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

“Effective coaching in the workplace delivers achievement, fulfillment and joy from which both the individual and organization benefit.” —Myles Downey

Most people underestimate two very important truths: the immeasurable value of coaching, and the inability to effectively coach themselves. No one is going to deny that professional athletes can outplay their coach. However, it’s the coach’s vision, experience, and guidance of the players that ultimately affects a game’s outcome. The same can be said for home care sales and marketing.

Are you struggling to attract more clients and increase your referrals? Have you noticed that your marketing efforts aren’t packing the same punch as they used to? If you’ve been trying to go it alone, you know how hard it is. You know how overwhelming it is.

Consider yourself an athlete on the field and your agency is competing in the big game. Why would you go it alone? A coach is there to guide you, to help you find the answers to your biggest challenges, and give you the personalized instruction you need to take your referrals to the next level.

A good coach is expert at listening, knowing what questions to ask, and holding you accountable for your own actions. Consider how often you have good intentions but fail to carry them out. An effective outside opinion will most likely prompt you to accomplish your goals and be more productive. A good coach will help you define and separate the real issues between marketing and selling home care services.

Home care marketing and sales is continually changing. What worked in the past may not be as effective today. When given the opportunity to receive guidance from an outside source, jump at the chance! Don’t go it alone.

Do not gamble your agency’s hard-earned dollars on hunches or feelings. Take advantage of the expertise of home care coaches who have worked in the trenches and have mentored clients all across the country. You’ll get the answers you need and reach your business goals faster and more easily. And say goodbye to that overwhelming feeling.

For the cost of a cup of coffee each day, find the best return on a marketing dollar you will ever experience at: www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com. Break away from the pack in your local home care market and restart your agency’s home care service game with a winning coach.

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

“There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.” -Albert Guinon, French Playwright (1863-1923)

I want to remind you to slow down. Not in your marketing efforts, business planning, or new strategy development, just during your sales calls. It is estimated that less than 3 percent of our time spent selling is actually “face time” with a referral source. Since most of us spend thousands of dollars each year to reach that precious 3 percent, it is really important that we are as effective as possible.

The art of effective communication begins with a plan of action. Time spent on pre-call planning pays great dividends. We always practice what we plan to say. I challenge you to practice the other (oftentimes more important) part of communication – listening.

Are you an effective listener? Most salespeople overestimate their abilities in this area. In home care sales, listening is far more important than speaking. Referring back to my seminars and the blog Home Care Sales 101, you will find the most important part of a home care service sale is the interview. To properly interview a referral source, you must be an effective listener.

Being an active listener is a talent that requires practice and focus. To maintain your customer’s trust during the interview you must remain alert, maintain eye contact, reflect the correct facial expressions, and in no case should you interrupt. This sounds simple but it is definitely not. More often than not, trust is lost when an ineffective listening technique is performed.

Practice eye contact in the mirror with affirmative and agreeing facial expressions. Have a coworker practice with you while retelling a story you have already heard to see if they ever feel as if you’ve lost interest. Try only adding conversational filler statements such as “I see” or “Yes, I understand.” Oftentimes you will force a referral source to go beyond their “standard” responses and get closer to their true needs and expectations.

Finally, here’s my proven and effective coaching statement of the week: There is Power in the Pregnant Pause. As a home care salesperson, we are all taught to get out all our unique abilities and present agency first and foremost. This is very important and most seasoned salespeople really excel in this area. However, the most effective home care sales representatives know how to turn a pause into a period when referral sources sell themselves!

A “Pregnant Pause” is a powerful thing. In the art of conversation, we instinctively want the flow to be recognizable. If a referral source has had this conversation with your competition on numerous occasions (and take it from me, they have), they know the routine. A noticeable pause without words will most often result in the customer filling up the conversation with your next statement! Only this time it will be the referral source taking up the conversation flow toward your sale. It will be far more effective with your referral stating your agency’s abilities while you continue to practice effective listening.

Try this communication technique with your friends, colleagues, or family and see how effective a listener you can be.

