http://www.homecarereferralmanblog.com/">Home Care Referral-Man Blog

-Anthony Robbins

One of the questions I hear most often from clients is, “What new strategy are you guys coming up with next?” Sometimes it seems as if all my clients are running around looking for the next great idea. Although we are continually coming up with new strategies, I always tell them to put the lion’s share of their attention on what’s worked well for them in the past.

Success depends on consistency and repeatable results. During seminars and boot camps, clients often tell me how a successful event they held months or even years ago brought in tons of new business or how a “certain” campaign relaying a “certain” theme substantially boosted their revenue. My response is nearly always the same…. “So why did you stop?”

In home care marketing, everyone tries to outrun the competition in implementing the newest, greatest strategy. Rather than focus on speed, I want you to pay special attention to the direction of your agency. It’s kind of like the old joke where a man tells his wife “I’m not sure if we are headed in the right direction, but we’re making damn good time!” If you are constantly rushing to work in your business to get things accomplished then you will not have time to work on your business and provide leadership and direction.

This week, I’ll leave all the latest, greatest strategies like Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and Boutique Marketing Advantages to my home care coaching staff. I want to share with you five basic rules of home care marketing and remind you to focus on following your past successes.

1.     Are you effectively branding your agency with your current clients? Sounds simple, but your real client readmission rates and repeat referrals will tell the true story. If your satisfaction rates are nowhere near your readmission rates, you have left the back door of your entire marketing efforts open and your satisfied customers are walking out! Give every caregiver business cards to distribute to your clients. Send out a monthly newsletter to your current and past customer lists. Begin a patient loyalty program, which includes sending out birthday and holiday cards and other collateral throughout the year. If you need help getting started, contact me. Stop losing satisfied customers because they simply can’t remember the name of your agency.

2.     Are you following up with programs you spent time and money to develop? Referral sources need to be reminded on a regular basis of your specialized care plans and disease-specific marketing initiatives. I see agency after agency develop great strategies for capturing disease-specific populations only to abandon them after an initial roll out campaign and move on to other projects. Think of it like your favorite musician in concert; you like hearing the older favorites just as much or more than the newer stuff. Your referral sources are no different. Keep the more effective programs updated and on your marketing playlist.

3.     Are you tracking your current customers’ happiness? Everyone claims to give great customer service to their “A” accounts, but how many times in the past year has the owner of your agency called on your key accounts? Are you sending out satisfaction surveys and making sure that your top clients are still feeling the customer love? I will tell you that I see many clients who lose market share by not tending to their current referral sources. It’s much more cost-effective to keep a current client happy than it is to develop a replacement.

4.     Are you adequately tracking your sales force efforts? To adequately keep up with your marketing return on investment, you must put a structured customer relationship management tool in place. Without tracking expenses and efforts adequately, how will you ever know if your marketing and sales dollars are being spent effectively? An investment in an industry-specific CRM (like PlayMaker CRM) should be the highest priority if you are going to effectively spend your agency’s hard-earned profits.

5.     Are you harvesting the low-hanging fruit? Remember to include ALL your employees in ALL your marketing initiatives. They are members of the community who can be your first-line advocates. Use award luncheons and monetary bonuses to reward this non-traditional sales force. Also remember that your non-marketing employees have community and clinical connections all over town that can be very helpful with marketing initiatives. Remember to make marketing and sales efforts a line item in every agency staff meeting.

For even more discussion on these proven strategies, simply contact me or one of my sales coaches at TAG Home Care Marketing for a FREE 30-minute coaching call. Click this link www.HomeCareCoachingCall.com or call 866-232-6477.

If you’re heading out to Dallas for NAHC’s 2010 Annual Meeting, be sure to attend my presentation, Magnetic Marketing: Six Surefire Ways to Supercharge Your Referrals in Sixty Days or Less! It’s Session 515 on Monday, Oct. 4, from 4:15 to 5:45 p.m.

