Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Home Care Marketing: AI Chatbots, DFY Leave-Behinds, and an Interview with Annette Ziegler, Successful Community Liaison
Curious about the latest strategies for home care sales and marketing? This episode promises invaluable insights as Valerie steps in for Dawn, who’s on voice rest. Along with seasoned co-hosts Annette, Dawn, and Lisa—who despite being under the weather, share their wisdom.
We also introduce you to the Kollab app by LeadConnector, a game-changer in user communication and support. Annette's segment wraps up with a deep dive into effective in-person sales techniques that you won’t want to miss.
Ever wondered how AI chatbots can revolutionize your home care business? We dissect the integration and functionality of these AI marvels, trained to provide spot-on information and capture vital contact details from potential clients and job seekers. Human intervention remains key for personalized follow-ups, ensuring a seamless experience. Real-world examples, like Star MultiCare's success across multiple offices, showcase the tangible benefits of deploying AI chatbots. We also offer best practices, highlighting what to include and avoid in your chat interactions to maximize efficiency and client satisfaction.
Exciting news for home care agencies! Discover our new monthly service, Lead Behind Legends, featuring unique, branded leave-behinds. October's themes include a pumpkin decorating contest and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, providing creative and customizable marketing kits to make your agency stand out. We delve into the challenges and rewards of infield marketing, identifying traits for success, and offering advice for newcomers. Finally, we discuss effective community engagement strategies, from sponsoring activities like bingo to scheduling educational in-services, ensuring your outreach efforts are both impactful and memorable.
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
welcome to august 9th. We've had folks out sick and don doesn't have much of a voice, so I'm gonna um do the the continual again this weekend. I've been enjoying it, but I'm going to talk about some sales stuff and some online marketing stuff today. So thanks for being here. A little housekeeping, as usual Lines muted Once you're talking. Share stories, experiences and tips. Please ask questions. You're always welcome to ask questions, that is no problem. Let's see here. Oh well, you all know us by now. I'm Valerie. I'm the co-owner of Approved Senior Network. If we haven't met before, hello, I'm a registered nurse by trade. My forte is the online marketing piece, and these other three ladies and Lisa's not joining us today, but they are your in-person sales and marketing experts. Annette, you want to introduce?
Speaker 2:yourself. I think I know a lot of you, but I am Annette Sickler. And a little bit about myself. I worked in CCRC for about 13 years and as a home care liaison for seven years and I teach the 90 day sales training courses and I just love what I do. Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right Dawn. Do you have a voice?
Speaker 3:Oh, Lisa's here. Oh, Lisa is here. Hi, Lisa, Lisa did come. Okay, Lisa and I have both been ill, so I don't know if she's going to be able to talk. I will talk until the cough takes over. I'm Dawn Fiala. I've been in home care for a long, long time. I've been in sales, marketing, recruiting, retention operations. I love sharing. You know all the things that I've learned through the years and I'm so happy that you're here today and welcome.
Speaker 4:Hey guys, it's me, yeah, it's me. Again, also, what Dawn said until I start coughing, I'm fine. Um, I have been in home care forever and ever and worn all hats and I just love being a part of your guys's journey and if there's anything that I have in my brain that I can give to you and help you with, I am happy to.
Speaker 1:So I loved, I love the experience of being here with you guys you know, what's really interesting about this is that lisa and dawn are not in the same part of the world, like one's in phoenix, one's in california, and they're both very sick. And then also dawn's son got sick and he's in austin, texas. So, whatever it is and it's not COVID, and it's not the flu, whatever it is, it's bad, it's virtual, virtual, viral, and it's awful, and these people have had lots of fevers. So mask up or do something, because make sure you wash your hands a lot, because I mean it's. I think it's worse to be sick. I don't know. I think kids handle it way better than we do.
Speaker 1:All right, how to watch the meetings that you missed. So log into the forum. So there's lots of different ways that you can do this, but the easiest way is to go to homecaresalesforumcom, put in your email address and then use whatever password was emailed to you and then use whatever password was emailed to you. Or you can use the forgot your password feature and log in. You will see, once you log in, lots of different things. This is an old screenshot, but you'll see lots of different things that are being posted there. I'm going to show you a different way to do this in just a second. But if you click on learning at the top there and if you're on your mobile device it's going to be at the bottom, but anyway, learning it will take you to this, which says 2024 continuum sales mastery, and that is where all the replays are. So please go there and watch the videos, and we also let you know in the forum that the replay is available. So here you can just see a screenshot of this. Starts back in January of this year and it goes. Hello, it goes all the way through to now. So old screenshot, but you get the picture. You can go through and watch, rewatch any of the ones that you may have missed over the course of the last several months six months, I guess.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to talk about the Colab app, how to use it, what it's for marketing with 24-7 AI chat examples and use cases done for you. Leave behinds monthly. It's a new program. We're only telling our current clients and you guys about this right now. We're only telling our current clients and you guys about this right now. It is on our website, but we're not shouting it out to the world because we want to roll into it slowly and do it right, and then we're going to do frequently asked questions with Annette, her experience and recommendations for in-person sales, which you may be in class with Annette, but really getting to know what her experience was and why she was successful is always, I think, fun to learn from somebody who's been there, done that and what did she do in the past.
Speaker 1:All right, and be sure to stop me or ask questions if you want to Unmute your lines or you can do the chat. At the bottom there's a little chat thing. All right, let's talk about the CoLab app, which you've probably never heard of and it may not make a bit of difference to you, but here's what I think makes it easier to communicate in the support forum. So the CoLab app by Lead Connector is another way that you can get to us, talk to us, communicate with us. So if you like apps or if you want to try it, it's free. Of course I am going.
