning away for staffing reasons. And maybe I could see, all right, we're turning business away. We're great on sales and marketing. Don't need to focus on that. In the new year, I need to focus more on recruitment and retention and put money into that. If everything is great, then I'd say consider opening up a second location, a satellite office and expanding

your business if that's something you wish to do. Because if all of your metrics are good straight across the board and you're kind of maxing out, maxing out is over $3 million in revenue with one office. That's what I consider. You're kind of maxing out there. Then it's time to expand, open up a second location or maybe bring in an executive director or something else, which is all stuff I talked about last week.

But start with your KPIs, identify your holes and address your holes, whether it's lead generation or closing and converting. I love it. Steve, this has been fantastic. Really great sessions. We were long overdue to have these. Sorry, it's taken me so long to get you on the show. I know you're busy, but these episodes have been everything that I could hope for and

more. For anyone listening to this, hit homecareevolution.com. That's Steve's business, Steve's website. A lot of great information, products, services, YouTube videos, events. If you're not connected with him and his team, get connected with them. There's so much great information coming out of his business. And subscribe to that magazine. Apparently, it's a deeper dive on everything that we talked about the last two weeks. So home care evolution. Steve, I have a feeling that people are going to want to reach out to you after listening to this. We were just talking about right fit clients. Who are you and your team best suited to serve? There's quite the spectrum of home care owners and operators. who are you best suited to serve?

I'd say that there's like three levels, right? So I'm great for the people who are looking to start a business because we have the startup services and we get them going, not just get them open, but we get them open and then we help them through the first 12 months with coaching and support all in one big package. The second client would be somebody who has an existing business and it's going, but it's not happening. You know, your typical standard, you know, 7% to 12% profit margin business. And I'm trying to grow this thing

and trying to get it, but it's just not happening. And I don't know what else to do. That's like our bread and butter type client. And then I'd say the second, the third client that we have is somebody who has a Medicaid business and they're trying to end the private pay. We have a lot of those. Because as you know, Medicaid varies state to state. And often what happens is Medicaid funding will go up and it's good for a while.

But then also the Department of Labor comes in and makes changes and they don't address the Medicaid. And if the business is too Medicaid heavy without the private pay side of it, when that adjustment comes, you go into operating without profit and then it becomes a challenge and then you're struggling. And what good is having a $5 million Medicaid business if we spend $4,999,000 to operate that $5 million business. So again, newbies who want to open up a business, people who are doing okay, but it hasn't happened for them yet. They want to make it successful. And people have Medicaid businesses that want to add private pay. That's our one, two, three wheelhouse. Amazing. Amazing. I'm so glad you detailed that out because again, I think a lot of people will be listening to this and I want to make sure that the right people are coming to you. And I love that middle tier, that plateau. A lot of businesses get stuck. They hit a plateau and they don't know

how to come out of it. And you really are, you and your team are someone that they can turn to, to get out of that. Last thing, you've got these bootcamps. You've got one coming up next week, probably a little tight to get people there, but you've got another one coming up in February. I just want to put a plug in for these bootcamps. Your energy is unmatched. A lot of home care owners, again, that are hitting that plateau need this confidence boost, this morale boost, this boost of energy. And from what I've seen and heard, I don't think there's anything quite like your bootcamps in the industry. So if anyone is struggling and needs that burst of energy in your business or someone in your team,

you get sales reps, you get business development reps at these events as well. And so if there's someone in your team that could benefit those listening to this, if there's someone from your team that could benefit from an event like Steve's, I highly recommend you look into these bootcamps. So we'll go ahead and wrap here. Steve, thank you so much for two incredible sessions. So much good information. You are a pleasure to know, and I hope everyone has enjoyed these sessions and can't wait

to catch up with you again shortly. Thank you so much, Mirabai. I appreciate it. 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.