And stop by the TAG Home Care Marketing booth– #1515. My sales team and I look forward to explaining our theme this year: “Taking Your Referrals to the Next Dimension!”

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie

Whether or not we are in an actual recession is not really a factor in home care marketing. It feels like we are, so we act like we are. One of the first actions responsible owners and managers feel the need to do is cut expenses and take a hard look at revenue streams. At the top of the list is usually marketing, which most poor souls think is an expense.

During slowdowns such as the one we are mired in, there is no better time to ramp up your marketing efforts. Since your competition is cutting their marketing expenditures, you will have less noise to get your message out and will ultimately gain market share.

So here’s my great idea this week…continue to market and brand your home care agency, especially as your competition is retracting and lying in wait for better times. Don’t think of your marketing efforts as expenses but rather opportunities.  Fear is a powerful emotion, however it is courage that will lead you toward increased revenue and referrals.

Marketing is one of those initial costs that seem easy to reduce. It’s hard to measure and you aren’t quite sure if it’s needed when it’s time to reduce costs. Why not cut it until things are looking up again? Simply put, you will find yourselves in an even deeper hole when the market makes an upturn and you will lose market share… it happens every single time.

During the last economic slowdown in 1985, companies that were aggressive recession advertisers grew their revenue over 2.5 times faster than those that reduced their advertising. Firms that invested more in marketing in a down market realized a 4.3% increase in their ROI. When you look at those numbers, it is obvious …. Now is the best time to effectively increase your home care market share through marketing!

I feel your pain. But in the next 2-3 years if you do not lead your agency toward greater revenue through effective marketing, you will be left behind. I want you to grow by getting out into your local community with these free or nearly free proven home care marketing strategies:

Partner up with other health care providers

Go out and talk to the marketers in your community who work in ALFs, ILFs, hospices, insurance offices, physician offices, hospitals, etc. Invite them all to a lunch meeting and start brainstorming about ideas that benefit everyone. Co-marketing sales calls or presentations is a great idea. Conduct an open discussion of everyone’s greatest success story in marketing. These endeavors usually result in ideas and tend to energize everyone.

Start a home care newsletter

Begin your own agency newsletter. Sounds easy enough and many people start one. Trouble is we get too busy to keep it up because after that initial rush of “stuff you have wanted to write” dries up, it starts to be a burden. We have already done all the work for you. We have written tons of home care articles and columns and they are right here at www.HomeCareNewsletters.com. I will even give you the first template free…It doesn’t get any easier than that. Start one today and saturate your local market with some value-added marketing material.

Become an educational event planner

Every home care agency with a marketer must insist that educational event planning become a priority. I tell every owner and manager I speak with that their staff should have their day job of calling on referral sources and at the same time be planning an event in your community. Events draw in potential future referrals and are an effective way to brand your agency. My home care coaching staff has guided live events all over the country and they are just a free coaching call away.

Market to your staff

Have a staff meeting to solicit their help. Agency owners who are honest and reach out to their staff will find a wealth of understanding and ideas. Of course your staff wants your agency to succeed. Don’t go it alone when you have other soldiers right beside you in the same foxhole. Your staff has tons of connections out in the community. Let them lead you toward senior groups and social networking. Find the hidden talent and resources you have in your agency that will lead to increased marketing and exposure.

Become a super marketer

Become a community expert and celebrity. Submit articles to your local newspaper, trade papers, and other publications. There is a tremendous need for home care education and once you have established yourself as someone who can provide some answers, your agency will be flooded with contacts. I’ll even give you a powerful topic that is little known in your community but certainly true: “Home Health services are the most cost-efficient way the government spends your health care dollar!” Beat that drum and watch your local community seniors start dancing.

For even more discussion on these proven strategies, simply contact me or one of my sales coaches at TAG Home Care Marketing for a FREE 30-minute coaching call. Click this link www.HomeCareCoachingCall.com or call 866-232-6477.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

“It pays to plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”

-Thomas Edison

As a marketing coach and mentor to several home care business owners in home health, hospice and private pay skilled services, I want everyone to look beyond the horizon and plan for the upcoming nursing shortage that may impact your business. Many times it seems that we as an industry wait until our backs are against the wall before we react. Of course, this could cost our businesses revenue.

