The franchise's operations manual compiles 25 years of information from successful partners and serves as a guide to new partners.
As the demand for aging services like caregivers continues to grow, agencies and franchises alike are taking the opportunity to expand and grow their businesses.
After considerable growth in 2022, Seniors Helping Seniors, a home care franchise, finished the first quarter of this year opening six new locations and completing eight new agreements for a total of 14 new territories, enabling their expansion in Illinois, Texas, Colorado, California, Florida, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Over the rest of this year, they plan on adding 25 franchise partners and are currently developing a website franchise owners can use as a resource for additional business support and to streamline internal processes.
The franchise currently has 125 locations serving 260 territories nationwide.
HealthLeaders spoke to Seniors Helping Seniors franchise consultant, Dave Wagner, to learn more about the franchise's growth strategies and best practices when looking for partners.
HealthLeaders: What has been the franchise's growth strategy during this current boom in demand for home care services?
Dave Wagner: The key is finding potential franchise owners who have a passion and energy to deliver high-quality care to seniors with our unique model.
The caregiver shortage is certainly a challenge. Many home care brands are plagued due to recruiting from a vast demographic pool of potential caregivers. However, our model of recruiting mature adults uniquely positions us to navigate this challenge. The goals of our target demographic have different motivations. As is always the case, no gimmick replaces the hard work of building a team of passionate caregivers, whatever the challenge of professional outreach.
HL: What is the importance of brand recognition when it comes to attracting clients and recruiting caregivers?
Wagner: It is essential in both of these areas. Awareness brings a level of belief and confidence. For families that are working through the angst of providing care, safety, and security for their loved one, a nationally recognized brand provides a lot of comfort, confidence, and credibility that they're aligning themselves with a supportive partner.
Our unique matching process invests effort into providing caregivers with similar life experiences, communication, and care scope that allows our client to flourish.
Regarding caregivers, brand recognition brings along with it the credibility and security in knowing that you're working for a provider of choice. In our case, the uniqueness of our business model is a lure for caregivers.
HL: What are some best practices for managing relationships with franchise partners to ensure they provide the quality of service the franchise upholds?
Wagner: Standardization of our branding in all facets of our marketing and advertising across the franchise population. To effectively take advantage of the power of the brand, we provide our franchise offices tools to assist in preparing their messaging. It makes the creative phase simpler and allows franchise offices to take advantage of the compounding duplication of Seniors Helping Seniors.
We have an operations manual which assists in establishing every facet of the agency. This is a collection of 25 years of information that we have gleaned from successful franchise owners to provide a road map for new franchise owners. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.
There is a consistent communication cadence with all our franchise owners. From the multi-weekly communications necessary to assist a new owner in getting launched to the less-frequent communications with our more mature owners, continuing to maintain this line of communication guarantees that the Seniors Helping Seniors brand and methods are duplicatable across the United States.
“For families that are working through the angst of providing care, safety, and security for their loved one, a nationally recognized brand provides a lot of comfort, confidence, and credibility that they're aligning themselves with a supportive partner.”
Dave Wagner, franchise consultant, Seniors Helping Seniors
Jasmyne Ray is the revenue cycle editor at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Brand recognition gives clients peace of mind that they're in good hands, and caregivers confidence that they're working with a supportive franchise.
Standardizing the franchise's branding across all channels takes the pressure off partners to create messaging.
Consistent communication with partners is key, beginning when they first launch their location and continuing once they've established themselves.