In this week’s episode of A Drink with the Hurricane, Steve discusses the mindset when looking to hiring a marketing rep. Does this mean you no longer have to market? When am I ready to hire? What are the activities my marketing rep should be doing? All of these questions are answered and more!
_____
Video Transcript:
I love the dramatizations and this one right here is another particularly common one that we see. We have many homecare business owners who call us for help and they keep saying I wanna hire a marketing rep, I don’t like marketing, I don’t want to market, I’m gonna hire somebody and let them do the marketing. And while that’s all true and dandy in theory the truth of the matter is, if you hire a marketing representative it doesn’t mean that you’re never going to market again. Rather, your marketing representative is the leader of the pack, the front of the line, the person out there every single day marketing and setting up important busy, big meetings for you as the owner to accompany them on which will lead to multiple referrals in the next three to six month’s time.
So, when you have a marketing representative you should still spend time with your rep in the field. Just like your scheduler, just like your recruiter, just like any other office position. You see those individuals on a daily basis, on a regular, consistent basis. Your marketing representative, however, should be out of the office, every day of the week. They should really only come into the office twice a week for a few hours to grab supplies, be a part of a meeting or two, and then be on the road the rest of the week. A full time marketer, 40 hours, should be on the road 32 to 35 hours a week.
As a new business owner with a new marketing rep in the first six months, you should plan to spend one day a week with your marketing representative. Now you may think, that sounds like a lot. One day a week? Well you gotta train this person. You gotta makes sure they’re doing the right things. You gotta make sure that your reputation, ’cause your reputation is everything when it comes to getting referrals. You gotta make sure this person knows what they’re doing, they’re representing you the correct way, and what is the correct way? The way you want to be represented. And, the referral sources are receptive to this individual.
Now, you put it on your marketing representative to fill the day. Don’t have a day and just go cold calling. For the first month, that’s fine. But after that first month is over, your marketing representative should be setting up lunch-and-learns, should be setting up cups of coffee, where you’re having a meeting with a potential power partner, or a meeting with a potential referral source over a cup of coffee somewhere. You should be going to networking events together, community events and sponsoring activities. That’s five different things you could do and it’s not your responsibility to fill the day, it’s the marketing representative’s responsibility to find all the things and fill it up, so that this way it’s a productive day and a productive use of your time.
For the first three to six months, you should plan to do this. Now you’re thinking, three to six months, that’s a lot of work. Well think about it from the flip side. You’re paying this person a national average salary of somewhere between $40,000 to $50,000. That’s the national average, a little bit lower in some markets, a little bit higher in other. But $40,000 to $50,000 base salary. Don’t you want to make sure you’re getting your maximum return on investment? A marketing representative should make your business a seven-figure business. Which means that if I have a marketing representative working for me, I should be doing at least a million dollars a year in revenue. So, a million dollars in revenue, $50,000 investment, yeah, that’s worth me spending one day a week for 12 to 26, 24 weeks in a row. Once that happens, and you got the right person and they’re established and you trust them and you know that they’re out there doing what they’re supposed to do, then you should plan, twice a month, forever. Twice a month, forever.
Because you got the right marketing person. Executive Directors, Directors of Nursing, Directors of Case Management at social, at hospitals and rehab centers, these folks like to deal with the owners. They don’t like to deal with marketing reps. So if your marketing representative sets up a meeting for you with an executive director, with a Director of Nursing with a high ranking, a CEO from a hospital, you want to go to that meeting. You need to go to that meeting. Make the connection, go over everything that you can deliver and promise on, right? And then, leave it up to your rep to keep the relationship going between meetings. You may only see that person once every three months. But your marketing person will see that person every week. Or every two weeks. And so therefore, they are an extension of you as the entrepreneur, as the business owner, out in the community, out in the field.
Now I know this sounds like a lot of work, and it is. You want to have a $3 million a year homecare business or more? You’re gonna have to put a lot of work and effort into it, and time in the field, time in the community, time with your referral sources is vital to your business’s longterm success. Now, you want to hire a marketing rep, you want help executing the things that we’re talking about with your marketing rep, or you want to grow your business to a point where you’re the one out there doing the marketing, but you want to grow it to a point where you can hire a marketing rep.
These are all the things that we do. This is why we have bootcamps. This is why we have coaching programs and so on and so forth. Pick up the phone, give us a call and ask for a consultation to show you how we can help you find something that fits within your budget to get your business to where you want it to be so that you can truly BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION!
https://www.homecaremarketing.net/contact_us/