Just three years ago, several of my clients struggled to adequately staff nursing and therapy visits. This meant they were turning away business. They actually ended up losing market share because of their inability to take referrals and had to spend a lot of time, energy, and treasure to gain it back.

Below I’ve listed several sobering statistics about the upcoming need of nurses.

Current State of Nursing Needs in the United States

• Nursing designated to be the most in-demand profession through the next decade.
  According to the latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published in the November 2009 Monthly Labor Review, more than 581,500 new nursing positions will be created through 2018 (a 22.2% increase), making nursing the nation’s top profession in terms of projected job growth.

• The latest published Congressional Budget Office report found that the demand for RNs is expected to grow by 2% to 3% each year through the year 2025.
  The shortage of registered nurses in the U.S. could reach as high as 500,000 by 2025 according to a joint report released in March 2008 by Dr. Peter Buerhaus of Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, Dr. Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth University, and Dr. David Auerbach of the Congressional Budget Office.

• Evidence shows nursing shortage trends remain unaffected by current economic slowdown.
  On December 4, 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the healthcare sector of the economy is continuing to grow, despite significant job losses in nearly all major industries. Hospitals, long-term care facilities, and other ambulatory care settings added 21,000 new jobs in November 2009, a month when 85,000 jobs were eliminated across the country. As the largest segment of the healthcare workforce, RNs likely will be recruited to fill many of these new positions. The BLS confirmed that 613,000 jobs have been added in the healthcare sector since the recession began. An additional 581,500 new jobs will result from the current demand, making the nursing profession the largest need of new jobs for any occupation. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of job openings will result from the need to replace experienced nurses who leave the occupation.

• Demand for qualified nurses will get more and more competitive in the next few years.
  Officials with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) released projections that the nation’s nursing shortage would grow to more than one million nurses by the year 2020. In the report titled “What is Behind HRSA’s Projected Supply, Demand, and Shortage of Registered Nurses?” analysts show that all 50 states will experience a shortage of nurses to varying degrees by the year 2015.

So here’s the problem you are facing: the current adjusted unemployment rate for nurses is less than 1%. To attract new staff, you will need to lure working nurses away from their current positions.

Online job search engines, newspaper ads, and job postings with your state employment commissions will not attract the type of qualified candidates you will need to maintain and grow your business.

Stop wasting time and money on ineffective recruiting. Instead, take your business to the next level with iTarget Recruitment Campaigns, which allow you to zero in on each individual in your audience through the revolutionary science of variable data. If you are looking to attract qualified nursing and therapy staff, contact us today. We’ll show you how to reach all qualified nurses and therapists in your service area and provide you an online view of their applications before you even decide whether to make contact.

TAG Home Care Marketing owns lists of hundreds of thousands of verified state nursing and therapy prospects from every region of the country. Reply to this link and I’ll give you a free personalized market analysis of all the nursing and therapy professionals located within a 50- or 100-mile radius of your agency. Click here.

This is a free no obligation report that should prove to be invaluable to your agency as you grow your referrals and revenue.

For even more discussion on this proven strategy, simply contact one of my sales coaches at TAG Home Care Marketing for a FREE 30-minute coaching call. Click this link www.HomeCareCoachingCall.com or call 866-232-6477.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

The biggest hole in most home care companies’ marketing strategies is the plan of how to retain past customers who have been on service and were satisfied. You can pour your entire marketing budget, time, and initiative into going after new business, but if you haven’t cultivated your past customers, you definitely have a hole in your marketing bucket.

