Talking Your Way to Sales

Donald Kendall once said, “There is no place where success comes before work, except in the dictionary.”

As the co-founder of PepsiCo and its CEO for 21 years before his retirement, Kendall transformed the company — which competitor Coca-Cola did not even acknowledge as a challenger — to one of the most successful beverage and snack food companies in the world.

I have only been in my office for a few days this month (Thelma and I have been enjoying the summer), but I have received several calls from providers asking for ideas to drum up new business. So, though they might not be on the Kendall scale, here are a few simple ideas for talks, based on your knowledge and a little extra work, that can build sales.

• Prepare a short talk on how to care for a homebound patient. This discussion need only be about 10 or 15 minutes long. During your talk, incorporate and show one or two over-the-counter items that you stock. Have your lecture bound into a handout. It will probably be only several pages long, so there will be plenty of room to add product sheets for a number of OTC items that are prominently displayed in your showroom. Be sure that each time you prepare a handout for a talk, you change the items you show. Your vendors should be happy to supply you with these product pages.
• Contact every minister, priest and rabbi in your community and offer to give your talk to some of their congregation clubs, the sisterhood or brotherhood and any others under their roof. These organizations are always looking for speakers, and someone offering help for patients at home will be welcome. Who better than your company — the local DME provider — to do this?
• You can go a step further. Prepare a similar talk for taking care of children, and not just those who are homebound. Even learning about a simple way to put a child in the tub and take them out would prevent many a backache. Don’t just list the bath equipment that can help. Talk about the strollers you stock and the automobile safety seats. Besides bathing, there are many other topics in this category that would make great subjects for a series of talks.
• Contact the parent/teacher associations at all of the public and parochial schools in your community to give this presentation. One simple and inexpensive gesture is to offer to provide the refreshments. I find it wonderful to see how much good will doughnuts and cookies earn.

Remember that many of the parents in your community probably know each other. If you show one mom a piece of equipment that can help with her child, then the others in her “group” will soon hear about your company and its services.

These efforts don’t really require a great deal of extra work, but they can help you gain some of the extra sales you seek.

It Must Be Magic

A competitive bid. Magic, because this will solve all the problems of needy American citizens — or so they say. But it is all an illusion.

The only serious effect of this “new” thought — creating another competitive bid — will be the loss of many fine companies that provide care and services to their communities. Until we deliver the message to politicians that the problem they really face is fraud and abuse, the situation will never be resolved.

I have reported about billing frenzies at hospitals. I have spoken about services ordered by physicians to protect themselves from lawsuits. I have spoken about frivolous lawsuits. All of these are forms of fraud and abuse, and they will continue.

So what is the next step? We all have to join hands in a collective effort to show the powers that be in our government that they cannot foist an illusion on the public that will magically create lower prices for services or save them any dollars. It just won’t work.

HME providers are, without a doubt, the most unappreciated members of the health care industry. Most providers are hardworking, honest individuals, with equally hardworking, honest employees, who receive very little reimbursement for the services they perform.

Make your voices heard.

Sheldon “Shelly” Prial is based in Melbourne, Fla., with Prial Consulting and also serves as the director of government relations for Atlanta-based Graham-Field Health Products. In 1987, he founded the Homecare Providers Co-Op, now part of The VGM Group. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 321/255-3885.