Speaker 1:There's the link to the Apple store and some screenshots and I'm also going to in this presentation that we email out to you the PDF. These links be in there so you can click on one and go to it and go to it. But you just type in Colab by Lead Connector K-O-L-L-A-B. You're going to find it in there. You can download it. So what is it? Well, it's actually access to our forum, our sales support forum, the one that I just talked to you about. That you can get to by going to a link on your desktop. Some people would much rather browse and look at stuff on their phone, so I wanted you to make sure you knew about the Colab app. And let me go to the next slide. This is on the Google store and let's see.
Speaker 1:So, here is what it looks like. This is my phone, a screenshot of my phone. So when you go to the Colab app it'll give you a couple of examples. You go there and you want to pick home care, sales and marketing forum and then click on join group. You're probably already in the group, but join group and when you do that it'll prompt you to log in Again. You can use the forgot password feature if you don't know what it is, and then you're going to end up in here. Yours won't say manage, because I'm an admin, so mine says manage, but you'll be able to see everything here. So this is what it looks like. I kind of just scrolled through my phone and took some screenshots of what people are doing and what's in there. So the first thing you're going to see at the top of your phone are all the featured posts and you can scroll to the left and see all the featured things that Annette has been putting in there. And then I just kept scrolling down. I know this is pretty cool because Lisa just put this up as a leave behind and somebody did it Positive capsules and it's so cute and he created all these stickers and all the things and then prescription for self-care. That is really cute.
Speaker 1:So you can see what other people are doing, what they're sharing. You can see what we're sharing home care, marketing. This is the podcast version of the continuum. You can see that. We post that in there. Our latest folks who have graduated from 12 week sales training are, you know, pictures. So we're trying to share as much as we can inside this app, and I get it that it's just another group or it's another thing or another app or another login or another app or another login. But if you're in home care, sales and marketing, this is a great place to be. And also this is where you can find again all of the replays of the previous continuum. So at the bottom of the screen you see where it says learning, home discussion, learning, leaderboard notifications and profile. If you go to learning, you're gonna end up being able to see all of the continuum replays. So I just wanted to let you guys know that's available and make sure you could download that. It's easier to scroll through it when you're on your phone and just hanging out on the couch or whatever than it is to get your laptop out and do all that.
Speaker 1:So, all right, let's talk about marketing 24-7 with AI chat. Now, this is more of an online marketing thing. Do we have any questions or anything like that going on here? Oh, nope, here's the chat. Okay, if you have any questions, let us know. Let's talk about AI answering your questions or anyone's questions that come to your website. So this is available to anyone who's in our programs. I guess it's available to anyone.
Speaker 1:Period, it doesn't matter if we created your website or we didn't create your website. If you're in a franchise, they just have to insert a little code on your website and usually they're okay with that. Most of our franchise partners will do that. If you are an independent home care agency, it's something that you would send to your web developer a little piece of code and they just put it in on your website and boom, this little thing will pop up. So I used our website as an example for most of this, because I didn't want to ask weird questions on one of our, on one of our clients websites, even though most of them are used to me testing things. But so a little pop up comes up and we've used this in different ways over time, but this is kind of what it looks like.
Speaker 1:I also that that was the desktop. By the way, this is the desktop version and it will just chat with you. You can ask it anything you want and people have. I know Lisa has been in there fooling around on it asking is the sky blue and things like that, and it answers pretty accurately. Here's what it looks like on the phone Chat with me about your home care marketing needs. And here's me chatting with me. But, hi, this is the ASN team chat Current clients.
Speaker 1:We always tell our current clients where they can go to get help for all support related questions. How can I help you today? And then I asked what services do you provide? Hey, we provide marketing and website services, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you can just kind of see that. And how does it know? How does it know? This isn't a human having this conversation, it's, you know, any random person. It's trained. The AI is trained. So what we do is we either go to we tell the AI to go to your website and look at all the information on your website and scan it and get all the best answers, or in some cases, it's better just to send the AI to a frequently asked questions page that's updated and accurate, and sometimes we create a frequently asked questions document that is very specific to your questions and answers. We can train the AI any way that you want to train it. I prefer to create the frequently asked questions document and have our AI just scan that document so that that is the only place where it's getting answers and it's not, you know, maybe giving an answer from some rogue page on your website. So it asked me let's see, let's look at this.
Speaker 1:The third screenshot over we provide marketing website services designed to give home care agencies more visibility. Would you like more detailed info over a call or email? We also train it to make sure that it asks for contact information at every turn. We want to get contact information or send people to a page on your website where they can enter their contact information. So what you can't see here is it asks me for information.
Speaker 1:So I said my name was Sue, here's my email address, and then you can see that it picks up right away. Thanks, sue, I'll pass along your info. Meanwhile, you can also fill out our form for detailed inquiries here, and so it takes us. It'll keep chatting with me. Anything specific you want to know, it'll keep on talking to me and trying to get more information, which is really helpful, and then I came back a little later. What I want to show you is that we can interrupt the AI and start talking as a human to this person. So I came back a little later and now you're looking at the inside of our CRM. This is all guided by the CRM that we make available to our clients in their account. So you can see here that I interrupted the AI and I said I started talking to Sue. Can I get on your schedule? Of course, here's the link. And she said thank you, and I actually was the one talking to Sue at that point.