*Consider some of these general marketing facts:

1.  Acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers.

2.  A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%.

3.  A 5% reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by 25-125%, depending on the industry.

4.  The customer profitability rate tends to increase over the life of a retained customer.

* “Leading on the Edge of Chaos”, Emmett C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy

Now consider some facts specific to the home health industry:

1.  A 2009 CMS study revealed 1 in 5 Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital within the first 30 days of discharge from home health services. Depending on the diagnosis, average chronic disease patients are readmitted and discharged from hospitalization an average of more than four times. Are you recapturing all these referrals?

2.  In recent studies on readmissions of Medicare patients to home health, less than 20% could effectively state their previous health care provider’s agency name. This same study found nearly half of these referrals could remember the first name of a nurse or therapist involved in their care. Simply put, these patients were exposed to the names more often, therefore recollection was greatly increased.

Home health companies are required to clear Medicare payer numbers through the “Medicare common file” to make certain the patient isn’t under service with another agency. If you track your discharged patients through this method, I’m afraid you will find that 6 months to a year later, a shocking percentage of your satisfied discharged customers have now become your competition’s new customers.

Why people choose one agency over another is a challenge to determine. One surefire truth is that if they can’t remember your agency’s name at the point of a discharge, all the marketing, customer service, and care you did for this customer has been for nothing. The number one reason they should have chosen your agency is past satisfaction.

They are not going to receive the same care, and you are not going to receive the referral, all because they couldn’t verbalize a preference when asked at discharge.

Finally, it is the responsibility of home health agencies to give superior services to their patients. I am certain your discharge surveys confirm patient satisfaction. However, if your readmission rates are not equal to these satisfaction rates, the missing piece of the puzzle is exposure.

This huge hole in your marketing bucket can be avoided with a turn-key, cost-effective Patient Loyalty Program.

For more discussion or free samples of this proven strategy, simply contact one of my sales coaches at TAG Home Care Marketing for a FREE 30-minute coaching call. Click this link www.HomeCareCoachingCall.com or call 866-232-6477.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.”
– S. J. Perelman

Home care agencies are notorious for putting pressure on their marketing teams without developing them in the business. How many times have you taken the time to teach instead of reprimand or judge your sales team?

All of my clients are looking for ways to differentiate their agencies. There is a tremendous opportunity for home care agencies to set themselves apart from their competition simply by training their sales teams. Put them out into your communities with more knowledge and the ability to actually talk business with your referral sources. Begin this training by asking your sales team to identify how referral sources are reimbursed.

If they have no idea how your referral sources make their money, you may have some work to do….

We find most home care sales personnel are compensated per referral. Should they care if the referral is profitable to your agency? Sure they should!

Medicare home health agency representatives may have no idea that HHRG stands for Home Health Resource Group, or that the HHRG is the basis for calculating your home health agency’s reimbursement. Does your home health sales team track and are they aware of LUPA’s Low Utilization Payment Adjustment for four or fewer visits, or the adjustments for outliers, partial episodes, and significant changes in condition?

If not, I’m sure they are not as concerned with the quality of referrals being brought in as the quantity. Therefore, they are at risk of receiving “non-profitable” referrals.

As a private pay non-medical agency, does your sales staff understand at what point in hours billed your agency becomes profitable? Do they understand the ROI (Return On Investment) concept when marketing your agency’s services, or do some of their marketing attempts cost more than they yield?

What if YOU invested in your sales staff? What would happen to your agency’s profitability quotient if your sales team actually knew what they were selling? What if they could go to a physician’s office and intelligently discuss the recent doctor’s changes in reimbursement and how your agency can be a value-added partner in saving them money?

Action Steps

Here are four steps you can take immediately to set your sales force on a higher plane.

First, have your billing clerk and clinical supervisor spend two scheduled afternoons with your sales team to explain how your agency makes money and the real possibility of your agency losing money on the referrals brought in.

Second, resolve to train them on a different clinical referral source each week, how they are reimbursed and how that would affect your agency.

Next, send them to summer camp. Sign them up for one of several open slots to my Big Referrals Boot Camps this summer. They will come back with a better understanding of your agency’s profitability and how to present your agency’s services with proven strategies and techniques.

