So a lot of reps will come to me that last week of the month and they’re like oh my God I’m not going to hit my numbers what am I going to do?
And my answer is typically the same I usually say well, what worked for you this week, what worked for you this month?
Go back and look at those week of the trigger questions and how did you ask for the business and they delivered a result.
I also will typically say go to where you know has the referral. So the ones that have given you the most volume over the last several months.
Go back and share with them hey my numbers are down a little bit this month is there anybody else that you think maybe can qualify or benefit? Because typically your biggest referral sources are also one of your biggest fans,
and they want you to be successful, so they will typically help you find another patient to work on.
I also usually will look at the account and see if I could increase one of my calls, like maybe I’m only going there every Tuesday.
And I’ve got this last week of the month, you know what maybe I’m gonna hit them Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week.
Because now, if I have a conversation with them Monday I maybe will be able to uncover someone that’s going home by Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and be able to land those referrals if I see them more than once that week.
So typically I will increase my presence, by increasing my sales calls to those high prior priority accounts, the ones that are probably going to have a referral for me.
I also will take the time and take a deep breath to make sure I put on my mindset put on my superhero costume and role play my trigger question.
What questions, am I asking so that I’m getting them again to uncover a patient that’s going to pop into their mind.
If you are not part of the roadmap to referrals you may not understand that, but if you are, use your roadmap to referrals information.
Pop into your classroom rewatch the training videos watch me and Melanie doing the role playing watch the other members of the of that group the sales reps role playing using trigger questions on each other and grab something that you love from that video.
So you can do this I’ve got faith in you.
As a salesperson, hitting quota is par for the course. But there are times where the clock is ticking and you realize you need to drive more business. If you are an owner with a sales rep on your team that is struggling to hit the number, let us help. We can offer tools to take them to the level you are expecting and we can even take over coaching and management of those reps for you.
If this is speaking to you, reach out to Mike for a quick consultation with the contact info below.
https://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/insights-logo.jpeg6751200Melanie Stoverhttps://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/HCS-Logo-GENERIC-01-300x74.pngMelanie Stover2022-10-22 17:03:352022-10-22 17:03:35Insights: It’s the last week of the month and I don’t have enough referrals
D/C day!!! WOOO HOOO! I am thrilled! I was disappointed with the “no OT” order, but I knew I could address that with the nurse at SOC.
I have a preferred provider in OH and PA, and I reached out to them. They are an old client of mine, and I wanted my Mom to go there. I know the VP, and I know the marketers. I wanted my Mom to get good care and help them out with a Medicare patient.
Unfortunately, like a lot of agencies right now, they didn’t have the staff to admit my Mom. So, I was ready for the patient choice list. I wanted to see it. I was curious how they were going to present it.
And guess what? THEY DIDN’T PRESENT ME WITH PATIENT CHOICE!
OMG, here I am, waiting for the big REVEAL! I was sure it would come on a piece of paper with the hospital-based Home Health at the top of the list! But NO!
No choice!
I ask the nurse who we are having for Home Health. She didn’t know. My Mom was chomping at the bit to get out of the hospital, so she was like, let’s get out of here. You are not tracking down the Case Manager or Nurse Practitioner to find out.
We discharge, and I take Mom to her little Air BnB that we stay in for the next 70 days while she receives follow-up treatment and settles into the house.
The Home Health nurse calls to schedule a start of care. She introduced herself to me and asked me to come the next day for the SOC. I say yes, of course, and anxiously await the nurse so that I can tell her that she needs to tell her Marketer to go to the bone marrow clinic coordinator and tell her how awesome Mom is and to have Home Health as a standing order on all bone marrow transplant (BMT) patients who are discharging.
(Reminder we are in Cleveland – no family – no friends because she doesn’t live here, and even if we were at “home,” Mom is supposed to isolate anyway due to her immune system and WBC at 1.4, so read this as “NO SUPPORT” beyond me and her – PERFECT Home Health patient).
The next day – The nurse is on time and fantastic! Guess what?
