Mike’s Message:

Fall is Finally Here!

By next week all of the schools will be back in full swing.  Since I have the honor of working with sales professionals across the nation, I know that some school districts have been back in school since early August and others are on the more traditional schedule of starting after Labor Day.  Another good example of how different each of your markets is.  When children are in school effects your business just like many other under currents that impact people’s outlook and schedules.  This is why my team’s job is so much fun, we get to teach proven sales skills and then help each sales professional adapt them to their market.  Adaptation is all about making these skills work in their market, the underlying skills however remain unchanged.

I had a conversation with a gentleman charged with business growth at a major metropolitan hospice program recently and we debated how his market was just different.  And while a major metro market is different in some aspects, the way that a skilled nursing facility operates and how they work with hospice(s) is the same in New York or Des Moines.  He just didn’t get it, or perhaps he just didn’t get it.  When I suggested that he needed to change some things, he resisted and pointed fingers at everyone else in the organization as why his numbers were in a long decline.  Our final disagreement centered around the fact that there is only one metric, at the end of the day, that is important to measure the director of business development’s success - growth in census.  Since his had been in a steady three year decline, there existed a problem.  Fortunately management saw the reason behind this and change is underway.  If he survives, he may even get credit for doing a good job!

Your Q4 plan should be in place, formalized and with timelines and metrics established for execution.  The last four months of the year are when you really need to kick things into the next gear.  If you have had a record year so far, as many of you have, then it is time to make it an even bigger success!  If you are on target or under, this is your last chance to bring your numbers up.  What you do today will impact the rest of the year.  What you do in the last four months of 2010 will determine how great your 2011 will look.  Building a strong book of ‘A’ accounts is dependent upon what you do on a daily basis.  View your sales calls as one long series of conversations within a bigger relationship plan.  Keep everything moving forward and keep building your best accounts.  Expansion of how they use your services is the best way to protect that most valuable relationship.

Have a great and safe Labor Day weekend and here is to a Fantastic Finish to 2010.  Email me with your continued successes!

Happy Selling!

It’s Back to School Time Again - Is Your Agency Ready?

While you or loved ones may be going to stores to get pencils, lunchboxes, notebooks, crayons, or dorm furniture, autumn and all that it brings is just around the corner. Is your agency preparing for the fall?

From ortho surgeons coming back from summer vacation with a heavy caseload to tackle to the growing menace of cold and flu season on the horizon, studies have shown that the next two seasons have the highest increases in slips, falls, elective procedures, respiratory problems, and more. Whether you’re a home care or hospice agency, you need to be gearing up to face these upcoming opportunities. Here are a some tips:

DO create a cold and flu specialty program for your CHF and COPD patients and referral sources. These could be a big new source of referrals every fall/winter season, especially when you approach referral sources that send you patients - but not their CHF or COPD patients (yet!).

DONT Over Screen The Consumer Calls: Especially in fall and winter, there is a tendency to dismiss cold/flu consumer calls as not medically eligible for our services, and thus never send someone out or log the call in as a “real” referral. While a consumer may be complaining about how dad is having a tough time with his flu, the unspoken underlying prospect could be an exacerbation of CHF or COPD. The same over screening could be said of other calls, such as slips and falls. Be careful, ask questions, and make sure there isn’t anything more there, before hanging up the phone.

DO Visit the ‘C’ account referral sources that haven’t been sending you any referrals lately. Despite what you may hear or what they may say, sometimes you never know the real reason you aren’t getting referrals from a particular account - especially after the summer season. When things pick up in the fall and winter (and they will), make sure you are a real presence - be there to catch those referrals when they happen. Don’t think that a drying up of referrals means anything until you’ve gone into the account, qualified them, probed for needs, and asked the right questions. 

DON’T assume your Reps can automatically handle everything that will be thrown at them these upcoming seasons. Make sure they get trained on how to efficiently and productively increase their referral numbers higher and higher while effectively managing all of their accounts. Numbers that plateau or drop in the fall/winter is a big problem, so use training like SQUARE ONE BOOT CAMP to help your good Reps become Superstar Reps that can easily handle the extra workload the next 6 months will bring.

Good luck and happy selling!

Be All You Can Be

During a recent training session in New York City, I was asking each student to come up with one thing they will focus on to improve. One of the student’s hands went up with a question."What if I don’t have anything to improve?”. I asked him if there was something he was good at, that he could get great at. He shook his head no, without batting an eye. Finally, after a lot of discussion, he took the time to stop and think - and came up with a really great new goal. 
We encounter this situation a lot with hospice and home care agency employees who are good at their jobs. Maybe their numbers were growing for awhile, but now they’ve leveled off. As we all know, someone who is good can always become great - but only if they know how to work on it and actually follow through.
It is with this in mind that we started the Next Step Advanced Training Course, so that Reps with lots of experience or good numbers can turn their sights on great numbers that keep on growing.

One of the most rewarding things about our Square One Boot Camp is how much students love the program, and see how much their numbers jump when they go home to apply what we’ve taught them. Their sales managers love it to, I’m sure, and we take every one who comes and train them on how to be the best hospice or home care liaison they can be.

