Hi folks, Steve “The Hurricane” here, and for today’s episode of “A Drink with The Hurricane”, we’re gonna talk about three tips on how you can pay top dollar to your caregivers. So raise your glass and let’s toast to your success. Cheers.
This is “A Drink with The Hurricane”, the talk show discussing all things growing your home care business. This video is sponsored by Home Care Evolution, where we help home care agencies adapt to changing circumstances, transform their business, so that they can thrive for years to come.
So the most recent Home Care Pulse report came out just last week. And after having combed through that entire benchmark study, there were several findings that really jumped out to me as a high priority to address. And the first one of those is the caregiver wage. As we know, caregiver turnover is at an all time high. There are caregiver shortages and labor shortages that are so tremendous, not only affecting healthcare, it actually is spread across all industries. Recently on LinkedIn, I shared an article about how Verizon has decided in the United States of America they are going to start all employees at $20 an hour. And this makes it much more difficult for people to attract caregivers, because being a caregiver is a much more demanding job than selling cell phones working at a Verizon store. And so when you think about the national average pay rate for a caregiver right now is around $15 an hour, $20 at Verizon will completely flood the market.
So how do we combat this? Well first, the Home Care benchmark report showed that people who pay caregivers in the bottom 25%, meaning that you are in the lowest compensation rate, average almost 80% caregiver turnover ratio. On the flip side, the people who pay the top 25% fair almost 20% better, having about a 60% caregiver turnover ratio. Think about it this way. If I’m in the bottom 25 percentile, for every five caregivers I hire, four will leave me. If I’m in the top 25 percentile, for every five caregivers I hire, only three will leave me. So in this case here, money truly does talk.
Now with that said, here are three tips as to how you can ensure you’re paying your caregivers more than anybody else. The first tip is to make sure you are charging the right amount of money. In another episode, I’m gonna go over the profit and loss statement from 2021, because it is staggering to see just how slim the profit margins are. But whatever pay rate you are going to give a caregiver, a general rule of thumb is to double that and make that your price for charging for services. All right. So if I’m paying a caregiver $15, I need to be charging $30. If I’m paying a caregiver $20 an hour, I need to charge $40 an hour. This is the margin that has been tried and true and works again and again to make sure that you can pay your caregivers and cover the expense associated with doing so.
The second tip that I have for you on making sure that you can pay your caregivers is to make sure that you have a very strong inquiry management process. If you’re gonna be charging top dollar so that you can pay top dollar, well you can’t let your low rates be what sells a client on why they should work with you and your agency. You’re going to have to get more skilled and more refined at answering that phone. So this means you’re gonna have to do some inquiry training with your office staff. You’re gonna have to jump on the internet leads that come in faster than you currently do, and you’re gonna have to really over deliver. What I always say, sales is customer service. You’re gonna have to deliver that white glove customer service. Be ready to answer questions. Ask the right questions. Qualify the client. Find out what is important to this client. Is it the bottom line price that’s important to the client or is it getting the best quality care? If it’s getting the best quality care, people will pay more to get the best quality care, especially when it comes to taking care of a loved one. Remember, our patients, these are people’s mothers and fathers and grandparents and aunts and uncles and other people that are very well loved. So if someone has the resources to afford it, people are often looking for the best quality of care. People will pay more money as a result of that.
The third and final tip that I have for you on this is making sure you have a strong closing process. So when you do the inquiry, the inquiry is only the first step in the sales process where you schedule a time to go out and meet with the patient and their family face to face. It’s that face to face assessment where you actually do the sales. You need to have a presentation that you walk through all of the different things about your company. You wanna highlight your company’s attributes, highlight any awards or accolades that you and your company have received over the years. You wanna talk about how you would take care of a patient with this patient’s situation based on the experience of you having done so before in the past. You want to go over all of the specific nuances and concerns of the patient and their family to make sure that you know what they’re looking for and that you know how to handle their expectations. You also wanna be able to do some price comparisons and building value and explaining why your prices are more than your competitors and what they’re getting in exchange for it. And then afterwards, obviously make sure that you’re gathering all the information about the patient. They feel comfortable with you, and then asking for the sale. When you follow that process, which is tried and true, and it’s something that I teach people how to do all the time, whether it’s through the Home Care Evolution quarterly magazine, or through my other sales trainings and programs that I offer through the Hurricane University or even when people come to my conferences. I spend a lot of times in this area because I know that in order to be able to charge top dollar price so that you can pay caregivers and get people to work for you, you have to have strong policies, practices, and procedures.
So there’s the tips, folks. I hope to see you at the next conference where you know I’m gonna give you everything you need to blow away the competition.
So folks, I’m Steve “The Hurricane”, and I just spent three days teaching all these people how to..
“Blow away the competition!”