There is a mixed-blessing to earning commissions through recurring business. The plus side is the continuous selling of product with the associated steady flow of income. The potential downside is losing focus on expanding the customer base and product mix; in other words, you stop growing, become complacent and start coasting.
Medical sales is hard, and it’s easy to get caught up in the “busy work.” I consider busy work the activities that help you to maintain your business, but do little if anything to gain new business. Often, these tasks could and should be considered “minimum wage activities.” It’s a common paradox to find people who got into medical sales to earn a six figure income and then spend their days doing tasks for which an unskilled labor force receives on average $10 per hour! It’s the sales rep who makes deliveries herself instead of paying a courier to do it so she can make two or three sales calls instead. It’s the sales rep who delivers literature to a customer without having a sales conversation, when the same result can be achieved by sticking the literature in an envelope and buying a sixty cents postage stamp. Or it’s the surgical sales rep who schleps instruments and implants around the territory until 11:00 pm at night to set up for a customer’s surgical case the next day. It’s no small wonder that customers often see medical sales reps as little more than highly paid delivery people.
Talk to any of these reps and they will tell you that they’re working their asses off, and truthfully they are. They are working hard, but doing easy work. The hard work is selling, but it’s easy to avoid that by just staying busy instead of creating the time to do what you’re really paid to do—SELL. Metaphorically, you’re on the bike, but you’re not pedaling—you’re coasting!
Coasting in sales is when you’re doing what you need to do to keep the money flowing, but you’re not doing much, if anything, to increase your sales volume. The pitfall is finding yourself comfortable with the money you’re making and patting yourself on the back for maintaining the business and keeping your customers happy.
Sales representatives are an endangered species. Your relevancy is shifting due to the plethora of information that is available to your customers at the click of a mouse. The information that you fail to provide will eventually be found by your customers on their own. And when that happens, the only thing left to consider is who will deliver the product or service? If it’s you, than you really are just a delivery person.
When you’re not fanatically focused on selling, you’re coasting. Don’t confuse being busy with being successful. Success in medical sales requires you to get a customer who is not currently using your product to buy from you. Or it’s getting one of your current customers to buy a product from you that she is currently buying from someone else. But if all you’re doing is scrambling to hold onto the business you already have, make no mistake—you’re coasting—and coasting only works when you’re going downhill.
– By Mace Horoff. Visit www.MedicalSalesTraining.com for more.
$128 Question
First, the rules. DO NOT post your answer to this blog, or Facebook or Twitter. Email your answer to Managing Editor Graham Garrison at ggarrison@mdsi.org.
When did the first World Health Organization countries begin using ICD-10 Codes?
Sometimes people say one thing and mean something else. Sometimes they don’t say anything at all, but you still know what they mean. Communication is a cornerstone to delivering outstanding customer service. The key is to listen, react and adapt.
A few weeks ago I went to a restaurant that I had gone to several times before for lunch. On these previous lunchtime visits, as soon as we were seated the server would bring over a basket of delicious home-made potato chips. However that night at dinner, there weren’t any chips.
The server came by and I asked her, “Are there any chips?” She informed me that was only at lunch. Even without the chips, the restaurant had great food and I would return again – for lunch or dinner.
A week later I did return for another dinner and made a comment to a different server about those delicious chips. She also explained that they were served only at lunch, yet just a few minutes later she returned with a basket of chips. She said, “Next time you come in for dinner, just ask and we’ll get them for you.”
Now why didn’t the first server get me the chips while the second server was only too happy to bring them? The second time I didn’t specifically ask for the chips. I just made a comment about them. The second server didn’t have to read my mind. It was obvious that I wanted the chips. She didn’t just hear. She listened. She knew I didn’t want an explanation. I just wanted the chips. And, she just wanted to take care of her customer.
The lesson: People can say one thing and mean something else. Or sometimes they don’t have to say anything at all. It is obvious. Just listen. As the old cliché goes, read between the lines. Or, put another way, it’s not mind reading!
Shep Hyken, CSP, CPAE is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. As a professional speaker and author, Shep helps companies develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For more information on Shep’s speaking programs and books, please contact (314) 692-2200. Email: shep@hyken.com Web: www.hyken.com. For information on customer service training, go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com.
Your physician office lab customers probably won’t experience too much heartburn making the transition to ICD-10, at least as it relates to lab products and procedures, according to those with whom Repertoire spoke.
“ICD codes are used to report diagnoses for both ambulatory patients and for inpatients, but for labs themselves, the change in codes should not have major effects – at least not right away,” says Kathleen Claessens, senior director of federal health policy and reimbursement, Roche Diagnostics Corp. “On a lab claim, the codes the lab reports come from a requisition, which includes diagnoses based on information known to the physician at the time the test is ordered. So the codes will be different, but the information conveyed and the lab tests ordered should be the same.” What’s more, for outpatient tests, labs submit CPT codes to describe the tests, and those codes are not affected by the transition to ICD-10, she points out.
“For most of our customers, in terms of rapid tests, there won’t be a change,” says Julie Fadel, MT (ASCP), associate director, technical marketing, Sekisui Diagnostics. “Outpatient facilities will still use CPT codes for billing.” What’s more, most rapid tests are used to detect fairly common diseases. “I can’t imagine it will be that difficult to crosswalk to the appropriate ICD-10,” she says. Although the ICD-10 codes are more specific, a strep throat is, after all, a strep throat. Even with less recognizable tests, such as those for bacterial vaginosis and trichomoniasis, the coding should be straightforward.
Fadel says she’s curious to see how the transition to the 5010 electronic transaction goes. And then, beginning next year, she intends to ask sales reps about their customers’ readiness for ICD-10, “to keep a pulse.”
This month’s Repertoire cover story focuses on the conversion to the ICD-10 system for your customers. While providers have until October 2013 to make the transition to ICD-10, they are under the gun to switch to Version 5010 now. That’s because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will only be accepting electronic claims in that format. Though the deadline for implementation is Jan. 1, 2012, the feds have given providers a grace period of 90 days before they initiate enforcement action.
For the full article, visit www.repertoiremag.com, but here were some interesting thoughts from those interviewed:
“The implementation of ICD-10 will create significant burdens on the practice of medicine with no direct benefit to individual patients’ care,” Peter W. Carmel, M.D., AMA president, was quoted as saying. “At a time when we are working to get the best value possible for our healthcare dollar, this massive and expensive undertaking will add administrative expense and create unnecessary workflow disruptions. The timing could not be worse, as many physicians are working to implement electronic health records into their practices. We will continue working to help physicians keep their focus where it should be – on their patients.”
“We’re way behind the game,” says Rhonda Buckholtz, CPC, CPMA, CPC-1, CGSC, COBGC, CPEDC, CENTC, vice president of ICD-10 education and training, American Academy of Professional Coders. “We can’t compare [U.S. health data] internationally.” ICD-9 served its purpose by establishing a uniform, national standard, she says. “Before that, carriers could come up with their own local codes. They didn’t have to follow a certain standard or set of rules. It was really willy nilly.” That said, ICD-9 has outlived its usefulness, she says.
“There’s no doubt that getting more granular codes will improve quality of data, assuming that the more granular codes are actually used,” says Robert Tennant, senior policy adviser, Medical Group Management Association. “The granularity issue also gets into some very important payment questions. It gets into reimbursement and the specificity issue.”