With the Next Step program, we take those superstars (or superstars of your organization or other sales professions), and train them how really good can become truly great. The first few hours, I got to be honest, are a little tough. A lot of these superstars dont realize until they see some of the training in action later in the day exactly HOW they can go from really good or great numbers to Super Star numbers. And they dont realize how much they can continue to keep growing their numbers and stay away from plateaus, until a few months after being home from training. I gotta be honest, it’s not as immediately rewarding.

But yet, if I take the time to stop to think about it, maybe it’s far more rewarding in the end. And that little bit of self reflection, of actually thinking about where you are and where you could be, is how you can take your organization from being great, to truly legendary. 

Wow, what a summer so far!  I hope this finds all of you well and having a great summer!

Down to the Final Four

If you have been watching the World Cup soccer tournament, you know how exciting it has been.  I have to admit to being basically a once every four years fan, but the national pride and great sport is great.  We had the opportunity to be in Germany as they won a game to pass through to the round of 16 and it was incredible to witness the celebrations.  I can only imagine what it will be like if they win the Cup.  The final four are Germany, Holland, Spain and Uruguay.  If you have any referral partners who are from or in any way connected to one of these countries, it could make a great conversation piece.  Who are your ‘final four’?  Who are your top four accounts?  List them and have a monthly contest to see which one you can increase the most.  Remember that we are always wanting to have those enriched, value added conversations with your top accounts - have your questions prepared to find out what their needs are and how more of their patients (those that currently are not receiving care) would benefit from the gift of home care or hospice services.  We are the solution to keep their patients from the frequent readmissions and unnecessary hospitalizations.

Customer Service

As you know, I am always suggesting that you look for best practices and ideas outside our industry.  This past weekend my wife and I bought a new dryer and to our surprise, we could buy it on Saturday, July 3rd and have it delivered and installed for free the morning of the 4th of July!  Why is this possible?  Because competition has driven the companies to offer this level of service to compete for the business.  So not only did we get a great price, but also Wow service.

If appliances can be delivered next morning, is it not reasonable to think that hospice patients and home care patients could be admitted in similar fashion?  Why should a dying patient have to wait because of a weekend or holiday?  I see more and more agencies developing more weekend admission staff and seeing a significant growth in referrals.  Hiring staff who want to work weekends and are dedicated weekend admission nurses and therapists is becoming a standard of care delivery in some markets and my bet is that it will be spreading across the country.  Be a leader and look at exploiting this opportunity now rather than being forced to at a later date.

Bootcamps

We have released the dates for our Fall Bootcamps and they are now open for registration.  Check our website at: http://www.hchms.com/product-detail/24/Training/square-one-boot-camp

Remember that there are plenty of patients out there and if it is slow (due to the summer), there is no better time to discover with your referral partners just how many patients they have in their patient population that would benefit and qualify for your services today.

Happy Selling1

Summertime and Bootcamp

Well, it’s finally here!  Summertime is upon us!  The kids are wrapping up the school year and everyone is preparing for vacations.  The weather is warming up and the combination of all of this can either be an opportunity for you or an excuse.  It is your choice to take the changes and make them into an opportunity or wait until your sales manager asks the question and give them the age old excuse about things slowing down for the summer.

How can you turn things to your favor?  Look for ways that you can make your referral partner’s life easier.  How can you help them by freeing up their time when they are preparing to leave town and most importantly, how can you help make things run smoother while they are gone?  Of course the best time to prepare for the events of summer are in advance, so many of you have already done so, but no matter where you are in the process, seize the opportunity today!

Today is the second day of Bootcamp and is always one of my favorites.  We get to see the sales professionals start putting all of the skills together and perform two video role plays.  By the end of the day everyone is exhausted but really pumped up about what they have learned and how it all comes together.  Tomorrow we will make plans for exactly how they will put what they have learned to work in their jobs. 

It is always nice to see a group of sales professionals from all over the country come into the program with their concerns over who will be in the class, how they will perform in the video role plays, etc. and then watch them come together as a group of professionals and friends.  With the tremendous diversity of backgrounds in each of our classes, the students really learn a lot of one another.  One student this week was known to exclaim, “Awesome” with some frequency.  This became one of the groups mantras (with a smile). 

Watch for the fall dates to be announced soon for both Square One Bootcamp and Next Step Advanced Sales Training.  Be sure to sign up early as there are always a limited number of students in each class.  We will be skipping a week in our publication of the Legendary Sales Leadership Letter and the next issue will be on Tuesday, June 29th.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day ( and sometimes three times)

While on a transcontinental flight last week, I noticed that my watch battery had died.  On that day, my broken clock was right three times (since I was flying east to west) and that got me thinking about some of the idioms and proverbs we use and how they relate to home care and hospice.  This one is widely used to describe dumb luck - people that get lucky and have undeserved success.  One definition listed was:  A normally unreliable person or instrument can occasionally provide correct information, even if only by accident.

What we see are a lot of home care or hospice professionals who think that the competition is really bad and their agency is so much better.  They seem to explain away their competitor’s sales people’s success as being dumb luck.  What we know is that, in reality, most agencies provide great care - as an industry we do a great job.  The competition is more frequently than not employing professional sales people who may be even better at building long term relationships with referral partners based on the value add brought to the table.  All of this to say that we cannot assume that our competition provides worse care or that their sales and marketing is not as good as we are, we must always work to improve ourselves and our sales skills.

