Home Care Marketing
As we continue discussing all the necessary tools in managing home care marketing representatives, today we tackle one of the most important weekly activities in “Lunch and Learns”.
First off, what exactly is a “Lunch and Learn”? (or “Lunch N Learn”) It is a scheduled activity where Marketing reps bring in food of some sort (Sometimes a snack, other times a meal, hence LUNCH) and discusses their services or products while the attendees indulge. You don’t have to bring them food, but it’s definitely a good idea to bring something unless otherwise directed. (some places have strict policies against this as they may be viewed as “accepting a bribe”. I know it sounds crazy to me too, but it’s legit, so if they ask you not to bring food, don’t.) Sometimes these can be “In Services” as often we are speaking on a topic that can carry credits and the purpose is meant to educate the audience on our services. In Services are also the term they (referral sources) tend to use when scheduling them, so it would be wise to call them Lunch n Learn In Services.
Now that we know what they are, obviously there is a cost associated with this. Don’t go crazy on spending a ton of money on Lunch N Learns. Remember the purpose of the meeting, to Market your services and educate the audience on who they should send your way. I have Home Care business owners calling our office every so often because their reps are doing Lunch n Learns and spending 200-300 dollars on each one! That is absurd! Unless you’re presenting to 50 people, you should easily be able to keep your Lunch n Learns between 25-75 dollars each. Pizza and Sodas, Chinese food, sub sandwiches cut into quarters with chips, and so on. These are all very cost effective meals and ways to keep within a modest budget (For details on budgets, click here)
Next comes frequency. So how often SHOULD we be doing Lunch n Learns? That answer is, every week! We should be completing 1 Lunch n Learn (at least) each and every week we spend working. So if you have 4 weeks off each year, that’s 48x during the course of an entire year we should be completing. This can be tricky when there are only so many places in our territory, how can we do so many. Simple:
- Do a new Lunch N Learn every 6 months – If you have say 20 referral sources you’re focusing your efforts on, plan on doing one in each account twice a year. That’s half the battle right there. We should have plenty of specialized programs (for details on specialty programs, click here) so this shouldn’t be a daunting task.
- Do them for different departments – Many referral sources have different departments. Take a hospital for example. They usually have Case Managers and Social Workers that are two separate departments. Doing the same Lunch n Learn twice but for different audiences in this hospital is a MUST!
- Have Out Comes Meetings – if you’ve been working with a particular referral source for an extended period of time and they’ve already heard about all your specialty programs, you can come back in and have an “Out Comes Lunch n Learn”. This is where you will specifically go over all the outcomes their referrals have had with your organization, which will (assuming they are good outcomes) lead you to seeing an increase in referrals.
- Always schedule them 3-4 weeks in advance – If you’re constantly scheduling these in services 3-4 weeks out, eventually you will come to a point and time when every week you will have at least one planned, and that’s the goal!
Lunch n Learns really are the only time you have a captive audience in which your company is the focal point of discussion. We need to complete these on the regular if you wish to gain new referral sources and grow your business. Completing them every week is a sure fire way to make sure that plenty of people are aware your company exists and will send patients your way. If you have a hard time setting these up, then I would strongly recommend you invest in training, like coming to a boot camp, as if you don’t do Lunch n Learns you won’t be in business very long.
This is just 1 part of the equation for long term sustained growth. If you’re a marketing rep, just hired someone to market for you, or your marketing rep has been with you for a long time but you feel they should be more productive, then I strongly recommend you sign up for Home Care Revenue Builders now. Once doing so, register for the July Webinar that will go over everything needed from hiring, managing, and compensating your reps so that you can “Blow Away The Competition”.
