Home care companies are constantly looking for new growth avenues and expansion opportunities. In order to reach new heights, leaders at companies like TheKey, Comfort Keepers and Nova Leap are exploring various strategies to scale their businesses.
For TheKey, this means focusing on three main areas. One of these areas is the company’s “boots on the ground” sales force.
“That is in every market that we serve clients in today,” Melissa Reyes, president of the west division at TheKey, said during a panel discussion at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference last month. “That has always been a big part of our structure and our model. Currently, we have just over 85 sales representatives across the nation, and really they’re out there creating and growing the partnerships and relationships with the 3,000 referral partners that we have across the nation.”
Delray, Florida-based TheKey provides home care, memory care and specialized care services in more than 100 markets throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia.
TheKey is also throwing its weight behind digital marketing and its online presence. One of the reasons for this push is because TheKey wants to be a solution that is easy to discover in a crowded home care marketplace, according to Reyes.
“We’re seeing more and more that family members are involved in the decision making, and many times those family members … they’re a state or two away,” she said. “We want to ensure that when someone is looking for care for their loved one, we’re easy to find online, they can understand what it is that we do and what differentiates us, and also hear what our clients are saying about us.”
Gathering and implementing feedback is also top of mind at TheKey. Reyes noted that consuming feedback can lead to better client satisfaction, and, in turn, lead to a boost in word-of-mouth referrals.
Re-franchising and organic growth
Irvine, California-based Comfort Keepers is one of the largest personal home care providers in the U.S. The company has more than 600 locations, and about 70 company-owned locations.
Much of the company’s growth efforts this year and next are focused on re-franchising these company-owned locations, according to Ramzi Abdine, chief operating officer of Comfort Keepers.
“That’s an exercise that takes away bandwidth from every department in the company — HR, legal, compliance, operations, franchise development — they’re all involved in that,” he said during the panel discussion. “It’s kind of like changing the wheels while driving.”
Aside from re-franchising Comfort Keepers’ company-owned locations — which Abdine described as a “herculean effort” — the organization is also looking to speciality care programs as a growth driver. The company has plans to launch a Alzheimer’s and dementia specialty care program, specifically.
Additionally, Comfort Keepers is launching a CRM for its franchise owners.
“We really want to understand what is going on with our consumers and our caregivers,” Abdine said. “We want to evolve to meet their needs.”
Nova Scotia-based Nova Leap, a company that has gained a reputation for being an active player on the acquisition market, is setting its sights on organic growth.
“We’re in the process of focusing on organic growth, which we think will come from our sales force, so we’re investing in that,” Chris Dobbin, president and CEO of Nova Leap, said during the discussion.
Nova Leap is a Canada-based home care organization that has been growing in the U.S. The company has operations in Nova Scotia and 11 different states.
Nova Leap’s focus on organic growth, however, doesn’t mean that the company is backing away from M&A completely.
“We’ll continue to make acquisitions as part of our growth strategy,” Dobbin said. “Historically, between 2017 to 2021, we averaged one acquisition per quarter … we paused that in 2022 and in 2023 we’re back in the acquisition trail. We just made a tiny one in Massachusetts, and expect to make more this year and in the coming years.”
Companies featured in this article:
