Passion, Ethics and Sales
Posted by Mike Ferris on Friday, March 28, 2008 and posted in Home Health Care Hospice SalesThe best way to create a solid business foundation is to foster a customer centric, sales focused organization. If the agency always approaches every decision with the question “what’s best for the patient,” then everything else will fall into place. Acting in this manner does not run contrary to operating a good business—it simply keeps things in proper perspective. It is entirely consistent with your mission. By empowering all members of the agency to focus on selling its services, referrals will increase along with the pride felt for the company.
Customer-centricity marries sales with customer service. Training teaches your customer service (intake) personnel how to recognize and respond to sales opportunities. Customers are recognized as the organization’s most important asset. The sales approach and management of customers takes a long-term orientation.
Customer centric sales techniques are built around needs assessment. The sales people (both outside and inside) ask purposeful, relevant questions. They have meaningful conversations with customers and offer solutions that are directly related to their needs. This will empower referral sources to make the only logical choice—your agency.
Selling home care and hospice services requires the perfect balance of sales skills, people skills, product knowledge, enthusiasm and ethics. Long-term success will elude those who are not passionate about home health and hospice. There are easier places to make a living than selling these services, but no more rewarding sales career.
Passion and enthusiasm are contagious and they produce sales results! Having a positive self image and visualizing success are essential to maintaining an enthusiastic attitude. The sales team must feel that they are empowered, appreciated, respected and heard. This is true in all realms of sales, but is especially true when selling an intangible such as the services we provide to our communities.
The Customer Comes First
Putting the customer first will pay big dividends in home care and hospice sales. This includes the agency putting the needs and wants of the patients first as well as those of the referral sources. If you ask 100 referral sources what is most important to them when selecting a home care or hospice, at least 95% of them will respond “that they take good care of my patients.” But when you ask what that means to them is when you start getting interesting, actionable insights that can be used to build strong relationships.
Train the sales team to ask how they can make a referral source’s life easier. If you can make it demonstrably easier to refer to your agency, you will get the referrals. Find out how the referral source would like to be treated and then create a customized “plan of care” for each of them. We create individual care plans for our patients, why not for the referral sources?
Communicating Quality
The best way to communicate quality is to personify it—make it tangible. How you communicate quality is a determent of successful home care and hospice sales and marketing. The key lies not in just talking about quality, but rather in demonstrating it to each referral source in a way that is meaningful to them. Every agency claims to provide quality services, in fact, quality in most home care or hospice referrals is presumed.
Use tangible examples that demonstrate how quality shows up at your agency. Here are just a few ways to do this:
- Use benchmarked data in graphical format to show how your outcomes compare to others.
- Utilize telemedicine and explain that your agency feels that this represents the new standard of care for many diagnoses. That the agency has made this investment because it is consistent with providing the best possible care.
- Patient and family testimonials that speak to the wonderful care that they received from your company.
- Endorsements from local, well respected physicians.
- Introduce clinical field staff to the physicians and offices of the patients they serve.
Be passionate about home care and hospice, love what you do, act with integrity, and keep smiling.
Until next week, Happy Selling!