NOT the hospital-based Home Health!!!!
This was a private home health agency, and I said to her – OMG, I thought you were going to be Cleveland Clinic Home Health (because on the phone, she just said – “Hi, I am Payton, the home health nurse – she didn’t say which home health) She laughed and said, “No I used to work there but not now.”
She did all the right things, completed a medication reconciliation on the 17 meds Mom takes twice a day, and taught Mom how to flush her Hickman and wound care. All great stuff! When I questioned her about the other disciplines, she said you had ordered OT and PT.
Yeah! Someone along the way added OT! GREAT! We are so excited!
Mom is in a lot of pain; she is weak, HUGE fall risk, her balance is way off, and the pain meds make her cogitatively slow. All the things you would expect on a patient who was in the hospital for 25 days AND had a bone marrow transplant.
I shared with the nurse my experience at the hospital and how they didn’t offer Home Health.
She reported that it was “crazy” I suggested they let their Marketer know. She said, “OK .”I also shared that we had clinic on Monday and Thursday, so could she please let the other disciplines know that we need visits on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday? I watched her type it into the Tiger Text for my Mom.
I also shared that my Mom doesn’t answer her phone and would they text or call me to schedule the appointments. I watched her text that to the group too. She reported her frequency would be once a week because that is when my Mom needed her dressing change and her line work for her caps to be changed. Perfect.
This is a solid care plan for my Mom.
Here is where it gets a little shaky. No call from the OT or PT. I appreciate this. I have agencies I work with now that PT is out for one week. It’s not what we want for our patients, but it does happen.
The part of a patient’s family is the no-call that doesn’t feel good. Of course, I am an OT. (full disclosure I have not treated a patient in over 20 years, so I am a little rusty) While it didn’t feel great that the PT or OT or anyone from the agency called, I was not in trouble by myself with my Mom. I put “oil” on those old skills and cranked them up!
She needs assistance with all ADLs. I believe all the support and assistance my Mom needed would have been a challenge for anyone who doesn’t have the biomechanical knowledge for transfers, bathing, and compensation techniques while dressing and grooming.
I didn’t call the agency to see what would be the outcome for PT and OT, knowing that I could handle the care.
Monday rolls around, and no one has still called. I texted the nurse she said that she handed Mom’s case off to another nurse and she should be calling me for a schedule, but she would check in with the OT and PT.
The nurse texts back and says the OT and PT had “tried” calling, but no one answered. So I double-checked my Mom’s phone for missed calls or VM – nothing.
Since I was texting, I told the SOC nurse to please give the OT and PT my number to schedule. The OT called within 3 hrs to schedule an eval the next day between 3-4. Unfortunately, the PT has not called yet.
Today during the weekly visit, I asked the nurse if they had a marketer because I would like to share our experience of not being offered home health with the Marketer.
I am happy to give the Marketer the nurse coordinator’s name, email, and pager that she can follow up with to report on my Moms progress, educate the BMT coordinator on Home Health, and hopefully set up standing orders for BMT patients.
The nurse who was changing my Moms dressings and caps for her Hickman reported she would. (I will let you know if I ever get a call from the Marketer)
What can we learn from this experience?
Patient choice – NOT ALWAYS! So, many CM, D/C planners, etc. SAY the offer patient choice and same might. My experience is they often use this as a “smoke screen” because they are “supposed” to offer patients choice by their policy. But as I just experienced – NOPE. I can only make an educated guess the hospital-based HH was “full,” and they picked the next HH on their favorites list that had availability.
Staffing is a PAIN right now! Every agency we work with is struggling with staffing. I don’t know why the OT and PT didn’t call me. I can only make another educated guess that staffing was a problem, and they needed to push the eval a week for the OT, and it will be more than a week for PT by the time they get here.
COMMUNICATION is key. While I appreciate staffing is challenging out there. I would have really appreciated a call to say, “Hey, we got you. We are a little bit out – is it ok if we come with therapies next week?”
