How much time do you sink into advertising open positions, reviewing resumes, pre-screening applicants, interviewing candidates, making job offers, and onboarding new caregivers?

Most likely, you spend too much time on recruitment. From start to finish, the process can be unwieldy and take valuable resources away from workforce development, and, most importantly, client care.

The average time to hire varies widely by industry, but in the US it’s 44 days, a window that has been increasing for the last few years. In healthcare, the numbers are worse. According to data from LinkedIn, the healthcare industry has the fourth-longest time to hire, with a median of 59.5 days. The longer your process takes, the more likely qualified candidates are to drop out of your funnel, or be scooped by a competitor.

We think it’s time for the industry to do better.

The solution can be found in recruitment automation. Automating your senior care recruitment is the number-one method for adding qualified caregivers quickly and seamlessly to your team.

What is recruitment automation?

Recruitment automation is the process of turning manual tasks into automated ones so you can hire and onboard new staff quickly and efficiently.

For instance, instead of having a recruiter or hiring manager review dozens of applications for a caregiver position, your recruitment automation platform can review them for you and identify the most qualified candidates. Then, it can even schedule screening calls with the top applicants so your hiring managers can make contact and start nurturing those candidate leads right away.

In fact, it can automate much of the tedium of recruiting so you can focus on facetime with your top candidates.

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are one of the most common forms of recruitment automation, but many ATS don’t have comprehensive automation capabilities, like job promotion, call scheduling, and onboarding.

How does recruitment automation work?

Recruitment automation is done using sophisticated software that executes your recruiting steps, tracks candidates, and stores valuable applicant and employee information.

Let’s say you need to add ten new caregivers to your senior care agency in the next six months. That’s a big hiring push, so instead of uploading a job requisition to a dozen job boards one at a time, screening each resume that arrives, and calling each applicant individually, then manually moving them through the process with clumsy spreadsheets or email threads, you can have your software do all of that.

As you prepare to launch your recruitment push, you’ll need to consider things like:

• The job description
• Where you want to advertise your open positions
• What requirements are must-haves for the role
• Who will interview candidates and the criteria they should look for
• The basic steps in the process, like pre-screening, interviews, credential checks, etc.
• Your if-then logic: i,e., if a candidate schedules an interview with a hiring manager, then notify that manager by email and add it to their calendar
• Whether you want to check references and how many
• The credentials to be verified
• Legal and tax documents to be collected at time of hire
• Onboarding materials and training for all new hires

Benefits of automating your senior care recruitment

Recruitment automation creates more time for relationship building, more time for developing your workforce’s skills, and taking care of client needs. The list of reasons to try it is long. Here are a few of our favorites:

• Scale your recruiting efforts without adding more talent acquisition staff. As your agency grows, you can recruit more caregivers when you need them; no need to add more HR or recruiting staff until you’re ready.

• Advertise job openings across the web—on job boards, social media platforms, and with digital ad campaigns.

• Identify the best candidate referral sources so you can devote your recruiting dollars to those job boards, social media platforms, campaign types, schools, and training programs.

• Write inclusive job descriptions, eliminating language that is gendered, ageist, ableist, or racially biased.

• Sort through large numbers of resumes and caregiver applications quickly.

• Track candidates as they move through your recruitment funnel so you can improve efficiency and fix leaks in your pipeline.

• Automatically schedule screening calls, interviews, and follow-up meetings by letting candidates choose the time and method best for them.

• Ensure you have diverse candidate slates before you move forward with the hiring process to help boost diversity on your teams.

• Complete the hiring process more quickly. Candidates can fall out of your pipeline if the process takes too long or they lose meaningful contact with your agency.

• Improve the candidate experience by automating outreach, customizing the candidate journey, and triggering if-then logic.

• Document evaluation rubrics and share notes among interviewers so hiring results are consistent across the agency.

• Trigger reference checks, credential verification, and qualification assessments as soon as candidates reach the right point in the hiring process.
• Onboard new hires quickly by gathering and storing important legal and tax paperwork.

• Safely and securely store candidate and employee data so you can hire and manage staff responsibly.

• Garner insights about your employee lifecycle by tracking tenure, advancement, and attrition of workers to help you retain staff longer.

Time to get your recruitment engine up and running—and saving you time

Ready to start automating your senior care recruiting? CareFunnels isn’t just for home care sales. Home Care Marketing Pros’ clients can use the same engine that powers sales growth to bring in qualified caregivers with efficiency and speed. Book a demo to see how.

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Did you know that when someone calls your agency, you can use that phone call to identify which marketing campaigns, channels, and platforms are most likely to send interested leads your way? And you don’t even have to survey the caller.

Using call tracking, senior care businesses can use every phone call as an opportunity to bring in more qualified leads and close more sales. 

What is call tracking?

Call tracking is when a business uses software to gather and log information about inbound phone calls and the people calling. It’s a tool that your agency can use to enrich marketing strategy by analyzing “warm” leads.

With call tracking you can:

• Gather relevant information about your leads, like name, location, contact information, the services they’re interested in, and the outcome of that phone call—like scheduling an appointment, requesting more information, or inquiring about insurance.
• Identify the referral source to identify top marketing channels. With call tracking, you can collect information on how the lead heard about your senior care business, like PPC ad campaigns, lead nurture email campaigns, Google Business Profiles, your senior care website, or even print marketing—just about anywhere your potential clients might find you.
• Feed that information directly into your marketing automation engine so you can make data-driven decisions to improve your campaigns.
• Immediately start leads on their customer journey as soon as they make the first phone call—preventing valuable leads from slipping through the cracks.

Should you use call tracking for your senior care business?

There are many reasons to use call tracking technology, among them are the ability to enrich marketing campaigns and improve the sales process. This technology also lets you:

• Improve lead conversion rates
• Eliminate missed calls (and therefore lost leads)
• Refine the sales process by learning what messages most resonate with potential clients
• Optimize PPC campaigns and reduce ad waste
• Identify the times of day your ideal clients are most likely to call
• Improve sales scripts so your representatives are more likely to close sales
• Collect valuable information about your ideal clients—like their location, concerns, and the campaign that led them to you—and the ones least likely to convert to paying clients.
• More quickly score your new leads based on their qualifications to buy your services
• Automatically add lead information into your marketing automation engine
• Improve your marketing programs overall

How call tracking works

Call tracking happens in a few steps.

First, unique phone numbers are attached to your marketing channels. This can include landing pages, PPC campaigns, SEO pages, your website homepage, your Google Business Profile, and print marketing, or anywhere else your potential clients can find you.

Each number is different, so call tracking can identify the source. For instance, you might run a print ad campaign with one phone number and a PPC campaign with unique numbers attached to every landing page (often called click-to-call). No need to remember which number belongs to which campaign: Call tracking manages all of that.

Nor do you have to juggle a dozen phone numbers. Every inbound call is directed to your agency in one place (or two—you decide).

Then, every inbound call is routed through call-tracking software that gathers important information about the call, the caller, and their needs, like the source of the call (i.e., which landing page), the time of the call, the length of the call, the caller’s location, and whether the call was answered or sent to voicemail.

That information is logged in your marketing automation engine so it can be used to refine future marketing campaigns.

How to set up call tracking

Time to get your home care agency’s call tracking set up and your sales team selling. Here’s how:

1. Choose the destination for inbound phone calls. For example, the department that will field client calls.
2. Designate an agency sales representative(s) to answer incoming calls and follow-up with missed calls so no leads fall through the cracks.
3. Set up an out-of-office voicemail to capture inbound callers when sales agents aren’t on the clock.
4. Train your sales team on phone etiquette and teach them to master inbound phone sales.
5. Test, track, and improve phone scripts to ensure your sales representatives are able to close sales quickly and efficiently.
6. Monitor active campaigns to direct budget to the ones most likely to close sales.

Ready to use call tracking to improve your marketing campaigns?

Senior care businesses using our CareFunnels platform can streamline their inbound marketing strategies with call tracking. Plus, get all the most important communication in one place—enriched, organized, and automated to help you close more sales.

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Consumers trust other consumers: 87% use Google to evaluate local businesses. That was in 2022. The year before, that number was 81%.

This is especially true in the healthcare industry, where consumers are increasingly likely to consult patient reviews before choosing a provider. When your client leads go looking for reviews of your business, what will they find?

Home care agency reviews across sites like Google, Yelp, Care.com, and Caring.com are hugely influential in an agency’s credibility, reputation, and competitiveness—and your business has the power to influence what appears on those sites in a way that is authentic and ethical. Here’s how.

Why reviews matter for your senior care agency

Reading reviews is part and parcel of buying local: 33% of consumers say they always review reviews when looking for local businesses, and 43% say they regularly do, according to BrightLocal.

Reviews are also a valuable way to hear frankly from your clients about what you’re doing well and what needs improvement. Here are more reasons to solicit public feedback.

• Senior care consumers are checking your reviews: Healthcare is the top industry where consumers feel business reviews are most important, according to BrightLocal. In fact, more healthcare consumers read patient reviews of healthcare providers in 2022 (86%) than did in 2021 (72%).
• It builds your reputation: Consumers are more likely to trust brands with reviews, according to survey numbers from Terakeet.
• It establishes trust: When consumers can see what real clients think of your agency, they can trust the services you deliver. Responding graciously to positive and negative reviews demonstrates your openness to feedback.
• It demonstrates your high standard of care: Detailed reviews from your happy clients put your excellent standards on display for prospective clients.
• Senior care is a personal business: Clients are asking you to come into their homes and take care of themselves or their loved ones—it’s personal. All the more important that you can demonstrate first-hand endorsements of your business.
• It helps you improve your business: Your agency must be open to client feedback. It’s how you’ll discover weaknesses in your care services and uncover strengths to capitalize on.

Don’t be afraid of feedback

Asking for feedback from clients can be nerve-wracking. We’ve all seen online reviews—what if an unhappy client decides to tell the world?

If you provide good services and maintain a high standard of care, your chances of landing a positive review are strong: Only 6% of consumers write only negative reviews, while 37% write only positive ones, according to BrightLocal’s 2023 Local Consumer Review Survey.

Your goal should be good reviews of your agency, but some negative reviews actually lend credibility to your public profile. If everything looks too good to be true, potential clients may wonder if you’re controlling or influencing those comments.

How to get reviews of your home care agency

You can ask your top clients to review your business—and it works. Here’s how.

Ask your clients to write a review of your agency with automation. No need to personally contact every single one of your clients and their family members. Use your marketing automation engine to quickly and easily (and automatically) contact clients via text and email, asking them to review your senior care agency.

