Conquer the Summer Slump: A Guide for Home Health, Home Care, and Hospice Agency Owners

Don’t let the summer slump slow down your agency’s success. With these strategies, you can overcome the seasonal dip and keep your agency thriving.

Let’s dive into how to avoid the summer slump and maintain a successful home health, hospice, or home care agency.

1. 1. Rev up your sales & marketing: Time to double down on your sales and marketing efforts! Boost your sales & marketing efforts during the summer. Don’t slow your sales calls just because “everyone” is on vacation! Use this time to your advantage and gain access to people who don’t “normally do” the referrals, BUT they are due on vacation! Time to ask great discovery questions! Often they will tell you the “secrets” of the account! Get insider information and attract new patients to keep referrals flowing.
   2. Create summer programs: Develop specialized functional programs that your sales representative can deliver that cater to summer needs. Be the post-acute care educator! By providing tailored services, you’ll keep patients engaged, improve their quality of life, and stand out from competitors.
   3. Strengthen referral relationships: Nurture relationships with hospitals, physicians, and community organizations. Educate them and be the patient advocate so that you can grab the mind share of your referral sources! Collaborate to identify potential patients and establish a seamless referral system. Strong relationships ensure a consistent stream of referrals.
   4. Embrace technology: Leverage technology to overcome the summer slump. Explore telehealth options and remote patient monitoring for efficient care delivery. Use digital platforms to streamline communication. And what about AI? Well, it is boosting the productivity by 20% of all the sales teams we work with – how are you leveraging it?
   5. Invest in staff training: Take advantage of the summer season to invest in staff training. Today’s representative requires many more skills than the pre covid rep! We teach reps how to fill up your nurses when you have SOC and when you are booked up until next week – how to engage your referral sources so that they still consider you their 1st choice even if you can’t accept a patient/client today! Enhance skills in specialized areas like Dx Sell – Diagnosis-Based Sales or an industry-specific sales process. Well-trained staff delivers higher-quality care, improving patient outcomes and generating positive referrals.

You can conquer the summer slump and maintain a thriving home health, hospice, or home care agency by ramping up sales & field marketing, offering specialized programs, nurturing referral relationships, embracing technology, and investing in staff training.

Adapt, innovate, and continue providing exceptional care throughout the summer season and beyond!

Together we GROW!
Melanie

P.S. Want to discover the secrets of how we transform sales representatives into top producers? Jump on Mike’s calendar, and he will show you how!