Goal for the Month of June: 

The theme for the month of June needs to be to maximize referrals before the summer begins in earnest.  It is too easy to blame dips in referrals on seasonality—don’t let it happen.  Be proactive and maintain promotional efforts all summer long to keep your numbers up.

Monthly Reminders:

Lots of weddings and even more anniversaries to celebrate.  Keep a list of all of your referral sources’ anniversaries so that you can send them a card or take them a small gift.  Make sure to keep your ear to the ground so that you know when their children plan to marry.

Holidays and Important Dates in June:

Adopt-a-shelter-car Month
Cancer from the Sun Month
Child Vision Awareness Month
Children’s Awareness Month
Effective Communication Month
Entrepreneurs “Do It Yourself” Marketing Month
Dairy Month
Fireworks Eye Safety Month
International People Skills Month
National Aphasia Awareness Month
National Candy Month
National Iced Tea Month
National Rivers Month
National Rose Month
National Safety Month
Potty Training Awareness Month
Professional Wellness Month
Sports America Kids Month
Student Safety Month
Turkey Lovers’ Month
Vision Research Month
Rebuild Your Life Month

Excerpted from 101 Promotional Strategies That Deliver Legendary Results without Busting Your Budget! by Michael Ferris

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This week’s post is a follow-up to last week’s article on emerging trends in home care and hospice sales and marketing.  This week, we’ll address some current trends that will help your agency meet the competitive challenges in our industry.

Integration with physician practices through the creation of specialty programs continues to work well.  The deeper the integration of the home care agency with the referral source’s practice, the harder it is for the competition to siphon off any business.  Find out how the agency can best serve the referral source by enhancing their ability to provide excellent care and outcomes for their patients.

On the subject of outcomes, there is a continued focus on quality measures and they are being used aggressively to market an agency’s services.  Home Care Compare and other datasets are being used to generate graphical representations that show the benefits and advantages of working with a specific agency.  As the prospect of pay for performance becomes more visible across the entire Medicare continuum of care, there will be more interest in working with agencies that can improve the other provider’s outcomes.

Agencies are having good success using telehealth along with specialty programs as points of differentiation.  The key to these agencies success lies in their ability to communicate the benefits to the referral sources of these programs.  This is accomplished by training their sales people how to sell the benefits and creating collateral materials to support the sales effort.  Specific needs must be uncovered for the referral source and a telehealth solution presented.  Due to the barriers to entry in the home telehealth field, this continues to be an important differentiating factor.

Sales and customer service training for the intake department is paying big dividends.  Since the bulk of referrals are handled by these staff members, it only makes sense to train them to listen for needs, suggest solutions and arrange to have a representative of the agency come to the home to aid the transition to the home.  In any other industry the internal sales department would be provided with ongoing training to increase the number and quality of sales.  Home care agencies totally overlook this element and as a result they make it more difficult to refer patients to the agency.  Making it as easy to refer to the agency has been proven to increase referrals dramatically.

There is an evolving trend in Medicare home health and hospice of using referral representatives to facilitate the admission of patient referrals.  These referral representatives are trained to be good at customer service and selling to the patients and their families.  Agencies are finding that their conversion ratio is rising dramatically and it is removing much of the admission paperwork and time from the nurses.  These representatives can be trained to install telehealth systems and train the patient and or caregivers to use them properly.  This allows more telehealth units to be placed in more patients’ homes with less stress on the nursing staff.

Private Duty agencies are having success offering “Peace of Mind” packages that provide the client’s family members a feeling of security.  These packages include some standard services such as home makers and medication tray set-up.  By adding either daily phone calls or telehealth or both, the agency provides a higher level of security.  This is an emerging market for telehealth.  Private duty agencies can set up their own programs or in most cases will partner with a local agency that offers telehealth services.  Additionally, since so many family members live in another area of the country the agencies have set up e-mail and or phone updates to keep them apprised of their family member’s current status.  The secret to success is to package the services and then market the benefits not the features.

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Home care and hospice marketing is constantly evolving, which is reflective of our industry.  Each year brings added levels of sophistication to sales and marketing programs.  Couple this with a substantial increase in the investment by home care and hospice in sales and marketing, and you’ll see that the major industry trend is towards increased competitive pressures.  This week’s column provides some insights from the current marketplace which are intended to collectively enable your agency to meet these challenges.

Agencies of all sizes and shapes are scrambling to protect their flow of referrals and increase them.  The level of competition in all parts of the country (with the exception of one or two CON states) is fierce.  An appropriate question, then, is “What should I be doing to market my services?”

Why Market?

From time to time, I encounter home care or hospice executives who pose the question, “Why should I market?” My response is a question put to them quite simply, “Do you want to ensure the financial success of your agency so that you can continue to provide your community with the best medical care?” The key way to ensure future success is to create a strong marketing program now that establishes and supports your agency’s “brand” in the community, and one that cements your agency in referral sources’ minds as their home care provider of choice.  Do you know what your brand is?  Do your customers?  What type of service or program do you provide that stands distinct and apart from your competitors?  What makes your operation unique?  The answers to these questions are ones that will shape the ultimate conceptualization of your marketing plan.

Marketing, after all, is simply just giving the consumer what he or she wants.  The art of marketing lies in crafting a message and providing a corresponding delivery mechanism to reach the target audience in the most efficient fashion.  The task at hand is to translate sales and marketing best practices to the home care arena, and refine it to fit your agency.  Then shape the message to highlight the differentiating factors for each segment of the market you serve.

One very important distinction that needs to be made is between marketing and sales.  Marketing is getting the message out to the marketplace, and sales is actually getting the referral.  Your agency staff should all be sales people.  That’s a statement that gets home care and hospice professionals worried.  It was tough enough for them to buy that they were all in marketing; now they are expected to be sales people?  A culture change in your agency will take time, so start now.

Next week:  What’s currently working in the industry?

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Brand loyalty is not just for the conglomerates and big businesses.  Smart branding is the best way to maximize your results.  Your brand is simply defined as the positive or negative inclination to select your home health or hospice agency over another.  It is the aggregation of the sales presentations, stories and relationships with the community.  It is the difference between being viewed as a commodity and not.

Selling a service vs. selling product is a much more difficult brand to build.  There is no “widget” to use with varying degrees of customer satisfaction.  There is no packaging to use to brand the product in the customer’s minds.  At past NAHC Annual Meetings there have been incredible leaders from many industries as diverse as Ritz-Carlton and Harley Davidson.  They have shared the essence of what they have built as their brand, their promise to their customers.  In home care and hospice this is where we need to focus—our promise to the patients, their families and the community.

I believe that we should look at our companies as being in the hospitality industry.  There are many correlations to our industry with the exception that we are delivering the service as a guest in their home.  As a result, it removes the ability to charm the customer with decor and vista.  I am sure that we have all had a less than stellar customer service encounter in a hotel that made up for it with ambiance.  This is not to forgive bad service, only to point out that we have less control over environment in our hospitality model!

The brand is a major investment that must be nurtured and supported with a consistent image, message and customer relationship.  Make it more tangible with stories and testimonials.  Provide the people your agency touches an easy mechanism to spread the word in the community.

Branding is not solely logos and colors, and it is not an exact discipline. Every element of outreach, every “conversation” with the potential customer must be taken into consideration because branding happens at every point of contact.

Consistency of message and image are important to building a strong brand.  Every time you use anything different you are “muddying” the water and making it more difficult for the consumer to latch onto your brand.  For this reason, it is vitally important that all elements of your agency use the logo, message, color, look and feel on a consistent basis.  Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by using multiple looks in the market.  Another element that causes some problems is when there is a name change.  This is a process that requires a long-term approach.  You must use the old name with the new for a period of two to three years to make sure that you do not lose customers for the wrong reason.  Even then it is prudent to maintain the listing in the phone book, on the Internet, etc. for the old name—just to catch those that didn’t get the new one!

First impressions are part of the brand created in the customer’s mind but it is truly the collective impressions on the customer by the agency.  These could happen through advertising and other outreach activities.  There are certain times in each relationship where the branding occurs.

Hospice providers have the benefit and the challenge of serving the end of life patient and their families.  There are two key seminal moments in the customer relationship for hospice agencies.  The first occurs during the admission process and the latter when the patient is actively dying.

One example of smart branding would be the agencies that have licensed the 1800HOMECARE vanity phone number.  The same principle that fueled the tremendous growth of 1800FLOWERS can work in our industry as well.  According to the findings of a June 2002 study by Response Marketing Group of Burlington, Vermont, nearly 60% of participants recalled the vanity numbers they had heard after only one exposure to a radio advertisement. 

Now that as an industry we have gone “from good to great,” the quest is now to go from great to greater!  The consumer is becoming more educated about home care and hospice, the competition is pushing the envelope and the value of your brand has never been more important.  The sales team has the chore of expanding the brand in the community; what are you doing to support them in this effort?  Your brand is your promise; the sales team and the care delivery teams are building it everyday!

Want to know what your brand is in the community?  Ask your customers and potential customers.

Until next week, Have Fun, Be Proud and Happy Selling!

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You should plan to celebrate staff appreciation week and nurse appreciation week this month.  One agency created a billboard advertisement with a photo of their nurses and the caption “Our Thanks to Our Nurses.  Nurse Appreciation Week May 7-13.” This not only shows your staff that you care, but it also promotes your image in the community.  When they were recruiting nurses, they were amazed by how many cited the billboard in their decision to apply when they saw the classified ad.

This is National Older Americans Month—there are many ways to tie in a promotion this observance.  For example, co-sponsor an event with an organization for the elderly (AARP, Alzheimer’s Association, National Alliance for Caregiving, to name a few) at a senior center, retirement community or assisted living facility.

Monthly Reminders:

It’s time to start preparing for summer.  Take out those notes you made since you started talking with referral sources about their vacation plans months ago.  Bring something appropriate for the vacation the week before your referral source leaves.  Tie the gift to the trip or give something that will be helpful to the planning or packing process.

Excerpted from 101 Home Care Promotional Strategies That Deliver Legendary Results without Busting Your Budget! by Michael Ferris

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