In one experiment detailed in the Harvard Business Review, a travel company asked its customers to review them via email within four days of using their travel services. Researchers found that the email increased the number of reviews by 8 percentage points and reduced the share of “extreme” reviews (that is, very positive or very negative) by 10%.

Don’t write the reviews yourself. It’s easy to spot a fake, and it can damage your credibility with potential clients. Best to leave the review writing to others.

Make it part of your lead nurturing sequence to demonstrate that you value feedback. As you use your marketing engine to keep in touch with your potential clients—getting to know them while educating them about your business—ask how you’re doing. Conscientious attention to potential clients may sway their decision to go with your agency over a competitor.

Make it easy to leave a review. When asking for reviews, point clients to the site or platform where you want them to comment. Set up a customizable link to your Google Business Profile, add a prominent CTA in your emails that sends them to Care.com or Caring.com, and include a QR code in print materials.

Ready to get great reviews for your senior care agency?

Prompt your clients to leave reviews of your agency by automating text messages, emails, and more through Home Care Marketing Pros’ CareFunnels platform. Track patterns in review content and learn more about the characteristics of users who leave positive reviews so you can manage your online reputation and keep delivering care that motivates great client feedback.

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According to a survey by Pew Research, 31% of Americans prefer text messages to phone calls. This extends to their interactions with businesses too: 65% of consumers feel more favorably of businesses that offer text messaging than they do of businesses that don’t.

Have you made it possible for potential clients to chat with your agency via text? An automated text messaging feature on your home care site can help you bring in potential clients via an engaging exchange with a sales representative.

Here’s how web chat can help you turn website visitors into client leads.

What is web chat?

Web chat is a tool that visitors to your website can use to interact with a sales representative or schedule a time for a care consultation—and you can use it to add new leads to your sales funnel quickly.

Having a web chat lets you automate your lead generation efforts: It’s a relatively passive way to bring new client leads into your senior care agency sales funnel, even after business hours.

It starts with a click-to-chat function on your agency’s site: The chat gathers basic information about them, like their name, phone number, and basic inquiry. Then it moves the exchange to a text message, making it more likely for you to get a response and convert that lead to a client: Roughly 90% of consumers open a text message within three minutes.

Plus, the information collected in the text exchange can be fed directly into your marketing automation tool, letting you start that lead on their customer journey immediately.

Do you need staff to run the web chat all the time?

No. It’s expensive to staff customer service agents, much less to keep them on the clock 24 hours a day. But it’s 2023, and there’s no need for a costly around-the-clock call center.

The benefit of having a web chat on your site is that it can connect users to a home care rep while they’re on the clock, or schedule a time for a follow-up call if they reach out after business hours.

Such a tool gives interested leads a convenient way to interact with your agency anywhere, anytime.

Who needs a web chat feature?

Businesses that cannot afford to staff a full-time team of 24-hour-a-day can benefit from having a web chat feature on their website.

By automating lead generation with web chat, you can:

• Eliminate wait times for interested leads
• Easily gather leads’ contact information so they don’t leak out of your sales funnel
• Add client leads to your sales funnel 24/7
• Quickly schedule appointments and follow-up calls even when a customer service representative isn’t on the clock
• Increase response rates — text messages have a higher open rate than emails do, and a higher response rate too: about 45% for texts, compared to just 6% for emails
• Start building a relationship with leads right away
• Get added to potential clients’ contact lists
• Get notified when a new lead enters your funnel so your sales staff can reach out quickly and close the sale

How web chat works in senior care marketing in 3 steps

Let’s take a look at how web chat adds a lead to your sales funnel.

1. A potential client comes to your home care website. They see a chat icon at the bottom of their screen. Some include an inviting message, like Chat with a care representative Or, How can I help you today? right on the homepage.

2. The web chat then asks for their name and contact information.

3. Once the user has provided their contact details, an agency sales representative is notified, and your team can initiate the next contact with that lead via text.

Alternatively, you can automate this exchange if your sales team isn’t immediately available or is off the clock.

If the user indicates that they do want a follow-up call—with a yes, sure, please, or any other affirmative—then your web chat can fire off another automated text message.

And just like that, your new lead has slipped into your marketing automation platform, and you can initiate the first human contact to start moving that lead through your CareFunnel.

How much of web chat is automated?

The first response from your home care agency is automated, but a member of your agency staff can step in at any time to take over—it’s all up to you!

We like automation for the initial exchanges because it guarantees that your leads will get a prompt response at any time of day or night, and faster response times make it more likely to convert leads into clients.

It also makes it easier to gather contact information and add leads to your sales funnel right away, even when your agency staff is off the clock.

Give your senior care agency website an upgrade!

Our CareFunnels platform is designed to take your senior care agency to new heights with features like web chat, call tracking, detailed reporting, and more! If you want to take your agency's website to the next level, book a demo to see how we can make that happen!

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In your agency, you hold your staff to the highest standards. Your caregivers provide the best, most conscientious hands-on care to your clients, your client services team provides top-notch customer service, and your agency sales team matches leads to the best senior care services for them.

Your marketing too must also reflect the high standards of your agency. Why? Exceeding the expectations of your leads can lead to higher sales and happier clients.

What is a standard of care?

Standard of care is a term often used in healthcare that describes the generally accepted best practices for treating a condition, but it has its place in senior care marketing too.