If you want to make sure that you or your sales people are not fooling themselves and letting the competition get ahead, join us in Chapel Hill for Square One Bootcamp June 7th to 9th.  This is the last Bootcamp before the summer and the next one won’t be held until the fall.  Don’t miss the chance to send your home care and hospice sales professionals to get a tune up and be ready to blow the goal numbers out for the second half of 2010.  We have seats available and there are still discounted hotel rooms available. 

So maybe some better proverbs to guide your efforts might include:

Make hay while the sun is shining.
If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors.
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in getting up every time we do.
The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
It’s all about them, not about us.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
If you don’t like something, change it.  If you can’t change it, change your attitude.  Don’t complain.

Have a fantastic Memorial Day and get ready for a blow out second half of the year.  Happy Selling!

Happy May to all of you! It has been great to see so many of you at each of the conferences where I’ve spoken of late. 

As I walked through JFK airport this morning, I stopped by the Starbucks and noticed they had the caloric content on all of the baked goods for sale.  While I was looking more for the espresso than the baked goods, I was shocked by the amount of calories in each item.  All of the muffins, scones, crumb cake, lemon squares had 450+ calories each!  While I might not be tempted to buy one next time, it started me thinking about the value of full disclosure and how it applies to what we do.  Certainly we have never tried to hide anything from our referral partners, but it seems that many times we dance around some things rather than addressing them head-on.

Think about each of your key accounts.  What are you scared of them finding out?  Make a list and then look at how you can a) address the issue with them, b) turn it into a competitive advantage and c) use it to build a stronger relationship.  You see, if you don’t have any hidden secrets or things that you ‘hope’ that they don’t figure out, you will be much better positioned to maintain their trust and earn more referrals.

When in doubt, lay your cards on the table.  Be honest.  Don’t point out your weaknesses, but rather make sure they will not come back to haunt you later!

It seems that we have proudly been providing more and more interim management positions of late, positions like interim CSO, CRO, CCSO and CMO (Chief Sales Officer, Chief Referral Officer, Chief Customer Service Officer and Chief Marketing Officer).  As organizations determine the importance of these areas of their business, they have found that sometimes the best medicine is to bring in interim management that can improve the processes, implement training and support in finding the right person to take the job on full-time.  This is just one more element of proof that our industry is finally coming of age and recognizing the importance of managing the way in which we interface with the community.  In the short run, it has meant way too many airline miles and hotel nights for myself and my talented team, but when we remind ourselves of why we do what we do, it makes everything mile worth it. We know that when we help our clients improve in these areas and increase their numbers that more people will receive the gift of home care and hospice. Our industry is noble and we are so glad to be a part of it.

Thanks for all that you do and Happy Selling!

Having just returned from the NHPCO Management and Leadership Conference in Washington, my team and I are really pumped up about the current focus on selling and marketing hospice services, and the push to make the management of referrals to admissions more efficient and effective.

The attendees were upbeat, positive and planning for success in the years to come.  Polly, Kara and I met with many clients, and across the board they were focused on making their phone ring and then maximizing the resulting admissions.  Current clients are citing impressive results from current initiatives and reporting impressive gains in ADC.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you in Dallas on May 11th and 12th for the newly expanded AdmitRight Hospice Referrals and Admissions Workshop.  We have secured additional rooms for those attendees who have not yet booked their hotel rooms, so just let us know if you need help with room arrangements.  We hold this important workshop at the DFW Marriott so that you can fly in and fly out from anywhere in the country, and there’s easy parking for those driving in.  One of the things we heard at NHPCO was how to stretch sales and marketing budgets, so we have implemented a special pricing that allows you to send three participants and only pay for two!  Since there are three distinct tracks (Management, Liaison, and Intake), so send someone from each area.

I look forward to seeing many of you at upcoming conferences and hearing about your successes, and how you have implemented many of our processes and seen growth in your business.  Thank you for all that you do - your hard work means more people receive the gift of home care and hospice.

Happy Selling!

Best,
MIke

Tearing down the silos that exist in an agency is a trend that is gaining significant traction.  Many have talked for years about the need to ‘work together’, but in many situations it was only given lip service.  In today’s home health and hospice world there is no better place to effect culture change than in the horizontal integration of your services.  We are working with the top forward-thinking organizations to make sure that they are using proven, practical, and innovative solutions and strategies.

The barrier busting starts with the referral management and scheduling.  These are the two hubs that touch all customers and are the keys to building this new culture of effectiveness, consistency, customer centricity, and sales focus.  If you are on this path, make sure you have the right processes in place and stay the course.  If you are considering doing this or have made some ill conceived efforts, reevaluate and then make it happen.  Let me know how we can help you in implementing the best proven practices.

Happy Selling,
Mike

For some of us, the NHPCO Management and Leadership Conference approaches right around the corner. It’s a time when we network, meet new people, see what’s new and improved out there, see what’s working and what’s not...it’s a time to reflect on what’s happened since last year’s conference, and a time to figure out what’s going to improve our numbers until the next one.  Whether you’re a Hospice or Home Care agency, what are you doing this spring to reflect on prior successes, and to figure out how to bring about new successes?

