Hello from 35,000 feet up in the air as I fly back from Denver. While in Denver I had a dinner conservation with some hospice and home care colleagues on what makes an excellent hospice and home care sales professional? This blog offers up what we believe to be the “Top 10” selling skills. What do you think?

Passion

A belief and commitment to what you do equals passion!! You must believe in the value of the services you and your team offer! This translates in how a good sales person presents the features and benefits to both families and referral sources. An excellent salesperson is an excellent storyteller. This both inspires and motivates and can be contagious. This is a fundamental building block in creating a culture of growth.

Knowing Your Stuff!

Understanding the Medicare Benefit, CMS Rules and Regulations, clinical appropriateness and how your team works is considered table-stakes for a quality sale professional. This requires active participation by the salesperson in in-service educations, team meetings when appropriate, sell-study and development. Becoming an authority will result in the ability to serve more patients and grow referrals.

The Power Of The Team

Knowing your internal audience as well as your customers is critical in growing your referral base. The hospice team including all the support staff is what makes a hospice program great and relates back to how you go about creating a culture of service and thus growth. Relating to your team and understanding the value they can deliver to all your referral segments can be a large differentiator. Lastly, giving your team member positive feedback and a “that a-boy” can go a long way.

First Seek To Understand, Before You Seek To Be Understood!

The art of inquiry and knowing the right questions to ask so you can learn as much as possible about each referral source, i.e. physician practices, hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living communities, disease management groups, etc. is marketing/sales 101. Those excellent salespeople have a nice honed skill in doing this. Profiling your accounts is not a one-time event; it’s continuous as the relationship develops. The more you understand and know about your customers, the better you will be at presenting features and benefit to them and take a value-based approach to your sales efforts.

Start With The End In Mind

Start with knowing what you want at the end of your visit from your customer!! Plan your call based on what the expected outcomes are. Establish your pre-call plan on a set of objectives. Here are some examples of customer objectives for a hospice/home care sales call:

• An Executive Director of a Senior Living Community agrees to an in-service.
• A hospitalist group practice manager agrees to allow you and your Medical Director to attend a business meeting to talk about GIP in the hospital setting.
• The ALS Association will agree to “test drive” your organization and refer a patient.
• The Clinical Manager agrees to set up mini in-service around the clock to talk about your Hospice ED Diversion Program.

Developing Relationship Equity

“Investing in the development of a strong professional and when appropriate personal relationship helps build your relationship equity bank! Having a large “bank” of relationship equity will allow you to advance your agenda in a positive way. This in more than simply developing rapport but rather investing collegially in the work you do together.

Approach and Discipline

I posted a few weeks back called “Happy Feet On The Street”. Please refer back to that post if you can. It discussed the structure and process to a disciplined approach to effective field sales. Spend the time developing pre-call reports, the rule of seven visits, weeding your garden, knowing when customers are most available, and having your sales “tool kit” such as having business cards and appropriate collateral material is important.
Networking

A great sales person is an excellent networker and uses this skill to prospect for new business. Linked In, networking meetings are a few good mean and method to networking. …

Execute, Execute and Execute More!!

Successful salespeople take these first nine skills and execute. Sales is a “contact sport”! The more you do the more your skills are developed. I am also an old Vince Lombardi fan who preached “you performance as you practice!” The more you put your profession in play and practice these skills, the better your outcomes will be!

Here are a few ways to use these tips. First, use them as a way to assess your current sales staff and develop an improvement plans. Second, create an annual development in-service plan to help strengthen your sales team skill sets.

The Best!