Speaker 1:So a human can take over that chat and the AI will stop talking. So it's really interesting in how you can do this. What we do is we notify our clients that someone is chatting with you on AI chat and you can then log in either from your phone or from your desktop and you can intercede with that chat if you want to. Most of our clients don't have time to babysit this 24-7, so they just let the AI chat work its way through the questions. But if you just happen to be sitting there and you're like, oh, I can talk to this person, then you can certainly pick up where the AI left off and it will stop. Anyway, I find this to be fascinating and I know that it doesn't replace human interaction Totally. Get that. We all know that this is really helpful for job seekers as well to point them to the right website address on your you know they'll say I'm looking for a job. I mean, you've seen this a million times. Right, it'll point them to the link where they need to go to fill out your application or whatever system you're using. So it's really helpful for leads, but it's also helpful for those job seekers and it does fill in the information that you know. Once this is over, you're inside this contact, you can replace the word guest with Sue and sometimes it will pick that up and it'll replace. You know the name and everything and all this conversation is saved here so you know if Sue can, if Sue goes on and puts in our information, sue's information will be filled in. So, anyway, I think this is fabulous. It works well for us, the clients that we've tried it out on Star MultiCare. They have six offices across the country. They have New York, pennsylvania, ohio and Florida and they use this on their website and I do see and hear a lot of job seekers. But it's really nice and they're able to get people where they need to be with this chat. So they were one of our first guinea pigs and it did take us a minute to train the AI to give the right answers.
Speaker 1:We do not give pricing via chat. You should not give pricing via chat. We do not give pricing via chat. You should not give pricing via chat. Obviously, you're going to want to make sure that you know you know the client, what the client needs before you get to give them pricing. So we don't do that. And as far as jobs, we don't talk about caregivers will ask hourly rate what's your hourly rate? And we don't let the chat answer that either, because that often depends on a whole lot of things. So some of the answers that we give may frustrate the AI, may frustrate people because it's not going to give them pricing and it's not going to give them hourly rate Unless that's something you wanted to say, then it certainly will. So, anyway, it's been a great experience for us and for the clients that have used it. So just keep in mind it is an option.
Speaker 1:I've seen some other chat services that actually have a human answering those questions. It's a live, 24-7 chat and it does have a human. It's much more expensive than this, of course, because you have to pay the people who are answering all the questions, and that may be something that you prefer. But if you ever wanted to have a live chat available that you didn't have to babysit, this takes this, takes place of that, so I just want to show it to you. It's available. It's on our website. If you go to our website and you go under marketing solutions, you will see the AI assist and there's a video there that kind of goes through it as well. So if you want to see it again somewhere else. It's all there, all right. Any questions about AI chat?
Speaker 3:No, valerie. I have a quick question. Sure, if somebody is a current client and they have the CRM as part of their package, would the AI chat be able to schedule an appointment or an assessment for them? Yes, if the person wanted to get to that place.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do have a couple of different abilities for the chat. We have one version of it that I prefer, the one that just answers general questions and then points that they want an appointment, points them to a form to make that appointment. But we also have one that will constantly try to get an appointment set up with the person that's chatting with you, whether it be a job seeker or a lead. It's going to try to schedule that appointment and so it's a little it. It answers things a little bit differently. I've tried them both and I, for us, I prefer to send someone to that contact us page. I know that sounds weird, but I, I don't. I don't know. It's a strange mix up.
Speaker 1:I and for the for the, but for our home care agency, they preferred that we not try to set the appointment or not hammer as hard on the appointment setting piece as we did on making sure they got enough information or information in person. But yes, it will try to set those assessments up or those caregiver interviews up. If you wanted to, it will do that. Thank you for asking, and if you're in our programs and you're already one of our clients, it's $50 a month. That's how cheap it is, so it's not really that very expensive. Okay, done for you. Leave Behind's new monthly program. We're going to call this Lead Behind Legends.
Speaker 3:Oh, Valerie, there's one more question.
Speaker 1:Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Can the chat track KPIs, for example, provide a report as to frequently asked questions or the number of scheduled meetings. So I think, KPIs for the chat itself.
Speaker 1:Christopher Gentry, I would expect nothing less from you than a nice untechy question from you than a nice untechy question.
Speaker 1:You know, that's a great it's what I see in the chat is it doesn't. It's it's chat by chat. It doesn't actually capture all that, but what I can see is the number of similar questions, so I don't really have a great answer for you. Probably the answer is it's not going to track it the way you would like it to track it. But I can see in there and I can always show you the back end of it sometime, how many times and how many different ways people ask, especially job seekers, what is your hourly rate, and so I can see some of that. But it kind of divides it up by, you know, from chat to chat to chat, so it's not as clean as you would like it to be. But, on the other hand, I'm sure as our developer rolls out more features with this, it'll start keeping track of things like that, because you definitely want to answer those frequently asked questions, if you're not already doing it. Yeah, yeah, it would be great to know. The things that are good about this is that those chats can be marked as you know, the person, the human can be tagged as a live AI chat. Therefore, when you go back through and you look at how many live AI chats did we receive and how many of those actually became clients, you can absolutely see those, that information, which is really nice, but it's not going to automatically do it for you. You kind of have to do it by hand. Do it for you. You kind of have to do it by hand. All right, thank you, all right. Okay, starting now. So I'm just presenting this to our current clients, people who've been through sales training and just want you guys to know this is available and we're going to start doing it. Oh, my goodness, oh, I need to take one of these bullets off, starting now with a September ship date. Oh, I need to take one of these bullets off, starting now with the September ship date. We're going to do four different branded leave behinds each month, 25 hard copy units, and on those 25 hard copies you know some of these are little squares, so there's four squares per page, so you actually have 100 leave behinds that are branded to you.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a monthly service and we decided on something else. We're not going to do exclusive territories, but we're going to do. We're just going to take that off the line item there. But what we're going to do is anybody in the same territory gets completely different leave-behinds. So I can have two people in Phoenix, but home care agency A stuff is not going to be the same as home care agency B, so you don't look like you're doing exactly the same thing. So it's not necessarily exclusivity, but there will be a difference if you're in the same territory and we will watch that on a case by case basis. We already do that with our social media posts for our clients across the country, so it's not foreign to us to make sure two people don't have the same things.