Finally, go to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com and sign up for a no-obligation 7-day FREE trial. You’ll discover the industry’s most innovative, tried-and-proven sales and marketing strategies to skyrocket your referrals and differentiate yourself from the competition. You will also have a live sales coach at your disposal to assist you in your crowded home care market.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

PS…. Complete all these action exercises and you will qualify to be like S. J. Perelman’s more familiar quote….”Crazy like a Fox”!

Today’s home care customers are much more sophisticated and demanding than ever before. As we call on our referral sources we must be strategic. If we call on a customer and do not make a lasting impression about ourselves or our agency, we have lost an opportunity. To respond effectively to our referral sources’ needs, we must focus on the people and the process. Selling our services does not occur because of our chance encounters or showing up regularly, it is a process that we must practice and execute better than our competitors.

When we take into consideration that we are selling our services to people and not to objects, such as hospitals or physicians’ offices, we should come to the following realizations:

1. Step one is always to engage the person you are talking to…. We all know that we don’t always get to speak to decision-makers on every sales call. But remember to make an effort to be approachable and friendly with everyone we come in contact with. Eye contact, smiles, and active listening should be our mantra with every person we meet on a sales call.
2. Even though “gatekeepers” may not make the referral decisions, they do have something we must always respect…the ear of every decision-maker in your market!

Take to heart these statements about the process of selling an intangible home care service:

1. Face-to-face contact with your referral sources is the most valuable sales opportunity you will ever achieve.
2. Each personal contact you make that does not further your agency toward closing the deal sets you further back in the sales process.
3. Too many non-value contacts with a referral source will take you completely away from being seen as a value-added home care contributor.
4. “Selling ain’t telling.” If we don’t take the time to listen to the stated needs of our referral sources, how will we ever be able to demonstrate our agency’s benefits to them?

As sales representatives, we all should practice our responses and actively listen. And yes, it is important to listen attentively and make sure our initial presentation of services is polished. But I want you to consider this: both of those skills are secondary to the ability of asking good questions!

To get the referral sources’ attention during a sales call, use correct questions to more completely understand the referral sources’ needs, interests, situation, and motivation. A well-phrased, appropriately timed question is a home care sales person’s single most powerful selling tool! You must ask thoughtful questions in order to understand the thoughts of all of your prospects.

Action Steps

If you believe that home care service sales are won by the salespeople simply dropping off brownies and brochures, then there is not much I can say or do to help you. However, if you feel that finding out the one or two singular topics or needs your referral sources are passionate about will differentiate your agency from the pack, then follow these action steps.

1. You must contact me and take advantage of a free coaching call. Schedule a coaching call this week with an experienced home care sales professional at the link http://www.homecarereferralmanblog.com/schedule-a-strategy-call
2. Request your free informative PowerPoint class instruction on “Getting Past the Gatekeepers”. You may use this informative class to reinforce the need of sometimes having to work the process of the sale to even get to the referral decision-makers.
3. Sign up your sales force today for our onsite Big Referrals Home Care Boot Camp to literally fire up your sales force and turn their potential into proven results. Call 866-232-6477 to sign up, and as an added bonus I’ll give you 3 months of free online support membership to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com.
4. Finally, go directly to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com and sign up for a no-obligation 7-day FREE trial. You’ll discover tons of innovative, tried-and-proven sales and marketing strategies to skyrocket your referrals and differentiate yourself from the competition!

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

Selling is hard work. It is one of the most difficult jobs in our economy. As a home care salesperson, you face continual rejection, potential failure, persistent disappointment, setbacks, obstacles and difficulties not experienced by most people. Selling is not easy and it has never been easy. And it never will be easy. But selling home care services can be very lucrative for sales reps who continuously push themselves outside their comfort zone and try new techniques and strategies. If you use the same sales activities over and over again like bingo and birthday parties at senior living facilities then your results will be incremental because you are committing what I call marketing incest – DOING WHAT YOUR COMPETITION IS DOING! Stop committing marketing incest right now….

