The Legendary Sales Leadership Letter 
 July 22, 2008

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Mike's Message

Dear Friend,

Thanks to all of you who wrote in with congratulations on the new division. There was a lot of excitement about having Home Care and Hospice Marketing Solutions and Polly Rehnwall, Inc. under the Simione Consultants umbrella. I know that we can better meet all of your needs today and look forward to discussing them with you. 

It was great to see some of you at the recent NAHC conference. I'm really looking forward to the next Square One Bootcamp as we will have more trainers, including Polly Rehnwall. It is guaranteed to be a blockbuster training program.

Press release opportunity:  There is always a need for your local newspaper to have human interest stories that are timely. The current stress upon home care and hospices due to the record gas prices is a good opportunity to get some press. The national associations have plenty of data to add in to make it a great release. For example, at the NAHC Financial Management Conference, it was revealed that home care and hospices drive approximately 4.8 billion miles each year serving their communities. That's about twice the number of miles driven by UPS and FedEx. I would include your estimated annual mileage and a particular staff member who cares for more remote patients.

Offer to have photos taken of the caregiver in or with his or her car. If you have cars with your agency name on them, make sure that the photo shows the car -- it is a moving billboard and should be in the photo in the paper to reinforce the brand.

We are past the midway mark in the calendar year 2008; time to lock and load with strategies to propel your referrals.  Keep doing the right things, for the right reasons and success will be yours. 

Hope you enjoy this issue and Happy Selling! 

Best,

Mike Ferris

Director

Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

mferris@simione.com

Feature Article

Home Care and Hospice Growth is Not Accidental!

by Michael Ferris

Think back on all of the things that have made your agency what it is today. What have you done over the years to build the business? I think you'll find that you built a successful agency on the back of strong relationships. These relationships are at many levels -- with your staff, referral sources, patients, their families and your community. The strength of the relationships has a direct correlation to your success in home care and hospice.

Relationships are built based on trust and familiarity. They start with a first interaction and continue through the process of getting to know each other. Sounds a lot like dating, doesn’t it? Referrals are generated based on relationships. My contention is that your agency’s most important asset is the collective relationships that you have in the community. The stronger the relationship the more likely you are to receive their referrals. The more trust, the greater your ability to enable the referral source to increase their utilization of home care and hospice. There are two ways to grow referrals: by taking referrals that would have otherwise gone to a competitor or by expanding their use of home care or hospice. The latter is, in many markets, the greater opportunity for growth, especially for a hospice program.

Much like your clinical and financial practices, you must always be looking for ways to perfect your processes. The sales and marketing processes must continue to be perfected and refined. You cannot rest on your laurels at any time. If things are going really well and the referrals keep growing, this is the BEST time to continue to improve. You will gain the most return on your investment and you will never be in a position of having to figure out why referrals are flat or down and making changes to turn the trend around.

Your sales program must be cultivated, like a garden. You have to start with the best sales people, train them and support them in their efforts. They must target the most important potential referral sources, building, managing and protecting relationships. It is no longer enough for sales people to be out in the community going where the wind takes them. Being proactive versus reactive is always going to generate the best results. If you are not providing your sales people with accurate and up to date data, it is almost impossible for them to operate at their best.

Measuring results has shown to provide the best metrics for determining the effectiveness of the sales program. There must be a tracking mechanism to enable accurate analysis. With results, you can reward success and attend to problems. The organization should have shared vision, mission and goals. Acting with purpose and knowing where they stand will empower the entire group to advocate for the program in the community.

Here are Some National Best Practices:

• Training -- sales training for outside and inside (intake) sales people must be continual and based on what works in home care and hospice. Start with a basic training program and continue with weekly, monthly and quarterly training initiatives. This is the single most important place that you can invest your resources and provides the platform for everything else listed below. Sales people are expensive; make sure they are well trained and challenged to become the best in their field.

• CRM (customer relationship management) -- automated solutions that enable the organization to manage all of their referral relationships is essential. Start by looking at what your current IT system will allow you to track and report. Then determine if you need a separate CRM solution that can be integrated with your current system. The system should enable you to manage the relationships with your referral sources, prospective referral sources and with the community. Marketing and advertising program responses and consumer inquiries should be tracked and the follow-up automated. Tracking of expenses incurred by referral source is also a best practice that enables best allocation of resources and corporate compliance with internal policies on annual expenses per referral source.