I am VERY curious if this clinical staff will contact the Marketer to call me. I have told them I am an OT who works in Home Health now on the marketing side of the house.
This gets me thinking, and now I am asking the question you to ponder.
Would your staff contact you? Would you get the message that a family wanted to GIVE you the contact of a potential referral source? Does every staff member know who you are? What do you do? Even if they are PRN?
Does your agency reach out to patients or their families and say – “Hey, we got you! PT and OT are on their way. They will be there within X.”
…Or just know what you do when you can’t get there within 48 hrs with all disciplines? Who watches to ensure all disciplines are in the case if ordered? What is the process?
This is not to challenge your ops team. This is so that you can use it in the field as a selling tool. For example, you could say we review all cases on Tuesday and Thursday to ensure all disciplines are in and communicate with the family. This would show your referral sources how you care for their patients in these trying times of staffing.
These opportunities are gifts to help us grow and serve more seniors!
Together We Grow!
Melanie Stover OT, MBA, MS/ISM
Co-Owner of Home Care Sales
PS: Need more assistance with sales guidance? We can offer tools to help all the way up to managing your sales team for you. Go here and set up a call with Mike to discover more: https://calendly.com/mike-home-care-sales
https://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/396c91a4cd56728c7a06c7af04c65978.jpeg6751200Melanie Stoverhttps://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/HCS-Logo-GENERIC-01-300x74.pngMelanie Stover2022-10-13 20:36:072022-10-13 20:36:07Do they REALLY offer patient choice? (Spoiler alert – NO – Let me show you how they did it for my Mom)
You know, we have an incredible program called Community Calls.
Community Calls is one of those programs where, if you could figure out, ask yourself this question, think of it this way.
If I could talk to myself my 20 year old self my 25 year old self to be honest, when I was just getting ready to open my first agency, and I could tell myself,
how to get to success faster, it would be to use the Community Calls program. And what I mean by Community Calls program is,
we each have in our service area one of those wonderful big large Assisted Living or personal care facilities that we absolutely want to work with.
You know they’ve got the best the best location in town, the best parking they’re clean they’re bright they’re new they’re shiny and they have a wonderful reputation and we know that we could get staff to love being in that building.
Yet they’re not referring to us. So one of the ways that you can break in there is that every single one of these buildings is filled with seniors and these seniors are bored.
They are lonely they get to go play games and have fun with some of the activities people.
But other than that they’re just sitting around and the pressure is on the staff at the Assisted Living facility to keep them engaged to keep them happy to keep them feeling part of involvement.
Imagine now you are the facility owner and somebody comes to you from in home care or from home health or hospice,
and says hey we would love to be able to come in and least once a month and for an hour bring all of your residence together and give them a conversational talk,
just about home health and hospice services and,
you know we’re going to have a little bit of a conversation too about maybe how to make the most of their next doctor’s appointment, or how to keep your brain healthy and smart.
How to eat choose the right foods to eat and the good news is is that we will even provide them with a flyer and a handout.
And now we even have the opportunity, if you would like you could offer some tours at the end, we could put a couple posters up at the local, you know pharmacies.
Maybe, even at like you know target at the return area who knows anything that’s local to the building where we could say hey we’re doing these health talks for seniors.
And for caregivers and we would love you to attend and we’re also offering free tours of the facility at the end.
This could be an opportunity now for the building to take care of two problems. One is, they’re taking care of the bored people that live in the building,
that are looking for something new to do. Now if you do a great job with this talk, which we do teach how to do this, by the way, in our Master’s Program.
But if you do a great job of giving a presentation, meaning you engage the audience, you know you could maybe have a couple of gifts from the dollar store that you said, who can share with me, one of the reasons that people fall.
And they raised their hand and they say Oh, they tripped over there sneaker or they fell over their dog or they couldn’t see where they were going, because it was nighttime and they tripped over something, whatever their answer is.
You give that little dollar store gift to these people that are in the audience keeping them engaged.
