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In This Issue:
Our Top Picks
LEGENDARY RESULTS: Managing Referrals & Increasing Admissions (Vol. 1 - Referral Management)
LEGENDARY RESULTS: Managing Referrals & Increasing Admissions (Vol. 2 - The Admissions Process)
Field Guide to Selling Hospice Services
Field Guide to Selling Home Care Services
Sit in on a class for FREE! 52 Week eSales Training Course
17 Proven Methods to Grow Referrals for Legendary Results in Home Care & Hospice (eBook)
Upcoming Training and Speaking November 5 - 6, 2008 Dallas, Texas
November 17 - 19, 2008 Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Want More? Click Here
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Dear Friend, The report from the NAHC Annual Meeting is all positive. You are part of a vibrant, growing and maturing industry. Take pride in the fact that President Clinton, during his address to the assembled members of our industry, said that in the current environment we have a huge opportunity as a key solution to the new health care paradigm.
His inspirational speech provided insight into the current financial, environmental and health care state of our nation. The former president said that we cannot continue to be the world's most competitive economy when we are spending 16% of our GDP on healthcare and that our country spends 30% of its healthcare dollars on administrative costs (next highest in the world is Canada who spends 16% on administrative costs). We need the seniors to be part of the solution as volunteers. The final day's panel spoke to the future of home care and hospice and again, it being the solution. Bill Borne, CEO of Amedisys, said that we have to be proactive and “drive the bus” for the Comprehensive, Continuous, Chronic Care Management model. Another statistic of interest is that it is expected that there will be 60,000 hospitalists by 2010 -– the trend we are seeing nationally will be expanding rapidly. This means you have to work in concert and perhaps provide the glue that holds the post acute patient care model together, linking hospitalist and primary care physician. There is good news on the data front. More and better data is available and studies are under way to (finally) develop key benchmarks related to sales and marketing practices. PPS 2008 appears to have enabled organizations to better predict their reimbursement and have it better reflect the services rendered. Don’t forget key housing cutoff dates for the two upcoming Bootcamps: AdmitRight Bootcamp cutoff for special hotel rates is October 24th. Square One Bootcamp cutoff for special hotel rates has also been extended to October 24th. Register today (see Sales Training Corner below) and join other industry leaders at these important Bootcamps that will deliver results to enable admission growth with Legendary Results! Also, I am very excited to let you know that the new two volume set of books (see Our Top Picks, left) co-written by myself and Polly Rehnwall will start shipping on November 1st. Place your orders today to ensure delivery from the first press run. Thanks for what you do and Happy Selling! Best, Mike Ferris Word of Mouth is the Most Powerful Home Care Marketing Strategy At Simione Consultants, we are constantly searching for ways to stretch our clients' marketing dollars. There is no better way to do so than by encouraging and empowering customers to spread the word about your agency. Patients, clients, referral sources and your staff that believe in your agency and its delivery of home care services should be assisted in being evangelists for your brand. I use the term evangelists because that is the level of buy-in and belief that customers can and will achieve if you will help them to do so. In all industries, companies are looking for ways to make their marketing dollars go further. Gone are the days that the answer to the question “how do we increase sales?” lies in buying more advertisements. In the past there was an immediate and direct correlation between how much you spent on advertising and your sales. Today it is not that easy. The most effective strategy is to empower your clients, patients, referral sources and friends to tell others about your services. This will by definition give your marketing dollars maximum effect. Some examples from other industries: Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow is a great book on being remarkable and getting people to spread the word about your product or service. Seth used the same principles to promote the book. When the book first came out, he wrote an article in Fast Company magazine that was an excerpt from this book. In the article he offered to send any reader that e-mailed him a free copy of the book (he charged $5 for shipping and handling). Over five thousand people responded and he shipped them out in purple and white milk cartons. Then he offered to sell these same people additional books for $5 each but they had to buy twelve. So each person that ordered additional books gave the books to their friends and business associates. By the time the book was published and released to book stores five months later it was a business best seller. All accomplished with no paid advertising. The purpose of including these examples is to get you thinking about ways to harness word of mouth at your agency. Since word of mouth is not prevalent in home care, the best examples are found outside the industry. You should be looking for ideas on a daily basis. We all have witnessed examples of word of mouth marketing successes, but what have we done to empower our customers to tell the world about our agency? In the Internet world these programs are know as viral