Your service quality builds your brand’s reputation and that reputation is what brings in sales. Reflecting that in your marketing strategy is vital.

Why is standard of care important in senior care marketing?

High standards are a powerful tool for client attraction and retention. When you have exceptional service quality you can:

• Build trust with clients and potential clients. When you consistently provide high quality care to your clients and their families, they grow to trust you—and they will stick with you. When your marketing presence reflects the same high standards, potential clients will grow to trust you as well.
• Bond with clients long-term. Your brand is what “attaches” clients to your agency. Research has shown that brand communication that “tangibilizes” services is key to the success of that product (especially if it’s new). The way consumers feel about your brand is what makes them go with your agency—or with a competitor.
• Increase referrals. Happy clients are the best marketers: Consumers are 90% more likely to trust a brand (and buy from them) that was recommended by a friend.
• Attract new caregivers. Standard of care in marketing is a recruitment tool. When you have a reputation for being the best in the business, caregivers will want to work with you.
• Build your brand’s reputation and recognition. A high-quality standard of care that is reflected in your marketing is a magnet for more eyes on your brand.
• Speed up sales. When clients are already convinced of your high standard of care, your sales team can move to close the sale more quickly.
• Sell more services. A polished brand simply sells more: 47% of consumers say they will pay more for a brand they trust.

People will notice investment in your marketing campaigns. Consistent, polished campaigns that contain high-quality images and video, thoughtful messages, and professional design send a message to your client leads that you care about maintaining a high standard of care.

Maintaining high standards in your marketing

The quality of your care should be reflected in your marketing, and your marketing must accurately reflect your standard of care. Empty promises will quickly be found out: Your clients, potential clients, and employees will set the record straight in their reviews and in their recommendations to friends and family.

What makes great care?

• Empathy: One of the most important characteristics of a healthcare provider is empathy, and this should be reflected in your marketing messages and agency brand.
• Compassion: Compassionate care is central to any senior care business, and this too should show up in your presence in the market.
• Consistency: Do client leads have a good experience at every point on their customer journey, or does quality begin to fall when they become a paying client?
• Quality control: In order to provide consistent service to your clients and potential clients, you need to set a standard and enforce it. This requires documenting those standards and conducting regular training refreshes and reviews.
• Communication: How easy is it for client leads to get in touch with you? How often do you reach out to your clients and client leads, and how clear are your messages?
• Responsiveness: How quickly do you respond to client leads? (The faster you respond, the more likely you are to land the sale.)
• Employees: Your employees are your messengers, and the way they represent themselves and talk about your agency is a reflection of your brand.

How to reflect quality in your services

Here are best practices for reflecting a high standard of care in your senior care marketing campaigns.

• Invest in good images of your offices, of your caregivers, and of your staff.

• Invest in a polished, modern website that showcases your services and philosophy of care.

• Create high-quality thought leadership content that demonstrates your senior care expertise.
• Commit to maintaining an SEO strategy that puts your brand in front of interested clients.
• Complete your Google Business Profile with photos and videos and client reviews and commit to keeping it fresh.

• Build a plan for consistent client outreach, using email drip campaigns, social media marketing, and TK.
• Ask clients to review your services and use those messages across your marketing materials.

• Train your client services and sales teams on the best customer service practices. (Try sales scripts for easy quality control.)
• Train all employees on company standards so they know how to recommend the company to others and talk about your services.

Ready to make sure that your standard of care is reflected in your marketing?

Our comprehensive suite of digital marketing tools and services here at Home Care Marketing Pros is here to provide you with what you need to reflect your high standard of care to your potential clients and hires.

From polished and professional websites to reputation management and beyond, learn more about what we can do here!

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Your senior care sales strategy must be a long-term one: Only 2% of sales are closed during the first meeting with a potential client. Between becoming a client lead and becoming a new client is a critical time for your agency sales team to build meaningful relationships.

There are many ways to do this. One of the best methods — because the ROI is outstanding — is the lead nurture email campaign.

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing is the practice of building a relationship with your potential senior care clients using email, phone calls, text messages, social media, long-form content, and face-to-face contact. The lead nurturing process includes learning more about your potential client’s needs, concerns, and limitations, and educating them about your services and philosophy of care.

Lead nurturing is time-consuming, and it requires investment, but it’s also how sales are closed: Clients that are nurtured buy almost 50% more than clients who are not.

One of the most cost-effective ways to nurture your leads over time is through automated email marketing campaigns. The ROI is hard to beat: Nurturing leads with email campaigns can return a 4,400% return on investment, according to one calculation by Campaign Monitor.

Even though speaking with clients over the phone or face to face is a necessary part of building relationships, lead nurturing of any kind requires marketing automation as well, and that’s where email campaigns can help.

How to nurture leads with email

To nurture your client leads with email, you need to build a drip campaign. This is a series of emails delivered at predetermined intervals that contain information about your agency and its services. A drip campaign can also be designed to collect information about your ideal clients so you can improve your marketing strategy over time.

These emails are triggered by your marketing automation engine—a major time-saver.

How to design a lead nurture email sequence

To guide your leads smoothly through the customer journey, take the time to design a helpful and meaningful lead nurture campaign. Here’s how:

1. Identify the goal of your campaign

Ostensibly, the goal of any marketing campaign is to increase sales, but when nurturing leads, get more specific than that. Maybe your goal is to add new clients for your companion care services or even to get existing clients to add more services (yes, you can nurture your existing client base too!).