My sales coaches and I have conducted hundreds of role-plays with attendees of my Big Referrals Boot Camps here in Nashville, TN. The number one and two mistakes made during live role-play presentations is not knowing your referral sources’ needs, and “dumping the bucket” – rattling off every service your company ever thought about having. Most of us continue talking in an attempt to cover up a lack of knowledge or to prevent the referral source from exiting the conversation.

Unfortunately, your customers are more like you than you may give them credit for being. They would much rather talk than listen. Use this to your advantage and learn as much as possible about their company and its needs.

It doesn’t matter what kind of great birdhouses you are selling if your customer has come to buy seeds!

Try slowing down the sale and just listen. Listening builds trust. It is such a powerful tool in developing the art and skill of conversation that as a home care salesperson, you will never be successful until it is mastered. The more you listen to your prospects and referral sources, the more they trust you and believe in what you are telling them. Listening also allows you to understand your clients’ needs so that you can better serve them and build stronger relationships.

To access my pre-call and post-call sales planning sheets and a ton more, sign up for MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com and take your referrals to the next level! 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

What is the difference between Selling and Marketing?

Imagine you just met the potential love of your life. You would want them to know every good and decent thing about you. You would want your friends to say nice things about you. You would take that special person to nice places, play romantic music, and do things to really impress them.

All of that would be marketing. Marketing accelerates and leverages your efforts to lead you into the sales process.

At the point you have decided to ask that special person to be yours and only yours for the rest of your life…

…The Selling begins.

You ask them what they want and desire most from a partner, what would make them most happy and then you listen intently. You explain to them the benefits of having you and only you as a partner. You distinguish between yourself and any competitors. You try to convince them of how much better their life would be with you – as opposed to without you. Then, once you feel that you have overcome any objections or “reasons why not,” you ask them to be your life partner.

All that would be Selling.

Quite simply, proper marketing creates the desire and urgency in your customers to allow you to sell to them. The art of selling is the progression toward closing the sale. In home care sales, too many agencies are guilty of constantly marketing and never get around to closing the sale. A good example of this would be the sales rep who is always “visiting” referral sources, or doing “drive-bys,” but not really selling. Unless you have properly interviewed and presented what’s important to your customer, you simply have not progressed toward a home care service sale.

Another way to look at marketing versus selling is that marketing is a process that has a definite beginning and no ending point. Like the “farming” metaphor I have used in the past, it is the constant planting of the seeds in your garden. Sales is the harvest, or what you reap. Selling has closure that ends with a referral being given. Marketing does not replace sales and sales does not replace marketing. Both are important and need to be present. You must plant your seeds but you must be sure to harvest them when they are ready!

To start your new crop of referrals today, I want to send you a proven, done for you marketing tool. I would like to give you a FREE GIFT to help you get started on your own custom monthly newsletter. Send your patients, clients, and referral sources a value-added resource every month. It only takes a few minutes and you’ll be on your way to skyrocketing your referrals month after month, quick and easy!

Click the link below and once you get there, click the “Get Started” button. Once you’re on the sign-up page, fill out the short information form. Type “freegift” into the Promotion Code window and you’ll be on your way to having your own custom, professional newsletter that is specific to your agency – home health, hospice or private duty – in just a few minutes!

Click this link to get your FREE GIFT. Remember to use Promo Code: freegift.

If you would like more information on this topic and other proven and innovative strategies, join my online members-only coaching site at www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com. 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

In last week’s Blog, I talked about the importance of having a nurturing marketing and sales system in your agency to build a fence around your patients, clients and referral sources. This week I want to give you one of the best nurture marketing tools to skyrocket your referrals month after month.

One of the greatest assets you have is your customer list, which consists of existing and previous clients and patients and medical referral sources. The direct marketing big thumb rule is: a list loses 10% of its value each month absent contact, so after 10 months of not contacting your list its value is essentially zero! That is how fast your relationship with clients, prospects and referral sources can go away. Now sure, most of you are marketing to your "A" or "Top Tier" accounts weekly or at least once per month, but what about all your other accounts and post discharge clients and patients who you are not "nurturing" or making contact with every month? What kind of a relationship are you building with them, or better yet how much of that relationship are you losing because you are not staying in contact with them month after month?

