Record low unemployment levels have changed the face of recruiting & hiring. With US unemployment levels holding at 3.5%, hiring has become a unique challenge for many home care and home health agencies. In most major markets, final candidates are showing up to interviews with 1,2 or more job offers in hand, and negotiating from a position of strength as never before. The past 18 months have driven up salaries in the home care sales space by 15-25% and they may not come back down anytime soon (or, any time at all). The tendency in these situations is to try to get them before the other guy (or girl) does.....and make an offer before you're truly ready. After all, if someone else or 3 offered

Managers at assisted living facilities (ALFs) and independent retirement communities (ILFs) are often committed to keeping residents in their facilities for as long as possible. There are, of course, costs associated with filling vacancies. In addition, if residences remain empty for any length of time, the profitability of these types of entities can be severely adversely affected. Consequently, to the extent that agencies can assist residents to remain in their homes, ALFs and ILFs may be extremely interested in establishing on-going relationships with private duty agencies, home health agencies, hospices and home medical equipment companies. ALF's and retirement communities can be valua

Wait, what? I know, you're thinking that every one of these articles should be about successful salespeople, or managers. What to look for, who to hire, who to avoid...right? Well, it's just as important to understand who the BEST customers are, and why....so let's dive in. 1. They are available - In our industry, you need face time with your customers. You need time for education, for follow up, and for relationship building. Those customers who won't give you time to do that limit how successful you can be. When you have a customer that does make themselves available, it's up to you to maximize the value of those interactions....but at least you have a chance. Presence, not presents is the

The homecare industry has generally been highly profitable for some owners. Providers welcome this profitability and the resulting viability that it has brought to the industry. Private equity groups have become frequent purchasers of homecare providers, a sure sign of profitability. At the same time, the environment for the provision of services of all types has become difficult and perhaps even dangerous for providers. The consequences for violations of regulatory requirements have never been higher! Business/referral arrangements have been a key focus of recent enforcement actions. It is fair to say that providers dare not enter into business arrangements without knowledgeable advice

The science of sales relationship building If you talk to any sales rep in the home care space, they'll tell you "relationship building" is one of the keys to success. I completely agree with them in this industry, and in any other. That said, many of these same reps use faulty logic when it comes to relationship building that actually hurts their long term chances of sales success. So then, here is a sales business tenet that you should internalize and use at every "relationship building" opportunity. Be INTERESTED in them, before you attempt to be INTERESTING to them. All too often, the process of being INTERESTING to them precedes anything else the sales rep does. This leads to oversellin

Hospital Discharge Planning: Insights A recent study of the experiences of patients and their caregivers with transitions from hospitals to other care settings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, reveals the following insights: 1. When physicians show compassion toward patients and their wishes, including taking the time to talk with them openly about their conditions, patients and their families may make the best decisions about care. 2. Patients and their caregivers want to feel prepared to take care of themselves or their loved ones after leaving hospitals. They want assurances that their needs will be met until they have recovered their health. 3. Despite implementation

In the home care arena, we often call the sales function of the job "marketing". That stems from a long term belief that "sales" is bad, and "marketing" is somehow less bad. Ask any successful company if "sales" is bad and they'd probably laugh you out of the front door. Sales is the key component to growth, closely followed by a strong and well formed marketing plan. So, how can these two titans of business development work together? Relatively simply actually. Your marketing effort should whenever possible, precede your sales effort, yet give the same themes and messages that your sales department does when making sales calls. In essence, marketing sets the tone for future sales calls by s

Once upon a time, sales managers and directors looked for a quick, easy way to determine the effectiveness of their reps and sales teams. Quota achievement is obviously the easiest measure, but even that number doesn't tell you how effective your team is, it only tells you the end result. Besides, if you're NOT achieving goal, then you have very little to go on when trying to determine how to develop your team. Enter....the Sales Per Hour (SPH) Ratio. SPH is a very simple measure of sales effectiveness that you can start using today. Here's how it works: (Number of new admits or clients) / (Number of selling hours per week) = SPH Example: 20 new admits this week / 32 actual selling hours = .

Enforcement Action in San Francisco: What Happened? Federal Criminal Complaints have been filed against thirty defendants in the San Francisco area who are charged in a “patients-for-cash” kickback scheme. The complaints center on Amity Home Health Care, the largest home health care provider in the Bay Area, and Advent Care, Inc., a hospice. Under the leadership of Ridhima “Amanda” Singh, Chief Executive Officer, the federal government claims that Amity and Advent paid kickbacks to marketers, doctors, discharge planners/case managers at hospitals, and social workers at skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in exchange for referrals. What kinds of kickbacks were allegedly given to referral sour