• Account Analysis -- every account must be profiled and a customized service plan created. An agency’s allocation of resources must be based on their relative value. The most important referral sources must be the top priority. Trends and performance analysis must be ongoing. If a referral source has increased or decreased or if there is a gap in normal referral patterns, the quicker you act the better.

• Market Analysis -- discovering where the best opportunities lie in your market or for any planned market expansions should include a thorough analysis of the available data. There are reports that can show you the Medicare discharges by DRG from facilities, market share out of market discharges coming into your area, etc. that can enable you to save much time and energy as well as confirming existing experiential data.

• Differentiation -- establishing your agency as being the logical choice because you have transcended the view of home care or hospice as a commodity. It is no longer sufficient to just be a good provider of services -- you must differentiate your services, outcomes and capabilities to enjoy the strongest relationships.

• Enhanced Communication -- the point of care capabilities for agencies is now the norm for home care service. Why not provide the same abilities for your sales team? There should be communication with between the inside sales team, outside sales people and clinical that is as close to real time as is practical. The best performing agencies are putting the necessary information at the finger tips of those interfacing with the referral sources.

• Empowerment -- the best agencies empower everyone in the organization to act as a part of the sales team. Everyone shares goals based on the mission and vision of the organization.

• Reward and recognize -- the sales team should have an ongoing reward for surpassing performance expectations. All agency members should be recognized when new levels of growth are attained.

• Focus and execution -- as will all quality initiatives, there must be focus on process and a dedication to execution. Too often sales and marketing initiatives in our industry have great ideas at the inception and poor execution.

Conduct a 360° review of your sales and marketing program. By involving all areas of your agency in the review you will gain the greatest insight and engender feelings of inclusion. Once you have completed your review, set a program in motion to continually improve your processes, implement best practices from around the nation and expand the use of home care and hospice services in your community. Good luck and Happy Selling!
 

Sales Training Corner

A Few Seats Remain for August Square One Bootcamp!

Join us for the next Square One Bootcamp which will be held August 25 - 27 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Spaces are filling up quickly so reserve your seat now to be part of what promises to be a smash hit event!

You have two registration options:

To lock in a seat with a $500 deposit, click here.

To lock in a seat with your full payment, click here.

"I am a veteran of healthcare sales and marketing with 20+ years of DME and Home Respiratory experience.  Simply stated, it's refreshing to participate in a thoughtfully developed sales and training program that offers new techniques while sharpening old skills.  I would highly recommend Square One Bootcamp for the novice as well as the seasoned sales professional." -- Anthony Succo, Healthkeeperz

52 Week eSales Training Course

Our groundbreaking and highly-acclaimed 52 Week eSales Training Course is available for one to one hundred students.  It provides a weekly lesson (takes about 30 minutes to complete) that will keep your sales team members' skills sharp.  Students have said that the course supported them in becoming better at their profession, increased their referrals and forced them to review the basics.  On average, our 52 Week eLearning participants have increased their referrals by over 31%! 

"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

Reframe What's Difficult: "Time", Not "Decision"

We always talk about the importance of empathizing with patients and families. But we still have to be careful in how we express our concern and support them, as we don’t want to reinforce the angst around choosing hospice care.

Language matters.

One of the phrases we often hear is, “I know it’s a difficult decision.” Catch yourself (or your team members) the next time you hear this. Then try some simple reframing: Change “difficult decision” to “difficult time.”

You don’t want to emphasize the difficulty in choosing hospice, because that casts a negative light on your very valuable service. But you want to empathize with the difficult time that the patient and family are having in dealing with the patient’s illness or family situation.

While you’re at it, reinforce the family’s (or referral source’s) decision to contact you. We know that guilt around choosing hospice can cause families much stress, so reassuring them that they’ve done the right thing helps support them. They appreciate knowing that they’re not alone in feeling that way and that it’s natural for families to react like this.

Finally, share some real stories with them of how others in their same situation have dealt with the same issues, but found that having hospice by their side made it so much easier.
 

Sales Leadership

Clash of the Titans? Improve Team Relations

It's inevitable: There's always a natural tension between the team growing the census and the one delivering the service. This is true in any business, whether it's making widgets or serving patients. Why? It's not that the teams are uncaring or don't want to see hospice care expanded. But growth is disruptive, especially when it's as rapid as it is in many markets today.

