One factor keeping you on your toes might be the seasonality of the business. Use these tips to navigate the slow season with grace.
Care work has its seasons as a business, but that doesn’t make you a seasonal business owner.
There will be peaks of business—probably around major holidays and especially during the winter—but that doesn’t mean that your growth has to be stunted the remainder of the year. Here are some tips that we’ll go over on how to maintain and grow your registry during a slow season:
- Automate and delegate tasks using technology.
- Use this time to audit and focus on your regulatory landscape.
- Reallocate time to sales and marketing efforts.
Automate and delegate tasks using technology.
With the hundreds of things and tasks juggling in your head on a daily basis, the least you can do is think about the ways that you can use technology to automate.
Think about the Eisenhower Matrix: Do. Delegate. Delete. Defer.
Delegating doesn’t just have to be to another person on your team or a virtual assistant. This can mean putting more on the shoulders of your technology platforms.
Instead of spending a day of each week troubleshooting issues, take some time to improve operational processes like scheduling or check-in calls with key referral sources.
Delegating and automating tasks frees up more time for you and your team to focus on higher-level, strategic initiatives, find new places to seek out caregivers, and develop new referral contacts.
Use this time to audit and focus on your regulatory landscape.
One of the blessings-in-disguise that comes with a slow season is having more bandwidth to focus on regulatory initiatives and maintaining state standards, etc.
Caregiver registries, though on the hook for less liability than traditional home care agencies, are not immune to regulatory scrutiny. This underscores the importance of:
- Understanding state and federal laws that pertain to your registry.
- Consulting with legal counsel who are well-versed in this space.
- Maintaining a clean registry with proper operational procedures and technologies.
All of this takes time—and your team needs to be in lockstep with those initiatives, too. If you find yourself in a slow season, make regulatory alignment and understanding a priority.
Best Practice: Using a third-party payment processor can keep regulatory distance between your company and any caregivers that you contract with. This creates less of a paper trail connecting the two dots together, making it easier to defend your business model as a registry.
What’s the benefit of making regulatory understanding a priority?
Julie Black, Owner of Nurture Care, was hit with an unexpected audit from the DOL. Her team was equipped because of their use of the Ally platform for their caregiver registry’s operations.
They switched to Ally to use a platform that was purpose-built for their business while increasing their odds of passing a workers’ classification audit—which they did. “The partitioned payment systems in place saved us a lot of time. It’s very efficient, and we don’t spend a lot of time in the system because it’s running correctly,” Julie added.
Reallocate time to sales and marketing efforts.
One of the best parts about using technology is that it can save you time. What can that time be used for aside from keeping in line with regulatory standards? Sales and marketing.
“[In 2023] we hit a stride and found our ideal client growth strategies, growing over 100% during an eight-month window,” shared Jeff Mannel, Founder and CEO of Atlee Care.
“I have found that my best use of marketing and advertising is through a relationship we made with a local senior living community. I give them my tri-fold brochures, and he gives them out when new residents move into the community.”
Here are some referral partners and other marketing strategies that can help you grow your registry.
- Mental healthcare: Medicare has expanded access to mental healthcare services this year and we anticipate that they will recognize the growing need for care in the home. This is the perfect opportunity to leverage new territory and relationships to grow your registry long-term.
- Personal relationships: You might be focused on generating net-new relationships with healthcare businesses in your community and missing out on the people who are likely already a good fit. Michael Assimon, Director and Owner of Griswold Care Pairing of Central NY shared, “I’d estimate 80% of the time that with each new client we meet, there’s some connection I can make, whether from school, family, or work.”
- Are there any unique marketing strategies that you would add?
Slow seasons don’t have to cause panic in your caregiver registry.
Although slow seasons may not necessarily feel like a good thing, they might be a needed period of downtime to focus on centering yourself and your role in your business.
Technology can act as a respite that helps you to recharge. Whether it’s through automation or time savings, tech enables you to play a bigger role in more important parts of the business or parts that you find more enjoyable.
Are you looking for a registry management software that can help you grow during a slow season? Look no further than Ally. Get in touch with us to schedule a demo.
