Home Instead Franchise Owner Achieves Up to 88% Year-Over-Year Growth

In the last year, all, all three of my franchise offices have, uh, seen significant growth. Um, in my Maplewood, uh, territory, we're at sixty-six percent growth year over year. At my Mendota Heights territory, we're at forty-eight percent. And at my Burnsville territory, we're at, um, eighty-eight percent year over year growth. The, um, number of referrals that we receive has been benchmarked against the network of other Home Insteads. We're, we're always in about the top ten percent. My name is Jim Pitzner. I live in, uh, Maple Grove, Minnesota. I own three Home Instead franchises that serve the St. Paul, Minnesota metro area and southern metro area as well. The referrals that we get from referral providers are our most valuable referrals. They're the ones that usually convert at the highest rate. The person who is in charge of getting those referrals, we call them a home care consultant, and it's a challenging position to, um, to sort of oversee, because they're out there in the field working with, you know, different various, uh, referral providers, and it's a challenge to kinda, uh, oversee that position and make sure, make sure that what they're doing is effective out in the field. That is sort of the number one, making sure that that person is being effective. And so prior to working with Melanie, those are some of the challenges that I faced. Uh, what I liked is they had very specific training for that position, for the home care consultant position, and that wasn't something that I'd seen before or had access to. Uh, my home care consultant, Claire, had just broken her ankle, and so she was not going to be able to go out in the field for a couple months, and so I was looking for a way to support her so that, um, she could be even more valuable when she got, was able to get back out there in the field. We ended up, uh, working with, uh, Home Care Sales with their highest level package and, uh, part of that is a one-on-one training with, uh, with Melanie and some of her people, and I took part in some of those. And just hearing the level of expertise that she had, the sales IQ, uh, that, that she had, uh, I was very impressed with. But also, my home care consultant was pretty early on, uh, in the first couple months, was getting some great results out in the field just with the, the tactical changes that we made, uh, in order for her to get in front of people and the response that she was getting from some of our referral providers. I think the most valuable part of the partnership is the ongoing, uh, expertise that Home Care Sales brings, uh, on a monthly, weekly basis. The materials that they've provided that we can bring out to our, our referral partners has been very valuable. And also just, uh, reporting. The account level review where I know that my home care salesperson really has been able to sit with Melanie and her people and dig into our referral providers, find out, you know, who are our best referral providers, where are our best opportunities, what is the strategy that we should be putting together to, uh, get results and get more referrals. And that's been very valuable to, to us. Melanie has a lot of great industry knowledge, and it's, it's rare, uh, out there in, in the world today for someone to have that level, and it's expertise and a system that can be taught that will strengthen any, uh, home care sales and marketing person, and her accountability, uh, makes that much easier for me. The way this system works too, we're providing, you know, valuable educational resources to each, each, uh, referral provider that we talk to. Um, so they actually kinda look forward to when we, we come in the door 'cause they know we're, we're not just there to ask them, "Hey, do you have a referral for me?" We're there to talk about, you know, how home care can help solve a particular issue for them. So if you're thinking about working with HCS, I would suggest going all in. I would suggest that you, uh, at least for a year, uh, have the one-on-one coaching. Also have the piece of meeting with other home care salespeople throughout the country, other, uh, clients of theirs. And I would suggest, uh, doing that for one full year for sure, because it will help to, uh, establish the system that works and is repeatable, and it kinda gets into, uh, their day-to-day. There are three other owners in, in the area, uh, in our metro area that have also used, uh, HCS, and they also had great results just like we did.