Technology is the buzzword in any business! We should all get at least some form of it to increase our agency’s efficiency and performance, right? But what if you subscribe to a software solution and find yourself always pressuring your team to use it? Constant pressure by itself is negative and counterproductive.
Here is what I learned managing a home health, home care and home infusion therapy business that relies extensively on technology to increase home health care referrals and to manage the entire business.
EHR:
No two businesses are alike and not all processes are the same. Unfortunately, software vendors rarely customize to your needs. That’s why you should shop around to find the solution that has similarities with your procedures, knowing that you may have to work differently and as set by your software vendors. Also, the easier the solution, the less pressure you will have to apply on your staff to use it and the more productive your will be. Our case was different because we chose to have our own ERP (www.homecaremaker.com) to create and control all processes that we follow, maintain our independence and to add new features any time we feel it necessary, like deciding to add a specialized Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM) dedicated to our line of business and its unique approach to referral sources for home health care, hospice and home infusion therapy.
CRM:
Following the great success we encountered in getting more referrals to our agency, we decided to spin off the CRM tool and make it available to home health care, hospice and home infusion therapy agencies at large. To be a game changer, our CRM had to be affordable, simple and powerful with a mobile app especially designed for marketers and with enough features to get more referrals and to market a hospice or home health care agency.
Maximizing the use of your CRM:
Going back to our introduction, the key to success in any software investment is to get your team to use it. For that, the system’s simplicity means automatically more power in your hands as it will encourage your marketers to use the system and get you more referrals. However, simplicity alone is not enough and your involvement in the software implementation is mandatory. That is why, Isoratec CRM comes with a complete desktop application to ensure that management has a real- time access to any field work performed by your sales team. Your sales people should know that you have access to their work any time and a weekly sales meeting would be the right venue to assess your reps’ performance and the agency’s strategy if needed. During the meeting, do not hesitate to show the performance of each with respect to the target(s) that you set for them. Last but not least, nothing beats a good reward to your rep for getting a referral, hence the need to pay the right commission for referrals.
Return on Investment:
Luckily, you can easily measure the return on your investment for your CRM subscription. Simply use as a benchmark the number of referrals pre- CRM and compare it to referrals post- CRM. You should see and excellent ROI provided you got involved in managing the use of your CRM.
Conclusion:
You need to select a good CRM that is reasonably priced to manage your sales process and to store your data securely in one place in order to become more efficient, hence increasing your home health care and hospice referrals. Selecting a good CRM alone is not enough IF you don’t get involved in its implementation by monitoring KPIs on a daily business (use of a dashboard) and by meeting periodically with your sales team.
Good luck selling!
Tony J. Onaissi is the founder and CEO of Isoratec, a home care technology company, and of Home Care Lebanon, a home health and home infusion business he founded in 1998. Contact Isoratec about CRM software at https://www.isoratec.com/
