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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, Thanks again for all of your kind words! Seeing many of you at NAHC Annual Meeting a couple of weeks ago was great. The number of people that shared that they read this Sales Leadership Letter and my magazine articles and columns, enjoy them and use their content is the greatest reward. One of the challenges for a writer is not knowing if the message is reaching and resonating with the audience. So, again, THANKS! All Trends Point to Increased Focus on Relationships Everything we do should be focused on building new, stronger and deeper relationships. There are any number of indicators out there that the nature of selling to the medical community is changing. In the not so distant future there will be less focus on giveaway items, lunches, etc. and a greater and greater premium on relationships. Those relationships built upon providing a solution to the referral partner’s needs and the ability to make their lives easier while making them feel good about their choice of home care or hospice provider will win the long-term battle. Sales (at least the way that we teach it) is all about building those types of relationships. Competition continues to increase, but many will fall by the way side. Especially those who are unable to communicate the value added reasons to select your agency. Focus on the long-term ability to build the relationship, communicate the value and provide Legendary Customer Service. I am always on the lookout for great customer service, as should you. Look for industries that share similarities with ours. I think that the hospitality industry is a good place to look. How a hotel sets itself apart from its competitors is no different than the process for you to do likewise. The reservation process is much like the referral process -– it should be easy, accurate and you should feel that the other party cares. Check-in is like the admission process; you are happy if the correct expectations were created at the time of reservation. You are elated if they surprise you with the unexpected that exceeds your expectations. You get the drift; the similarities continue through the process. Opportunity abounds. Sometimes it is good to just read statistics that support what we already know: there are more patients needing our help every day. Demographic data supports long term growth, but it is nice to see news flashes like the following: Hospital Discharges to Home Health and Nursing Homes Increasing The rate of patients discharged from hospitals but who still needed home health care increased 53 percent (from 2 million to 4 million) between 1997 and 2006. There was a 30 percent increase (from 4 million to 5 million) in the rate of patients discharged to nursing homes or rehabilitation facilities during the same period. Source: Yahoo! Alerts [alerts@yahoo-inc.com] 10.27.2008 Best, Mike Ferris It's Not the Size of the Patient That Counts Pediatric home care and hospice services are a true gift to the patients and their families. We tend to focus most of our attention on the services we provide for elderly patients, which is natural since they comprise a majority of the total revenue for our industry. While it’s the demographic that immediately comes to mind when someone says home care or hospice, the gift of home care and hospice is no greater than with its smallest patients. The complexity involved in working with payer sources for pediatric cases is greater because very few are Medicare. First, every state has a different program to meet the needs of the pediatric Medicaid eligible population. Private insurers all have different philosophies and approaches. And finally, there is the added complication of the need for a caregiver and demands of the parent’s work situation. Thankfully there are many agencies willing to work with these difficulties, and meet the needs of this fragile population. On the surface, the sales formula is the same: only two ways to increase referrals for the program. They can come from those that would have otherwise gone to the competitor, or they can come from expanded use of the services by the community. The big difference that needs to be highlighted is that our job of making sure the community knows what services are available is more important since there are so many pediatric patients that go without home care or hospice services. These patients are going uncared for when they should be the first to have as easy a time as possible. It is my experience that healthcare professionals take a greater interest in selecting the right provider for their pediatric patients. This, of course, provides a greater opportunity for an agency to build relationships built upon great service and the ability to understand and even anticipate their needs. Pediatric specialists will go out of their way to send their patients to a specific agency, and will also go to greater lengths to make sure a provider that has disappointed in the past is not receiving referrals. As with any specialty program, you must first research the niche to find out what the needs of your community are for pediatric services. How large is the market? What are the unmet needs or sources of dissatisfaction? What payer sources will give you an adequate price or contract? The program should be built to specifications dictated by these basic questions. You will want to build a sales and marketing message that sets you apart from the other providers. And since there are less providers who cater to pediatrics, by number, the basics take on greater significance. Some very successful niches for pediatric home care include: • Community health Selling Pediatric Hospice Services Programs providing services for children with life limiting conditions and illnesses are truly a blessing to the lives they touch. They have the same issues all hospice does, only magnified. It is stressful for the staff, and as such, this many times can become the story the sales team tells the community. Another key to remember is that because the healthcare professionals are more involved, they have many interactions with those staff. The staff and the incredible things they do then become the why for selecting your program. There is a huge opportunity for the pediatric hospice program to expand the community use of hospice. This opportunity is greater than in any other area of hospice. The accompanying issues of late referrals (right at end of life), not wanting to feel they are giving up, and the over emphasis on cancer diagnosis are the same. For all of these reasons a sales and marketing program for pediatric hospice is very rewarding. Thanks to all of you who are telling the story in the community and enabling more children, families and siblings to benefit from these incredible services.