2. Gather existing content and identify your gaps

Gather all the content and information you think might help you reach that goal: videos, webinars, polls, quizzes, informational sheets, long-form content, and new service announcements. Take inventory of what you have and look for ways to make your asset library more engaging and multifaceted. You might even try diversifying your media types by adding video or interactive landing pages.

3. Segment your audience

Though your ideal clients will share many things in common, some will have unique needs. Group your clients based on things like location, payment method, or the service they’re interested in. This will help you deliver targeted messages and speak directly to their interests and concerns.

4. Lay out your sequence

When laying out the sequence of your email campaign, consider how you can teach your leads about your agency and learn more about them as you go.

Consider these best practices:

• Personalize the experience by using your lead’s name, referencing the service(s) they’ve expressed interest in, or sending well-wishes on local holidays and events.
• Provide them with value. Lead nurture campaigns should do more than just push your services, they should also provide your leads with information they can use, whether or not they become your clients. Try offering tips for staying healthy during flu season or notify leads about upcoming changes to Medicare. Build trust by proving your agency to be a subject matter expert.
• Make the experience as engaging as possible: Sequence emails so your leads get a diverse experience with the content. Try a video one week with a poll the next, followed by a tip sheet of home healthcare tips.
• Offer information about cost and ways to afford your services. Cost will be a concern for many clients, so show them how you can make your services more affordable via private insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, payment plans, etc.
• Consider seasonality and upcoming holidays and events. You may want to run Mother’s Day or Father’s Day promotions or celebrate local festivals or events in your emails.
• Include an incentive, like limited-time discounts, free trial periods, or in-home consultations.
• Use client testimonials. Show your potential clients what your current clients say about your wonderful agency. Text reviews are great, video reviews are even better!
• Always include a call to action. Tell your clients what you want them to do next and give them an easy way to do it (like a button or a phone number). Promoting new meal prep services? Try a CTA like Learn more about our healthy in-home meals or Speak to a client nutrition specialist.
• Sign up for your own email campaigns to experience them along with your leads. You might see opportunities you hadn’t thought of before.

5. Track performance and optimize

As your campaign runs, use your marketing automation engine to monitor engagement and learn which emails get the highest open rates and what messages lead to the most CTA clicks.

To optimize, you can A/B test subject lines, calls to action, or even days of the week when emails are delivered. The more you measure, the more you can optimize.

6. Follow up on newsletter engagement

When your leads show interest in your email nurture campaign, capitalize on it. Respond quickly to lead outreach so you can push that sale over the line.

The goal is not surveillance (don’t call someone just because they opened the email or watched a video). Give them something meaningful to engage with: Ask them to opt into a phone call or email exchange with someone from your agency. Give them a reason to reach out.

Start nurturing your senior care leads with CareFunnels!

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A client lead is only as good as the follow up. A warm lead is of no use unless you meet them where they are.

To convert those leads into clients, you’ll need to build a trusting relationship. Good lead nurturing requires planning, attention, and coordination among your client care team. It also requires persistence: Only 2% of sales are closed at the first meeting. If you’re going to convert client leads into customers, then you’ll need to finesse the art of the follow-up and build a lead nurturing program.

Senior care industry lead nurturing 101

It’s estimated that 80% of sales occur after five follow-ups, this means that between initial contact and sale, you have to nurture those leads.

Nurturing is the process of building relationships with your potential clients over time, usually through regular contact designed to educate them about your agency, demonstrate to them how you can meet their needs, and get to know them as people.

Why nurture? Because nurtured leads make almost 50% more purchases than leads that aren’t nurtured.

To start nurturing your leads, it’s best to “score” them, by evaluating their readiness to buy. There are four ways to score leads:

• New lead: This lead is totally new to you and you may know very little about them.
• Warm lead: The lead is interested and qualifies as an ideal client, but they may need some more persuading before they buy.
• Hot lead: This sale is ready to close, all that’s left is to push it over the finish line.
• Cold lead: The lead has lost interest, gone with a competitor, or otherwise exited the market. Cold leads should be abandoned—at least for the time being—but kept in your marketing automation engine.

How do you know when a lead has gone cold?

There are a few ways to know it’s no longer worth it to pursue a lead:

• They don’t qualify as an ideal client: Some leads aren’t right for you because you don’t offer the services they’re looking for, you don’t work with their insurance carrier, or they’re looking for a different price range.
• Exited the market: Some leads will tell you that they’re no longer interested or no longer in the market for senior care services. It’s clear that those leads have gone cold.
• They haven’t responded after three unanswered follow-ups: This is often the most disappointing, but it happens. If the client has not responded to you after three unanswered direct contacts, or five follow-ups if they did engage at some point, then it’s time to abandon the sale for now. Keep this kind of lead in your email drip campaigns.

To nurture a lead, you’ll need:

Personal contact: As early as possible, make contact with the lead to start them on their customer journey. Ideally, by phone or email.

Automated contact: Between points of personal contact, continue to engage your leads with ongoing marketing, like email drip campaigns, social media marketing, or text messaging campaigns.

Engagement: Consult your marketing automation platform to see if they’ve engaged with emails or responded to phone calls or text messages. You may learn that the lead has gone cold and your energy is best spent elsewhere.

Trust: In order to close that sale, your client leads must trust you. Senior care is a very personal business, and that client needs to be sure that your agency can consistently and conscientiously care for themselves or their loved ones. Take the time to build trust.