marketing. An example of viral marketing would be Hotmail. This free e-mail service grew like wildfire. This term is used because effective campaigns spread like a virus. This is true of all campaigns that are designed to enable customers to spread the word. To enable your message to spread like a virus you must have customers that are true believers in your agency and its services. This is accomplished through the provision of quality services and by having an agency culture that is focused on Legendary Customer Service delivery. Then you must provide the mechanism for your customers to spread the word. Any type of thing that allows them to easily tell others should be considered. Simple items like refrigerator magnets can keep your name in front of the patient or client and make it easy to remember your agency’s name. Patient identification cards or blood pressure cards enable your patients to best be able to tell their physician or a hospital discharge planner who they choose to use for home care services. For private duty agencies one really powerful method of employing word of mouth advertising is to offer coupons for free services. These coupons may be for a free day of services, a predetermined number of hours or a specific package of services. The coupon can be given to your best clients to give to their friends and neighbors. Holiday gift coupons are another way to get your best clients to spread the word. Another idea would be to send a bouquet of flowers every time a client sends you a friend as a referral. Use testimonials as they are very powerful in spreading the word. You must train all of your staff to be on the alert for compliments and ask at that moment if the customer would be willing to put something in writing for you. The staff in the home can help to facilitate this process by having something that the patient can use to write their feedback. Why do you think that hotels, restaurants and other service companies have preprinted postage paid return cards for their customers to provide their evaluations? Anything that you can do to make it easy for people to sing your praise should be considered and implemented. Video taped testimonials may be the easiest and the most powerful way to get your best supporters to tell the world about just how pleased they are with your agency. If you will collect a cross section of patients, clients, family members, and all types of referral sources and edit into one video presentation, you will have a very powerful tool. And it will probably be the first one in your community -– how remarkable! Within word of mouth marketing programs, permission marketing is the most effective manner of conducting targeted marketing programs. With the target prospect’s permission to send communicate with them about your services you will have the greatest impact and success. Whether you are communicating via mail, telephone, e-mail or even in person, you will find that you will multiply your results per dollar invested by a factor of 10:1 or more when you have permission to do so. Spam is the term given to unanticipated and impersonal messages that are sent to a list of people. By harnessing word of mouth marketing you will be able to maximize all of your investment in marketing. This is very important as all agencies have limited budgets for promoting their services. Home care and hospice are ideal services to use word of mouth marketing. Your challenge is to create your message and empower your customers to spread it. We have the advantage of reaching out and touching people’s lives on a daily basis. The service that we provide is one that makes a real difference in the recipient and their family’s lives. The missing ingredient has been packaging and a method to empower your customers to spread the word.
Sales Training Corner Grow Your Admissions with Legendary Results! Click here to download a PDF brochure with all the details. Michael Ferris and Polly Rehnwall of Simione Consultants are the nation’s leading experts on hospice sales, referral center management, and admission team best practices. Now you and your agency have the chance to attend two jam-packed days of skills learning and building, as well as never revealed before tips on how to supercharge your hospice referrals and admissions! Who Should Attend: Only the most progressive Hospice team members that are interested in increasing referrals, admissions, census, efficiency, profitability and beating the competition! (CEOs, Coos, Marketing, Sales, Referral Center, Outreach, Clinical and Outreach) This is the first program of its kind, specifically created to empower you to blow your revenue goals out of the water for 2009 and beyond! Attendance is limited -- Sign up today -- THIS PROGRAM WILL SELL OUT! Don't Miss Out -- Last Square One Bootcamp of 2008! The last Square One Bootcamp of the year will be held: November 17 - 19, 2008 To lock in a seat with your full payment, click here. "This training is well designed and provides solid ideas and tips in order to improve sales. It also encourages participation and practice, which is a great way to learn. I would recommend this training to others in the hospice industry needing specific sales training." To view a brief video of what makes the Square One Bootcamp experience so special, click here! 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!" 