Selling Tips

For Beds & Support Surfaces

In selling home medical equipment, we try to match up the right products with each patient. In general, however, we tend to think too much about making these matches based on the products we have in stock or what a patient’s payer will reimburse us for. Let’s take a deeper look at this interesing product line and consider these selling tips:

• Understand your product offerings in depth. Consider not only those your company carries but what other product lines are on the market. While Medicare represents 40 percent of HME business on the average, we think of its ruling everything we do for other payer classes; this should not be the case. A great HME sales rep should be a true resource to customers. Too often, I hear complaints from referral sources that the HME company can’t access preferred products or their reps are confusing customers or their intake folks simply cannot discuss product options in detail.
• People who need a bed/support surface come in all sizes and shapes, and they have different needs. What are the needs of customers? They are finance, image and performance. So, does your product line meet their payer source and budget? Does it fit their house or decor? Does it work efficiently? Make sure you have translated the benefits of your service into finance, image and performance benefits for each customer. After all, discharge planners may be interested in far different things than physicians. For example, discharge planners may want you to be there quickly on Friday evenings or the weekends; physicians tend to be more focused on treating particular diagnoses.
• What are the top diagnoses in your market for people who need beds/support surfaces? How do the physicians in your area think about managing these patients in the home? Can your sales reps talk diagnoses? Can they talk about the advantages and disadvantages of different beds? Of different support surfaces? Get your sales team focused. Bring in your manufacturers’ reps and ask them to do in-services with your sales reps. Then plan a session with your reps to discuss what they learned and create “scripts” or a series of questions for each different type of patient. Reps need to know what kinds of questions to ask and how to respond to clinical questions; otherwise, they sound like everybody else: “Hey, Doc, we do HME … got any referrals?”
• Create a great sales presentation. A presentation shows the customer that you understand his or her interests. Find out what customers want to know about beds and support surfaces. Lace it into a professional presentation that engages and involves the customer. Think about Microsoft’s PowerPoint; it makes all presentations look professional. Or, just print your presentation out on colored paper. Have customers critique your presentation, and change the parts they don’t like. For example, list the diagnoses for manual beds on a slide, then say, “Tell me how you typically manage these diagnoses.” Engagement creates interest. Reps should talk 20 percent of the time and customers 80 percent.
• Get great at this product line. Be smarter about it than your competitors. Bring new information to your customers. Put products in perspective. If a new product makes sense, talk to your referral sources about it. If it doesn’t, tell them it doesn’t fit their patients. Keeping customers up-to-date is a great way of keeping their interest.
• Mesh with intake. If intake employees cannot answer a specific question for a customer, have them punt to the sales team. Intake and sales need to work hand-in-hand to maximize business. Make sure that these departments are on the same page.

Alison Cherney is president of Cherney & Associates Inc., a Brentwood, Tenn.-based marketing and sales consulting firm, and is the producer of Homecare Power Selling, a sales training program for home care sales reps. She can be reached at 615/776-3399 or through www.cherneyandassociates.com.