But even that frightening statistic fails to accurately depict the total cost of customer neglect. There is vulnerability to the seduction by your competitors and ultimately loss of referrals you could have gotten if you were thought about more constantly. In home care, we have been notoriously cheap and negligent about nurture marketing and the understanding of the return on investment from staying in touch with our LIST! We often only contact our list out of desperation solely and crassly looking for referrals. Ideally you want your clients and referral sources not only referring to you when you are directly calling on them, but also thinking of your agency when you aren’t physically there. You want your clients and referral sources to have such a strong relationship with you that they refer to you rather than go elsewhere (even when it’s more convenient to go elsewhere), and even feel guilty about casually dividing allegiance. In short, we don’t want to have a casual relationship with our customer, clients and referral sources, we want a marriage.

Our agency discovered this the hard way. We believed that we provided the best quality service in town so we felt like we didn’t need to really do anything else, that our clients, patients and referral sources would keep coming back to us month after month. The problem was that one of our main competitors in town was sending out interesting, educational, and professionally designed newsletters every month to our clients, customers and referral sources and was developing a relationship with them while we were resting on our laurels and whatever relationship we thought we had developed months prior. Our competitors were now top of mind for our clients and referral sources and we ultimately lost a ton of potential referrals to the COMPETITION! Don’t let this happen to you. We ultimately built a better mousetrap and brought most of our referrals back but not without truly understanding the importance of building a Five-Star relationship with our customers and referral sources.

The Five-Star Relationship consists of the following:

1. Frequency
2. Consistency
3. Constancy
4. Creativity
5. Quality

Very quickly, one by one…

Frequency means often, every week or every month, but make sure it is often. Consistency means that some component of the weekly or monthly touches needs to arrive as expected and anticipated on a regular schedule. Constancy means without interruption, lapse or gap. Creativity means entertaining and interesting and Quality means including information, education and quality of presentation.

One very easy and inexpensive way of nurturing your list and developing a Five-Star Relationship is through a monthly newsletter. If you are not sending out a monthly newsletter, you are leaving thousands of dollars and tons of potential referrals on the table each and every month. Why is a newsletter so powerful? It is congruent with the nurture marketing principles and the Five-Star Relationship components listed above. It develops and strengthens your relationship with your existing and past clients. It keeps your agency’s name and the services you do at the top of your clients’ consciousness. It gives you the opportunity to continually educate your clients and referral sources month after month. It also gives you the perfect platform to recognize clients and referral sources who refer to you. This technique will boost the number of referrals you get because when one referral source trusts you enough to refer to you (as evidenced by their feature in your newsletter), others will follow suit.

Sending out a monthly newsletter is not an option – it’s a necessity – if you want to grow your referrals and profits and take your agency to the next level. But, if you decide to do it, you must follow the five principles outlined above. Most agencies fail at getting a monthly newsletter off the ground because… it takes too much time, money or resources!

Not anymore…..You can have it all done for you!

Rather than get into all the details, I would like to give you a FREE GIFT to help you get started on your own custom monthly newsletter. It only takes a few minutes and you’ll be on your way to skyrocketing your referrals month after month, quick and easy!

Click the link below and once you get there, click the "Get Started" button. Once you’re on the sign-up page, fill out the short information form. Type "freegift" into the Promotion Code window and you’ll be on your way to having your own custom, professional newsletter that is specific to your agency – home health, hospice or private duty – in just a few minutes!

Click this link to get your FREE GIFT. Remember to use Promo Code: freegift.

Stay tuned for next week’s Blog where I reveal another nurture marketing strategy to keep your clients, prospects and referral sources coming back again and again.

If you would like more information on this topic and other proven and innovative strategies, join my online member’s only coaching site at www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com. To sign up for a free 30-minute Coaching Call with a TAG Home Care Sales Coach Click Here. Call or click to receive your FREE product sample package, Click Here.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

“Customer relationships are like marriages; they starve without consistent, heart-felt communication.”
– Dan Zadra

Imagine if you could put an “iron cage” around your clients, patients and prospects and keep them coming back to your agency over and over again! You can, but first you need to start thinking of yourself as a farmer and integrate nurture marketing into your sales and marketing process.

