It’s me Cheryl Peltekis, RN “The Solutionist”. Yes, I know what a weird nickname, but it truly fits my quirkiness! I am super grateful for the success that I have been able to accomplish.
It feels beyond great to know that I’m set for my retirement and that I have the home of my dreams and the career that I love.
It wasn’t always like this…
My childhood wasn’t a Disney princess story. One of the worst days happened when I was only 8 years old. My brother Mark was killed crossing the street by a drunk driver. I can’t even express in words how this rocked our family’s world for the next few years. Just writing this makes me relive this tragic time.
A few years later it was time for high school. I really, really hated high school. You see, I had gone to public school up until the final four years. I attended special classes for the gifted kids and I never felt that I fit in. My parents decided to let me go to Catholic School for high school. Even though it was with my neighborhood friends, I felt removed from the kids I grew up with. I felt like someone made a mistake…and that mistake was me!
It was hard going to a school where everyone had their childhood friends from their elementary years. I didn’t get involved with many activities and immersed myself in working and schoolwork, as well as reading. To this day, I still read about a book a week. All nonfiction.
I did well in school without working very hard and I decided that I wanted to be a physician. Imagine my shock when I failed in my first year of college! Too much freedom made for some bad choices and boy was I good at making some really bad decisions. The thing that changed my life was this embarrassing college failure. It was a low time in my life. I felt so stupid and so disappointed in myself.
I was smart, but not smart enough to realize that I was wasting a scholarship that I received to pursue my biology degree. Somehow, I survived and I decided to go after my next career choice that would allow me to help patients. I decided to pursue nursing. While applying to nursing school, I realized very quickly that wouldn’t be an option for me because I really couldn’t afford school and my parents weren’t in the position to help me.
Thankfully, the nursing school shared with me that Pennsylvania Hospital gave a scholarship to a student each year to go to nursing school in exchange for 3 years of work once you completed the program. I applied, went for the interview and got the scholarship. I really believe that my failure, is what got me the scholarship.
I remember telling the HR Manager (her name was Terry) that I screwed up and didn’t apply myself in college and insisted that I was never going to make that mistake again. I took 100% responsibility for my situation and I remember her telling me that is why she selected me.
Over the next few years, I gave up any social life I may have had and I converted to nerdism. Full nerd submission. I became a bookworm without the glasses….
I attended 3 different colleges at the same time
- Penn State for Nursing
- Philadephia Community College to get pre-requisites out of the way
- Holy Family University for business classes
I was on a mission to get done as fast as I could and completed all three in 2 ½ years! I finally felt like I was starting to like “me” and was proud of my success. I was (and am) content with this accomplishment, but I still was carrying around a small source of continuous pain like I wasn’t producing enough value in the world. It was a nagging feeling that wouldn’t go away, even with my accomplishments. So, over the next 3 years, while I was working full time at the hospital in oncology nursing, I really started my transformation.
It was like I was a worm turning into a butterfly. I loved helping people, and I was ready to take another step towards becoming more than just a pair of hands helping others. At the age of 26, I took a leap of faith and opened my first business.
Today, I own a home health, hospice, and private duty organization besides being the co-owner of Home Care Sales.
I know how hard it is to get a business to be lucrative. The pains of growing a business are as bad as birthing a child (And I would know… I have 5 children).
In these industries, we faced (and still face) so much competition. Everyone has built their SEO optimizations, allowing them to capture more online business and as for services, we were all offering basically the same with some minor differentiators. I struggled to just get a foot in the door of many accounts, and growing seemed like a pipe dream.
Many days, I felt nauseous, had sweating hands, and felt like I was walking around in a fog trying to figure out what the heck is going on. “Why wasn’t my organization growing?” I would repeat over and over.
We had suffered 3 years in a row of financial losses and once again failure was looking at me right in the face. I couldn’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror. I had to save this business. I couldn’t handle another failure. Understandably, this caused me to be depressed and (if I wanted to drive business) I needed to snap out of this sad state.
Finally, I looked at the top 5 companies that were my competitors and I conducted a SWAT analysis. Quickly I found what I was missing. There was one thing that I didn’t have that was giving my competitors free rein to steal my business. I was missing a Sales Team! A professional liaison, relationship builder, customer service guru, and post-acute care expert.
Now, I know so many of you out there don’t have sales representatives, but this one thing made the difference between failure and success. Once I made the leap to hire, I was again afraid because I had no clue on how to manage them. I found help by going to 5 different boot camps and attending a sales manager’s class. I mentioned I read books right? I don’t want to share how many books I read, but I’m pretty sure I set a Guiness World Record.
I saved my business that year and now I want to help save yours! I went from failure, to “The Solutionist”. I was able to regain my self-worth and prove that I was a winner! I want you to have the same experience. I want you to come out a winner!
If you want to grow your organization and you don’t have sales reps or you have reps that aren’t bringing in the business, Home Care Sales can help. We create superhero sales representatives that are high performers!
I know it is hard, but if you follow our High Performance Sales process, you and your team can gain new accounts and grow existing accounts. This sales process has been proven to work in any market when it is followed and supported with exceptional services. I almost lost my business, but because I lived by the success principle of taking 100% responsibility for my life – I acted. I went out and built my self a sales team of superheroes that turned my company around using the high performance selling process.
If you want to read my story about how I saved my organizations you can get my book “Five Steps to Sales Success” on Amazon, or download the free eBook version at www.homecaresales.com/book.
While you are online, check out this brief video about our products:
If you want to grow, just email mike@homecaresales.com and he will unlock the vault of products to make it happen!
Successful Selling,
Cheryl Peltekis, RN
“The Solutionist”
