Home Care Marketing
(Click Here to Register for Webinar on Dec 1st)
Mark your calendars, folks! The webinar of the year is slated for December 1, 2015. I’ll be talking about all things pricing for your Home Care company. It’s truly the most important webinar for the future of your business.
Home Care Pulse recently surveyed over 1,000 home care companies across the country, with each of them offering a variety of price ranges. Costs were broken down to companion rates, weekend rates, minimum and maximum hours—all differing depending on the services provided. But I want to urge everyone to avoid using this a la carte style of pricing. It’s confusing to clients, and it’s a headache for business owners. Stick with one rate across the board, for ALL services.
For instance, your business should not charge a different rate for weekday services versus weekend services. I understand WHY some companies go this route. Since they’re already undercharging for their services, they tend to increase their weekend rates because it’s more difficult to find qualified help. But that’s not the way to go. There should be one rate for services across the gate.
Other companies will take any type of case, even if it’s only for an hour a day; and they’ll break down their services with a higher rate on those days with less working hours. If your Home Care business is just launching, that pricing model is OK; but make sure it’s only temporary. Once you start gaining more referrals and your business grows, those minimal cases will become more of a challenge.
The best thing to do is to take the proper marketing steps from Day 1, which is the essence of what HME strives to instill in our clients. This will help you land solid clients who need more than a one-hour visit, for example. Afterall, what can a home care visit truly accomplish in an hour?
In a situation like this, you’ll want to establish a minimum window of time for a home care visit, typically four hours. In my previous position, the only time we ever went below four hours is when the client insisted on shortening the visit. And we’d still charge them for four hours anyway. It’s a “closing sales process,” which I’ll talk more about during next month’s webinar.
You can accomplish all of this by setting your business standards and customer expectations up front. Setting different price ranges is unnecessary.
And don’t just “wing it,” either. You have to establish a strategic process for pricing, stick to it and be able to adjust accordingly on a case-by-case basis. So take time to simplify and minimize confusion up front. You’ll increase conversions this way and ultimately increase your census.
So there’s my tip of the week, folks! Go ahead and register for the webinar on December 1st. I guarantee it’ll be the best hour you spend. Until then — God speed! And remember, don’t just beat your competition – blow them away!
