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How to work in these crazy times – dealing with overwhelm

I was recently speaking with the owner of an agency who said to me:

“I am exhausted. Look at my calendar. There is no time for me. I am slamming and jamming through the day from one meeting to the next. I don’t have time to think strategically. I am struggling. What’s worse is I see my staff struggling with the same issues.

They are tired of being on zoom for 6-7 hrs a day in meetings. They tell me our clinical and caregiving staff is getting “burned out,” and I am afraid they might be running into the ground. I am worried.

My staff IS the agency. No nurses or Aides or Caregivers – NO AGENCY

Day to day, I don’t know my staff situation because of COVID and having staff out on quarantine. COVID tracking is taking up a tremendous amount of time and resources.

We have plenty of referrals – that’s good – the reps are following your inside sales process – that is not a problem.

The problem is I am overwhelmed and tired.

And it feels like everyone else is too.

I need help. I need a plan. Not just a couple of morale boosters but a plan to honor my staff. And help me get out of this “funk” of groundhog day that has been my life for that last 6 mos.”

 

I told this owner – He is not alone.

 

I, too, feel the collective “tiredness” of the whole world.

We are in a sustained trauma.

We can’t see our friends. We have to reserve spots online to go to church.

Our “Social framework” is broken.

For the Owner. He is tired.

I shared with him some productivity hacks to gain some of his time back. So that he can have room to think. Think about the future – winter is just a month away for him.

Everyone will be “back inside,” and that means even less socialization for him and his staff.

We have all heard the estimates on the costs of employee turnover:

  • 6 to 9 months of salary. (That’s well over half what you pay an employee in a year. For an employee making $100,000 a year, the turnover cost could be as high as roughly $75,000. Ouch.)
  • 16% of annual salary for jobs with traditionally high turnover, such as entry-level jobs.
  • 20% of annual salary for jobs requiring mid-level experience
  • 213% (not a typo!) of the annual wage for top-level executive positions, including C.E.O.s *

(Statistics according to https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/employee-retention-the-real-cost-of-losing-an-employee
)

We can all agree employee turnover is expensive.

(Add on top of that all the “COVID-exposure quarantines AKA COVID exposure “vacations” as one owner calls it)

His marketing team is delivering more referrals then he can serve! He is TURNING DOWN REFERRALS! — YIKES!

He needs current staff to stay and “do more” even when they are already tired! (He also is hiring as fast as he can)

Employee centric management will shape pandemic recovery success.

For this owner, we are creating a plan. A step by step Employee Engagement plan for him to help him honor his staff, increase morale, and connect to the human first.

The Framework is C.E.F.T.

C- Compassion. Offering comfort, and empathy to staff during this challenging work/life/kids a homeschooling balance

E- Experience. Your staff needs to “DO” Something! The activity needs to be engaging, and your team will become involved in the reward system. E is also for EASY – Yes, the activity needs to be engaging, but it needs to be EASY too- the staff has enough “work” to do.

F- F.U.N. We ALL NEED MORE FUN!!!

T – Timely. This cannot be a 1 and done. This is an ongoing plan of engagement and honoring of staff. We have all tried gift cards – for them only to become an expectation. This plan has “surprise” and “chance” worked in so that his staff doesn’t “expect” the reward (much like a slot machine – you keep coming back because you don’t know when it will pay out!)

The result of this plan will be that he can give it to his administrators to roll out each month and engage his staff. Engage and delight his team that his agency cares. Cares enough to create the social framework they lost during the pandemic.

This agency will create deeper relationships with its staff, which will allow them to serve more patients and increase their revenue.

We are all in this together.

Giving the owner the Freedom to Grow.

During this time of Overwhelm, we are here to help.

If you want to gain access to this Employee Engagement Plan – we invite you to be part of our Beta roll out in our Mastermind. Click here, fill out the application, and see if it’s a good fit for both of us!

Melanie

P.S. Overwhelm is real. You can move out of it with structure. With structure comes FREEDOM! You got this – We can help!

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50% of Patients who are referred home health – Don’t get services???

Over this past week, you may have seen several industry sources sharing that nearly 50% of all Home Health referrals from the hospital are not started for care.

One of our mastermind members has seen an explosion in referrals from the hospital.

That is GOOD! Revenue is UP!

While the increase in referrals is AWESOME!

Here is the BAD part.

It has created 2 problems.

  1. Incomplete patient information – i.e., more non admits
  2. Not enough staff and putting HUGE pressure on existing staff to do more– i.e., Recruiting and retention.

Incomplete information: Incomplete patient information has always been a challenge. And when the patient leaves the hospital, it’s hard to “track them down” if the contact information is not correct.

How can your marketers or office staff help?

For our Mastermind Program, we are adding a module on transitions.

Here is a piece from that module:

V. C. E.

Verify:

Verify patient contact information and emergency contact information when the patient is STILL in the hospital.

Call:

Call the patient (if you can’t get in the hospital) AND the emergency contact to welcome them to your agency when the patient is STILL in the hospital or as soon as you get the information.

Educate:

We have created a “What to expect” brochure that is patient-centered and is a perfect resource to have the D/C planner hand out or email to the patient or family that describes the next steps so that the family knows who to call and gives them peace of mind during their transition

 

Recruiting and Retention

This is the “other side” of the sales and marketing coin. When your team does their job – you will have staffing problems. This agency owner and mastermind member always tell his branch administrators – keep hiring and let it be a sales problem! He means by that keep hiring nurses, therapists, and HHAs to the point that his agency has “open visits” and then put the pressure on sales and marketing to get more referrals!

