Welcome,

...to this edition of Stephen Tweed's Leading Home Care Report. This special report is for CEOs and senior executives of America's leading home care companies. This report is published every other Wednesday by Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company for our clients, friends, and advocates who want to grow their home care businesses.

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In doing my research for the presentation, I talked with a number of infusion pharmacy owners, administrators, pharmacists, and association board members. During my interviews, I had one of those "aha" moments. I realized that you ... the executives of home health agencies and hospices ... are one of their major customers. Many home infusion referrals come from home health and hospice.

It struck me that there are some things we can learn from putting ourselves in the position of the referral sources ... instead of the referral seeker.

When you are on the receiving end of a sales call from a home infusion pharmacy, what is your experience? What are you looking for? How do you make that decision of which pharmacy to refer to?

Maybe you are not the person who receives that sales call. It might be interesting to find out who in your agency receives those calls. Talk with them. Find out what the sales call feels like from the customer perspective. What can you and your sales team learn from being on the customer end?

Also, you can learn by talking with your local home infusion companies about how you can work together to approach physicians and hospital discharge planners about taking care of their patients who need home infusion. Creating and packaging specialized home infusion programs with nursing and other services can be a great way to create competitive advantage in the marketplace.

• Product Differentiation
• Service Differentiation
• Narrow Market Focus
• Relationships
• Exceptional Customer Experiences
• Common Values
• Low Price

Then we discussed how each of these seven sources might be applied to the home infusion business. I was able to give specific examples from my research.

The same seven sources apply in home care. For example, under "Product Differentiation," you can focus on perceived quality of patient care, and use home health compare data to demonstrate high quality.

You can focus on product innovation by using innovation and creativity to develop new programs and services that no one else in your marketplace is offering. Or you can focus on program packaging and promotion, creating specialty programs to meet the specific needs of a defined group of patients or referral sources.

One of the hot topics during this discussion is the relationships strategy; "All things being equal, people would rather do business with a friend. All things being unequal, people would still rather do business with a friend." This discussion always leads to the issue of hospital based agencies versus free-standing agencies. I've worked on both sides, and it's clear that the grass is always greener on the other side.

What do you do if you're a free-standing agency and you just can't seem to make inroads into the hospital? Or what do you do if you're the director of a hospital based agency and you're frustrated because the discharge planners and physicians in your own hospital are giving away referrals to your competitors?

The answer to both of these questions is, "create competitive advantage." Find out what your key customers need and want, and craft a strategy that is unique to your agency. Position your agency as the one that is best prepared to meet their needs and wants in a unique and different way. When you can do that successfully, you'll get those referrals.

If you are not getting your fair share of referrals, then you have obviously not created competitive advantage in the eyes of your key customers. You have work to do in that area. It calls for some serious strategic planning. And then it calls for serous execution of your strategic plan.

If we can help, please call me directly at 502-339-0653. I'll help you assess your current situation, and design an executive strategy retreat to bring your senior team together. We'll help you craft your uniqueness, and execute your strategy with excellence.

For more assistance in crafting your uniqueness, click here.

We've found that this one-day intensive is great for that new sales rep that needs a jump start to selling home care. And it's great for the home care sales manager or marketing director who is looking for tools and tips for training and managing sales representatives.

Today, Wednesday, February 28th, Michael is in Ontario with another group of CAHSAH members and guests for a repeat of the Sales Training Boot Camp.

Our next scheduled Sales Training Boot Camp will be held on May 23, 2007 in Richmond Virginia, and is sponsored by the Virginia Association for Homecare & Hospice. Our plan is to bring the boot camp to convenient locations around the country so that your sales reps and sales managers can participate. If you would like to bring this powerful program to your state, please contact your state home care association.

It takes innovation, creativity, passion, and persistence. In a brand new, down-home, practical marketing manual published by Leading Home Care, Angie Landmesser and Trisha Menoni give you the details of their innovation and creativity. They show you step by step how to apply their ideas to get more referrals that turn into admissions. They’ll stimulate your thinking to come up with your own innovative ideas that will work for you in your marketplace.

This e-Book is divided into 10 Rules. Each rule features very specific action steps and first-hand examples. You'll have all the tools, forms and ideas you'll need to launch your own expert marketing campaigns.

Last but not least, the authors have created an appendix with web links to 19 resources that will help you implement each action. They'll even tell you the best sources to buy supplies for your campaigns.

For more information, or to order your copy, click here

Stephen is a past-President of the National Speakers Association, a 3500 member international society of experts who speak professionally. He is also the father of a 37 year-old son who is physically disabled and uses the services of home care on a daily basis.

Meet the entire Leading Home Care Team