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! Limited Seats Also Remain for Last Square One Bootcamp of 2008! The last Square One Bootcamp of the year will be held: November 17 - 19, 2008 “This has really been a great experience. I can feel confident when entering any office or facility and know that I have the right questions to ‘show off’ our services and make our referral source know they are making the right choice.” 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 I talk frequently about how important passion is as a predictor of success in our industry. Those that are truly passionate about home care and/or hospice are the most successful. This is true for all of the members of our industry, regardless of position. Since my area of expertise is in sales, marketing and customer service, I am always quick to point to passion as a critical attribute of the successful home care or hospice sales professional. Today I want to talk about enthusiasm, because it seems to get short shrift these days. It's not cool to be real enthusiastic. People tend to try to be laid back and hide their emotions. My belief is that you must be enthusiastic to have people realize just how passionate you are about what you do! As with all things, you must be true to yourself and be yourself -– in other words, you can’t fake enthusiasm. What we know for sure is that we can’t expect to bore people into referring to us! If you are not enthused about sales and marketing, I can assure you of one thing -– sales and marketing will be a dreadful, painful, struggling job. Here are some synonyms for enthusiasm: Gusto, inspiration, excitement, ardor, fervor, passion, zeal, motivation, commitment, willingness, keenness, zest, devotion, energy, verve, vigor, fire, spirit, avidity and earnestness These are all good attitudes to bring to sales, marketing, to business, and to life. But sometimes, it seems in short supply these days. Here are some ways to increase your enthusiasm: 1) Fall in love with good ideas. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." ~ John F. Kennedy 3-Week Behavior Change A workshop is great for laying out the basic changes needed for an effective referral and admissions model. But making sure you have good mentors to coach your team on how to effectively handle phone calls and manage admission visits is just as important. The 3-Week Rule: Here's a basic rule that we find true for team training: It takes three weeks of intensive, day-in-day-out, hand-in-hand coaching to successfully change old behaviors. If you want your team to improve visit productivity and conversion rates of calls to visits and visits to admissions, then you need to make this important investment. A good trainer: Start by designating a "torchbearer," someone who will "own" the needed process changes and mentor the field and referral center staff. A dedicated schedule: Then, be sure that your trainer is with your key team members for an entire day 3 times a week/team member for the first week and 2 times a week per member for the second and third weeks. This way, you'll help make your investment really stick! Create a "No Fly Zone" in Your Referral Center So you’ve decided that it’s time to change the way you manage referrals. Congratulations! You’ve recognized that it’s a customer service function versus an order-taking process, so you’ve probably also decided that you need real customer service reps in your referral center. And those service reps are usually not licensed clinicians but professionals with a customer service background. Change isn’t easy, and it’s particularly challenging for traditional hospices. For a long time it was thought that only a nurse or social worker could handle a referral. That’s because we were in the order-taking and screening business, not in the service business. Once you decide to take the leap and embrace the concept of “every caller gets a visit”, then you realize that the goal of the referral coordinator is to facilitate a visit with referred patients and families or with callers requesting information, not to screen for hospice appropriateness. With the need to manage our costs at all levels, it doesn’t make sense to have a nurse on the phone when the true nursing function occurs at a visit. What does make sense is to have someone who can move reluctant families to accept a visit by focusing on their concerns instead of ours. The bullets start to fly. But beware! Unless the rest of the clinical staff is on board (and this takes awhile), be prepared for an insurgency! While they say they accept the change, some may actively revolt. So how do you minimize the impact? Here are a few tips that can really help in the transition to a new service center model. Move it out of clinical territory. Create a “no fly zone” around the referral center by moving it away from the clinical team offices. Locate it near other nonclinical offices (or better yet, next door to marketing).
Manage it “manager to manager.” Restrict the clinical staff from just marching in to ask the customer service reps for clinical information (a sure fire way for them to express their clinical superiority). Remember: One of the tenets of friendly service is to not drill callers for all kinds of clinical information but to get it at the visit instead. That means going out on more visits without knowing a diagnosis or without a doctor’s referral. As that’s uncomfortable for nurses who are used to lots of information upfront, their first instinct is to question the person who took the referral. Make sure that you protect the no fly zone by not allowing instant access to the reps. Instead, enforce the chain of command, with any complaints or concerns discussed manager to manager, not staff to staff. Reinforce mission messages. Last, constantly reiterate the reason behind the change. The mission is to provide service to referral sources and consumers regardless of the outcome. It’s much broader than the old mission of providing quality care, and helping the teams understand the difference is important to your success. Remember that with any insurgency, the forces of change typically wear down the combatants. Hang in there, and the need for the no fly zone will hopefully disappear. Question: How do I motivate the sales person who used to be a strong producer but has slipped into mediocrity? Answer: This is a very important question and is an issue in all industries and all types of sales organizations. These sales people have proven themselves in the past, and for any number of reasons, fallen behind their historic performance. First watch the numbers, as you want to determine when these start leveling off or dropping first. Also, their participation in sales meetings, quality and timeliness of reports, and other expectations that have historically never been a problem can also be a tip off (if they have never been good at paperwork, timeliness, etc. then this will not be your diagnostic tool). Your relationship should be strong with these leading performers, and your door should be open to them at all times. Motivation is most often provided by recognition. People at all levels of productivity are motivated by recognition in front of their peers. Another great motivator is anything you can do for them that they will be able to share or enjoy with their family members. Be cautious that the issues are not clouded by a discussion dominated by their feelings that they are not being fairly compensated –- this may be a smoke screen for other issues. One of the most compelling reasons to work with and recognize your best reps is to make sure they don’t fall into this scenario. As sales managers, we tend to focus our time on the new guys and the "problem children." This leaves the senior and most successful sales people to fend for themselves. If there is no time to tend to their needs, then either the sales manager has too many representatives to manage or needs to do a better job managing their time. Question: We are having trouble keeping our sales people from leaving after a year or two. What can we do to keep them? Answer: This question has a two part answer; the first one is common to retention of all staff and the second specific to sales staff. First, analyze your turnover rate compared to historical, industry and local business. Are you losing sales people at the same rate you are losing other positions? These type of comparisons will give you an idea of whether the problem is deeper than just your sales team turnover. Specific to the sales team, what are their frustrations? You must make sure that they are focused on the positives and not dwelling on the negatives. Anytime a sales person vocalizes why they can’t succeed, that is your diagnostic tool that tells you to shift into proactive mode. Head off these excuses earlier rather than later. The longer they are left unaddressed, the harder they are to dispel. 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. Be enthused and passionate and let people share in your emotions. Enthusiasm and passion are viral; they will spread through contact. Go forth and make those contacts and continue to make a huge difference in your community! Happy Selling and Don’t Forget to Vote! |
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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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