Reluctant to pick up the phone to make a cold call?
Don’t feel bad – this is common even among people paid to make sales.
For your home care agency, it’s no different. But if you want to get past your trepidation, I’ll explain here what you can learn.
We learned a lot when we made five appointments in the last few days with a home care agency we work with.
We set up meetings between social workers and other discharge planners at nursing homes for our client. Our strategy is to form a relationship that will get referrals from nursing homes for rehab patients who need home care when they get discharged.
With our system, we not only make cold calls, but we send the prospects emails, and direct mail through the post office.
We wondered how effective were the emails and direct mail in getting the appointments?
In other words, what was really making the engine run?
Twirling maple seeds
It seems that every means helped.
In other words, when it comes to sales, keep knocking. And knock in different ways.
Four of the five prospects had been sent emails as well as the mailed items for two or three weeks before the calls. The fifth one had not been sent anything since that person was new to our list.
And how many opened our emails? Two of the four who were sent the emails opened at least one of them.
A lot of work, but that’s where the rubber meets the road.
And when it came to the phone calls, that took a lot of dials as well.
To explain this, look at the trees around you….
A lot of maple seeds twirl to the ground on a fall day. But only a few sprout into seedlings. From our calls, we found that some facilities were not qualified. For example, we found that some of the nursing homes had no patients who could afford to pay from private funds. Others had too few beds to help us.
Other social workers didn’t return our calls. (Not yet, anyway.)
She unsubscribed, but liked us
And there were some surprises, too.
One employee who made an appointment with our client had even unsubscribed to our email newsletter a few weeks before, explaining that she did not ask to be put on the list. (At least her interest level was such that she gave an explanation.)
OK, I’ll knock on another door then.
This person’s response shows that email is not the preferred way to communicate with some people. Fine. That’s why we use multiple marketing channels.
Another thing – you must drop your line where the fish are….
Overall, we chose nursing homes/rehabs which had a good number of residents – they ranged from 75 to 196. We were pleased to include a few which were high-end facilities, meaning of course that the patients can afford private pay or have long-term care insurance.
The goal is to befriend these discharge planners so that they refer a steady stream of patients to our home care client.
But how many short-term rehab patients need non-medical caregiving when they return home?
When we questioned them, they tended to say only one, two or maybe three short-term patients per month. That does not sound like a lot. But if you can get two clients per month from five facilities, you are getting ten new clients each month.
ROI for your home care
Our sales program is called the Client Acquisition Program.
You’re probably wondering – what kind of return on investment would you expect with it?
In other words, will our program pay for itself?
We figure that if you can maintain three client referrals per month it will be worth it. At thirty hours per week of service with a $7 margin (funds after expenses are paid), you will go well beyond the break-even point on your investment with us. That is using the more advanced level of our Client Acquisition Program.
Thus, appointment setting with multichannel marketing works as a technique to get more home care clients.
What kind of appointment-setting programs would be good for your agency?
Grinding work
You can find appointment setters everywhere. It’s an industry unto itself. We at Savvy Senior Marketing are unique, however. We are the only marketing company that specializes in appointment setting for home care agencies that offers our special mix of direct marketing channels.
Let’s face it – sales work is grinding. The data entry, the endless phone calls, and the emotions of rejection stresses a person like a fisherman in a shark tank.
Be honest – who among your staff wants to take that on?
Let us at Savvy Senior Marketing take the stress out of sales and hand over to you prospects eager to send you home care clients.
Let us know of your interest in gaining new home care clients and we’ll tell you more about how it might work for your home care agency. We’ll also tell you if the area of service in your metropolitan area is still available. (Some of the territories in Chicago are already taken by our home care clients.)
Act now, because we can onboard only so many new agencies in a month.
Why not use this marketing method to bring in more clients and customers? Get in touch with us at Savvy Senior Marketing by making an appointment for a free 20-minute phone consult, or by sending us an email.