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 We talk a lot about how your ability to be perceived and experienced as the easiest way to refer patients to home care or hospice is the lowest common denominator in winning competitive referral situations. In addition to being easy, you have to make the process simple! Make it simple for the medical community to identify prospective patients for home care or hospice services. To do so we must not make them responsible for determining eligibility, appropriateness or other qualifiers for services. If you are going to distribute hospice criteria, for example, make sure that you get the person to whom you are speaking a mental trigger to call you. If they think hospice (and the trigger is your tool for criteria) they should call you -– DON’T make them figure out the intricacies of hospice appropriateness. If you do, you will reduce the number of calls you get by 50% or more. Think easy and simple and you will see your referrals increase and improve your long-term relationship with key accounts. This is one more way to expand the use of our services as a way to grow referrals. "They Didn't Fill it In" The situation: If your admissions team is signing them on as fast as they can, then sometimes they'll do only what they need to get the patient on service and comfortable until the team nurse comes the next day. And that can mean not fully completing all the required paperwork. Some ideas to help: Look at your assessment tool: What do you really need to generate an initial plan of care, and what can wait until the care team gets there? If the admissions team has to fill a bunch of boxes that are irrelevant to what the patient needs right now, then create a 2-part tool to complete detailed sections later. Ask the family to help: We've said it before: Stop taking dictation! Revise your tool so that medical history and status can be completed by the family or patient. Communicate, communicate. When you have a "fast track" admission, let the care team know before they go. People hate surprises, and that communication gap is the biggest complaint of most care teams. Automate, automate: Convert the tools to documents that can be downloaded so that the team can review the case now! Family in Crisis? One of the most frequently cited reasons for not admitting patients sooner is that "they really need time to process the fact that he's terminal." Don't let them "process" without us! Now is when they need us more than ever! Aren't we the experts in helping patients and families deal with these issues? Aren't we the ones who hound doctors for earlier referrals because we can do so much for their patients? Step #1: Own it! Stop accepting "they need time to process it" as a reason for not getting consents signed. Until you own the outcome (and the problem), you'll continue to be passive about the fact that they said "no.” Step #2: Take "time out." Advise the family to use hospice care while they sort out their options. Suppose they're considering chemo or awaiting the arrival of another family member before they make a decision. Tell them that if their goal is comfort care even for just the short term, then hospice is what they need. They can always change their mind as they consider other treatment options. Step #3: Use the benefit. Emphasize that the benefit is there for them and they should take advantage of it. Why not avail themselves of the services you can offer? After all, it will give them a chance to test you out while they discuss other options. Remember that our mission is to improve end-of-life care, so we have to do everything we can to help patients and families access our service. And what usually happens? Once they try us and take some time to think about their options, they usually stay with hospice care. Question: What do you do when you are recovering from a bad experience from the past and the account is bad mouthing your company? The account refuses to give us another opportunity to prove ourselves. How do we respond to this disgruntled account? Answer: This is never an easy situation, but one that your sales people will encounter from time to time. In fact, if it hasn't happened to one of your marketers, get ready because it will! First step is to make sure that the problem was resolved and the account feels that they have been "heard." Question: Do you have any specific tools that you are using for needs assessment? Answer: The most important tools are your marketers' list of probing questions and their account profiles. The list of questions helps them to remember those great questions or to jog their memory before making a great sales call. After the call, they document what they found out in the account profile and the next step in the process. The other important tool is a reminder (maybe a sign on the marketer's dashboard) that says, "Ask Smart Questions." Have your sales reps find any way they can to remind them to ask questions on every sales call -- regardless of how well they know the account. About Us Our Proven Process:
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:
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. 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. Thank you for all that you do to help tell the home care and hospice story in your communities. You drive the business that enables your organization to achieve its mission. To quote President Clinton, “Never lose your juice.” Never give up and no matter what the situation, stay in touch with how much of a difference you can and will make. Good luck and Happy Selling! |
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This newsletter and all content and information contained herein are the property of Simione Consultants, LLC and may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the publisher. 176 East Main Street, Unit 8 | Westborough, MA 01581 | (800) 653-4043 | (508) 366-7409 | Join our mailing list to receive new products, helpful hints, speaking dates, and more! |
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