Can you REALLY move the needle in one week?

I often hear owners and representatives say, “Oh, this will take a while for me to start to get referrals from this account.”

 

When given the right tools, this is simply not true.

 

More than any other profession, sales rely on your thoughts, and thoughts become actions or inactions.

Actions, when taken in the correct order, will produce results.

 

Cheryl and I are in the middle of a 30-day sprint with a Home Health and Hospice.  It is a big project. They have AMAZING leadership, and their reps are good-hearted people who want to do well.

 

Have you ever said in the past: 

 

“Well, Dr. NoGood refers to XYZ Home Health because _________”

– or

“They have to get to know me first before they will refer.” 

– or

“You HAVE to bring them lunch before you can get a referral.”  

 

Or perhaps you thought:

 

“Well, they have their hospital-based agency so I am going to get nothing, so why go in.” 

– or

 “These sales calls intimidate me. They most likely already have a favorite home care, so what’s the use? …But I will go make the call anyway.” 

 

And what happens?

 

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You walk out empty-handed.

 

NOW…

Imagine you had the CONFIDENCE that the step-by-step procedure has worked for thousands of marketers JUST LIKE YOU!  And they CAN WORK FOR YOU TOO!

When you have the right information, tools, and experience, you can move mountains in a short period. The reps are killing it this week! We hear back from them walking out of a building with 8 referrals; out of a hospital with 7 referrals.

Why is this working so well?

They have the formula to follow! This week focused on their “Top Accounts” and gaining more from their top accounts and uncovering challenges – Cheryl shared with you the “STAR” script a few weeks ago.

  • Script
  • Trigger Emotion
  • Action
  • Rescue

 

The STAR script helps the marketer uncover challenges and areas of opportunities!

 

I also want to recognize their team is coachable. They are open to ideas and suggestions. They are IMPLEMENTERS! They are gaining coaching from their leadership, Cheryl, and I, and they are ACTING on it!

 

We are SO proud of this team! We are so grateful for these owners to invest in their marketing team!  Together We GROW!

Serving Seniors Together!

Melanie

 

P.S. You want the STAR Method for uncovering challenges and opportunities?  It’s in our upgraded High-Performance Sales Academy!  Click here to start today!

Not quite ready to discover the step-by-step process?  Want more info? Jump on Mike’s Calendar and find a time that is good for you!

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Providing direction, delegating, and removing obstacles to get work done

This week I got to spend time coaching one of my most favorite owners of all times. We first met when I was speaking at the annual nurse entrepreneurs conference two years ago. 

I remember him quickly standing and walking towards the side of the stage, waiting for me to wrap up my presentation to about 1000 nurses. 

I was thinking:

“What did I say that motivated this man to make sure that he got time to speak to me.”

To my delight, he was a wonderful gentleman who was an owner of a private duty and wanted to open a home health and hospice organization. 

His first words to me were, “How did you learn to provide direction and delegate work to remove obstacles to let you open multiple businesses, and work as a consultant?” 

I immediately recognized where he was in his leadership journey. He had reached that major career transition point when a person needs to shift from doing the work to getting work done through others.  

This transition is difficult for many. It means giving up direct control over the work which involves more risk. More need to trust and equip others to get the work done and a shift in focus. 

Changing your view from personal achievement to enabling and empowering others to achieve. I invited him to be mentored by me for a few weeks to see if I could help him push through the change.

Over the next few weeks, I coached this owner. I uncovered another difficult transition that he and many owners face as they remove themselves from the daily grind of running their organizations. A major transformation happens when the owner stops being the expert in a particular function, area, or discipline and instead starts to lead others to become the experts.  

Personally, this was the hardest transition for me to experience.  Having to give up being the person most in-the-know felt like giving up a child. I could see that this was also a challenge for the owner that I was mentoring. 

Leaders who succeed at these transitions start developing new skills and know when it is time to stop relying on the old ones. 

They learn to set clear expectations, track progress, and communicate information that people need to do their jobs. I was able to help this owner shift his focus to helping others develop their skills and gain confidence.  