For many of the people I talk to at NHPCO, the subject that most frequently comes up is our AdmitRight Admissions and Referral Workshop. I talk with graduates about how well they are doing after implementing what they learned, I talk with prospects about how it can fit in with their current strategies, and I field a whole host of questions from curious hospice agencies about whether the great reputation they’ve heard about the workshop could really be matched by reality. I reassure them that yes, it really can grow your admissions by over 17%, as we’ve seen time and again. But one of my best interactions at NHPCO came with a satisfied client, a Sales Manager, who suggested that we expand the program to include additional tracks for Liaisons and Referral Center Staff.

It was a brilliant suggestion, and as a result, on May 11-12th, we are holding our expanded AdmitRight Hospice Referrals and Admissions Boot Camp at the Dallas/Fort Worth Marriott.  We will now offer three tracks to choose from; one for Managers, one for Liaisons, and one for Referral Center staff.  By adding the Liaison and Referral Center Staff tracks, we can now customize the Boot Camp to meet the specific needs of everyone involved in the referral and admissions process at your agency. 

We hear it every year at NHPCO: clients love our AdmitRight Boot Camp - it’s helped them grow their referrals and admissions without any added cost.  And now we’ve made it even better.

We look forward to seeing you at NHPCO, please be sure to stop by our booth to say hello!

You can also check out the link below to learn more about the expanded, 3 track AdmitRight Referrals and Admissions Boot Camp:

http://www.hchms.com/product-detail/24/Training/hospice-referrals-and-admissions-boot-camp

How Can You Spring Into The Second Quarter?


Spring starts officially on the 21st and for many parts of the country, it can’t come too soon!  The groundhog was definitely right when he saw his shadow on Groundhog day and predicted six more weeks of winter.  As you finish the first quarter, it is time to evaluate where you stand in regard to your goals.  Are you ahead of plan and looking for ways to really close the quarter with momentum to drive a big second quarter?  Many of our clients are saying that they are having record referral months this year.  They’ve told us again and again that by practicing the sales skills we’ve taught them, and creating processes for their sales managers to encourage and support that training has made their referrals skyrocket. My advice: make hay while the sun is shining!  The best time to invest in sales and marketing is when things are going well.  Leverage your success by adding training, coaching and support for your sales team.

We have the Next Step Advanced Sales Bootcamp coming up in a month and I am excited to see that we have clients sending their top sales people to the Bootcamp.  It is great to see the number of graduates from the Square One Bootcamp among this list - all of them superstars at their company, along with some top producers who did not have the benefit of Square One.  If you have not reserved your spot, we only have 8 seats left, so do so before we sell out.


Daylight savings time is the time to remember to change the batteries in your smoke detector and to make an extra hour’s worth of sales calls each day!


Have fun and Happy Selling!


Best,
Mike

Translating Olympic Success to Your Sales Success


The 21st Winter Olympic Games were a huge success for Canada and for the USA.  What can we learn from these Olympics?

The US earned an all-time record 37 medals (first time to win the Winter Games medal count) and it happened by design.  Twelve years ago in Nagano, the US team won a total of 13 medals (at that time a record for the USA team).  Soon thereafter, the U.S. Olympic Committee changed how it funded the national governing bodies that find, develop and train the potential Olympic athletes.  It adopted a customized approach specific to each different sport and took a performance based approach to funding.  They implemented a funding approach that supported the specific needs of each type of athlete and based funding on their performance.  Sounds a little like our formula for success, doesn’t it?  Support your sales people, look at their individual needs, hold them accountable for performance and pay based on success.

Congratulations to Canada, they were a great host country, enjoyed success on the medals podium.  The logistics surrounding a successful Olympic games are enormous, but let’s look at their efforts to win medals.  The implemented a program called “Own the Podium” and this became the central mission, vision and focus of all of their athletic programs.  They invested in the success of their team and they delivered.  They invested $117 million in athlete training and technology.  Canada won the most gold medals (14) and came in third in total medals (26).  They are committed to continuing the Own the Podium program for 2014 in Sochi, Russia.  Again, sound like a familiar success strategy?  Training and technology to support their teams.

Congratulations to Canada also for their hard fought gold medal in hockey.  You could not have asked for a more exciting game between the US and Canada for the gold.  And, with Sidney Crosby scoring the winning goal in overtime, the script was complete!  (Congrats to our ardent Penguin fan readership!)

As you formulate your plans to “Own the Podium” this year, make sure you have dedicated time and resources to train, support with technology and inspire your sales team.  Hold them accountable for delivering results and watch the referrals grow!

Don’t forget that March is Kidney Disease month.  There are many people in our target demographics who are under diagnosed for chronic kidney disease and home health and hospice can provide the screening and education to identify these patients before they suffer acute kidney damage and require dialysis or transplant.

Hope this helps, and Happy Selling!

Your Agency’s Winter Olympic Games


How great is it to have the Olympics to capture our imaginations and inspire legions of kids who want to be the next winter sports superstar? I hope that you are getting the opportunity to enjoy it with your family and friends. Truth be told, kids aren’t the only ones who can be inspired by the Olympics. You and your sales reps can be inspired too, as this is the perfect time to create your own agency’s Sales Winter Olympic Games! 

As a sales manager, its important to keep your reps motivated, and you can use these Sales Olympic Games to both boost your Q1 sales campaigns and your sales reps’ morale. You’ll make everyone that much more focused. 

As a salesperson, its important to stay passionate and inspired, so create your own games to set new personal best sales records and bring home your own Gold Medal.