…if you really want to achieve some big referral goals this year then you have to be different and start doing things that you have not done before. These activities may consist of calling on a new type of referral source like physiatrists, hospitalists, dialysis centers, visiting physician groups, retail clinics and/or HUD housing communities. These are just a few of the many untapped home care referral sources that you probably are not calling on regularly, if at all. To get even more untapped referral sources go to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com. You probably aren’t calling on them for the simple reason that you don’t feel comfortable in how to approach them or know what to say to them. Here’s a little secret….your competition is thinking the same thing – or may not even know that these referral sources exist! Just think of the many opportunities you’ll gain by simply taking that jump out of your comfort zone and watching the net appear.

So if you want to sell more and earn more, you must start by increasing the amount you believe in yourself, look for new opportunities in your market, and get out of your comfort zone. Raise your aspirations, set higher goals, and make detailed plans to achieve them. You must begin to see yourself and think about yourself as capable of being one of the highest earning salespeople in your field. Take that jump today!

Action Exercises

Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, select two new types of referral sources that you haven’t called on before from the list above or from your own list right now, and make a cold call to them in the next two days.

Second, resolve to do one new sales activity each week that forces you out of your comfort zone. This could end up doubling your income!

Third, go to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com and sign up for a no-obligation 7-day FREE trial. You’ll discover tons of innovative, tried-and-proven sales and marketing strategies to skyrocket your referrals and differentiate yourself from the competition!

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

There are many ways to market and sell your home care services. Should you use just one approach or should you employ a variety? I recommend a multi-pronged approach. First, develop professional looking identity pieces like business cards, brochures and specialty program pieces. Then determine the media that best serves your budget, goals, message and particular target market. Ideally, you should consider all venues and media to market your business with respect to your specific marketplace. Here are just a few strategies that you should consider:

• Direct selling to referral sources
• Variable data direct mail
• Signage and billboards
• Print ads
• Local radio- Expert speaker on national health care observances and consumer awareness messages
• Local television-Expert speaker on national health care observances
• Web Site-Health care information resource
• Existing clients and referral marketing
• Tradeshows and senior fairs
• Host-parasite relationships with non-competing vendors
• Public relations-Hosting or sponsoring local educational events

Why do you need to diversify your marketing?

As the old adage goes: “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket.” And like your stock portfolio advisor recommends: Diversify, diversify, and diversify!

Diversification will reduce your level of risk and provide a steady influx of new business from different sources. Sales is the key to the success of your business, so you must have multiple strategies working at all times to provide your company with maximum sales.

Sometimes one strategy might have an unanticipated dip in referrals compared to what has been forecasted. This could be your direct sales strategy to an “A” account referral source (e.g., doctor who is on vacation or has recently retired). If you have a multi-pronged approach with other strategies in place, staggered to hit different market segments, you will have a more consistent level of sales, and you’ll reduce your risk of huge dips that could have a major impact on referrals and ultimately cash flow.

How do you diversify your marketing strategies?

Sit down with your marketing managers/team and plan out your marketing strategies for the rest of the year. I recommend that you use plenty of notebook paper.

Key: You must plan your marketing strategies on paper.

This will help you establish clear objectives and goals. Then, everyone in the organization will have a road map of what needs to be done and where the company is going. By just writing down your goals, you will have an 80 percent chance of success and be ahead of 99 percent of other home care agencies that do not have a marketing plan!

Finding one particular strategy that works great for you doesn’t mean that you should terminate your other strategies. Stick to the original marketing strategies that you set at the beginning of the year and you’ll experience greater results than you could imagine.

The biggest problem most agencies face is failure to stick to their original plan and starting a “shotgun” or panic strategy when sales are down—dumping a huge amount of money into one strategy and waiting for the calls.

When a company is already suffering cash-flow problems from lack of sales, this panic strategy is an expensive way to yield very few results.

Remember, it can take 30 days or more for a new strategy to take hold.