Our goal here is not to eliminate the natural tension, as that's just not realistic. Instead, we want to reduce it and manage it as best we can.

The service promise. The first step is to set some expectations for what the referral and admission team will be delivering to the care teams. It's best to take an 80-20 approach, with a service promise that the admission will be complete 80% of the time. What's "complete?" That usually means that all mandatory fields (demographic and clinical) are completed in the patient database, registration forms are signed, and supporting clinical documentation is scanned to a patient file.

Huh? Progressive hospices are getting rid of the antiquated paper chart by scanning signed forms, written progress notes, orders and other faxed documents. A patient file is created containing this information in a PDF or other scanned format.

The initial plan. Note that a critical step is to create mandatory fields in the assessment tool. The key here is to look at the admission as just the initial plan of care, not a comprehensive review that exhausts patients and families on day one. The initial assessment is an overview of needs. Then each care team member generates the more detailed, comprehensive plan of care during the first few days (or week) after admission.

The other 20%. It's the other 20% of the time that generally causes the tension. "But look at this form. It's not completed. And they didn't ask about the funeral home. I thought that was required." Sound familiar?

Tip: Start by clarifying what's mandatory and what isn't. For example, maybe the funeral home was required in the past, but now it's not. Maybe it's filled in half the time because it was relevant to discuss at admission, but in this case, it wasn't. Remember also that saying it once doesn't mean everyone understands it. Changes have to be repeated over and over before they are embedded.

The communication plan. This may be the most important part of the tension reduction process. Don't just hand them a mishmash of forms and half-completed tools. We recommend that, when the referral center or admissions nurse emails the alert of a new patient to the team, they indicate the circumstance resulting in the 20% situation. Maybe it was late at night or the patient and family were very exhausted, or it wasn't the time to discuss a DNR. Whatever the situation, the email message should let the team know that parts are missing from the 80% service promise.

The team-building plan. Here's a great idea to build relationships with the teams: Have the nurse case manager accompany an admissions nurse or rep on the admission visit. Then that same admission team member should accompany the nurse and social worker on their initial visits to the patient. Just do this a couple times and you'll all be amazed at how it helps open each others' eyes to the challenges each faces.
 

Questions and Answers

Reader Questions and Answers

In each Legendary Sales Leadership Letter, we answer your questions.  Send them to us or call (800) 653-4043 and we'll make sure that yours are answered in a future issue. 

Here are this week's questions answered:

Question:

What is the best way to convert to an electronic CRM solution? 

Answer:

First, and most importantly, congratulations on deciding to move forward with a CRM solution! The best way to convert (I assume from a paper system) is to make sure that you are collecting all of the information in your current account profile books. If there are elements that you have not been collecting, this is a good time to do so. (Note: I believe it is advisable to have a paper system in place and then convert to an electronic one. You don't have to learn a new system and methodology.)

Just as with any software implementation, you will want to work closely with the vendor to create the plan. Hire someone to input/import the account data rather than having the sales people doing the data entry. This will clean up the data and reduce the amount of time spent learning the new software. And, this all needs to happen without neglecting the referral partners -- or you will see a big dip. Hope this helps.

Question:

What are your tips for setting goals and obtaining them? 

Answer:

The number one tip is to know why you are doing what you are doing. What drives you and what are your aspirations? Establish your personal goals and make sure that your professional goals support them. Be very clear on these elements and the rest will fall into place.

Question:

Do you have any feedback on how an intake department should look so that it successfully supports the sales reps?

Answer:

This is an excellent question and one that has many answers. Much depends on the structure of your organization and is not part of your job description to determine. That being said, you should work to partner with the intake department and have them view you as an integral part of their team. If they think immediately of informing you when referrals are received, new doctors are making referrals, or any service issues, then you will know they view you as part of the solution and are on board with common goals for growth.

The intake department should be concerned with providing great service to the referral partners. They should serve as an important resource in developing account information and gaining added data about account preferences, needs and personal information. They should be your partner in building the strongest possible relationship with referral partners. Gain their trust and confidence, and you will (together) generate many referrals. Make sure they are asking referral partners if they "have any other patients we should be setting up services for" at the end of every referral call.
 

Ask Polly

Think First!
Preplan Your Initial Call
By Polly Rehnwall

The problem. You get a referral and you want to act quickly to schedule the visit. The problem? When you contact the family, they don't want to schedule it until a few days later. Since you already were vague by asking what would work best for them, you've set yourself up for a delay.