The word “nurture” stems from the Babylonian word “nutra,” which means to nourish. Home care agencies that adopt this fundamental tenet into their sales and marketing program develop stronger, longer lasting relationships with their customers and essentially have them come back again and again. Agencies that don’t adopt this philosophy simply lose their clients and patients to agencies that do and then blame the competition for stealing their customers. Just ask yourself, “How much nurturing do I give my customers and is it enough for them to want to choose my agency over a competitor’s when a need arises?”

Nurturing relates to the idea of building greater customer loyalty through regular communication. There is a great parallel to cultivating a farmer’s field and successfully selling or marketing to your clients and patients. Your clients, like a farmer’s field, need to be nourished and protected to ensure the greatest harvest possible.

As some of you know, I spent several years studying and working in Mainland China. During one of my field trips out into the countryside I had the opportunity to discover the incredible magic of Black Bamboo. Black Bamboo is a type of bamboo that grows in Mainland China and happens to be one of the strongest natural substances in the world. It is so strong that the Chinese use it as scaffolding for building some of the largest and tallest buildings in China. In order to grow Black Bamboo, Chinese farmers must first till the field and then carefully sow the seeds one at a time ever so carefully below the earth – not too deep and not too shallow. The seeds are watered every week and mixed with slurry made of dung.

This process carries on for almost five years…Yes, five years without a single bamboo shoot to harvest. But after carefully nurturing the seeds week after week for almost five years something remarkable happens….the bamboo shoots through the ground and grows 60 feet in 30 days. So, the question is, when did the growth of the bamboo really occur? Did it occur over the five-year period or did it occur during the short 30-day period? The answer is that it occurred over the five-year period. If the farmers hadn’t nurtured the seeds during this period, the seeds would never have sprouted and there would not have been anything to harvest. Home care is similar in comparison to harvesting bamboo in many ways because we often have clients and prospects that may not need our services at this point in time but then suddenly a need arises and all the nurturing that you have been providing that client or prospect pays off because you have been there all along. They call or choose your agency because they think of you first.

Mae West said it best, “Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is out of money, honey.” Nurturing your clients and prospects needs to be a consistent and relentless process that connects you with them to increase top of mind awareness, increase trust and respect, and reinforce your agency’s message and competitive advantages.

Nurturing your clients through a systematic process and being consistent with it is easier said than done, especially in home care. But, if you truly want to become a successful farmer with fields always ready to harvest from the seeds that you have sown, you must have a nurturing process in place that allows you to consistently connect with your clients and prospects. I would recommend that you start with providing your clients and prospects a monthly newsletter, birthday card, holiday card, discount “loyalty card” and other value-added information and recognition items to increase their level of trust with you. To truly develop a strong relationship and bond with your clients and prospects and put that “iron cage” around them so they come back to you again and again, you must first make some deposits into their account.

To discover how you can put an “iron cage” around your clients and prospects with a quick and easy, and completely turn-key, customer loyalty program, call into the TAG sales room at 1-866-232-6477 and my sales associates will be happy to help you or simply go to www.HealthMattersProgram.com.

If you would like more information on this topic and other proven and innovative strategies, join my online member’s only coaching site at www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com. To sign up for a free 30-minute Coaching Call with a TAG Home Care Sales Coach Click Here. Call or click to receive your FREE product sample package, Click Here.

Please visit my blog next week to discover a specific tried-and-proven strategy to stay connected with your clients and referrals and differentiate your agency from the competition. Send me your requests for blog topics .

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam

a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

Wow! I’ve been blown away at the positive response from the launch of my new blog. Thank you for all the kind words and feedback. I am really excited for those of you who have been sending me your marketing and sales goals as well as calling in to talk to one of our sales coaches about your 2010 marketing plan – You will definitely have a competitive advantage over your competition in 2010!

I want to talk about a marketing strategy that home care has used for years but now has an innovative new twist and could help you boost your referrals overnight.

