Character Matters

Yesterday I got a call from a Sales Manager that Home Care Sales mentored when he was hired for this management position at a Home Care Agency.? He started the call with, ?My reputation, and my company?s reputation is going to be ruined.?

After listening to him moan about customer service failures and broken promises with a lot of finger pointing, I asked him this, ?What did you do about the mistakes??? He said, ?I?m out selling, and trying to train reps, I don?t have time to do anything about these service failures.?? That is when I shared this advice:

“People with good intentions make promises. People with good character keep them! Be more concerned about your character than with your reputation. You express the truth of your character with the choice of your actions.”

Your accounts were promised follow through and trust me many are saying in their heads, “Oh, I’m sorry! I thought you meant what you promised.” Promises are worse than lies! Don’t say what you won’t or can’t deliver! Telling someone absolutely I will… is a promise to deliver and it creates hope for the receiver of this message! Not only does this make you a liar, but it will also destroy most relationships.

Melanie and I both believe this to be true:

Sales = Profound Customer Service

I know there are times that someone at your organization will screw up! After 24 years owning a home health, private duty and hospice… I totally get it! But how you respond to that mistake is how you and your team will be defined!

Follow these Steps:

  1. Own up to the mistake. Take full responsibility without giving any excuses. Tell your account that you will get to the bottom of what happened and that you will come back with a full report.
  2. Discuss with leadership that has the authority to make process changes. You don’t need to go to every member of the office staff and start to point fingers. You need to report the facts of what happened according to the account?s perception back to decision makers. You also don?t want to make any enemies at intake. Boy, that is a rookie mistake that I have seen too many times!
  3. Understand the exact area in your companies process that caused the mistake. Also, understand the steps that your company has taken to make sure that this cannot happen again at, not only this account, but ANY other account.
  4. Report back to the account that had the service failure on what happened. Be fully transparent. Tell them, ?We made a mistake. We had our performance Improvement Committee review what went wrong and we have made changes to prevent this from ever happing again.? Providing this type of a report back on how your company has changed any internal processes to prevent it from reoccurring will allow the account to see that you truly care about breaking a promise.
  5. Ask for forgiveness and another chance. If you have a great relationship, most accounts will forgive a mistake as long as it is infrequent. Some accounts will drop off from referring, but only until the next company has a service failure. I would make sure I return to this account quarterly to look to see when it will be my time to capture their referrals once again.

The beautiful part about a customer service failure is that you can really use this as an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your account. You can use this to uncover what is important to them and you can make sure that your words and your actions are congruent! This congruence in words and actions builds amazing trust! You can?t stop 100% of service failures but you can maintain your character and your book of business!

Want to jump start your business in 2020? Want to learn how to work with Medicare Advantage Plans?? Want to learn how to establish a Total Patient Care Delivery Model?? Want to be one of the home health organizations that survives PDGM?? Want to grow your hospice?? Want more private pay patients?? What to see how AI is going to change the way health care is being delivered?

Then hurry! We have expanded our room size, and again we are nearly at maximum capacity.? We started with 75 seats, went up to 100, and now we have increased to 125 seats and these too are almost gone!

Visit? www.homecaresales.com/event to signup for our growth summit in just a little over 2 weeks!

Cheryl Peltekis, RN “The Solutionist”

Co-Owner of Home Care Sales

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Tuesday Total Motivation: Write it Down

Did you know that statistically, you are more likely to achieve a goal if you write it down? There have been hundreds of studies conducted showing this to be a logical and irrefutable fact. It’s a characteristic shared by most high earners in the world.

Do you write down you goals? The answer is probably no.

Why would I say that? Well, statistics also show that very few people actually write down their goals or create a plan to achieve those goals. So I am going to present to you a proven methodology for you to be more successful based on this principle.

Step 1. Write Down your Goal

I was laughing to myself the whole time I was typing Step 1. In all seriousness, writing down your goals increases the odds of you actually acquiring them astronomically. Write down you goals in full detail. Leave nothing to the imagination. What EXACTLY do you want to accomplish?

Step 2. Consider what has worked previously

Whatever your goal is, you need to be keeping track of the things that work. So if you are in our industry and responsible for driving referral growth, then when you get a referral, you should be asking yourself what caused that referral. Was it a certain conversation? Perhaps bringing the write type of follow up was key? Whatever made that phone ring needs to be capture so you can try to repeat it.

Step 3. Use your successes to build a path to your goals

If you know what has worked to drive referrals historically, it needs to be considered a tool in your tool belt. The more tools you have, the more likely you are to get the job done. You need to drive business and your tools can get you there!

Step 4. You have to “run the numbers”

If you want to get 20 referrals and you have four weeks, you need to figure out how you are going to get those referrals. Does that mean 5 a week? Maybe…or maybe it means you double down on your efforts in order to gain 10 a week the last two weeks. Either way, need a logical path with milestones to achieve your goals.

Putting it into place

Lets say that I want to (or need to) get 6 referrals in the next two weeks. I would start by creating this formula.

Goal: 6 Referrals in 10 business days (or 14 actual days)

Best Success Tools: My best tools are setting up meetings via phone, delivering a follow-up on one of the physician’s patients in our care, and offering at 24-hour admission time.

Milestones: I need at least 3 referrals by Friday to hit my first milestone, but I’d like to have 4.

How I’m going to achieve this goal:

  • List out my closest referral sources
  • Consider which of those have a patient in our care
  • Call and set up an appointment with as many as possible
  • Provide a comprehensive rundown of the patients we are caring for
  • Ask for patients that have similar symptoms or diagnosis
  • Drive home our ability to get that patient under our care within 24 Hours

Now, that may not be as solid as a plan I might have with more tools in my tool belt, but it’s a perfect example of writing down a goal, evaluating your best success efforts, and creating a milestone specific plan to hit those goals. Even writing out this simple plan made me feel accomplished.

I challenge you

 

As we are still in the single digits of the month, take a moment to write down your goal, your best successes, and a straightforward plan on how you are going to achieve that goal. You’ll be surprised at the results!

– Jason

About the Author:

Jason Lewallen is Vice President of Marketing

for Home Care Sales

He can be reached at:

Email: jason@homecaresales.com

Phone: 615.815.7907

 

PS: Might want to consider…

If you are a home health, hospice, or private duty agency who struggles with:

educating your referral sources

not having professional handouts with the correct clinical/treatment info

not knowing what to say to drive referrals

not having time to train your sales team about diagnosis specific info

…then the 52 Wk Roadmap to Referrals program is the answer you have been looking for. Agencies are using this methodology to gain more referrals and position their entire sales team as experts.

It’s a plan for every week of the year and can lead to double and triple the referrals you are currently getting. The investment is a mere $500 per month. That’s less than a fraction of a referral!
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