Speaker 1:So for October, I'm going to show you what we're doing for October. We're doing the Halloween pumpkin decorating contest. October is physical therapy month, october is national breast cancer awareness month and October 21 is national apple day and there are so many cute ideas. So these are our October leave behinds. I'm going to show those to you. So what you can see is now some of these have planning that needs to occur behind them and I just put some examples here. These people really aren't doing this. I just put logos on here so you can see kind of what it would look like, but for the pumpkin decorating contest and Don Fiala did this year after year for a very long time. It's an excellent way to get your community involved and to get your referral sources involved, and it doesn't mean they have to carve the pumpkin, they just have to decorate it right. So we put together a flyer and some examples at the bottom so you can see what a decorated pumpkin might look like. If you wanted to participate, so these flyers would be branded to you with your contact information and look what we're asking them to do.
Speaker 1:This is something that we talk about in sales training a lot. I know Annette talks about this Text your picks to three, three you, you know, to your, to your cell phone number. Um, so that way you get their texting phone number, get it. We're trying to get their text, their phone number. So you're asking them to text or email their pictures to you. Um, this is.
Speaker 1:It does have some stuff you have to do. For instance, you have to drop off the little pumpkins. You don't have to do big pumpkins, you can do little ones, like, maybe the six inch ones, not the little teeny, teeny ones, but maybe like, like you can hold in your hand, like this. You have to drop those off for anyone who's wanting to participate. So you have to do this a little bit in advance. So, like that, right at the beginning of October, make sure everybody has their pumpkins. So you kind of got it.
Speaker 1:This is more of a process, but it's a great community involvement piece, and so I know Don did it for years and actually it's so funny. I was at a conference that was completely unrelated it was an SEO conference, unrelated to home care, and I was in the hotel lobby last year in the fall and they had done a staff decorating contest, pumpkin decorating contest and the pumpkins were sitting right there in the in the in the hotel. So this is a fun one to do for staff or community. So that's one of the things that we'll be sending out. We'll be sending the flyer out. We can't send you the pumpkins, because they're real and but, but I'm going to show you a way you can get those. And then these other three are four to a page, so there's actually a hundred of these. You have to cut them apart, but there'll be a hundred of these sent to you.
Speaker 1:And then Don reminded me that there has to be a reason. Don, dawn, you might have to say the words correctly. On the physical therapy month. Definitely don't want to miss that. And we put on there. Did you know our caregivers can assist clients with their PT movements at home. You want to give them a reason to come out and talk to you. Is that right, dawn Piala?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah. So for your leave behinds. One a month should get them to come out and talk to you, and so physical therapy and the pumpkin decorating are both great, great ways to get them to come out. And you also want to tie your service line to what's going on, and so physical therapy month is a great thing to celebrate, but why not tell them we can assist with exercises so that they're seeing how we tie in our services to what's?
Speaker 1:And yes, so two of these. At least one of these has to give people a reason to come out and talk to you. So we did two that way and I'm going to show you the stuff that goes along with these little handouts in just a second. And then, of course, breast Cancer Awareness Month. How could we not do that? So these are the October things that will be mailed out to anyone who's participating in this program.
Speaker 1:So let's look at the other piece of this. So the other piece of this and we got asked about this a lot and that's why I did this I put a little. You can go to asnhomecaremarketingcom forward slash store and you can see this. So what I did was and again, this is a screenshot, so it doesn't scroll all the way down For your pumpkin decorating contests Now. So for October, anything that we just showed you in those leave-behinds. If you were to scroll down this page, you can see that all the little George calls them tchotchkes. I'm going to say tchotchkes. The tchotchkes are on this page. You do not have to order anything from this page. We don't care where you get it. You go to the dollar store, you could go to Oriental Trading, but people are always asking us where did you get that stuff? So we put it on here. So all you do is click on the picture and it'll take you to.
Speaker 4:Amazon and you can order it.
Speaker 1:Right, you know we always leave the Amazon links in our on the PDF for you. Well, this is an easy way for you to just go here and you've got your October stuff that you need. So, and because we're mailing everything out a month in advance, you can, you know, order these as soon as you get the email from us that your shipment is on the way. You need to go order this stuff. So I did find these six inch pumpkins for decorating, but they're probably way more expensive here than they are. Just to go to your local farmer's market and buy a few. I don't know. $24.99 for four pumpkins sounds like a lot to me, but maybe it's not, I don't know. It sounds like. Kind of sounds like a lot to me, I don't know. So, but you can.
Speaker 1:But I put here it may be cheaper to just buy real six inch pumpkins from your local farmer's market or your grocery store. And then I did put on here decorating stickers and things. So if you wanted to do this a little bit differently and you wanted to give them some kits or do it with the organization, so if you're going to a skilled facility and you want to have a group pumpkin decorating day instead of the contest thing. You could do that and you might want to bring enough stuff so they can decorate. And Don has also talked about this in the past, where you know, if you want to do it as an event that you host with the activities director, you could bring the pumpkins and bring all the decorating stuff and so you can order it off of Amazon.
Speaker 4:And again, you don't have to use this stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm just, we just want to make sure you had some options. And then physical therapy month down here. That's a hard one. What do you leave behind? So I put some bags and I put some. These are bone pens. They kind of go with Halloween, kind of weird.
Speaker 1:But I thought you could probably put some of these physical therapy stickers. You know how people like well, I use at least the teenagers like to put stickers on their water bottles. They're big into doing that. So you can order a ton of these stickers and then just bag and put them in a baggie or a little gift bag along with a bone pen and then the little physical therapy month thing. So that's a cute, very inexpensive but super cute way to do do that. And then I didn't you know so then, if you were to scroll down, there's a bunch of stuff for um, breast cancer awareness month, and there's the apple day stuff. Oh my gosh, there's so much cute stuff for apple day. I can't believe I didn't, did I? No, I didn't. So let's go back. You know what? I'm just going to go there.