Some events might include:

~ ALF Referral Downhill—The first sales rep to get 50 referrals wins the Gold!

~ Weekly Referrals Cross Country—The first sales rep to get 5 referrals from each of their territories wins!

~ Combine group reps into two teams; first team to get 25 referrals gets first place!

~ Ski Jump—Every week, the rep who gets the most referrals from ONE sales call gets the Gold!

~ . . . and any other combination of events you can think of to make the sales call process fun and competitive. 

At the end of the day, the idea is to have fun while adding to your already stellar results!

Please let me know of what creative ideas you and your agency came up with, and the successes they generated!

The single best investment you can make for your sales superstars is the upcoming Square One Boot Camp in Dallas, Texas, March 8th—10th.  The CEOs and sales managers of our past students have raved to us about the huge boost in referrals. Wouldn’t you like to be one of them?  Register today before your competition does!

All my best and Happy Selling!

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

February is Heart Month

What are you doing for heart month?  I know that you are probably getting tired of hearing about this theme, but I cannot emphasize the opportunity too much.  Always go with the momentum!  One of the basic tenets of martial arts is to use the momentum of your opponent to your advantage.  In this case you are using the media blitz and widespread publicity buzz around heart month and heart disease to your advantage.  Delta Airlines’ flight attendants, for example, are encouraged to wear all red to promote heart disease awareness.  Look around you and you will see what is happening in your community.  Be a part of this and a leader in the awareness of the important role that home health and hospice play as a solution for the many patients currently at risk in their homes with heart disease.

Better to spend your time and resources promoting you as a solution than giving away Valentine’s Day goodies.  One is the right thing to do and the other is just lazy!

Build Your Personal Brand

Building a personal brand is one of the three things you should be branding.  You should be building your company’s brand, its services brand and your personal brand.

Build your brand by standing for something big.  You will do better work and build a memorable brand by standing for excellence and making a big difference in your community.  Don’t spend your time trying to be just likeable; be memorable for making a difference and taking important stands.  Playing it safe and not making waves will put your audience to sleep and set you up as another home care or hospice sales rep.  If you play not to lose, you set yourself up to not win.

Your brand should reinforce what you are going to do to benefit the customer, meet their needs and solve their problems.  It should make them feel proud to work with you for their home health and hospice needs.  Always reinforce the fact that you are all about serving their needs and how you will help them.  Be clear on articulating your statement that lets them know who you serve and what you stand for.

Your statement that explains who you are and what you do is the most powerful part of your sales message.  Be clear and be bold. 

Winter Irony

This past weekend Chapel Hill had eight inches of snow.  This is a major snow event for the Triangle area and as a result I got stuck on the west coast and could not get home.  (All of the flights into RDU were cancelled on Saturday.) Here’s some irony surrounding the winter weather:

First, the city of Cary, NC scheduled the Winter Wonderland sledding event at Bond Park—which was to feature man-made snow and allow families to sled and play in the snow.  It was a fundraiser and tickets were sold for the event.  The event was cancelled due to snow!  My daughter, a sophomore in high school, had the winter semi-formal dance, The Snow Ball, scheduled for Friday night, and, you guessed it, it was cancelled due to snow.

Hope you are having a phenomenal 2010!  We have been so busy that my team and I have been on the road non-stop. 

Here are my wishes for much success and Happy Selling!

Best,

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

It’s Down to Four

The National Football League is now down to four teams vying for a trip to the Super Bowl in Miami on February 7th.  I was in New York last week where Jets fever was getting going and now I am writing this to you from New Orleans where Saints mania is in full swing.  I am sure that Indianapolis and Minnesota fans are equally excited.  Great story lines, the Saints have never been to the Super Bowl, the Jets weren’t supposed to make the playoffs, the Vikings have the oldest quarterback to start a playoff game (Brett Favre) and the Colts were on auto pilot to go undefeated until the last two weeks of the season.

We are planning a big Super Bowl party for the students coming to the Square One Bootcamp (February 8 - 10) and can’t wait to see a really good game!  Join us in Chapel Hill and take your sales skills to the next level.

This is a good time to look at your “Super Bowl” lineup—who are your top four accounts?  What can you do to increase each of their business over the next six weeks?  Start by determining how many admissions you had last year in the same time period and then set your goal to increase the admissions.  Be bold with your goals—after all, this is the SUPER BOWL!!!

Analyze what the potential is for each of the accounts and then put your plan in motion to realize it.  Each of these accounts have the potential to send you more business.  The primary reason I can say this with complete confidence is that they are not currently fully utilizing your services.  They are not referring every patient that would benefit from, and be appropriate for home health or hospice services.  The best way to continue to grow your business and MOST importantly protect your bread and butter accounts is to get them to expand how they use your services.

Each of these accounts, much like a football team, have different players—each with a role to play and a different set of needs and wants.  Diagram your playbook and make sure you know all of the key players and what is important to them.  Have a plan to have each of them become more inclined to use you and your services.  Remember that all success happens at the personal level and this happens by focusing on what is important.  The blocking and tackling each and every day is what wins championships!

