The Legendary Sales Leadership Letter 
 April 22, 2008

"Ambition is the path to success.  Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in."
- Bill Bradley -
 

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Mike's Message

Dear Friend,

I was listening to speakers at the major national home care and hospice organization conferences week before last and I was reminded of the amazing similarities between the actions and skills necessary to successfully advocate for our industry with elected officials and those needed to market your services to your referral partners.  From introduction to closing to asking for a commitment, the process and skills are the same.

See if this sounds familiar to you:

• You have limited time to capture their attention and provide them with a reason to engage in further discussion with you.

• Clear and concise message.

• Be consistent -- stay on message.

• It takes repetition to get the message to stick.

• Talk in terms of benefits to the member and their constituents -- they don't care what it does for you.

• Paint the picture -- use examples and really help them connect the dots with real situations.

• Use multiple channels to deliver the message -- in person, e-mail, phone, facsimile and mail.

• Close -- you have to ask the legislator for a commitment to act.

And I just hit the high points!  So please be sure to use your awesome sales skills to help your elected officials understand the critical issues facing home health and hospice.  In the closing section, you will find links to the major association websites to easily chime in on the issues.

Feature Article

Best Practices in Home Care and Hospice Sales and Marketing

Historically, our industry has trailed the rest of the business world in the areas of sales and marketing.  And, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  That being said, we are closing the gap and the sophistication of home health and hospice sales and marketing is on the rise.  This means that to compete effectively you must get better in these areas.

It has been exciting for me to be on the leading edge of these trends and personally observe them with many of my clients and in conversations with other industry leaders.  There has been a continual expansion of the types of organizations placing new emphasis on sales and marketing.  Initially, it was primarily the for-profit and freestanding agencies that lead the way.  Not-for-profit agencies soon followed as they felt the competitive pressures.  In the last eighteen months, I have seen a huge increase in inquiries from hospices.

As a result of these improvements, the expectations for each sales person and their productivity has increased.  Higher expectations have encouraged a number of organizations to beef up their sales management, sales training and support.

Leading Areas of Improvement include:

• Sales Training

• Sales Management

• CRM (customer relationship management)

• Intake Sales Training

• Sales Incentive Plans

• Tracking Systems

• Collateral Materials

Many organizations reacted to increased competition by throwing more people at the situation.  If they did not have "sales people" in the past, they hired them.  Then they discovered that just putting people out there on the street was no longer enough.  Sales training programs are becoming more prevalent.  Sales managers are more likely to spend more of their time in the field with the sales people coaching and mentoring them.

CRM software and solutions are more common and many software vendors are looking at adding functionality in this area.  The most progressive agencies have started the process of implementation.  Most are including their intake people on the list of users for CRM.  This enables them to know what the sales people know and vice versa.  Sales training and/or customer service training for the intake staff has become another key area of interest. It only makes sense to have those that talk to the referral sources most often trained to maximize those interactions.

Five years ago, bonus programs for home care and hospice sales people were few and far between.  In today's market they are more common.  Given the fact that you can't really "push" people to buy our services, it is a delicate area that requires a fine balance and must fit in the culture of the organization.

Tracking of where the referrals are coming from to evaluate return on investment from advertising programs is something that many agencies are implementing as a part of their CRM systems.  Many are finding that more traditional advertising, such as Yellow Pages, is not returning as much as direct sales efforts.  Many are shifting budget dollars into enhanced collateral materials such as brochures and sales sheets.

The bottom line is that the trend is clear, home care and hospice sales and marketing programs are becoming important areas of focus for senior management.  They are finding that they must enhance their approach just to stay competitive. 

Sales Training Corner

Last Square One Bootcamp Before Summer Break

The last Bootcamp before we break for the summer will be May 5 - 7 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  As of this writing, there are still five seats available for this session.

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"After 38 years of being a nurse and attending multiple conferences, I've never attended a more personable, educational and meaningful conference as this one.  The material I received and the techniques I learned will make my job so much easier.  Thank the Lord for people like you guys." -- Judy Trummert, Good Samaritan Home Health and Hospice

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"With the help of the 52 Week eSales Training Course, I have been able to increase our accounts by approximately 20% and have increased referrals and admits by an even greater percent.  Thank you, and my company also thanks you!" -- Barbara Edmisten, Highland Hospice

Special offer for Sales Leadership Letter subscribers:  Enroll up to 10 students for one low price of $599 (does not include audio CDs)!  Click here to take advantage of this offer.
 

Sales Tip

Are You Too Comfortable?

Are you too comfortable?  If so, I will contend that you are not producing to your full potential.

Why?  Because much of sales is not comfortable, when you craft and ask new questions, when you approach new people, when you follow-up with prospects, when handling problems, when handling objections, and the king for home care and hospice -- when you ask for the referrals!

You should be good at doing these activities and comfortable performing the skills, but if you are too comfortable, you need to step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to take it to the next level.  The cost of not doing so is accepting where you are as being good enough.  The big problem with that is we know you will lose ground and your referrals will take a down turn.  GUARANTEED!

The reason I am so certain about this is that I have seen it repeatedly with good sales people delivering good results.  By not continuing to push themselves as hard as they did to get where they are, when the flat or down trend starts, it is then that they HAVE to get back out of the comfort zone.  The longer they wait, the harder it will be to rebuild.

So, as you can see, the easiest way to continue your success and maintain a steady growth in referrals generated is to push yourself to ask those difficult questions, role play presentations and interactions, go back to your top six objections and rework/perfect your responses . . .