If you are having a hard time letting go of work, maybe you feel like no one else will do this the right way. You may even be correct, but this will undoubtedly lead to burnout. Instead, change your focus from doing the work yourself, to one of guiding, delegating, and trusting others to do the job. 

Shift your focus to helping others develop their skills.  Navigate these leadership rites of passage and you will not only help other people be successful in their roles, but you’ll be also on your way to becoming more successful in yours.  

If you are ready to evolve as a leader.  You may want to join our mastermind group. 

Members have worked on skills like:

  • Providing clear direction and accountabilities.
  • Delegating and distributing assignments and decisions appropriately.
  • Monitoring progress of leaders by maintaining the flow of work and results (don’t worry…we provide the steps)
  • Providing appropriate guidance and direction based on people’s capabilities.
  • Intervening as needed to remove obstacles.

I enjoyed seeing this leader evolve. He created his leadership training manual. He implemented standards on patients on service for each clinical leader to manage. He mapped out a monthly calendar of expectations for the leaders to be prepared for the survey. Then he automated the process and just followed the calendar.  This lead to him to open new companies the same year!  Both Medicare-certified home health and Hospice.

When he needed to jump in and remove obstacles, he did but just by offering consultants to support leaders. This meant him not taking on the work himself. 

The result? 

He has several phenomenally successful businesses and a very happy life which gives him time with his family. 

It is exactly what most agency owners are looking for. That is what a mastermind group can do for you!

Are you ready? Apply Here!  Your transformation awaits you. 

Want to try to go about it yourself? Check out a great read Harvard Business Review Blog Network, Stop being a people-pleaser.  

Cheryl Peltekis, RN “The Solutionist”

 

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How to overcome objections and get the results you need – without losing money

It doesn’t matter if you are a marketer, sales representative, or clinical liaison, you will face many objections when you are out selling services. As a matter of fact, I struggled with what objections to write about here!

Each of my clients has shared so many with me. 

When I coach sales representatives or sales managers, I always assign a homework assignment to compile a list of objections.  

Here are the most common objections:

  1. We offer Choice (list)
  2. We have a preferred provider.
  3. We do not refer.
  4. We need someone to take x insurance patients.
  5. You need to do a lunch and learn.
  6. We have our own agency and for ease we just use them.
  7. We let the patient pick from our brochures.
  8. We use different providers based on where the patient lives.
  9. Our patients cannot afford your services.
  10. We let the hospital or Skilled Nursing Facilities place the referrals when a patient is discharged.

What I found during the past few years consulting is that a lot of the organizations that hire Home Care Sales to be their sales consultant have worked with other sales consulting companies first.  

Some of them have shared that they spent $20,000 on coaching for one rep. That is a lot of money! Sadly, these representatives come to Home Care Sales because they just could not succeed. They join home care sales and purchase the HPSA for under $500 and our weekly sales messages for under $6000 for the year, and they finally hit their dream results. Why? 

What is the key difference?  

I believe the key difference is teaching the sales representative how to deal with the most common objections for all the account types that they are calling on. I also believe that the sales representative should be able to learn from their peers.  

When our clients purchase the Weekly Road Map to Referrals, it includes monthly coaching on overcoming objections with a group of over 100 reps that show up for the coaching calls. I believe a lot is learned by attending these sessions. Hearing how one of your fellow sales comrades is getting past objections is truly one of the best ways for someone to learn. 

In addition, during these calls, Melanie and I provide email templates, voice mail scripts, and do several live roleplaying sessions to demonstrate to the reps that are in attendance how to get past objections.  We then invite the sales reps to bring up any objections that they had to deal with that week!  

After the coaching session, the sales representatives can log into their learning platform, Home Care Sales Pro and access the recording with the transcript so they can practice and refer to it before they walk into any account, they would like to finally gain access to referrals!   

I think many other consultants are either completely missing the boat or they are just not capable of offering coaching on overcoming objections in this format. I am not picking on any other sales consultant as many of them are excellent, genuinely nice people who with the best intentions to help your organization grow. 