This marks the one year anniversary of the Obama inauguration; seems likes more than a year ago to me!  I watched the inauguration with a large room full of home care and hospice professionals on a big screen.  Whether you voted for him or not, there was hope in the air and a sense of history being made.  Many had huge expectations for our new President—that he would be able fix the problems and leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Now a year later, it is difficult for people to see the progress for all that is in the works.  A nation that was united in hope is fragmented and back focused on individual issues.  My hope is that this second year will be a successful one for our government and that the health care legislation comes together in a manner that works.  In particular for home health and hospice, the need is still great for you to express your concerns and suggestions to your elected officials.  Do so today!

Please do what you can to help the earthquake survivors in Haiti.  This strong of an earthquake hitting the poorest country in our hemisphere one week ago has created an incredible need.  It certainly puts all of our challenges into perspective.  Give what you can; every dollar makes a difference.  Then send a link to at least ten others.  The power of your network will make an even bigger impact.  Choose your favorite vehicle to help—here are some options:

American Red Cross

Doctors without Borders

Avaaz

Count your blessings, grow your business, have fun and know that you make a huge difference in your community.  Good luck and Happy Selling!

Best,

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

New Year, New Decade!

Exciting times for sure!  It is time to make plans for making this the decade of home care and hospice.  You can make it happen by strategically telling the story in the community.  We have been telling the members of Congress that home care and hospice are a solution to the health care puzzle.  The best way for that to be seen is to make sure that we are caring for as many patients as possible.  We must help the referral partners see home care and hospice in a new light—they need to see that it will keep their patients out of the hospital and more expensive venues of care.  It will improve outcomes and reduce costs.  You are uniquely positioned to play an enormous and key role in the process.

What do you have planned for February and heart month?  Cardiac disease is the great common denominator.  All referral partners have patients suffering from cardiac diagnoses in various stages.  There is no better conversation to have to help your referral partners see how to better use your services to solve their challenges and problems, meet the needs of their patients and make their lives easier.  There is no better time to talk about cardiac than during heart month.  Use the momentum created by others during the month to gain your referral partner’s attention and garner more referrals.

Did you know that March is kidney month?  If you need information about screening for kidney disease and how you can use this type of campaign to grow referrals and make a difference in the community, send me an email at . 

Have fun, stay warm and Happy Selling!

Best,

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

With the holidays almost upon us, I hope this newsletter finds you and your families well.

This will actually be the last Legendary Sales Leadership newsletter of the year, so we tried to pack it in with as many great sales and marketing tips and information as we possibly could (not to mention finishing out our acclaimed 4-part series on Sales Management)!

Because our next newsletter won’t be until mid-January, I wanted to let you in on a great marketing strategy to employ in the new year:

As we all know, February is Heart Month, and it’s long been documented that heart patients are one of the most underserved populations when it comes to Home Care and Hospice. Go out and spend the month of January talking with your referrals sources about the upcoming Heart month and let them know how you can help make their lives easier—by taking the burden off their shoulders of managing CHF patients, for example.

Using this strategy will enable you to build new relationships with new referral sources, or strengthen and enhance your existing referral source relationships by expanding your referral opportunities with them. Plan ahead, and you can use the next TWO months to utilize this marketing strategy, and get ahead of your competitors who might not start talking about heart health until February.

Happy Holidays from all of us here, and as always—Happy Selling!

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

One month left in 2009 to finish with a big kick and finalize preparations for an enormously successful 2010.  We’re here to help!  Just let us know how we can help you to plan for the New Year.  This is what we do best.

The most successful sales people in our industry understand that they can’t spread their energy and intelligence too thin.  They know that they must devote time and attention to a limited number of things.  These top performers are very good at focusing on the most important activities and have a solid plan that will blow out their numbers.  In the real world, there are too many opportunities out there not to be highly focused on the best.

Studies from all industries show that the happiest and most successful people live in the here and now.  They pay close attention to the plan and the next steps to success.  They deal with any problems that confront them directly rather than worrying about those that may or may not affect them in the future.  Don’t worry about the what if’s; focus on the known and the important.

Successful people, as we’ve seen from countless examples, achieve the things they achieve by solving specific real problems and building strong relationships based on trust and real situations.  I was training a group of sales people yesterday and found that they (like many others) are worried about the odd situation or circumstance rather than the key activities developing the best (and more common) account relationships.  When we ask for challenging objections or prospects, we hear about all of these really esoteric situational what if’s.  We have to redirect the sales people to focus on the more common situations that will result in predictable results.  You cannot be Don Quixote and spend all of your time tilting imagined windmills.  Don’t worry about the what if’s—focus on the tasks at hand—then handle situations when they ACTUALLY come up!

Stop right now and take a survey of your thinking.  How much of it is devoted to events and situations that a) you have no personal knowledge of or b) over which you have no control? Compare that to the time you spend solving real problems and dealing with real people.  You should make sure the comparison comes down heavily on the side of reality.

Basketball season is in high gear now with the ACC/Big Ten challenge in progress.  Good luck to all of the teams and, of course, go Tar Heels!  I thought last night was going to be the big payback—Michigan State with all the reason in the world to come into Chapel Hill and settle a score from last season.  It was a great game and the Tar Heels pulled it out.  Now it is off to Lexington for next Saturday’s matchup with Kentucky—looks like they may have the advantage.  I just hope it is a good game.  Good luck to your teams and to you as we hit the most exciting part of the year!