And they’re excited they’re happy they love your talks they’re going to tell their neighbors and their neighbors from the building are going to come down to the next month’s talk
if you give away little prizes like that. Now if you also have posted the signs and you put them up at the local pharmacies, you are attracting people to come into that building and be able to have a tour.
Now you are a business partner to that Assisted Living personal care home that you want to so desperately serve patients at.
If you were bringing in people to have a tour of the building every month,
do you think they’re going to want to partner with you to be their provider? Absolutely. In addition, if you have already done, for your salesperson,
this is a script and the script is written on a ninth-grade literacy level anybody can do this presentation it’s not in high language. I mean
let’s be honest, I do not have the broadest vocabulary in the world and thank God I don’t need it right, I could just talk to you in common sense and you understand what I’m saying.
That’s the same thing about these presentations, they are written on a ninth-grade literacy level.
And so, these presentations are just enough to engage with the audience and then each of them have a little tiny gift that they give, and that is what we call the call to action.
Where during this little fun interaction with the community and by the way, sales reps, when they are asked who used the Community Calls program, how do you like it?
Nine out of 10 times the sales rep says, I absolutely love it. Some of our car companies that we work with that have used this program,
they actually have a dedicated person who is now just doing nothing but the Community Calls program every single day going to different facilities in their drivable areas and delivering it. That’s how much some sales reps love this
program or this package I should say. So now you go in you do your little presentation, but the gift is that at the end you have an amazing call to action.
Meaning, something that is taught that asks the people that are attending the program,
who needs care, who would like to receive services? But it’s done in a way, without saying “who needs care?” And so that’s the thing that’s inside the program.
So if you want to break into a facility, go and have a call with Mike. Mike@homecaresales.com.
Figure out if the Community Calls program is for you, try it at a couple buildings you’re going to love doing it. The seniors are going to love you and the building is going to love you because
they get paid to keep us in bed, and if you’re providing them butts to come in and get toward to potentially move in.
As well as you’re providing them with services that keep people from falling, keep people out of the hospital, it’s a win win for them. So they want you there, they want these programs, they want these activities for their bored seniors.
I use this program not just to do it as a live session, I even did it for radio. So I got on my local radio station using the Community Calls programs, I call it the Health Matters series.
And every single Friday did a live radio show for 15 minutes talked about the lesson and for 15 minutes took calls.
And I did that for a couple years and talk about stress. These programs can be your example of how you’re giving back to the community.
It is marketing without you paying to market it is free marketing where you are getting in front of hundreds of people at the facilities and being able to share your message about your organization. So thank you so much.
As Cheryl discussed, connecting directly with seniors and facilities can be challenging but super rewarding. We have created a full program with handouts, scripts, and presentations made for you and ready to be edited/individualized for your usage.
https://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/insights-logo.jpeg6751200Melanie Stoverhttps://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/HCS-Logo-GENERIC-01-300x74.pngMelanie Stover2022-10-08 16:53:562022-10-08 16:53:56Insights: Is there a good way to get into an independent living facility?
Sales representatives often ask questions about trying to attract patient types that they know their organization is great at treating.
Today, I got an email from a new salesperson who works for a large private duty organization. Johnny asked if I knew how he could capture more diabetic patients. He explained that the admission coordinator was a diabetic and that she really felt that she would be able to create a plan of care to support diabetic patients.
I suggested that he go to speak to the local Certified Diabetic Education Coordinators (CDE) that are having classes in his service area. Then I gave him a roleplay example to help him understand the very “words to say” to gain a diabetic referral.
Here is the role play that I provided Johnny to follow:
In this scenario, Mike is the Clinical Diabetic Educator (CDE), and I will play the role of the salesperson.
Cheryl has made an appt with the CDE to learn about his classes and how they support their students.
Cheryl: Hi, you must be Mike – good to see you – thank you for making time to meet with me.
Mike: Yes sure – how can I help?
Cheryl: As I shared on the phone I am interested in learning about your offerings – we have clients and a number of them have diabetes and I am interested in learning how I can better support them and how I can get them to you.