Vagueness begets vagueness. When we're so casual about a time, it just opens the door for the patient or family to be casual about it as well. Instead, we need to have a plan with two visit times in mind prior to picking up the phone.

The plan. Think first! What are you going to say if they're out of town but will be back 3 days from now, or if they have to work and Saturday would be better? Of course we can offer to email or fax the consent form, but what if they want to be there in person?

Be prepared to handle these barriers. If they insist on being there, tell them the doctor really wants the patient to have your care starting today. Then, offer them the plan: "Let's do this. Let's get mom some help over the next couple of days until you arrive, then she can let you know if it was helpful or not. If not, we'll just end the service until you want to start it again. At least this way, she'll be able to have a nurse visit if needed during the day or at night."

Voice mail messages. You need to be ready as well for getting voice mail instead of a live response. In this case, preplan your message:

"This is Mary from Somerville Hospice. The nursing home has asked us to help provide some extra care for your mom. We'll plan on having a nurse there today at 4:00 to talk with you and get some papers signed. It'll only take about 30 minutes, and we'll get her that extra care starting today. Please call to confirm the appointment."

Notice how that's a lot more specific and directive than the vague "Call and let us now what works for you" approach. If they can't make the 4:00 time, then at least you get them to respond faster so that you can get it scheduled sooner.

The 2 times plan. On calls where you reach the family, be equally proactive. Have 2 times that you can offer to meet with them today. By being precise, it gives them less room to delay. What's the rush? Everyone says they wish they had hospice sooner!
 

About Us

Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

Supercharge Your Referrals, Revenues and Profits!

Headed by two industry powerhouses -- Michael Ferris and Polly Rehnwall -- Our Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division is designed to give you the easiest experience possible by providing the most comprehensive solutions to supercharge your referrals, revenues and profits!

If it only took one phone call to deal with all your marketing and sales needs, would you make it?

In an environment of growing competition and shrinking margins, you have to increase volume and improve market share in order to be successful. That means having a skilled sales team, quality marketing strategies and a customer service model that improves your conversion of referrals to admissions.

With every type of solution we provide, you won’t just beat the competition -- you’ll establish your competitive advantage for years to come!

Our Proven Process:

• Evaluate and assess talent, model and process

• Design customized solutions

• Assist with implementation

• Coach your staff

• Train your sales people

• Support your organization's continued success

Delivering optimal results begins with an evaluation of your sales, marketing and customer service program in order to design solutions custom tailored to your agency and your area. Our experts know home health and hospice, bringing years of marketing and sales experience and best practices to you.

Customized Solutions:

Have one or a few specific needs?  We can guide you through creation and implementation quicker and with more success than anyone else.  Below is just a small sample of our capabilities:

• On-site Sales, Marketing, or Customer Service Consulting and Training

• Referral and Admission Management Consulting and Training

• Square One Sales Bootcamp

• Marketing Program Development

• Interview Sales Candidates Video training / Corporate Videos

• Collateral Materials, Sales Letters, and Advertising Consulting

• Mystery Shopping / Market Analysis

With just one phone call, you can tap into all the resources and knowledge of the home care industry’s touchstone consulting powerhouse -- Simione Consultants.

We have an ability no other company can offer -- the only one stop shop to handle all your marketing and sales needs.

Home Care Consulting Pioneers

Simione Consultants, LLC was the first organization of its kind dedicated entirely to home care -- a commitment we continue to maintain today.  For more than 40 years, we have demonstrated we understand and are responsive to the changing and diverse business needs of home care and hospice organizations.

Value Driven, Success Outcomes

More than 800 home care organizations have trusted the team of experts at Simione Consultants, LLC to get them through the challenges of yesterday and today, and to gain the leading edge for tomorrow.  We provide expert assistance to hospital-based and hospital-affiliated agencies, visiting nurse associations, hospices, small proprietary agencies, and large national chains.  The size, capabilities and commitment of our uniquely qualified consulting staff offer unparalleled industry insights and innovative yet practical solutions.  Our track record of engagements with successful client outcomes is unmatched.
 

Closing Thoughts

Thanks for doing what you do for our industry and your community.  You make a difference in your community every day.  Stay focused on doing the right things for the right reasons. 

Send us more of your great questions that we can answer in future newsletters. 

Until next issue, Good Luck and Happy Selling! 

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