Don't get too comfortable or you will find that something will rock your world and force you to step out.  It is, after all, your choice to make.

Sales Leadership

Drug Reps:  To Hire or Not to Hire?

Over the last 12 to 18 months, I have seen a big uptick in pharmaceutical representatives looking for sales positions in home care and hospice.  This is a reflection of what is happening in the pharma world -- strategic changes resulting in layoffs, etc.  The opportunity in home care and hospice is one that is an emerging career path in a high growth industry.  On the surface it would appear that hiring pharmaceutical reps would be ideal, but what we know is that much like anyone else that you hire to sell for your company, they must be the right type of pharmaceutical sales person. 

Some very important distinctions between the two sales positions include:

• Pharmaceutical sales people are data driven and are provided with specific formulas to take data and create their sales plan.  This is pretty rigid, and if you interview someone for whom that is important to their past success, they will struggle selling home care or hospice.

• What we sell is a service, an intangible versus a tangible product.

• The physician has a greater role in making the selection of the drug to be prescribed.  Home care and hospice referrals are more often generically referred and someone in their organization is tasked with effecting the referrals and selecting the agency. 

• There are more problems that come up in the management of home care and hospice account management.  Compared with pharmaceuticals, our industry has a lot of moving parts, all of whom are people!  This results in service issues, unmet expectations, etc. that the home care or hospice sales professional must handle.  They must be adept at making these problems into relationship building opportunities.  Some pharma reps find this difficult to deal with.  You should interview to make sure that they have good problem resolution skills.

• Pharmaceutical reps are often incredulous when they find that they have the liberty to pick new places to make sales calls.  This is due to the highly structured and limited management techniques from their prior life.  The home care or hospice rep must be more entrepreneurial by nature.

• Budgets for sales activities have historically been much greater in the pharmaceutical world as well.  While changes to that industry are curbing some of the excesses, they still typically have a larger budget for entertaining.

The most successful sales representative situations are those where the sales person has become disenchanted with pharmaceutical sales.  With the downturn in the number of pharma sales positions available, the number of available pharmaceutical reps will continue to increase.  Take your time and hire the right ones.

When interviewing, you have to make sure they will be a good fit in our industry.  They should be on board with the fact that there are easier places to make a living, but none as rewarding.
 

Questions and Answers

Reader Questions and Answers

In each Legendary Sales Leadership Letter, Mike answers your questions.  Send them to us or call (800) 293-5471 and we'll make sure that yours are answered in a future issue. 

Question:

Do you have any specific suggestions on how to be a better listener?  I find myself getting very anxious and wanting to demonstrate how much I know.  This translates into my talking when I should be listening.

Answer:

First, practice visualizing yourself being a patient listener.  Be confident in your knowledge and abilities.  Knowing that you are the best at your job will make you less anxious.

Next, make yourself take notes while the customer is talking.  This will allow you to act interested and it will keep you occupied.  If you have immediate thoughts you wish to communicate, you can note them with the items you are writing down.  That way you can come back to them later and you don't have to worry about forgetting your brilliant thought.

Finally, smile, breathe and bite your tongue.  Practice great listening habits for six weeks and you will be over the hump -- it gets easier from here.

Question:

I have a referral source (MD - family practice) who refers about once a year.  The doctor does influence decision makers at the local hospital.  Is it worth my time to continue making visits to his office?

Answer:

Yes, as long as you do not have a higher value use of your time.  When determining time and territory management, you will find that you must always be evaluating the best use of your time.  In this example, you must value the time in terms of the one referral you get each year plus the number that they influence to you at the hospital.  Why do they only give you one referral per year?  Can you expand their use of your services?  Can you get more of their referrals?  This potential would also dictate the value of your time spent visiting them. 
 

About Us

Home Care and Hospice Marketing Solutions is the leading industry-specific resource for home care professionals.  Founded by Michael Ferris, we specialize in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service Coaching, Training, and Consulting for home health and hospice agencies.

We have expertise in Private Pay Home Care, Medicare Home Health, and Hospice including not-for-profit and for profit organizations.  Our services enable home care agencies to understand and capitalize on the opportunities in their market. 

The strategic and tactical services offered by Home Care and Hospice Marketing Solutions include:

• Sales training

• Coaching

• Sales management support

• Live sales training events

• Electronic sales training programs

• Market analysis

• Demographic profile reports

• Competitive analysis

• Comprehensive marketing plans

• On-site training programs

• Sales, marketing or customer service programs for corporate meetings

• Sales recruitment

• Customer service analysis

• Customer service training

Call (800) 293-5471 or write us and see how we can improve your home care and hospice sales skills!
 

Closing Thoughts

Take action!

I started this newsletter with the comparison of sales and advocacy.  The final piece of that puzzle is that it is all without benefit unless you take action.  Wherever you are in your learning process with sales skills, you must get out and use those skills and take action.  This will not only give you real life practice, but will also generate the results.  If we wait until all of the traffic lights between your driveway and the office are green, you will never leave the driveway!

Take a moment to tell your elected official how you feel about the issues.  Every e-mail received adds to the tallies that members of Congress analyze on a regular basis to determine what is important to their constituents.

National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) has tools to contact your members of Congress, issues, talking points, etc. at:

http://www.congressweb.com/nahc/actionalert11.htm

National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) has an easy-to-use tool to create an e-mail and contact:  http://capwiz.com/nhpco/home/

Thanks for all that you do for your community. 

Until next issue, Happy Selling!

Best,

Mike Ferris

Managing Principal
 

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