A diversified strategy can target several market segments at once, whereas the shotgun strategy targets a single segment. A diversified strategy also provides you with the benefit of having your audience experience repetition of your marketing, which is by far the most effective strategy to get the market to recall and identify your company name.

For help with proven collateral and strategies, or to get you started on a marketing plan, simply contact one of my sales coaches at TAG Home Care Marketing for a FREE 30-minute coaching call. (866-232-6477)

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

“Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.”

Robert Half (1918-2001)

Do you ever notice that the stories of successful people always start out with something like: “We were sitting around the kitchen table one Saturday and we had an idea……”

The author of the quote above was just such a person. A pioneer in the employment field, Mr. Half along with his wife, Maxine, started Robert Half International in 1947. It has since grown to over 360 offices and the world’s first and largest specialized staffing firm.

The most amazing part of this story is that Mr. Half took his idea beyond the kitchen table and acted upon it. Rather than fear taking a risk and being wrong, he had enough faith in himself and his idea to take action.

The idea of marketing home care services makes many home care professionals and entrepreneurs uncomfortable. Because of the cost-based reimbursement and regulatory issues regarding the disallowance of marketing costs, many home health care managers have not had the experience of marketing their business effectively.

However, there has never been a better time to implement new strategies and tactics to expand, diversify, and increase your agency’s revenues and profitability. Your future depends on developing methods of getting and keeping clients.

As home care companies, we can come up with hundreds of good reasons why we can’t act on marketing ideas. But, there has never been a better time to act than NOW. As more and more of your competitors are pulling back on marketing expenditures, the opportunity to increase market share and profits will never be greater. Get on the offensive and take action on that one idea today.

1. Action Step – Determine the most important goal, idea, strategy or tactic that you could accomplish right now, the one goal that could have the greatest positive impact on your agency’s financial situation.
2. Action Step – Determine the constraint or bottleneck that is preventing you from attaining or implementing it. What could you do to eliminate it?

If you need help getting started, go to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com for your free trial. Or call and schedule a free 30-minute coaching call with one of our industry experts at 866-232-6477. Take action on a great marketing idea today!

Are you continually going after new business without adequately reaching out to make your current clients happy? We’re all guilty of constantly looking for new avenues to attract new clients, however the average Medicare client is readmitted to the hospital and discharged an average of 1.5-3.2 times per year based on their primary diagnosis.

Customer retention and satisfaction drive profits. It’s far less expensive to cultivate your existing customer base and sell more services to them than it is to seek new, unknown customers. Business models across all industries show that keeping one existing customer is 5-7 times more profitable than attracting one new one.

It’s a no-brainer – your sweet spot in all of your marketing efforts should be to brand your agency with your current client population. Recent studies show that more than half of satisfied patients in the hospital could name the first name of a clinician who cared for them in the past. Less than 1 in 5 could name the agency that employed them! As care providers, we must remember to do the simple things to brand ourselves with our client population.

Make sure you have patient teaching literature to back up verbal instructions given by your clinical staff. Make sure your staff leaves business cards in the client’s home with each visit. Train your staff to repeat your agency’s name to your clients each time they refer to upcoming appointments or services. They should be saying the agency’s name 4-6 times per visit.

Finally, have a proven loyalty program that reaches out throughout the year with value-added collateral into the client’s home. You cannot take great care of your clients and then leave their subsequent discharges to chance. Make all your satisfied customers advocates for your agency.

If your discharge satisfaction rates are nowhere near your readmission rates, you have not branded your agency to your customer. Do not spend more and more of your agency’s profit dollars to go after new customers – begin a client loyalty program today.

Sign up today for a free 30-minute coaching call during which you will learn popular strategies that are working for companies all across the country. You will also get some free samples of effective marketing ideas sent to your company. Click here to sign up.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

P.S. – Go to www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com and check out an incredible referral-boosting strategy for April…The World Health Organization’s “1000 Cities 1000 Lives” campaign.