Transforming Customers

This summer’s hottest movie is expected to be “Transformers.” We all like the concept. Just the idea that one thing can be transformed into something else is pretty exciting.

In home care, we all probably do some transforming every day. We transform new employees with little sales and marketing expertise into health care product experts. We transform delivery staff into product experts. Many of us have transformed unsophisticated businesses to those where computers and state-of-the-art software allows us to monitor operations.

Having been in the industry an eternity (or so it feels), I remember well that providers with retail stores were few and far between. Most HME companies worked solely out of warehouses, and retail was something left for the local food market or drugstore. When someone did come into the location, we sold products out of the back warehouse — no showroom, no advertising and concern only for where employees, not customers, would park.

Now, it is time to take transforming out into the marketplace. We need to begin transforming our “over the telephone” referral sources into customers who know all about our retail operation, our full product line and the service component of our businesses. We need to transform those who have never visited our store, referred a patient for a product purchase, or even know where we are located into new retail customers.

Transforming these customers will take some time, but you can begin with a plan and a strategy. Here are some suggestions for making it happen:

• Develop a small flyer discussing and focusing on your retail products and programs. Include a picture of your store that referral sources would recognize if they drove by. If there is a well-known store nearby, use that as a landmark to help people find you.
• Create a postcard referral sources can share with their customers that talks about your store and the products you offer. Ask referral sources if it would be OK for them to share the postcard with the customers they refer.
• Continue to emphasize your store in all of your marketing materials and when appropriate include a small map and easy-to-understand directions to your store.
• Make sure your delivery staff reminds all who receive products in their homes about your store.
• When attending meetings of health care professionals, make sure you continue to let them know about your store.
• If offered the opportunity to provide a slide presentation about your company, include pictures of your locations/showroom and customers.
• Consider doing a mailing to all of your customers letting them know where you are located. They may have seen your truck, or looked at your brochure but had no idea you were working from a store location only a few miles from their home.

Too often, referral sources only order or purchase those products they are most familiar with. Is it possible they have not referred anyone to your store because they do not know it exists? They may be interested in more than just oxygen or a bedside commode.

Transforming the referral source into a source of business for your retail store is not easy. A great goal would be to find a way to have the referral source come to your store to see what you are all about. You may want to try one of the following:

• An in-service program with CE’s presented at your location.
• An open house with a guest speaker who may be of interest to health care professionals.
• A program for your patients/customers about a particular disease, product line or service.
• A wheelchair cleaning day, letting both referral sources and patients know about this special event.
• Offer a day of health care screening for your customers.

Keep thinking about ways to expose your customer base to all that you offer. Once you begin transforming all of your professional customers into retail-aware customers, you will be on your way to transforming low retail sales to a new high-revenue source of business.

And if none of this helps, just go see the movie and see how the real Transformers work!

Louis Feuer is president of Dynamic Seminars & Consulting Inc. and the founder and director of the DSC Teleconference Series, a teleconference training program. He can be reached at www.DynamicSeminars.com or by phone at 954/435-8182.