I also know that many just do not have the life experience that Melanie and I bring to selling services. I do not believe there is any other consultant company out there that is like home care sales.  

I am an RN and agency owner for over 26 years. That is a long time to have to maintain a collection of successful businesses! I started in 1995 and built (from the ground up) an extremely successful home health, private duty, and hospice organization. 

While still helping run and manage my agency, I was the full-time salesperson for all three service lines and named “Sales Manager of The Year” in 2013.  

My business partner Melanie was first an OT who wanted to service more clients. However, the agency that she worked for did not have enough patients. So she had to go find them. She fell in love with sales and has been incredibly successful at selling services for the last 20 plus years!  

Sales Representatives must know the steps to take, and you must be aware of where to find the data you need to overcome sales objections. Once you find the data, how do you then turn that data into a sales call that gets you in front of the decision-makers who have the control to win you a hospital account?   

So here it goes. In today’s example, I’m going to focus on a home health provider that really wants to get referrals from hospitals in their territory.  

They have one hospital referring to them and now they want to build on to that list. Right now, their sales reps are hearing the following objections from the hospital d/c planners.  (The prior sales coach got them this far.):

  • We offer choice
  • We have a list.
  • We have preferred providers.

I asked the rep, “What did you learn from the other sales consultant that you worked with?”  

The sales rep responded, “he helped get me to have the courage to approach the discharge planners and introduce my agency and provide them with information about what we do to help patients going home.”  

My response was, “that was where you made your mistake.”  

The hospitals’ discharge planners do not need other agencies’ brochures placed in their hands. They need agencies that can solve their most pressing problems. To do that you have to know the right information and use it in a way to ask the questions that will allow you to identify what they need help with!  

Imagine if you responded to the objection of:

“We have our preferred providers,”

…by saying:  “How do you help a patient navigate through the list of providers?”  

Listen, to the response closely and ask a follow-up question. Now we teach our sales representatives to go deeper in Step 1 of the High Performance Sales Academy: Identify. If I’m speaking to a cardiac floor discharge planner, the rep that follows the sales process would have already investigated the hospital’s readmission rate for CHF and identified what cardiac diagnosis’s the hospital has selected for their bundled payment initiative program.   

We also instruct the sales representatives to know who their top competitors are. The Sales Reps need to be aware of the current market expectations in order to be able to cause an opportunity to shift the market expectations. 

Being prepared gives you the confidence to push past through the objection and ask an important follow-up question. 

Would you like to learn how we are helping other hospitals in the area by keeping their CHF patients out of the hospital? 

If they are working on bundled care for CHF patients, you should hear a resounding yes. Then you can respond with your facts.

If that sounds too complicated for your team, don’t get overwhelmed or afraid! We have what you need to build accounts. We show you (and your sales reps) how to grow new “A” accounts and get more referrals.  

We also can support your leadership with recruiting and retention issues with our CAM FAM mastermind group. If you want to learn more about how we can help your organization grow, just email Mike@homecaresales.com or go here to set up a consultation where he can share what’s working.  

As an agency owner, I hate to waste money. I am always looking for products that have been tried and proven to be successful over and over again. I bet you feel the same way. Well, good news: You just found it. From one owner to another – This can help your team become what you need them to be. 

Cheryl Peltekis, RN “The Solutionist”

 

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Ron was looking for a Sales Meeting Framework – he found it – you can too.

Recently, I received a call from an owner who was frustrated with his marketing team.

We are going to call him Ron. Ron had a very successful agency, but he struggled to “get his team in alignment.”

He felt like he didn’t have a handle on what they were doing or saying.

 

He was concerned that they were spending “too much time in their home offices” now that the territory was opening up.

He said it was a decent year in 2020 for growth, but he wanted to do better in 2021 and didn’t know where to start.

