This week I’m back on the road doing sales training with live audiences!
Wow, it is incredible!
I truly missed the connection with an audience. Over the last several months, I had a lot of time to dig through data.
My mission was to study A accounts that sales representatives lost to identify if anything different could have prevented the sales rep from losing the account. I learned quite a bit and wanted to share some of this new data in my sales training.
It was a massive success, so I decided to share it with all of you!
Ask yourself this question. Are any of your “A” accounts vulnerable? You may think they are not. So did the next four sales reps.
Sales Rep #1
Account Type: Whole Life Community
Service Line: Private duty, Home Health, and Hospice
Length of time “A” Account: 5 years
Sales rep #1 was maintaining this account for five years. The sales rep visited the account at least twice a week, and he knew all of the leadership. They liked sales rep #1.
Sales Rep #1 had a monthly bereavement service for hospice patients, family, and staff and a monthly education talk and invited the community to attend.
Change occurred. The clinical director of the personal care facility retired. The position is filled by a nurse who works per diem for a competitor hospice, home health, and private duty company.
The new nurse manager complains and mistreats Sales Rep #1’s staff. New Nurse Manager goes to the administration and complains repetitively about Sales rep #1 and every aide, nurse, therapist, or social worker that walks into the building.
Everyone from Sales Rep #1’s leadership gets involved in trying to fix the problem. Within eight weeks, the account is lost. The new nurse manager now gets paid from her full-time position in the building and gets per diem pay for doing nursing visits from patients on home health services.
What could have prevented this from happening?
I do not think anything could have prevented this from happening. Maybe the sales rep could of help with finding a replacement nurse?
Sales Rep #2
Account Type: Hospital System
Service Line: Private Duty
Length of Time “A” Account: 7 years
Sales rep #2 visited this account twice a week and sometimes more often based on referrals. He was getting about 5-10 referrals/week from the discharge planners.
Change occurred. Hospital has a press release on the local news channel to announce that the hospital will close in 30 days.
What could have prevented this from happening?
The sales rep would have known that the hospital was closing if the representative had read the hospital’s annual report on their website. It was documented a year in advance that the hospital would be closing in their annual report.
Sales Rep #3 
Account: SNF/Rehab
Service Line: Home Health
Length of Time A account: 3 years
Sales Rep #3 worked closely with the physician who was the medical director of the rehab center. The relationship was a fantastic one that resulted in consistent referrals each week.
Change occurred. The physician was offered a job as a consultant from a competitor home health agency on reviewing charts of patients that had readmission to the hospital within 30 days from discharge. The physician accepted the job and then diverted all his patient’s referrals to the new company he was consulting.
What could have prevented this from happening?
There are several ways that this change could have been diverted from this “other agency” to sales rep #3’s company. However, without also offering a potential legally questionable relationship with that physician, the solution may not have ultimately worked.
The point I want to drive home is this:
If you are not continually prospecting for new business, you will lose referring accounts and not hit your goals.
If you don’t work towards goals, you simply won’t reach them. Getting comfortable and relying on previous relationships to propel your business forward is the downfall for many top producers. It’s critical to long-term success that you consistently focus on non-referring or minimally-referring accounts during your weekly visits to referring accounts.
I know prospecting is hard.
You hear “no” all the time. I also know that our High-Performance Sales Academy Certification Course helps you become a fantastic prospector. We teach you how to prepare for your prospecting calls so you can convert prospecting accounts faster, gain more referrals, and hit your admission goals. To learn more, reach out to Mike@homecaresales.com or go right to our website www.homecaresales.com and buy directly to get started immediately!
Cheryl Peltekis, RN “The Solutionist”