Mike: Ok yeah great – so I hold classes for folks with diabetes – and then one on ones with patients who are struggling to manage their diabetes. I hold them here at the office and the hospital. I would like to hold them in other places too, but it seems like there is never enough time.
Cheryl: Wow you really do a lot for the community – this is great. May I have a few brochures?
Mike: Absolutely, please let me give you at least 20.
Cheryl: I am curious – what do you see as some of the challenges that your patients face?
Mike: Oh, you know – they don’t eat well – they don’t check their blood sugar – they like to sit on the sofa and not move. Many of them are overweight and they don’t want to come to see me because they don’t want to get weighed. Folks report that they feel like they are going to “get in trouble”.
Cheryl: Wow – It sounds like they sure do need help at home. The good news is that my agency can help with all those issues. Our coordinator is a diabetic herself. She meets with each of the diabetic patients and builds a plan of care to support their diabetes, that’s why I wanted to meet with you. I know we are the company to service diabetic patients!
Mike: Yes, I know a little about home care services. However, most of my patients are on Medicare and you don’t take insurance
Cheryl: That’s true we do not take Medicare, but we still can help. We work with the patient and their families to build a plan of care to support them at home and that plan of care helps keep their diabetes in check. If folks don’t have the money to pay for a caregiver, we try to connect them with resources.
Mike: That’s nice. But I don’t know, I must think about how we might work together. I haven’t been referred to in-home care before. I just think about the cost for the patients. I am not comfortable talking about private pay expenses.
Cheryl: I can understand that and that’s exactly why I am here. To take that burden off your shoulders. How about if I come to one of your classes and as you go to break give me 5 minutes to share about my agency and what we do. Then we let the patients decide who would like to talk to me afterward.
Mike: Yeah, I like that better. Let’s look at a date – how about (insert date and times)
Cheryl: Perfect I will see you then. Before I go. One of the things that may not have thought about our patients that can’t get to your classes. Which patient has missed their appointments with you?
Mike: Oh I have a couple. We just keep calling them and rescheduling for another date.
Cheryl: How about if we offer a free in-home assessment to see if we can help get your patients here?
Mike: Oh – you would do that?
Cheryl: Yes, we would love to call them – ask if we could help and see where it takes us.
Mike: OK, I am open to that idea. I have one patient I would like you to connect. Let me get his info for you
Cheryl: Perfect – got it and I will let you know what they say – what’s your cell and I will text you
Mike: 333.333.3333
Cheryl: Great ok now you have mine too. Talk soon!
Now let’s review this roleplay.
First, I love to provide you with new referral sources (the CDE) to call on. I also love that this expands the CDE’s vision on how you can support private duty patients.
In the roleplay, Cheryl removes the stress of discussing costs, by offering to do the selling directly to the attendees.
In this example, the salesperson has access to direct consumer selling to the diabetic patient population.
I also love to show you how asking questions is more important than the rep telling the account about the agency.
Here in this example, the brochure vomiting is illuminated and replaced with specific information to differentiate the agency by just stating, “Our Coordinator is a diabetic herself”.
If you want to learn more about how you can sell by a diagnosis, we can help. We have a program called the Road Map To Referrals, 52 weeks of sales calls that expand the referral sources’ knowledge on whom to refer.
PS: Here is a link to a diagnosis-specific selling process video done by my business partner Melanie Stover. Be sure to click the Like and Subscribe button while you are there!
https://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/b7dae08bf33c62901181ad02e10cb6d0.jpeg6751200Cheryl Peltekishttps://homecaresales.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/HCS-Logo-GENERIC-01-300x74.pngCheryl Peltekis2022-10-05 18:05:482022-10-05 18:05:48How Home Health and In-Home Care can gain Referrals for Diabetic Patients
(Reminder we are in Cleveland – no family – no friends because she doesn’t live here, and even if we were at “home,” Mom is supposed to isolate anyway due to her immune system and WBC at 1.4, so read this as “NO SUPPORT” beyond me and her – PERFECT Home Health patient).