Speaker 4:While you go there, valerie, I love the bone pen. That is the cutest ever. But there's a question. Good job, there's a question. So, with the new way of doing this, will we no longer be sharing the candle links and the Google document links to to customize handouts?
Speaker 1:We will be sharing. We're not going to share with you the same things that we're going to share with our people who are paying for this. So people who pay for the service are going to get different stuff than then we're going to be sharing on continuum. It'll all be still stuff you can do on your own and that makes a lot of sense, but we don't want to share the same exact thing that we're doing for people who are paying for the service. You're really paying for us to make it easier for you, and I totally get that. Some people are easily going to be able to do this on their own, but some people would just prefer to have it easier for you, and I totally get that Some people are easily going to be able to do this on their own, but some people would just prefer to have it all mailed to them and all I have to do is put the kits together and go, and we get that request a lot. So having a marketing kit mailed to you is just some people's preference. But yeah, we'll still be sharing lead behinds, that's no problem. We'll just be doing a different version for our paid clients. So here's some easy stuff breast cancer awareness stuff.
Speaker 1:And then Apple Day it's. It's a kind of a you know cute little thing it's. You know we're trying to think every month is something that makes you stand out, that makes you different. Everybody's going to do breast cancer awareness. Everybody's going to do breast cancer awareness. Everybody's going to do Halloween. What's something different that is cute, that you could do? And so I found these and just you know little containers you can fill with some mini apple candy wrapped stuff. And I learned my lesson. You know everything has to be wrapped. So yeah, I learned my lesson, you know everything has to be wrapped.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so it's a little apple party favors. I don't know, it's just cute, just something you can do for national apple day, all right.
Speaker 4:So that's all here.
Speaker 1:Every month, we'll have a little suite of things that you can buy just to make your life easy. We don't really care where you get the stuff. All right, I'll go back to this, all right? So wait a minute. Why don't we go to our leave behinds and then I'm going to interview Annette so you can get a feel for how she was so successful. Lisa, do you want me to do this or do you want to do it? We've talked about these a lot, I know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I didn't do any new ones, but yeah, so I can, I can do it. Yeah, I can go over. August is National Wellness Month, so remember to take care of yourself. So you want to take this out and you're just showing, you're just showing love. You might not get ahold of anyone, but for this you just want to make sure that you're you're showing love and you're saying you know we care about you, care about the relationship I'm building with you, mrs Social worker or whoever.
Speaker 4:These little items here could fit easily into a little baggie and just really cute for self-care. Prescription for self-care. Just really cute for self-care. Prescription for self-care. At the beginning of sorry, the beginning of JJ, you saw JJ's. What he's doing is and I just love that JJ always has really cool ideas with with the stuff that we put up here. So that was really cool. But you know, must take 10 minute break, preferably outside inhale break, bring it all in and then you know, just feel good, take care of yourself and these little capsules. Actually, when you pop them open there's little like you unroll these little. You know positive, I don't know positive affirmations and just little positive saying. So I just think that's really cute. Maybe throw three in a bag and, um, take it out and I just, I just think it's different, it cute, it'll definitely set you apart.
Speaker 4:Importance of exercise promoting health and wellness. Here's another really great one with a why. Why am I here? Why would you come to me? Because we're trained in oops. Can you go back? Oh, sorry, you want to give, that's okay. You want to give the reason, like Dawn and Valerie mentioned earlier, but we're trained in guiding patients through their prescribed home exercise regimens called today. So this lets the social worker know or whoever's just charging the patient. Even the PT people know that you understand that they are going to have something that they're gonna need to do to progress and stay home and stay healthy and happy and all that, okay. And just some little stress balls with cute, cute handouts. You can do anything. These are just ideas to make it easier for you and have a lot of these drawstring bags you know on deck to be able to use. You can have plain, you know just white, or you can do any little colors that maybe match with your theme or your company logo, things like that.
Speaker 4:Okay, august is also National Safe at Home Week. Let's light the way. Call now for a free home safety assessment. That may be your only way into the home. And, hey, that's great. I'm letting my social workers know that I will go into a home safety assessment for free and maybe I'm checking back in with the social worker and letting them know hey, did you know that? You know they're living like this? Uh, you know, and then you're, you're taking them a little key chain, um, that lights up. You can slap your logo on it. Uh, there's lots of other things you can do too. I did see these little cute um round lights that you can like stick on a step. Um, I think that ties into safety, because that one step can make or break you sometimes. And then this is so cute.
Speaker 4:There's a theme here the texting. Right, we want the social workers, or whomever you're talking to, to be able to text you. If you're on texting basis, that's a game changer, for sure. But coffee time on me, redeemed by text, only to set a date. And then you're taking this out and you're. Annette got one back. This is Annette's idea and I just kind of changed it around a little bit. But she got one back and gosh, after like eight months or nine months of leaving this with someone and they wanted to have coffee with her and hopefully you did I don't remember and you guys had a good time, but it's a great way to connect one-on-one and if you can't have them meet you somewhere, you can take them coffee and maybe you ask them you know how many others are there that you need to bring coffee for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to just bring them some Starbucks or whatever's popular in your area. Just bring them some something. Take their order via text, right, right, hey, you're september. September is fall september yeah, fall prevention month.
Speaker 4:Um, this is, this is a don fiala and, just like these socks, our services can help to prevent falls, and so we want them to understand that we do know that falls are a thing and that we are looking at everything we do. We want to prevent that, because that can. I've seen people who are totally normal. They fall once and it's just downhill from there. So these little non-grip socks are really cool. They come in all different colors. Um, a great, great idea. I think you use it for yoga or you know who knows they're walking the floor, they end up taking their shoes off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think don said that they ordered these in bulk from somewhere and had their um name.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we, we did we ordered thousands and thousands of pairs of them for fall month, for the fall, because september is fall and it's also prevent falls um from china, and we had our logo on the front, the top part with the toes and our phone numbers, and they were the facilities were giving them out to patients, so it was good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's super cute. Yeah, Like, maybe take them to the community or the facility and say I'd like to donate these even and I want everyone wearing these. And so when they're the adult, children are visiting or something they're seeing whose name is on here, whose logo is, but that's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely yeah. You should be advertising everywhere, woohoo.