Direct mail postcard campaigns in recent years have been a very popular and proven marketing tactic for home care. It offered a relatively inexpensive way of reaching a large target audience with a broad based message. Interest in direct mail has dwindled due to over utilization and market saturation as well as a surge in internet marketing and not to mention the recent surge of value packs where consumers get a bundle of postcards in a single envelope.

Many give Direct Mail a bad wrap because they have not experienced a positive return on their investment. A lot of their poor response can be attributed to their mail being put into the “B” Pile – the TRASH CAN! Your direct mail must end up in your target audience’s “A” pile – mail that GETS READ – to get the response and return that will make your campaign a success.

Let’s discuss a new and proven marketing tactic that is available to you to grow your referrals literally overnight – Variable Data Direct Mail Marketing. Until recently, pharmaceutical companies made most of their marketing contacts in person to physicians and other clinicians in efforts to boost sales. We all remember the “exotic golf outings” and “speaking engagements on tropical islands” in which physicians were introduced to the benefits of certain medications for their patients.

Then along came the self mandated “Code of Interactions with Healthcare Professionals”….the pharmaceutical self regulations. The drug companies could no longer market to physicians using these lavish techniques. So, pharma companies turned their efforts toward direct to consumer marketing and have become very successful at it.

Because of this recent surge in pharmaceutical direct consumer marketing, there are over 52 million people registered with self-reported health-related conditions. Lists can be compiled that target individuals who have certain disease conditions such as Diabetes, Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Balance and Gait abnormalities, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s or need bathing or mobility assistance. Add to that a narrowing by other data filters, such as income, age and ethnicity, and you have a marketing campaign with a great return in investment potential!

This is an actual campaign from a recent client’s Variable Data Direct Mail Campaign:

There were 1,346 homeowners age 65+ with a net worth of greater than $75,000 within a 30-mile radius of Chicago, IL with at least one of the following attributes:

• Wheelchair
• Bed/Bathing Assistance
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Mobility Problems and Assistance
• Parkinson’s disease
• Diabetes
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder
• Congestive Heart Failure

The end result from the data above would have you targeting 1,346 potential customers.

Using this model you have the ability to customize your company’s message to populations broken down from any of these variables. You could differentiate between Home Health, Therapy, and Non-Medical Private Duty Services.

Cost-effective and targeted, this strategy will yield a dream marketing campaign in any market! It is a marketing campaign that will keep your sales pipeline full of prospects all year long.

Like all marketing campaigns, I urge you to start small, track your results, and increase your mailing size as your ROI for each campaign goes up. If you would like help on getting started with a variable data campaign, call into the TAG salesroom at 1-866-232-6477 and my sales associates will be happy to answer any of your questions.

If you would like more information on this topic and other proven and innovative strategies, join my online member’s only coaching site at www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com. To sign up for a free 30-minute Coaching Call with a TAG Home Care Sales Coach Click Here. Call or click to receive your FREE product sample package, Click Here.

Please visit my blog next week when I reveal how to put an “iron cage” around your clients and referrals and keep them coming back to your agency over and over again!

Send me your requests for blog topics.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

Okay, most of you know I hold sales boot camps and do on-site sales training. What you may not know is that one of the most immediate impact areas my home care sales coaches and I have with companies is one of the most basic…How to sell home care services!

Yep, you heard me correctly, we make the most dramatic difference teaching the most basic part of home care marketing: how to close a home care sale! This week I’m opening the vaults and sharing with you one of my most powerful and effective teaching points.

Oftentimes, home care sales calls feel like a social visit or a “drive by”. There is no readily available referral lying around to take, so a sales call is seen as a visit with the “remember me” at the end. This is where the true sales professional separates themselves from the social visit mavens. As with all sales, home care sales has an effective and proven path toward a referral that should be learned and followed.

Approaching a Referral Source

The selling of a service as immersed as health care takes a special sale. The salesperson must not only win over the trust of the referral source, they must also convey a willingness to be educated on the patient’s best interest. It is not merely a demonstration of ability, but a worthiness of the responsibility of care that must come through. The salesperson must not come across as an expert, but rather someone willing to learn about the needs of the referral sources’ population. Knowledge of procedures is necessary, but often trust is formed when the salesperson relinquishes the expertise of the needs of the patient to the referring party. Most often it is far better to display the compassionate elements of your company than the expertise at this point in the sales process.

