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To strategically grow, home care companies need to build out robust sales and business development teams.
As demand for home care rises, sales teams are on the front lines of a very competitive private-pay marketplace. Oftentimes, the sales team is the linchpin between the caregiver, the client and a successful business.
“One of the things that I’ve learned over time when it comes to the screening process for recruiting new business development managers is we’re looking for individuals who — first and foremost — are very aligned with the overarching mission of home care,” Family Resource Home Care Chief Growth Officer Sasha Weiler told Home Health Care News. “Which is helping people remain home, to age safely with dignity.”
Backed by Great Point Partners, Family Resource Home Care is one of the largest independent personal care companies in the Pacific Northwest. The company’s services include personal care, medication management, meal preparation, housekeeping, companionship, dementia support and end-of-life, transitional and respite care.
Over the past few years, Family Resource Home Care has continued to expand its geographic footprint across the Pacific Northwest. The company has seen tremendous growth since Weiler took on her role.
When Weiler joined the company in February 2019, the company had eight locations. Today, it’s at 30.
One of the main contributors to that growth is Weiler’s and the company’s focus and investment in its business development management teams.
Home care, in its basic form, is still a referral- and relationship-based business, Weiler said.
“No matter the size of your agency — whether it’s your owner out there or you have a dedicated sales team — it comes down to truly face-to-face marketing,” she said. “It’s getting out there, interfacing with these referral partners and not only creating relationships, but continuing to tell the story and the value proposition of home care. Because oftentimes, for many of our referral sources, home care is still not the top-of-mind solution when it comes to caring for seniors.”
Essentially, Weiler sees her teams of sales people as educators that are constantly advocating for home care. Being able to sell its value to referral partners and families has to come with a serious knowledge of the services provided and their value.
Representing the brand
Because sales teams and business development managers are the ones selling the vision, they end up becoming the face of the company in a lot of ways.
Or as Care Advantage CEO Tim Hanold put it, the “mayor of your brand.”
“It’s a really interesting balance because you have to find people who have a strong appreciation for the aging population, but you don’t want people who are just going to drop by and not be engaged,” Hanold told HHCN. “A really strong sales team is usually linked to a strong operational and delivery of care system.”
The Richmond, Virginia-based Care Advantage is a home-based care company that has over 50 locations throughout Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina. The company offers both personal care and home health care services.
The correlation between sales and client outcomes is not nothing, either. It’s critical, Hanold said, that sales is not just sales.
“Sales is company-driven,” he said. “A culture with a growth mindset is vitally important. Sales plus clinical operations equal — generically speaking — sales. That’s top-line revenue. As a provider, it’s nice to be able to give the right incentives to our sales teams as motivation, but if they’re not going about it in the right way, you can run into some struggles.”
The best sales teams understand they are representing the logo, Hanold said.
“The good ones, they go out there with a pretty high sense of pride in what they do and who they’re doing it for,” Hanold said.
Weiler echoed those sentiments.
“The most effective people in this industry are those that speak from the heart about what home care is,” she said. “That also resonates and can be detected by the referral partners that we work with, because the referral partners that we work with are also individuals that are drawn to purpose-driven work. Our referral partners are all people who share that same passion for protecting seniors and people with chronic disabilities.”
Doing more with data
Collecting and utilizing data on the sales side is also a huge opportunity for home care agencies to capitalize on new business.
“I think that’s the big key — organizations need to sit down and do a walk-back plan,” Josh Kondik, the VP of sales at Home Care Pulse, told HHCN. “That’s something we do with our sales team all the time. If you have a sales goal in place, what is it going to take for you to get there? How are you going to close that gap? What’s your inquiry-to-admission rate? Are you utilizing the data to help build a plan that’s going to be successful? If you’re just shooting from the hip, you’re never going to get there.”
The home care industry at large, Kondik said, has to do a better job of capturing data and then using it to fuel growth.
“I don’t see home care agencies collecting enough data to be successful,” he said. “Only 30% of businesses are tracking hospital readmission rates. Bill rates, inquiry-to-admission — these are all data points that they need to be aware of if they want to have strong performing sales teams and also be able to move the needle in areas. If I know that my inquiry-to-admission rate is 15%, and I want to get to $5 million in revenue, but I’m only getting five inquiries a month, can I really get there?”
Whereas Weiler emphasized the long game and a continued focus on relationship building with referral sources, Kondik highlighted another area of focus in the early stages of a sale.
“I don’t think people are doing enough on the front end with data to demonstrate that they’re the best place to receive care,” Kondik said. “I don’t see enough people in home care capturing experiential data to know if they’re delivering a good experience. And then, by way of not capturing that data, they cannot tell a compelling story.”
Whether it’s on the front line or in the back end, home care, ultimately, is a taxing line of work.
“Consistency is so necessary when it comes to calling on these referral partners,” Weiler said. “Never taking your foot off the pedal is something that we talk about in my weekly team meetings. Loyalty can be gained and lost very quickly by a competitor walking in the door and making a compelling value proposition. You have to continuously nurture, and it’s really not for everyone, because it does require daily interactions to maintain these relationships. It’s what makes a role like this a little bit of a grind.”
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