Right now – EVERYONE has VIRUS FATIGUE, and it is compounded by an increase in referrals, and in this team, that means the current nurses, therapists, and HHAs have to do more visits.

This Mastermind agency is killing it with recruiting. They have more applicants in the last 6 mos than we have seen in the previous 7 years of working with them. But the referrals are growing faster than they can onboard.

How can Marketing help? What can you do as an owner?

This Mastermind agency uses its marketing team to deploy several retention and appreciation strategies we collaborated on to increase morale and let them know they are appreciated!

The staff has reported:

“Feeling cared for”

“Like we matter.”

“Thank you for making my day brighter.”

and one intake staffer reported:

“OMG, I can’t believe you noticed how hard I was working. Thank you!”

It goes a long way to help keep your staff committed to your vision and your agency.

Cheryl and I are building a new recruiting and retention module for the mastermind group.

We are pulling together the best practices and tactics we have experienced as consultants in the industry for the last 20+ years so that the mastermind group can have a vault of recruiting and retention strategies that will allow you to plug and play the best practices at your agency. SO easy – just pick out the ones you like and implement them.

We are in beta right now!

If this sounds like something you would like to be a part of – go to www.homecaresales.com/mastermind to fill out an application, and let’s jump on a call to see if it is the right fit for both of us!

Melanie

P.S. Even though we are all socially distancing – Cheryl and I are COMMITTED to having MORE FUN in the mastermind this year too! Wait until you hear the fun community activities we have planned for the group!

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How to manage a Sales Rep in 3 easy steps

I just completed a session for HCAOA annual virtual conference.

“LOVE Home Care – HATE Sales Management”

 

The theme – Rediscover the Magic of Home Care!

That is a great theme and an extension of that theme “Rediscover the magic of your sales rep.”

Many owners that we have worked with have shared with us (maybe you have thought this too)

Sales reps are SOOO hard to manage. I don’t know-how
I don’t want to manage my sales rep – I don’t even like sales!
I don’t like it SO much – I don’t even have a sales rep anymore.

Cheryl wrote this week about the value of a sales rep for your agency.

If you were not persuaded by her encouragement to have salespeople, let us go with the facts.

According to the Home Care Pulse Benchmarking study – I shared this in my presentation.


It is a fact!

When you have more salespeople, it will produce more results (read revenue!).
But you just can’t have a sales rep and like magic, have them produce! You have to have the strategies in place to hold them accountable, and that is where we come in – Home Care Sales has been empowering reps and holding them accountable for the last 20 years, and we have had to learn the hard way!

Lessons learned so that we can share with you the easy way!

In today’s blog, I will break it down for you in 3 easy steps so that you can eliminate the drama, focus on high-value client referrals, which will allow you to IMPACT MORE LIVES while INCREASING YOUR INCOME!

ONE: Alignment Agreement – We used to call this an expectation document

Five action items or less that you and your Rep agree upon agree

Examples include: Documentation, calendaring/ planning, expenses

This one document has saved me so much heartache. Recently one of our mastermind members used this document they have access to it in our resources vault. They went through the interview process- and with the offer letter to the Rep gave them a copy of the expectations.

The potential rep turned down the position because she felt like she could not commit to the number of sales calls. While this agency owner was sad, he put all this time and effort into the potential candidate. I told him – he dodged a bullet!

If she would not commit to meeting expectations on the front end, he would have been chasing and hounding her to complete the activity level and met with 100 excuses on why she could not achieve them.

TWO: Planning

The MOST HATED word in sales. Planning.

I don’t know of any rep or manager who LOVES to plan. They like to “do,” but you know you would head off to CA from AL without your GPS. You sure don’t need to jump in your car or on your phone without:

  1. Targeting High-Value Client Types
  2. Your Sales Message of the Week
  3. Your Home Care Sales Trigger Questions ™ that are going to reach into the current caseload and get you the EXACT referral you want NOW!

We do this through the Roadmap of Referrals program where we give the reps the sales message of the week and the Home Care Sales Trigger Question all DONE FOR YOU (click here to see it in action with Mike)

THREE: ScoreCard and Coaching AKA – Holding reps accountable

What are the metrics that you want to see?

  • Hours
  • Revenue
  • Referrals
  • Home Assessments
  • Admissions
  • Number calls completed

This Scorecard is filled out by the Rep each week, and the Scorecard is delivered to the manager or owner.

This accountability focuses on the “right activities that are going to drive the right results.”

This Scorecard is available in our Achieve program (want to learn more? Click here and have Mike show you)

Coaching is key to connecting with our reps. Its where you deepen the bond, create a “safe space” to problem solve, and offer suggestions.

We use the acronym of GROW:

Goal
Reflection
Opportunity
Win

Accountability – Empowerment = Blame

Empowerment – Accountability = Low Performance

Accountability + Empowerment = High Performance!

 

 

With structure comes FREEDOM!

You can do it! You can be the sales leader!

We can help

Roadmap of referrals

Achieve

Mastermind

Keep Serving Seniors!

Melanie

PS Thanks, HCAOA! If you are not part of HCAOA – click here http://www.hcaoa.org/ to learn about this great organization!

 

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