Feuer: Beyond the Pads and Mugs

SUNRISE, Fla. — “The sales environment has changed
dramatically,” according to HME sales master Louis Feuer. “Having a
great home care company with a sophisticated disease management
program is wonderful, but of little value if no one knows about
it.”

Feuer, who founded sales training company Dynamic Seminars &
Consulting in 1977, said in those days the norm was to take in a
box of doughnuts to potential customers or give away “400 mugs.”
But that’s no longer the case. In addition to excellent equipment
and service for their patients, today’s referral sources want help
in keeping up with fast-changing products, rules and legislation.
And to get those sources to think of your company when the need
arises, that takes education and effort — along with
heightened visibility and marketing.

Feuer said he is also hearing the same thing from physicians
themselves: How do I keep up my visibility, enhance my image and
provide education to my patients and referral sources at a low
cost?

“I have been an educator for all of my career and always thought
there was some way to provide education to our customers in a
format that would get their attention on a regular basis,” said
Feuer, adding that this is “a marketing and branding issue that has
gone unsolved for so long because of cost, time and other more
serious issues on the agenda of every home care business
owner.”

He thinks newsletters could be the answer.

Over the years, he pointed out, a lot of HME providers have
offered newsletters to referral sources, but few have had the time
and money to keep them going. Feuer said he has battled the
time-draining prospect of newsletters himself. He wrote them for
clients in the past, but soon had to give it up. And while
electronic newsletters have eliminated the burden of printing,
timely, original content is still the key for any such venture.

Recently, Feuer joined forces with Prime Inc., an educational
firm run by a longtime colleague, to beat the battle. “We partnered
to come up with a plan where we could provide newsletters on a
monthly basis to home care companies to use as part of their
marketing,” he said. “We are going beyond the pens, pads and mugs.
That was costly, but this is education.”

When Feuer used to write the content himself, he said, he
ultimately could not get it done even on a quarterly basis, much
less every month. “You have to write it, edit it and you have to
get it out, and it just did not work,” said Feuer. “I have clients
who told me that they were doing it on their own and I asked, ‘Did
you get it out every month?’ And the answer was usually, ‘We did it
twice and then we gave it up.’”

Feuer describes the new initiative — Does Training
(www.doestraining.com) — as a line of educational
newsletters that allows providers to identify their company as an
organization that provides quality health care education in
interesting and interactive formats. “We produce newsletters in
three categories: for health care professionals, for patients and
for physicians,” he said. “We email those to you, and every month
you get to choose which newsletter you would like.”

For companies looking to spend money on things other than mugs
and pens, Feuer hopes the educational theme will strike a chord.
“You have something now that your sales rep can take out to every
single referral source.

“You can email it, put it in your billing statement or put it in
a shipping box,” added Feuer. “We have a whole staff of expert
writers getting these out. It is all original content, and it is
focused on national topics that would fit in for any region.”

Feuer advises providers to take a fresh look at their marketing
efforts. “While it may not be newsletters, then consider replacing
lunch with an afternoon popcorn delivery or an afternoon apple,” he
said.

“Consider the after-effects of any marketing product. Is it
something that brings value to customer? is it something that can
be shared with your name on it? When will you do it again to get
that same impact? That’s the basis of how the newsletters were
created, and that’s how I believe you need to look at any product
you are considering for your marketing program.”