Interviewing a Referral Source

The secret of obtaining referrals begins with the referral source’s willingness to let you (your company) assume responsibility of care. This needs to begin with an interview process where you allow the source to fully unload all their thoughts and frustrations involved in a referral to a home care company. Resist the need to interrupt or offer suggestions. Urge the source on until definite problems or frustrations are revealed by agreeing without interruption or one word statements that lead the speaker on with their thought process. Write down every word of this interview that is possible. In fact, openly allow the referral source to see you writing down every word. It shows your value and concern. End the interview process with a request to allow you to study these points. Resist the temptation to offer immediate solutions even though some may seem apparent. Close this sales call with a promise to provide solutions and a scheduling of a future visit. This will allow you to study the best solution and give the referral source the feeling of their concerns having validity to you.

Demonstrating Your Company’s Abilities

This would seem fairly easy, and in most cases this is where all the support emphasis is provided. However, this is where most sales calls derail. If you have done an adequate job in agitating the referral source’s need and frustration during the interview process, stick to your script. You have it in the form of written needs that you have obtained with your prior contact. Answer each need fully as best you can. Get the referral source’s input all along the way. Never move to the next known need or frustration if the source is still concerned. A demonstration of benefits can take minutes or several visits. This process is totally at your referral source’s discretion as to when the needs have been fully addressed. This process is complete when there are no more questions or concerns directed toward your company’s abilities to provide care and comfort to a referred patient.

Validating Your Claims

At this point of the sales process you should now be considered worthy. Now it is the time to differentiate yourself from the ones before you that have gained this recognition. Having a Power Binder that contains your clinical outcome results, testimonials, thank you notes or letters from discharged patients all add to your company’s validity and solidifies you in the minds of your referral sources. Outside input directed toward your quality of care is often 10 times as effective as your own claims. This process should cement your company in the minds of your referral sources and supports every thought you have instilled in their minds that you are now worthy of accepting responsibility of their patients’ care. End this process as soon as you feel the client “gets it.” Too much emphasis on this step can begin to unravel the compassion element set forth earlier.

Handling Objections

A tremendous amount of hard work and strategy can be lost if you are not prepared for this step. This involves asking the question, “Is there any reason you can think of that our company shouldn’t be given some of your referrals?” The answer to this question may be about prior relationships with other companies, some preference not explained by a third party, a specialty program that has been enacted, etc. There are literally hundreds of credible objections that may arise, but here is a secret in all negotiations….the same 5-6 are used 90% of the time in each market – I call this the Law of Six! Your job in pre-call planning is to come up with viable counterpoints to these 5-6 and have them at the ready. Once a tried-and-true objection to providing your company its business is effectively challenged, most referral sources never have a retort or state additional objections. Sometimes this one statement that you have adequately addressed has always been the “shutdown” statement and no other thought was ever needed by the referral source. Spend time with role play on this very important step to make certain you are coming across as informative but not confrontational.

Closing a Sale

This is often overlooked. But even a service sale must be closed. The act of selling a tangible object is obvious at close; the customer leaves the payment and takes with them the object. The closing of a service sell such as health care should be just as concise. Close with the promise of referrals in the future. Ask the person “Can we count on you giving our company the opportunity of caring for some of your patients?” Make certain the referral source verbalizes agreement then just as you gave their statement extra credence during the interview process write down in a note pad the time period in which they think a viable referral will be available. People strive to keep their word and this verbal promise is what you came to get! Thank the referral source for their time and assure them that you are personally available for problems or concerns should they arise.

End the entire sales process with a self critique. Write down as exactly as you can what worked, what didn’t, the parts where you felt the weakest, and your obvious strengths. Each call you will ever make will be unique, but working on these steps in acquiring a referral will make you more skillful and move all your contacts with referral sources closer to the sale.

So there’s one of my most effective topics. I hope you find it valuable and share this message with your entire sales staff. You may find spending less of your agency’s money on cookies and more on actual sales training and education may be your best bet in increasing referrals.

