Move into Action

By now most of you have stored away your holiday trimmings and placed those boxes on the closet shelf. You might have made lots of plans for 2010, hoped for health and happiness for your family and friends and sent wishes to people you only correspond with once a year. But now that the wishes and greetings have all been delivered, the time for action is before you. Are you going to do anything from that list of promises you made to yourself and to your business?

Think about all those times you said to colleagues, “Let’s do lunch,” realizing you were just making small talk. It is action, planning and strategizing that makes all the difference. Telling staff that one day you would like to have lunch with them alone is a great idea, but will it actually ever happen?

It is now time for a new way of doing business, keeping up with your referral sources, handling the key operations of your company more effectively and focusing on building sales and increasing revenues. We are past the time for good wishes, tentative thoughts about getting together for lunch or considering revising the way we work our territories.

It’s time for an action plan, and I want to provide you some guidance before 2010 is looked back upon as a year of what you could have done instead of what great things you accomplished.

Take a look at these five business areas as you move ahead. Your need for increased revenues demands that you review:

1. The billing system Consider not only the reports and information it generates but how you use all that it offers. Billing and reimbursement programs should provide tools for every aspect of your business, and though many do, too few HME managers optimize the value of their software in analyzing business.
2. The delivery system Take a careful look at how the order travels from the initial phone call, insurance authorization, product removal from the warehouse shelf, staging the delivery before it goes on the truck to final arrival in the patient’s home. Realize that if something can go wrong in the process, it will.
3. The sales system Go over how all sales are tracked, referral sources are monitored and how you are able to review the work of the sales representative. The more you know about how sales are generated and what activities are in place to ensure you are building revenues, the more likely you are to make sure the right behaviors are continually in place.
4. The order intake system Make sure you and your employees fully understand how an order must be taken, what information you need to and what to say and not to say to a customer. An order that is not correctly generated from the beginning can lead to revenues not only being delayed but often never received — and to an unhappy customer. Customers who are not satisfied that they have received what was promised will soon be clients of your competition.
5. Expense records and recording system Get a handle on all of your expenses from marketing materials, corporate sponsorships, commission plans, delivery costs and fixed business expenses. Understand the costs of shipping and how this impacts the total cost of sales.

In your business review, try these suggestions from companies I have worked with throughout the country:

• Begin an annual review of all marketing materials. Decide what items need to be re-ordered and those that should be deleted from your stock of public relations materials. Take some time to look at new materials and ways to increase visibility within your community. Decide what meetings you need to attend and those that should be taken off of your list.
• Assign someone in each department to help develop a review of all systems in that department. Make a list of what works (the pros) and what seems to be creating the most errors in your system (the cons). If your company is large enough, make this a key subject at your next department meeting, and certainly at your next staff meeting.
• Create a committee to search out technology options. Many will save you time and money. From GPS programs and new telephone systems to bar-coding, there is much to consider. Too many companies continue to put off the decision to add new technology to their business.

Now is the time to review all of these issues. Can you think of just one business system or process that needs your special attention?

Read more Sales Notebook columns.

Louis Feuer is president of Dynamic Seminars & Consulting Inc. and the founder and director of the DSC Teleconference Series, a teleconference training program. You can reach him through www.DynamicSeminars.com or at 954/435-8182.