Understanding: You may be interested in selling your latest services, but if that’s not what the lead needs, you’ll lose that sale. Lead nurturing requires contact tailored to their needs and concerns, so ask lots of questions.

A lead nurturing campaign: Once someone fills out a contact form on your website, it should alert one of your senior care sales executives to reach them via their preferred contact method, and it should add that lead to an email list that stars them on an email drip campaign. Lead nurture campaigns are multifaceted and usually include some combination of:

• Email
• Social media
• Phone calls
• Text messaging
• Events
• Content marketing and thought leadership

How to follow up with a lead

Eighty percent of sales require five follow-ups to close the deal. When following up with client leads, time, quality, and consistency matter. Here’s how to turn your leads into clients.

Assign follow-up tasks

You don’t want to lose a potential sale because everyone thought it was someone else’s job to follow up. You also don’t want to bombard new leads with multiple contacts from multiple people.

Your CRM (that’s customer relationship management) platform can assign new leads and trigger notifications to sales representatives to reach out, and track those follow-ups so you can move them seamlessly through the customer journey.

Follow up quickly

Following up within an hour makes it 7x more likely that you’ll key the key decision-maker on the phone.

In the senior care industry, many leads need an answer quickly—they’re preparing to leave the hospital after an unexpected emergency or they need someone to care for their elderly parents now that their work schedule has changed. Don’t wait so long that a competitor scoops them up.

Personalize the follow-up

When following up with your potential client, specifically address the services they’re interested in or the question they raised—show them you’re listening and have been preparing to meet their needs.

When following up for the first time, mention their initial contact:

Respond by mentioning your last conversation:

Ask questions:

Use their preferred form of communication

One of the best ways to maintain contact with your leads is to use their preferred form of contact. You can ask for their preference on your contact forms or at the first follow-up.

Try a second kind of follow up

If you have a warm lead who stops responding, try a second form of contact. If they haven’t been responding to phone calls, send them a friendly email, or vice versa.

Your email might look like this:

Make it easy for them to contact you

Your leads should know how to easily contact your senior care agency. Put contact information in your emails, on your website (we love a click-to-call button), and on your Google Business Profile. To never miss a lead, enable client text messaging or Google Business Messages.

Track your follow-ups

Keep track of every lead follow-up you make. This monitors their progress through the sales cycle and helps avoid duplicating contact.

Track the type of follow-up and the result of that interaction. Store it all in your marketing automation platform and learn from the data over time.

Know when the lead has gone cold

Sometimes, a lead just goes cold. It’s disappointing, especially if they were once close to becoming a paying client. It’s important to know when to let it go. If a client has not responded after three unanswered contacts, or five if they engaged at some point, then it’s time to retire it.

However, don’t put them in the bin. Store that information in your marketing automation platform. That way, if they do reach out in the future, you can reference past conversations and continue to nurture that relationship: Mr. Greene! It’s good to hear from you. I remember you were asking about our companion care programs last year. How is your dad doing?

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How prepared is your sales team to take client calls and close sales? Building a consensus about how sales representatives talk about your senior care agency’s services, your client support, your care philosophy, and your value proposition can provide a consistent, high-quality experience that converts leads into paying clients.

That takes preparation, strategic thought, and a tool called the sales script.

What is a sales script?

A sales script is language, questions, and tips your sales staff uses when speaking to potential clients.

“Script” can be a bit misleading: Sales scripts are a starting point for senior care businesses. They’re meant to guide you, not to dictate every word spoken. A script keeps your sales team from being caught off guard when clients ask tough questions.

Do you need a sales script?

We highly recommend having a few sales scripts to guide your calls. Here’s why.

A good sales script can help you:

• Build trust and establish a relationship with client leads
• Identify client pain points and needs
• Ensure quality, consistency, and accuracy of the sales process
• Close deals more quickly
• Increase the size of a client’s sale

How to write a sales script

1. Choose a goal

If you offer more than one service, your agency will need more than one sales script. Trying to sell all your services in a single call can overwhelm and confuse your potential clients. By sticking to one or two services, you can demonstrate to the lead that you’re listening and interested in solving their unique problems.

2. Identify your value proposition

Why should this client choose your agency over another that offers the same services? The answer to this question is your value proposition.

Simply saying, We offer better customer service! won’t cut it, especially if they haven’t experienced that customer service yet. You will need to demonstrate your value proposition in the sales process.

Remember the adage: Show, don’t tell.

You can also tailor your value proposition to different client needs (one reason to ask plenty of questions as you sell—more on that later). For instance, if your lead is concerned about cost, then you can tell how you help clients find ways to pay for services, like insurance carriers you work with, payment plans, or client financial services.

3. Imagine client questions and concerns

Anticipate the concerns your clients might have. You can do this by mining notes from past sales calls or consulting your sales staff to find frequently asked questions.

As you talk to clients, don’t forget to log their questions, use your marketing automation platform to keep track, and then use your list to improve your senior care sales scripts over time.

4. Brainstorm questions

No one enjoys a lecture. A successful conversation involves both the salesperson and the lead. Get them talking, and telling you what they need by regularly asking questions. It helps maintain their attention and forge a relationship.

You might ask:

5. Identify opportunities to upsell

Approach upselling with gentleness and tact. Senior care clients can be in a vulnerable position, and it’s easy to turn off a customer by treating them like a sale to be closed rather than a person to be helped.