If your agency needs to jump start with a proven and innovative product sample package, click here. If you would like more information on this and other proven and innovative strategies, visit my online coaching site at www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com or click here to sign up for a free 30-minute live call with a TAG Home Care Coach.

Please visit my blog next week when I reveal one of the advantages we can benefit from with the millions of dollars being spent by pharmaceutical companies on consumer marketing each year.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man

Happy New Year Everyone!

Now is the time to do the right thing for your agencies. Develop a Marketing Plan on Paper! – “Action without planning is the cause for every failure.”

Less than 1% of all home care companies have a marketing plan and that is why so many have failed during the last couple of years.

Having a well-developed, written marketing plan for your agency is almost like having a road map to help you get to your intended destination. Without it you and your marketing team will have no clear direction, focus or benchmark to compare results and will eventually get off course. A marketing plan will ensure your agency a higher rate of return on your marketing efforts and help you accomplish five to ten times more in less time. The components of a successful marketing plan contains Short- and Long-Term Sales Goals, Marketing Strategies, Competitive Analysis, S.W.O.T. Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats), Target Market, Menu of Services, Company’s Purpose, USP (Unique Selling Proposition), Measurement and Evaluation Strategies and a Financial Budget. Once you have developed your marketing plan you must be sure to review it weekly, monthly or quarterly and make the necessary revisions to keep it congruent to your agency goals. Remember, your marketing plan is only as effective as the information it contains.

Ten Simple Components of a One-Page Home Care Marketing Plan:

1) Current Market Situation – should include the following:

i) Market Demographic Data

ii) Market Share Data

iii) Referrals by discipline from local hospitals

iv) Discharge by DRG from major referral sources

2) SWOT, Competitive & Market Analysis – could include data on:

i) Ranking of competitors by census

ii) Competitors’ current specialty programs

iii) Areas in market showing the most growth by referral diagnosis

iv) Competitors’ reported outcomes

3) USP “Unique Selling Proposition” – examples could include:

i) “We are the largest home care provider in the state/county/region”

ii) “The best clinical outcomes in the following areas……..in our market”

iii) “The only home care agency also offering Hospice and Private Duty services”

iv) “The only agency with a Five Star Referral Guarantee “

4) Service Offering and Niches Market Opportunities – examples could include:

i) “Minute Clinic” Nurse Practitioners

ii) Disability Residential Care Homes

iii) Private Insurance Patient Assessments

iv) House Call/Boutique Physician Intake Programs

5) Target Markets – five top sectors are:

i) Hospital D/C Planners

ii) Specialty Clinics such as Orthopedics

iii) General Practice Physicians/Personal Care Physicians

iv) Residential Communities

v) General Community Groups

6) Objectives/Goals – examples could include:

i) Increase referrals from “A” accounts by 10% in 2010

ii) Begin private duty specialty nursing services

iii) Host an all day Senior Seminar incorporating other senior service providers

7) Strategies – examples could include:

i) Teach health and safety classes to reach community senior groups in support groups and ALFs

ii) Use disease-specific, self-reported data/household income criteria to send out direct mail postcard mailers

iii) Organize/Join local home care network support group

8) Tactics – examples could include:

i) Educate “B” account physicians on CPO in Q1 (Home Health)

ii) Brand a 4-hour private duty service for same day surgical centers (Private Duty)

iii) Publish disease-specific informational brochures (All D/C Planners)

9) Marketing Budget

i) Percent of revenue (3% is national average)

ii) Percent of projected profit

iii) The Absolute Best Budget is always based on Return on Investment

10) Summary Sheet – should include all the above and the following:

i) Implementation

ii) Measurement Criteria

iii) Timeline

iv) Review Sequences

I hope this is a helpful tool to give you and your agency focus on your 2010 marketing efforts. If your agency needs a proven and innovative product sample package, click here. If you would like more information on this and other proven and innovative strategies, visit my online coaching site at www.MyHomeCareSalesCoach.com or click here to sign up for a free 30-minute live call with a TAG Home Care Coach.

Please visit my blog each month for tons of great home care marketing ideas and strategies.

Working to grow your referrals,

Adam
a.k.a. – Home Care Referral-Man