I asked Ron a few clarifying questions – (ask yourself these questions too)

    1. Do you have a defined expectation document?
    2. Do your reps know exactly what you both agree are tasks or activities for the position?
    3. Do you have a quota?
    4. Do you have a planned-out sales message and corresponding handouts for all 2021 – based on high-value referral types? (PDGM or Private Pay?)
    5. How do you “run” your sales meetings?

Ron reported he had several action items that could be improved. He wanted to focus on his marketing meetings. I shared with him our framework that we use with management clients.

This framework works for Home Health Marketing, Home Care Sales, or Hospice Liaisons.

High-Performance Home Care Sales Meetings:

 

    1. Lead with results and outstanding performance (individual or team)
    2. Success Stories – Who had a great call that turned into a referral or business for your agency
    3. Best Practices – What is the one thing you did last week that you believe moved the needle
    4. Challenges round table
    5. Sales Message of the week with role play
    6. Win! What is the thing that is going to move the needle this week?

This framework will help Ron and you have the most productive sales meetings. It will keep you on track and results-focused.

If you answered “no” to any of the clarifying questions above – we could help!

    • Do you have a defined expectation document?
    • Do your reps know exactly what you both agree are tasks or activities for the position? (We have an expectation document in our Fast-Track program)
    • Do you have a quota? (We can help you develop a cost-justified comp plan)
    • Do you have a planned-out sales message and corresponding handouts for all 2021 – based on high-value referral types? (PDGM or Private Pay?). (RoadMap to Referrals gives you a weekly marketing message that drives in high-value referrals)\
    • How do you “run” your sales meetings? (we just gave you our outline for our marketing meetings from our sales management program)

Want to learn more about our programs – click here to pick a good time for you, and Mike will tour you on the different options!

Keep Serving Seniors!

Melanie

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How do you like the word vendor?

“Warning this is a little bit of a rant here inside.”

ven·dor

/ˈvendər,ˈvenˌdôr/

noun
a person or company offering something for sale, especially a trader in the street.
“an Italian ice-cream vendor.”

We have heard from our hospital systems for years: “No Vendors on the floor without a badge.” You must be part of our “Vendor tracking system.”

I appreciate their concern for tracking who is in their hospitals; I also would submit those in Home Health, Hospice, and In-Home Care business are more than “vendors.” We are CARE PARTNERS!

I know that you believe as we do – we are educators first and patient advocates before we are “vendors.”

We believe that Sales = Profound Service, and we have a MORAL OBLIGATION to share our message of Home Care with the world. If you do not share your message and educate our referral sources and families, seniors will not get the care they deserve!

This is also why we share our proven methodologies and programs with you because we want you to succeed and not have to go through trial and error. You get the fast track – the most direct way to getting clients and patients by following our formulas.

You lead the way. You have the discussions and position yourself as the senior care expert who educates on Home Care, Home Health, or Hospice.

Even in our own industry, I have been in groups where Home Care Owners, Hospice Executives, and Home Health Administrators ask questions such as “What software do you use?” or “What marketing services are out there?”

Much to my dismay, the administrator shuts down conversations with “Vendors: No Pitching, No Selling, this space is only for support.”

I am a business owner and want a salesperson to tell me what they or their company can do for me – how else would I know what is out there??? Isn’t sharing your message support?? YES!

The mindset that sales and support are mutually exclusive is pervasive, and it only hurts seniors in the end who are not going to get the care they deserve by not learning about your services.

The good news is YOU are part of the solution. YOUR MISSION is bigger than their NO!

When you hear the word ‘VENDOR” or “NO SELLING” if you are part of this group, you square up your superhero cape and tell them, “I am a Home Care Educator.” I am here to help.

Don’t ever let your light dim because someone referred to you as a VENDOR or say “you can come to my event or group but only if you “Don’t Pitch your services.” You shine bright and attract people to you with your knowledge and expertise. They need to know who you are and what you do to understand how to refer to you!

This is your time! Change this mindset. Shine bright and BE the one that shows the world how to be an AWESOME EDUCATOR AKA PATIENT ADVOCATE AKA SALESPERSON AND YES EVEN A VENDOR!

Serve More Seniors!

Melanie

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