Best Always and Happy Selling,

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

My favorite season is fall.  I love the crisp cold mornings, warm afternoons, deep blue skies, red and gold leaves, college basketball season and Thanksgiving!  What a wonderful holiday!  We have the opportunity each year to give thanks for all that we have, celebrate our national heritage and spend quality time with family and friends.  It is also a great time to reflect on what a huge difference home health and hospice makes in our communities.  The difference that our staff and caregivers make in the homes of our patients and their families is enormous.  In talking with many of you, I know that you are also doing many volunteer activities to help those less fortunate or in need during the holidays.  Thank you!

What are you doing to make sure that you have strong referrals coming in for the rest of the year? 

You have two choices; you can accept as fate that your business will drop due to the holidays or you can set out to make this the best holiday season ever for referrals and future growth.  Start by looking at the historical data.  What have your admissions done historically over the last several holiday seasons?  Obtain your data by week for the months of November and December by referral partner.  Analyze the historical patterns and then research the why behind the trends.  Make no assumptions!

Once you know how things have gone historically, you can then set goals for each week and make plans to make each week better.  If there are certain specialties that are not referring because, for example, they are not scheduling surgeries, then use that time to bring in other referrals.  Work with referral partners to use our services to keep patients out of hospitals and facilities for the holidays.  How can your services enable the patient to be at home for the holidays?  For hospice, there is no better time for having those hospice conversations than when the families are gathered.  Work with referral partners to set up appointments for your hospice to spend time with families to help them understand hospice and making sure that they can make an educated decision regarding their loved ones and end of life decisions.

In short, there are many opportunities to both increase current admissions and make 2009 your biggest year ever and to build the platform for an even stronger 2010.  Start now thinking about how you will make holiday season 2010 ever bigger than this year.  Every time you come up with an idea or strategy and you think, “too late to do this, this year”, then put it on your calendar to do earlier next year.

Thank you all for all that you do!  Thank you for allowing me and my team to help you to tell your stories more effectively in your communities.  We are driven by our opportunity to help you to make sure that more people receive the gift of home care and hospice.  Please have a very blessed, safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Selling!

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division

Happy Election Day!

Please take the time to vote today in your local and state elections. Not only is it our duty and responsibility as Americans, but as an industry we need to be involved at every level of politics. In the years ahead we cannot have too many friends in public office. 

What can we learn from successful political campaigns? 

Presentation. How people see you is a big determinant of how they feel about you and your company. Dress professionally and appropriately at all times.

Clear messaging. Succinct and clear should be your goal—easy to understand and see the value added. (I saw this sign in Chapel Hill the other day and had to get a picture of it and thought you might enjoy seeing it.)

Building trust. Trust is the cornerstone of building relationships. (See Sales Tip below for more specific ideas.)

Consistency. Don’t be worried about repetitiveness. It takes multiple impressions to have your message stick. There must be an underlying story that is consistent and supports all of the benefits to the referral partners. 

Stay on message. Really good politicians know their constituencies; they know what is important to them and they craft their message to benefit them.

Campaigns designed to deliver specific goals. You should develop sales campaigns that will keep your sales team focused on driving referrals for specific programs or disease processes.

And I am sure that there are many more things we can learn from successful political campaigns. Stop and think about how they will make you and your team better sales people. During sales meetings, you can use examples (especially when in election season) to get your team involved and understanding the concept. Sometimes home care and hospice sales people over think sales strategies. Framing them in a different, familiar way can help them see the simplicity!  Don’t let them over think!

We are in the middle of the Next Step Advanced Sales Training course here in Chapel Hill today, and I am always so pumped up by the opportunity to work with the best and the brightest!  What has you pumped up right now? 

Best Regards and Happy Selling!

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division




Report from NAHC Annual Meeting - October 20, 2009

The 28th NAHC Annual Meeting concluded last week and it was great to reconnect with many of you, meet new friends and get up-to-date on what is going on in the industry. The general sessions were, as always, a true gift to membership. While much time was devoted this year to the up-to-the-minute status of health care reform (see update below) and its impact on home health and hospice, there were still some very motivational speakers.

Attendance was great and, in general, the outlook was very positive despite potential for rate cuts!

A special thanks to Marcia Reissig, Chair of the Annual Meeting Committee, for a great meeting and very good opening remarks to the meeting. She had the audience participating and managed to set the tone for the meeting and the vision that home care and hospice are the future of medicine. The award for the Physician of the Year was given this year to Steven H. Landers, MD, MPH from the Cleveland Clinic’s Rehabilitation Institute Center for Home Health Services. He shared that he kind of “fell” into the industry when he finished his fellowship. He brought great insight into the value of hands-on, in-home services to the patients in the community. According to Landers, the result made possible by home visits was a more insightful, more complete view of the patient and his or her needs. “This has really practical implications for very common things like how people manage their medications and their disease self management tasks, such as for diabetes care and heart failure care, or understand their nutrition—and just for us understanding their general circumstances.” He is a strong physician voice for the essential nature of what we do and the fact that it is the logical solution.

There were many great sessions including one by Denise Bonn, Esq., Deputy Director, Center for Health Care Law, NAHC, outlining the Ten Principles of Legal Marketing. See Kara Osborne’s summary of her program in the Guest Corner below. Both Polly and I had great audiences for our programs and would be happy to send copies of the handouts to any of you that did not get to attend. .