Speaker 4:Yes, all right, september rehab week. So this is a great way to just connect with your social workers. Again, maybe call a couple different social workers Not call, but you know what I mean Call on them.
Speaker 4:Go in and talk to them and say, hey, I want to do a little ice cream social for you. You could do it at a rehab, you could do it other places too, but this is for rehabs. Um, or a sniffs, excuse me, just take like one of those bins, you know, and you scoop it up and I think on the next slide is just some cute, some cute little cups and scoops and spoons and I just think it's a great way, you know, spend an hour there or something and just serve that community and just get to know people and talk with them and let them see your heart and how you're, how you're interacting in that space.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh my God.
Speaker 1:So many September leave. See, this is why we can do this August. August is weak, like no. I mean, you did a great job, but like August is hard to find stuff for leave behinds. It's not a. It's not like there's a million celebrations in September, october, november and December.
Speaker 4:Summer is rough sometimes yeah, yeah, it's just like go, go and have some ice cream and go to the beach Right, go swim, have a luau, luau, you can do luau. Yeah, here's one more September, I don't know how many. I didn't do any October Valerie, because that's okay, the new stuff. So I guess I'll do. I'll do some Octobers for next time, but National Assisted Living Week, so we've hit like what. We have another one coming up for what was it again that you just did? A PT physical therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, physical therapies in October.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so, and we just had rehab, we just had, I think we just had social worker in March. I mean, we were gone down the list here. So National Assisted Living Week, inspiringiring Generations, is actually their theme to celebrate the individuals who live and work in assisted livings. And I actually just stole their logo there just because I thought it was so pretty, and I think they would appreciate it too, because they'll recognize it and recognizing that logo with your logo, that's a nice little, you know, a visual for them. And then if you go to the next slide, there is their pin. Oh, I meant to get rid of this, how about that? The next one? There we go. Yeah, that's the National Assisted Living Week's their pins. They came up with those.
Speaker 4:So I think that you know this would be just really cute to take out. Maybe attach it to one of these bags. You could add a lot more to this. If you want the bags, add some of the other tchotchkes, as George would say, some of the other things that you can throw in here, maybe a couple of positive pills, I don't know, some candy, I don't know Something. You can add anything there. Or you could go in and pin them all and say, hey, I want to pin you. Thank you so much for all that you do. You're inspiring generations and you could do something like that too. So you have time. You have time to think about it.
Speaker 4:Snappy Back by popular demand. We need like a snap sound yeah, but get patients home in a snap. So this was like for, not national, what was it? Lobster dinner day? That no one would know or care about, but I just thought it was funny and cute. So I wanted to bring it back.
Speaker 4:But more generic, just for you know, discharges in general, but letting them know I think this really just pops out in their face that you can get patients home in a snap and they can call you now for discharges and you'll be there. And then the you know, take out some. You know, play on words here. You know there's the healthy harvest snaps that you can take out and give to them, just as a you know something to attach to this or the Cheez-It snaps. I think that it'd just be really cute to play on words and you have something different to bring to them and they're going to love it, because they don't get to snack and all that sometimes. Sometimes they're just working from the time they arrive to as soon as they leave, and then they. You know, this will be really really nice gesture.
Speaker 1:All right, I think that's everything for all of August and all of September. So that's awesome, and we will add October leave behinds to this as we go. We just wanted to get our paid version, I guess, up there first, and now I'm going to do. Thank you, lisa. I know it's hard to get through all that when you don't feel good. Okay, wait a minute, here we are. Here we are Okay, annette, you're up.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:All right, so I always like to do this. We should probably do this with Lisa and Don as well, but I think that learning from someone who's been there, done that and been very successful at it is always a great opportunity for everybody. So let's start this way. How many years were you in the home care sales role?
Speaker 2:Seven years I worked for a non-medical companion care agency and 13 years I was in worked in a CCRC in the marketing.
Speaker 1:And tell us about the location, because you're in New York but you're not in Manhattan, so tell us.
Speaker 2:Rochester, new York. I'm in was in upstate New York, Rochester, new York, and I worked for a larger franchise that Touching Hearts at Home. I worked for Um and um. We were in business for. They were business for about 17 years, um, when I started um, they were at 1 million annually and when I left after seven years they were over 4 million annually in revenue.
Speaker 1:So that's awesome. Okay, so what is the hardest part of infield marketing?
Speaker 2:I think I have. You know. The hardest part, I think, is you know you're out, you're out on the road, road, daily. You're, you're pounding the pavement, you're driving from place to place. You know you're making several stops to communities, pounding the pavement. You're driving from place to place. You know you're making several stops to communities facilities. You know, sometimes you know you just have a day where nobody wants to talk to you.
Speaker 2:It could get discouraging. You know you have to be really organized, have a plan, make a route sheet of what you're doing for the day. So you know, because you have to be prepared that anything can change. You know we're in home care. So I had a. I would always have my days planned and I and all of you can relate. I'm sure One thing happens and it's you're doing an assessment, you have a client issue, you have people calling you, you're, you know, pulling off on the side of the road to take intakes. So I think it's just the hard part is like being on the road, staying organized, staying focused. That's what I would say is the hardest.
Speaker 1:I would say staying organized, I mean absolutely, especially when your day can be disrupted by a thousand different things. But I guess once you get into the role and you kind of expect that that might be happening, you're a little bit more prepared.
Speaker 2:You know you have to be able to multitask for sure. If you can't multitask, this job isn't for you. You got to be able to change in a minute.
