How to increase your Private Paying Clients within your Home Care Business
In this post that will take approximately 4 minutes to read I will tell you how to win more Private paying Clients to your Home Care Business.
But first, why are you not taking on more Private Clients?
Many of you will have won a tender and feel you don't have to attract Private Clients. I mean why would you? The Local authority will give you as much work as you want, You don't have to advertise, you can save money by not advertising. It's easier to recruit when you know you have lots of work coming in.
I get it, I hear this a lot. Working with the local authority is never a problem until it becomes a problem.
Why would it become a problem?
Quite often the margins with a tender get squeezed too tightly. As the cost of living and minimum wage increases your margins can all but disappear. If the local authority won’t increase rates, making a profit can be tough.
You end up working a lot for very little rewards and feel like giving up. Then the local authority query your invoices, put payments on hold and Boom, your cash flow is in trouble. Paying the bills is hard, staff worry about their wages and you worry about losing the business.
Not a nice position to be in.
So how do you make things better?
The answer is winning work in the Private sector. When you balance your books and have a bigger share of Private Work, life gets easier. One thing I noticed in my 15 years of home care was, The majority of elderly Private Clients always paid on time. They are of a generation who do not like to owe money. As soon as the invoice hits they paid. This is good for business, you get a higher rate of return and are paid on time. Cash flow is never a problem when you have a lot of Private work.
So How do you attract more private clients?
Simply put - The more you do the more you get. If you plan your weeks and days to make sure you achieve certain outcomes, you will attract more clients.
I.e.
- How Many posts are you going to make this week?
- How Many Blogs will you write this week?
- How Many potential clients or introducers will you connect with this week?
- How Many calls to current clients will you make to upsell this week?
- How Many referrals will you get this week?
Did you notice a common theme? - How Many / This Week
You have to put figures next to your outcomes.
Don’t Do That, Do This…..
Don’t go into the week saying I’ll Get some referrals, do some posts and call a few clients. This isn’t good enough. There needs to be a target that is measurable and realistic.
Let me explain
After a while of setting measurable targets you will know the metrics. This makes winning private clients easier.
For example,
Lets say you want to increase by 20 hours a week - 80 a month. This is achievable and you can sustain it without the quality of care declining. If you know, every 10 clients you speak to wins an average of 2 hours extra a week. Speaking to 40 clients a week (8 a day presuming Mon-Friday) will give you an extra 8 Hours
Target of 20 – 8 Gained = 12 more to achieve.
If you also know that on average you increase your traffic to your website and attract 5 enquiries a week through posting 3 pieces of content a day and those 5 enquiries will transfer to 10 hours of care a week. Then target yourself to write 15 posts a week.
5 enquiries - 10 Hours of care.
12 - 10 gained = Only 2 more hours to achieve
If you also knew on average for every 10 people you approached for a referral you got an extra 2 hours a week, then approach 2 people a day.
So your weekly plan would look like this
- I will speak to 8 clients a day to ask what extra we can do for them and introduce our new service
- I will write 3 posts a day and schedule them to go on all platforms
- I will speak to at least 2 people a day either x clients, clients or staff to ask for a referral.
Now you have a target that will drive 20 hours Private clients to you a week. Keep doing this and you increase by 80 hours a month (excluding churn rate) So with a little planning, paying attention to the metrics, setting targets and taking action, you will attract Private clients without any ad spend at all.
It worked for me and my clients and it will work for you once you understand the numbers and take action.
You have nothing to lose by trying but everything to lose by putting to much trust in the Local Authority.