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:
- We offer Choice (list)
- We have a preferred provider.
- We do not refer.
- We need someone to take x insurance patients.
- You need to do a lunch and learn.
- We have our own agency and for ease we just use them.
- We let the patient pick from our brochures.
- We use different providers based on where the patient lives.
- Our patients cannot afford your services.
- 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”
