Home Care vs. Auto Sales: Marketing your business
One of my girls recently started dating a car salesman. He is delightful and loves to talk about his job so I am learning a lot about the sales business. They have a completely strange vocabulary that customers never hear. I have realized that I do not ever want to buy a car again! However, if I do I will take him with me. There is a reason they are known as the least trusted profession. We may not trust car salesmen, but we do buy cars and there is no doubt they have very effective sales techniques. Perhaps we in home care can learn a little from them when it comes to promoting our business. Stay with me and I will share a couple insider secrets about car dealerships too.
We buy cars because we need them and we want the best we can afford. It is the same with Home Care. People need it but they don’t always know how to get the best value for their dollar and they don’t always know what they are looking for. If we want to be the home care dealership of choice in our area, we have to find ways to draw people to our agency and keep them as our choice customers.
First, we need to be known. You need to have a visible presence. We may be a national franchise or the homegrown dealer down the street. I am still amazed at how many agencies don’t have web sites. Even a free, one page, information site is better than none and will start being found. As soon as feasible, move to a better format. Spend a little time looking at your competitors and find ideas that you like and develop your own unique presence. Don’t be naïve and think that the elderly don’t use the internet. Even if they don’t, their children and their doctor’s staff probably do. It is one of the lowest cost of advertising there is.
Use free internet sites to promote your agency. Places like BBB, Yellow Pages, Caring.com and Manta allow you to submit information to them. There are many local information sites as well. Be sure to include your web site so people can find you.
Use brochures, public activities and logo tagged freebies to promote your business around your local area. Get local newspapers to promote you or write articles about you. Be involved in your local community activities as an organization.
The next phase is to get known personally. Get to know your referral sources. Doctors, and more importantly their office staff, Discharge Planners, Social Workers, and Community Service providers. When people attach your agency name with a person they trust, they will think of you when they need to refer. Never underestimate your staff. They are the face of your agency in the community. I have seen individual caregivers bring in lots of referrals because they were competent and loved by clients. I have also seen an individual bring an agency to its knees by creating an air of distrust. While car salesmen may get away with less than honest practices, It is NOT acceptable in the health care arena.
Develop trust and relationship with your clients and referrals. This is where nurses have a natural advantage. We are perceived as trustworthy. We gain trust by professional, compassionate care of our clients. Your staff is trained to provide quality care, protect privacy and support healthy decisions by your clients. You know that clients will talk about their caregivers with family, friends and their physicians. That is either the best, or worst, advertising you can get.
Strive for repeat business. I was surprised that dealerships really strive for this but it does explain all those friendly letters I get and throw in the trash. If your perception is that, someone went out of their way to be friendly and give you their best effort, you generally prefer to deal with them instead of someone new. There is a huge amount of trust in the home care business. Your referral sources and physicians need to trust your agency; your clients need to trust you. You must have caregivers you can trust to be excellent in serving the people they care for.
OK, for those who stuck it through, here is what I have learned about car sales.
To Crack someone is to over charge you when you think you are getting a great deal. They can do this on the front end by charging you more for the vehicle than you realize or on the back end by charging more interest than the bank requires or selling you an extended warranty at a ridiculous price. If you are not careful, they will get you on both ends.
MSRP means nothing to them. I thought it was the top price but they see it as the low end of price. When I asked is that illegal, he said it is only a suggested price. If they can get you to pay or a bank to finance, they think it is fine.
They will bait and switch you in a heartbeat.
Repeat customers are the best to crack, if they trust you, you can sell them anything.
If we ran our home care businesses like that, we would be in jail. So let’s keep our integrity and take the good we can learn and leave the rest.
