Grassroots Branding

In home care and hospice, branding starts at the grassroots level.  Historically high level widespread branding initiatives have proven relatively unsuccessful and have not delivered a positive return on investment.  That is because in home care and hospice branding is accomplished successfully at the individual and local level.  The “brand” is established at the personal level.  Relationships are the key to sales and marketing success.

In a service industry, your people are your product.  They are all your sales people. They are the ever important customer service.  There are many examples in business today of enormously successful businesses that are based on the importance of the relationship with the customer.  This is also true in home care.

Marketing or Recruiting?

It has been demonstrated that in home care those agencies with good marketing programs will be better at recruiting and retaining employees.  Conversely, agencies that are better at recruitment and retention are generally better marketers.  The reasons for these are quite simple because recruiting is marketing for people.  Every time you create a positive impression in the community through marketing it gets easier to recruit the best people. 

Hire for Attitude

Only hire the best.  Anytime that you violate this rule you will lower your standards and you will run the risk of destroying much of the culture you have built.  Pride is powerful and it stems from knowing that the agency only has the highest of standards starting with the staff qualifications.  Stability and quality of staff is an important element in the long term viability of an agency’s sales and marketing program.

When looking at the most successful agencies we can observe that they have exceptional cultures that are built by over the years by consistently hiring for attitude.  Outside of home care, America’s most admired companies all make attitude a top consideration when interviewing candidates.  Southwest Airlines is bombarded with applications each year with over 100 times the number of applications than they have job openings.  They continue to recruit aggressively and pick selectively.  They know that if the new hire has the right attitude that they can teach them everything else.  Wegman’s Supermarkets finished first on the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work List for 2005.  They have over a century of hiring great attitudes.  Whole Foods Markets has now become the largest retailer of natural foods in the country and has built their business on hiring people with the right attitudes.  Starbucks was built on the keen focus on the customer relationship.  The list goes on and on; the point is that home care must also focus on the customer relationship.  The quality and training of the staff dictates the success of these initiatives.

Legendary Service Culture

Service sells.  There is no way to compete with strong relationships built on great customer service.  The culture of the agency should be one that provides exceptional service because that is the way it is done at that agency.  They can’t imagine doing it any other way.  By hiring the best and striving to create and maintain a Legendary Service Culture, the sales and marketing team will be very successful in bringing referrals to the agency.

Create the Ultimate Customer Experience

With the right people in place it is then possible to create the ultimate customer experience.  The goal should be that every customer’s expectations are exceeded.  The agency that knows the needs of their customers so well that they are met consistently and automatically will build long-term and valuable relationships.  In home care there are so many divergent and unique customer needs that understanding exactly what each customer wants, needs and expects is critical.  Only with that knowledge can the agency create the ultimate customer experience.  Once established it provides a significant competitive advantage.

Pride

A proud organization will promote the agency and its services.  Since we know that all of the staff are capable of generating significant numbers of referrals, pride becomes an important element in the overall sales and marketing strategy.  Pride is built over time by always doing the right things for the right reasons, consistently delivering quality services that exceed expectations and by hiring the best at all levels.  Pride sells!

How staff are recognized and rewarded for their efforts to promote the agency will generate additional business growth.  Rewarding positive actions in a fun and public fashion creates a bandwagon effect.  Everyone wants to participate and in doing so create tremendous inertia.

Celebrations

Celebrate your people.  There is tremendous marketing potential in how you celebrate Nurse’s week and acknowledge their important contributions.  Home Care month, Aide week, Doctor’s day, etc. provide natural opportunities for marketing.  Generate maximum opportunities from these activities.

If you are not approaching recruiting from the point of view of marketing, you will not reap the rewards of your efforts.  Every recruiting initiative should be designed to generate marketing exposure.  The quality of the employees will dictate the level of service, the customer experience and the long term success of the agency.  People are the key to home care relationships.  Successful sales and marketing of home care services is completely built on relationships.  The sales and marketing department should work closely with HR to unleash this important strategic and competitive advantage.