The final day was highlighted by an exceptional and motivating speech delivered by Colin Powell, as well as the presentation of the initial finds of the Blackberry Study and the heartwarming and motivating words from Peter Samuelson. Peter introduced himself as the semi-colon (he was presenting in between Bob Fazzi and Colin Powell). He is a very accomplished and successful producer in Hollywood and has created some amazing foundations to meet the needs of children and homeless citizens. See his information at www.starlight.org to understand how big he thinks and does!

General Colin Powell shared his life story and was very entertaining, motivating and sent everyone home with a new outlook on what we do and how we do it. He shared stories from his youth, military career, stint as Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in retirement with his work creating the America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth Foundation. This foundation (www.americaspromise.org) through the hard work of Gen. Powell and his wife, Alma (who is the Chairperson), focuses on building a stronger nation by supporting stronger youth. Their mission centers around the Five Promises. The Five Promises are those developmental resources—wrap-around supports—that young people need for success in life: Caring Adults, Safe Places, A Healthy Start, Effective Education and the Opportunities to Help Others. He spoke to health care reform as one of our critical national priorities and referenced his experience with “socialized medicine.” He explained that he had received some of the best healthcare in the world from the military coverage he received until he was 65 when he was transferred to another socialized medical program—Medicare. 

I am really excited, as our last Next Step Advanced Sales Training of the year is fast approaching.  I love this program because it gives me the opportunity to work with the BEST sales people from our training clients. Three things excite me about working with them: first, they are the best (so we don’t have to teach them to be sales professionals); they are eager to learn, refine and hone their skills; and the return on investment for the client is always amazing. It illustrates the point I constantly espouse: the top performers get the least amount of attention from sales management, but have the greatest possible return on investment from training and support. We have a few seats remaining for the program in Chapel Hill, NC which will be held November 2nd through 4th. Send me your top sales people; we will help them take their results to the next level and provide you with stronger admissions numbers in the final months of 2009 and into 2010. The Next Step Advanced Sales Training Boot Camp is a great way to recognize your best sales people, give them the deserved pat on the back and an exceptional opportunity to take their admissions to the next level.

Washington Legislative Update:

The Senate Finance Committee voted 14 - 9 on Tuesday to pass America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. Now the bill moves to the Senate floor for debate and approval. It looks like this is now officially the bill that is moving. The 14 - 9 vote fell along party lines with one Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), voting in favor of the measure. The legislation, known as the “chairman’s mark,” reduces cuts to Medicare home health providers to $43.2 billion over 10 years, and for hospice providers to $7.9 billion over 10 years, building support for the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, sponsored by the late Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Representatives Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and John Dingell (D-MI), (NAHC Report, Aug. 17), and provisions to improve access to Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS). The message delivered to legislators was “as you work to finalize a health care reform bill, please include the CLASS Act, as well as provisions to improve access to Medicaid home and community-based services.” The CLASS Act is an important piece of legislation that will add tremendously to the opportunity for each of our organizations. 

Take one moment, visit your trade association’s website, and let your elected officials know how important home health and hospice are to the healthcare continuum.

Raising Funds for National Hospice Foundation:

Please consider sponsoring Ronald Whisnant in the upcoming Marine Corp Marathon on October 25th. Your generous gift will not only help Ronald achieve his personal goal of completing one of the nation’s premier marathons, but bring awareness of hospice care through the National Hospice Foundation. Please click here to donate; the website is secure, fast and easy to use! At the website, you will be able to choose an amount to donate and receive e-mail confirmation of your donation.  Thanks in advance for your contribution! And please forward this link to as many people as you can to encourage them to donate as well.

Winter is here!  Early snows falling in Colorado and at Lake Tahoe will allow for early opening for many ski areas this year. What are your plans for taking maximum advantage of the time between now and Thanksgiving?  What are your plans for increased referrals over the holiday season?

Thanks for all that you do! Have Fun, Much Success and Happy Selling!

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division




Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Part Two - October 8, 2009

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, as discussed in the last issue, and WOW, the visibility continues to increase. Over the first couple of days of the month, you could not look anywhere without seeing something related to the cause. NFL games had coaches with ball caps with pink bills on them, players sported pink shoes and gloves, stadiums had large pink ribbons, Delta Airlines has flight attendants with pink dresses, ribbons and pins. They even sell pink lemonade onboard the plane for $2.00 with the proceeds going entirely to the cause.

It is wonderful that this much needed awareness is finally permeating our society. The numbers of survivors continue to increase and the someday cure must be closer to realization. Thanks to all of you for all that you have done to heighten awareness and increase support in your communities.

Kim from Neighborhood VNA in West Chester, PA submitted the photo showing the pink pumpkins outside of one of her hospital accounts. Thanks, Kim for the great photo. Let us know if you see a good/timely idea and we will include yours in a future Legendary Sales Leadership Letter or on our Facebook page.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the NAHC Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. Please come by the Simione booth (Booth 634) to see us and talk about your successes and challenges! We will have a sample of the new look Legendary Sales Leadership Letter for you. Polly is presenting on Monday at 4:15 to 5:45 (Session 508: Easy Ways to Build Brand Identity in a Crowded Marketplace), and I am presenting on Tuesday at 8:00 to 9:30 (Session 608: Who Says You Can’t Teach Home Health and Hospice Nurses to Sell?).

Thanks for all that you do and Happy Selling!

Mike Ferris
Director
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Consulting Division