Create opportunities in the script to suss out other needs you can meet. If you have a client lead interested in companion care services, you might mention that you also offer transportation services:

If the answer is no, then move on. You’ll have the opportunity to repitch this to the client in a follow-up email or, if they become a client, in their welcome materials and email campaigns.

6. Leave room for improvisation

A sales script is just a guide. Your home care sales team doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) read the script verbatim, which can feel stiff and insincere. Sales professionals should practice their scripts well in advance of calls with client leads so they have time to interpret them in their own way.

7. Don’t close the sale, solve the problem

Let’s be honest, people don’t like to be sold to. It’s why sales professionals often get a bad rap—clients don’t want to be seen as dollar signs and deals closed, they have a need they want you to meet.

When writing sales scripts, keep this in mind: the goal is not to close the sale, the goal is to solve the problem.

Examples of senior care sales scripts

Feel free to use these as a starting point for writing your own sales scripts.

Building rapport with the client lead

It’s a good idea to build a relationship with potential clients. After all, you’ll be working closely with them to provide care for themselves or their loved ones.

Here are a few ways you can build rapport:

Identifying client needs

Identifying client worries and concerns

There are a few politely probing questions you can ask to find out what the lead worries about:

If you can hear that the potential client is anxious, you can gently acknowledge that and offer help:

Talking about your value proposition

It helps to have an edge over the competition. Tell them what makes your agency great.

Upselling

Approach upselling with care. Use it as an opportunity to meet even more of the client’s needs.

Ready to get started with your senior care leads?

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Inbound leads are exactly what home care agencies hope for—clients coming directly to you, showing up interested in your services. But more than half the calls businesses receive go unanswered. Are you taking advantage of every opportunity?

Responding quickly increases your chances of landing the sale, and so does an impeccable phone manner. It helps to go in prepared, so we’ve prepared these scripts and tips to help you convert online leads to happy, paying clients.

4 scripts for answering inbound phone calls

Converting inbound phone leads begins with excellent communication skills. Here’s how to handle the most common scenarios you’ll encounter on the phone.

Scenario 1: Greetings

Greet the caller brightly and cheerfully. Tell them who you are and ask how you can help.

Scenario 2: Getting a question you don’t know how to answer

If you don’t know the answer to one of their questions, politely say so, then offer a solution:

Or

Scenario 3: Dealing with a rude client lead

It’s inevitable. At some point, you’ll encounter a caller who’s impatient, curt, or just plain rude. It’s your job to stay calm and respectful, and if you can, calm them too.

If the situation escalates, you may need to pull in a supervisor.

Scenario 4: Putting a caller on hold

When putting a caller on hold, tell them what you’re about to do and why—otherwise, it sounds like the call has ended.

5 scripts for responding to client leads

Scenario 1: You know what services they’re interested in

You might know what services they’re interested in because the home care lead has filled out an online form or left a detailed voicemail. Show them that you’re paying attention by mentioning their request.

Ask if they’re available to talk. Otherwise, schedule a specific time to follow up later.

Scenario 2: Scheduling a call for later

If the caller is busy, ask to set up a call later in the day.

Scenario 3: You don’t know what services they need, all you have is a name and a phone number

Other times, all you have is a name and contact information. When you respond to the lead, ask to speak to the person by name, then ask to learn more about why they inquired with your home care agency.

Scenario 4: Responding to a missed call

If you miss the client’s phone call, reply promptly and apologize for the missed connection, then inquire about what they need.

The danger in missing a phone call is that the lead can just hang up and call one of your competitors. To keep from losing that sale, try missed-call text-back.

Scenario 5: You don’t offer the services they need

Sometimes, a lead may be looking for services your agency doesn’t offer. This is when it helps to have friendly relationships with other agencies who can fill in those gaps so you can refer that client out (and so they can do the same for you).

9 tips for capturing inbound leads on the phone

• Tell them your name and who you are. It sounds so obvious, but when we’re working quickly, it’s easy to forget the basics. Start the call by telling the lead who you are and where you’re calling from.
• Make sure you have the right person on the phone. Before you move into talking about your senior care agency’s services, make sure you have the decision-maker on the phone. That’s usually the person who initiated the contact.
• Make sure you know their name and can say it correctly. As a sign of respect, and for accurately recording their information, ask how to pronounce their name if you’re unsure.

• Listen. Inbound leads for home care agencies may be stressed, tired, or in a hurry. They may also be worried about their loved one. Listen to their needs and how they tell you. You may be able to help assuage their worries and therefore win their trust.

To ensure that you understand exactly what the lead is asking for, practice “looping”: listen to what the person is saying to you, repeat it back to them in your own words. Repeat until they say you’ve gotten it right.

You might even be able to identify other services you can provide, increasing the size of the sale.

• Get their contact information. If you don’t have it already, make sure to get the lead’s name and phone number so you can follow up with them later (and add them to your marketing automation platform).
• Take notes! As the potential client tells you who they are and what they need, take notes. Capture as much detail as you can while still actively listening to them. If you need them to slow down, you can say something like, I want to make sure I’m writing down exactly what you need. Can you repeat that again? Sounds like you need in-home occupational therapy?

Be sure to put those notes directly into your marketing automation engine when the call is over.