Speaker 1:Well, what's the easiest thing about infield marketing? What's the thing you enjoyed the most, I guess.
Speaker 2:I guess that being in the home care. The easiest thing was the mission. You know we were helping people age in place at home. You know, knowing that we were making a big difference in their lives. You know that made it easy for me. You know I love that part of it Also, you know you know, being out and about every day too, your schedule can be flexible. You know I like that part of it where it could be flexible because you were, you know, kind of making your own schedule being out on the road all day.
Speaker 2:So, I'd say that's the easiest part.
Speaker 1:Well, and so when you think about you know we do training classes and we talk to lots and lots of different owners and marketers when you hire a community liaison what personality traits are the most important? What should you be looking for in someone? And I mean, you want someone who's going to enjoy this job.
Speaker 2:Sure. So you know definitely somebody with an outgoing personality. You know, not somebody that's really shy, somebody with you know good customer service skills, a good communicator, somebody that shows empathy, you know, friendly, you know. And sales and marketing experience I think is good but it's not necessary. I mean I've seen a lot of good marketers you know, community liaisons come that have not had any marketing experience but had these good personality traits and they did well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say outgoing. Well, yeah, I would. I would say outgoing and really, like you said that, someone who is not afraid of multitasking and you know, and and okay with change, because your day changes so often. Yeah, so yeah, definitely. What do you wish you had known about this role before you started? What, what somebody had warned you about, just know.
Speaker 2:Just that. Even though you know that it's not a typical nine to five job, even though you have your days planned out, things can change in a flip of a switch. You know, even though you have your good intentions, to be out there marketing, you could just you'll have to be doing assessments. To be out there marketing, you could just you'll have to be doing assessments, inquiries. You know dealing with issues. So you just have to, you know, learn to go with the flow and you know this is what home care business is and you just have to be able to adapt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be good to know, I think, for anybody starting in this room being not being upset because you didn't get to those last three places you wanted to go to today. You know, it's almost sort of like to me. It sounds like you have to be okay that you may not be in control of your day.
Speaker 2:And I actually liked that. I mean, I have to say I loved being busy and every day being different. You know you just have to be okay with that. You know you have to understand that. You know it's just the way the home care business is. But I actually enjoyed that part of the job the most because every day was different.
Speaker 1:And I would say this is probably the this next question is you know what you just talked about? What's your best piece of advice for anyone in a sales role like this?
Speaker 2:So don't get discouraged. We say this in our sales training class. You know Rome wasn't built in a day. It takes time to establish, you know, relationships with your referral sources. You know you're gonna. You may go three or four times to a place and you just get. You know they close the door on you. You're going to have days like that. You know, keep some on days like that. You know I would keep some places that love you and go back to them. And you know, get fill your cup of goodness up then and you know, then get back to the hustle and with a smile. But don't get discouraged.
Speaker 1:I just you know it takes time, I mean it could take a few months to really build a good relationship and a rapport with these referral sources. It doesn't always happen the first time you walk in. So just don't get discouraged, grumpy to you or mean to you or are off-putting. They're probably not a very happy person to begin with and they're, or they're probably overworked and unhappy, and maybe in their role, or maybe just that day, not every day, but you know, I guess it's hard when you're young especially, to not take that personally.
Speaker 1:But as you get older you realize you know people are either just having a bad day, you know, inherently humans are not going to be snarky and mean to you all the time. I mean that's not how they want to live their life. But some people just can't help themselves. They come off that way and it's not uh, it's not personal, and sometimes it's just the day they're having, sometimes it's the life they're having and maybe you know so I always try to think of it that way as opposed to you know they don't. It's not you, it's not you that they don't like.
Speaker 1:They don't know you well enough to know if they like you. They. They're just in a challenging position anyway and so they might not be super nice. I don't know. I feel like not taking it personally is the best way to just keep rolling. And if you keep coming in with a smile on your face and you know not letting that negativity get to you, then eventually they're going to soften up or have a better day, or I don't know. I just feel like not everybody's going to be negative 100%, and if they are, they probably won't last very long in the world.
Speaker 2:And I always I mean I have to say like I, you know you're making we teach us in our sales training too. You know you're making that gatekeeper, your friend, that person that's that you know is greeting you when you walk in the door. You know you are going to come across some of the you know. Some are great and they're nice, but there's some that they're they're they're busy, they don't have time. You know it's not you, but once you can make them, your friend may take a few times. It's a good feeling that you, you know you're acknowledging them, you're saying their name, you're bringing them a little something. So definitely it's not you personally, it's. You know exactly what you're saying, valerie. You know they just might be, they're just busy and they may be having a bad day.
Speaker 1:Right, they certainly don't anticipate your visit or wait around for you to visit. That's I mean typically. You know they're not they have. You know, if you've watched any of the interviews with the social workers that are posted in the sales training, they're crazy busy people who have very little time for to go to the bathroom, much less put a smile on their face, and I mean it's great when they do that, but sometimes they just can't. They just need to move on to the next thing. 40 families are barking at them about stuff. Just remember that they're in a challenging position too. So, anyway, I just feel like that's always good to know, and I know you tell all the sales training folks that if you could have done a few things differently when you were starting out, or maybe at any time, what would those have been?
Speaker 2:So previously to working in the home care business, I worked for a CCRC in the marketing and was responsible for filling, you know, independent living, assisted living, memory care. I had the marketing and sales experience, but when I came into home care it was different marketing and sales experience. But when I came into home care it was different. I did have, you know, some good contacts and referral sources that you know I had, that I've connected with. But I wish I knew more.