Take Away Tips

• If you need to place the caller on hold or transfer the call, tell them. Don’t leave them hanging. If you need to put the caller on hold, offer a gentle, I’ll need to put you on a short hold while I find that for you. Sit tight!
• Don’t let a rude caller get the best of you. At some point, you’ll find yourself on the phone with a rude caller. It’s frustrating, hurtful even, but your job is to remain professional. Consider that they may be in a stressful or desperate situation, and you can be the one to help.
• Be friendly and be yourself. These scripts are a starting point—if it’s more natural for you to vary it a little, then do so. You can be approachable and professional at the same time.

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You already have several channels for lead generation, like phone calls and email, and you might even have a few targeted approaches set up, like online form-fills, marketing campaigns, gated content, referrals, and online chats.

Channels like these send home care leads directly to you—practically handing you potential clients. But are you forfeiting those leads? If you’re not following up in a timely manner, then you’re letting those potential clients slip by. That’s lost business.

Here’s how to optimize lead response time to maximize the chance of winning that sale.

What’s the ideal lead response time?

Conventional wisdom says five minutes. That means you need to be monitoring your incoming leads all day, every day—but you may have more wiggle room.

Responding within an hour makes you 7x more likely to get a decision-maker on the line, according to research published in the Harvard Business Review, yet only 37% of businesses respond within an hour. It gets worse: 23% of businesses never respond at all.

If you respond within an hour, you’re 60 times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker than companies that wait 24 hours or more.

According to Forbes, the average lead response time is 47 hours (the research in the Harvard Business Review found 42 hours) — that’s two days for one of your competitors to swoop in and scoop up your leads while they’re waiting for you to get in touch.

Put yourself in your clients’ shoes: You’re sitting in the hospital with a loved one who’s just had a stroke, looking at a discharge tomorrow. That means you need care arranged now. You don’t have 47 hours to wait. You don’t even have a full 24.

Why you need to respond to client leads quickly

So, why is it important to initiate a response within an hour?

• Healthcare struggles with lead response times: Hubspot studied industry lead times and found that healthcare tends to be one of the slowest to reach out to potential clients. Your senior care agency can set the precedent and get to clients before the competition does.
• The longer you wait, the more sales you lose: The adage is that the company that responds first gets the business. Of course, it’s slightly more complicated—there’s also the matter of customer service and availability—but if you don’t try, you’ll never have a chance.
• Your reputation depends on it: Quickly following up on requests shows that you’re conscientious, proactive, and that you respect your clients’ needs and their time. Even if you don’t win them as a client, a quick response can make a good impression.

What happens when you don’t respond to senior care leads fast enough?

You lose the client—and future businesses as well

First and foremost, you forfeit that potential client. The longer you wait, the bigger the window of opportunity becomes for your competitors to swoop in and grab that client.

Here’s a simple exercise: Let’s say you need to get your car to a mechanic, and quickly—your battery is less than a year old, but the car won’t start. So, you call three mechanics in your area. One calls you back right away to schedule an appointment. The other two: Well, one waits two days to call you back, but by that time the first mechanic has already replaced your starter and you’re back on the road. And the third, you never hear from them again.

The next time you need a mechanic, which one will you call?

You damage your reputation

Not responding is also a matter of etiquette—radio silence will be seen as rude. Plus, it can land you bad Google reviews, turning others away before they even pick up the phone.

You don’t learn anything about your ideal clients

The more conversations you have with potential clients, the more you can learn about their needs, concerns, and questions. Even if you don’t close the sale, you can come away with valuable information about your client demographic.

How automation can shorten lead response time

It’s likely that you won’t be able to staff a 24-hour client services team to respond to incoming leads at all hours. But that doesn’t mean you have to entirely postpone an interaction with potential clients.

Marketing automation can help you quickly respond to clients at any time of day or night, and it can help you slide them smoothly into your sales funnel.

• Make it easy for leads to reach you: Provide your contact information on your Google Business Profile, add a click-to-call button on your website, and offer a form for clients to provide you with their contact information. You might even try live text messaging or enabling Google Business Messages.
• Get immediate notifications when a lead contacts you: No need to constantly check your email and voicemail. Marketing automation can notify you as soon as a lead reaches out.
• Mark leads who have been contacted and those waiting on a response: Sort clients so you don’t duplicate outreach or miss potential clients.
• Respond to clients even when your office is closed: When someone reaches out after hours, you can send them a friendly, automated response confirming that you’ve received their message and will be following up.
• Serve clients a brief questionnaire to get more information: While they wait to hear back from you, your marketing automation platform can ask them some questions about their needs.
• Use chatbots for basic interactions when you’re not in the office: AI-powered chatbots can answer basic questions for leads while they wait for a response.
• Start their customer journey right away: Automation can insert leads directly into your sales funnel so you can start them on their customer journey as soon as they reach out.

3 tips for optimizing your lead response time and maximizing sales

1. Use chatbots to interact with leads until a human can reach out: Just remember that chatbots aren’t a substitute for people, they’re a first line of contact when your client services team isn’t available right away.
2. Let your clients choose how they want to be contacted: Ask potential clients for the best way to get in touch to increase the likelihood of engaging with your leads.
3. Track your lead response time: Your automation platform can keep a record of response times so you can control the quality of your sales outreach. You might even learn that your optimal response window is different than the recommended one hour.

Home Care Marketings Pros' automation is here to improve your lead response time

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