Speaker 2:I was kind of I had to self-teach myself, but I wish I took some kind of training program or had you know, knew who to talk to you know, knew the right things to say, had you know, knew who to talk to you know, knew the right things to say. So I, you know, I wish I had a little more training and direction. You know when I, you know, was just when I started, but you know I quickly learned and you know who to contact and who to make my connections with. But I just feel if I had a little more training or direction, you know when I had started, I would have enjoyed that better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I can agree. I would agree with that. It's from a nurse's perspective. I'm a nurse by trade. It is easy for people like it's easy for folks in the skilled facility to not understand that if you're brand new to this job, to not understand that if you're brand new to this job, you might not know what all these acronyms are and all these things, all these abbreviations for stuff, and you know, and so you know. We hopefully have helped a lot of people learn what all those things mean. But, annette, I get it, if you've never really been in health care, it's hard for you to know what everything means, even pt, ot, st adls, iadls uh, you know, don, I don't know.
Speaker 2:There's just so much standby assistance transfers right, oh yeah yeah, po is per oral, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean you like who wouldn't I? Unless you went to nursing school do you really know that someone takes their medication BID, po? Bid is twice a day and PO is by mouth. I mean, how do you know that? But you might see that somewhere and think what in the world does that mean? So I think it's great that there are training, there's training out there, but I would agree it's hard to know all those acronyms. Who are you talking to? What are they really saying to you? Because you're nervous and they're spitting out well and you're trying to make sure you take it all in and you're not really sure that you're getting all the right messages. So I think training is definitely helpful, whether it's ours or somebody else's. I think that's. It is rough to, if you haven't been in healthcare, to know all the right things to say, and even if you have been in healthcare, it's hard to know what to say sometimes.
Speaker 2:So and I, I really I loved my role. I really so, and I, I really I loved my role. I really I loved what I did. I loved meeting the people, the families, you know, seeing people happy. That we're, you know we're we're, they're able to stay home comfortably and I think I what I love, you know I miss that sometimes, but I'm much I'm happy to be able to be able to train everybody here working for, you know, asn, the tips and tricks and everything that I did to help me, you know, help me be successful in getting a lot of private pay referrals, and so you know I really did enjoy being out there and working for a home care agency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say I agree with you. If, even on your hardest day, the gratification of being able to help a family and comfort an adult child and let them know this, everything's going to be okay and comfort a senior, everything's going to be okay or a spouse, I miss those kinds of things too, that human interaction and knowing that you've fixed something and you were able to get them to where they need to be and where they want to be, those kinds of feelings and they're so thankful for all the help and all the guidance that whether it's a social worker or you or somebody is providing them, getting their medical equipment in the house, making sure that that didn't fall through the cracks. There's so many gratifying parts and pieces to all of this. It is I can. I can see how you miss that, because I can remember missing that human interaction or or that caring for others, as I kind of stopped doing it in person. I stop, I say I stopped touching people. I kind of touch people, but it is a hard thing to let go of yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a gratifying job, though I mean, you know it's, it's, it's, I enjoyed it so.
Speaker 1:I can, I know and I can tell just by talking to you all the time that you're just such a great. You would be a great person out in the field. I know that because plus people rave about you who you work with for so long. So, anyway, I think that's. That's all the questions. I have Other parting words of wisdom. I, if you have anything, anything I missed.
Speaker 3:I think there's a question. One more question Annette did you find doing activities in the community were fruitful? If so, how did you decide where you wanted to focus more activities or in-person visits?
Speaker 2:Um, so, you know, yes, I, you know I would, I would do, I. How do I want to say this? Um, I think it's great to do an activity at a community, like, if you, you're a member, care and assisted living, you're trying to get in there. Um, you know, sponsor a prize bingo? I would do. Um, you know, sponsor a prize bingo? I would do. You know you'd get on their calendar. You know ABC home care is going to be sponsoring a prize bingo, I think it's.
Speaker 2:You know it's showing, I would do it at communities that I would get referrals from showing them. You know I'm thanking them. You know, stopping by the referrals before you know I went into the community room and set up the bingo. I'm not saying to do a lot, but it's not a bad idea to do it. Do them, you know, once in a while and you know, especially maybe it's some communities that you know you haven't been able to get in and you're trying to get in through the door you can, you know, connect with the activities person and see if you can sponsor an activity.
Speaker 1:So yeah, kind of a mix, a mixed bag of what and then in services, did you do the, I guess?
Speaker 2:I would say, more importantly, you know scheduling the in services, the lunch and learns. You know meeting with the teams, doing a breakfast or a lunch, presenting on an educational topic. You know those I would, I feel, are, you know, most important to. You know gain your referrals, but I think it's nice to do some. You know activities at some communities. You know to try and get in a sniff, or you know, like I said, a community that you may have a hard time getting into. Or I also, like I said, would do it at communities that I got a lot of referrals from, kind of as a thank you Because a lot of these activities.
Speaker 2:They're not going to say no to you because they need to book these calendars and they're always looking for things to do. They have a small budget and if you offer to come in and bring snacks and prizes, they're going to say, sure, go ahead. I always say book it a month in advance because they do their event calendar a month in advance and you want to get on their calendar, you know. So they have your company name and that you're sponsoring this event.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. And so Lacey says I did my first one this week by ASN's guidance about a discharge package. It was fantastic. Thank you all.
Speaker 2:Awesome, that's great. We love to hear that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, I think, and it's kind of a mix of things. And if you want to see like super, super big community involvement, um, the interview we did last time, the last uh continuum meeting was an interview with someone who is crazy involved and always do at least once a month doing a big event or someone somewhere or as a community, that's a great video to watch or listen to, because she she says, I mean and at this point it's some high end stuff, I'm sure it didn't start out that way, but now she does a lot of fundraising, very involved in her community with fundraising and senior stuff. So if you want to see what that looks like or hear what it looks sounds like you can listen to or watch. Last time, last continuum, I think that's it.
Speaker 1:Anybody else have anything, I think we're good. All right, thanks everybody. We'll see you in two weeks. Happy Friday.
.png)