What are the 5 Steps to a Successful Covid-19 Concierge Client Inquiry ?

May 26, 2020

How Not to Lose a New Client at an Inquiry

An inquiry is the most critical point in opening or losing a case. A successful inquiry means taking successful steps to increase your aging life or geriatric care management business.

The Desperate Calls You will Get

With many states lifting COVID-19 restrictions, in spite of COVID-19 still present, people will travel again. You will get desperate calls from adult children visiting older family members and seeing first-hand, how unprepared their vulnerable aging parents are if COVID-19 explodes in the fall or sooner. They probably will be reluctant to move their older parent to Assisted Living after the high incidence of coronavirus in these facilities no matter how many amenities they provide. Here are steps to success for an inquiry or any call about your services

Take These Steps to Convert Inquiry to New Client

1. You must assure the caller that your geriatric care management services can be counted on to thoroughly assess the elderly person’s and family caregiver’s situation at the intake, to provide a safe coronavirus plan for sheltering in place, if the pandemic, still here, roars back again, determine the level of care if that is needed and level of GCM monitoring to sell your services.
2. You sell these services by convincing the caller that you offer a highly personalized and compassionate approach to the family and older clients. This breaks down to gaining client and family trust that your GCM services are the very best path leading them the care they desperately need, led by a professional guide they can count on.

3. You persuade them that they will get unbeatable customer appreciation, you will exceed their customer expectations, ensure the quality of life for the older client, and offer a concierge driven service.
4. You explain how your hands on professional staff can make families relieved and happy because they understand they save precious time and overwhelming stress by using professional GCM’s.
5. You show them you can access all community services and resource options they could not find alone and are now available to them through your services.

6. In this one sometimes short call, you show potential new clients how your concierge care management service will solve their problems through -you the GCM being there for them every step of the way.
7. You persuade them that by scheduling the next step, a free 30-minute complimentary consultation call, you will help them make sound decisions based on reality and assessment.

The GCM sells all of this through this free 30 -minute complimentary consultation done by a compassionate and highly skilled professional the director of your agency.

Learn the 5 Clinical Steps to Signing Up These families

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Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19Products

Sales have severely declined during COVID_19. Now that many states are lifting restrictions, learn how to increase your, clients, through all your products but especially new Covid-19 and telehealth. Sell successfully this and any GCM product in a 2-part intake. Closing the sale means the client signing your contract and giving you a deposit. Most care managers are untrained and terrified of this process. They are more terrified of going out of business with COVID 19

Learn the 5 steps to make and close a care management sale to get that contract signed, get a deposit, grow your business, bolster cash flow, make payroll, and stop you from being one of the 50% of new US businesses that fail after five years or one of

the 7.5 million businesses that will fail in the next 3 months from COVID-19

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

How to make the sale in the inquiry call -with a complimentary consultation

How to ” Identify needs using client” challenge questions” to find the problem you need to solve to make the sale

How to present your offer by selling solutions to the problem with a mini care plan

How to manage objections if the caller has concerns about price or product

How to close the sale with non-aggressive closing questions to have your contract signed, get a deposit, and grow your business with a new client

Memorial Day Trail of Dead Aging Veterans’ Felled By COVID-19 &VA Cuts

May 25, 2020

Stalag-VII-A Moosburg Bavaria

My father was held in a prison camp during World War II. He was an officer and his camp only housed the higher ranks. He never spoke about the war. He was a World War II navigator shot down in Poland and transferred to Stalag-VII-A Moosburg Bavaria. He returned home a broken man with PTSD, never took a bus, drove or flew on a plane again. His disability, like so many vets was untreated for 50 years. He worked as an advertising agent ala Mad Men and drank like Don Draper. Our family crumbled into a dysfunctional maelstrom, as most families do. Literally saved by the Palo Alto VA GRECC Program in his late 60’s, he lived a very good life with my family for his last 25 years.

Patton Liberates The Prison Camp

My mother told me that near the end of the war, his prison camp was abandoned by the Germans. Most of the men had dysentery and were skeletons. Patton liberated the camp, according, to the story I heard and he cried when he saw his officers so very ill, burning up the bunks they slept in to keep warm in the freezing German winter. My father would say verboten when we asked questions, as he learned German while imprisoned. We were told by my mother never to talk about the war.

Holyoke Soldier’s Home Prison Camp

In today’s New York Times front page there is another story of another soldier who never talked of the war. But this World War II soldier, James Leach Miller, lived to be 98. He survived D day the deadliest battle of the war but did not survive his own prison camp, the Holyoke Soldiers Home in Massachusetts. There was no Patton to roar up in tanks and save the 89 soldiers who died in the VA facilities that housed 210 frail older men. 74 were diagnosed with the virus. The state investigation shows there was limited staffing and workers that remained did double shifts. This was before the Pandemic hit. The Times reported that Holyoke had scarce PPE, was understaffed, and put veterans infected together with residents who did not yet have the virus.

Death By A Million VA CUTs

Erin O’Brien an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, said Massachusetts folk are outraged. Veterans programs require funding. President Trump has been making radical cuts in VA care and caregiver funding.

Trump Administration Batters The VA

The Trump administration has left the VA as battered as the fleeing Germans left my father’s prison camp. These poor soldiers in their 90’s were left as the Times headline says “to Languish in a Home Ravaged by Illness “with few staff , PPE a raging epidemic and no President Trump coming in to cry at his army’s plight and save them when he saw men who had risked their lives for all of us- and lived on – only to felled by VA cuts.

You Need a Virtual Rolladex on Speed Now to Market in Covid-19

May 20, 2020

What is a Rolladex on Speed?

During the Covid-19 pandemic, when many geriatric care managers are shut down, they need a virtual rolladex on speed- or an email marketing and marketing automation platform. An email marketing database is essential for keeping your prospective, existing customers warmed up and ready to buy your services or products. You store your contacts or customers and send information that will entice them to use your agency. Constant Contact is the most common. I use it because it has great customer services for non-natives in technology like me plus excellent templates. But other alternatives like Survey Monkey and Moosend and many others can be considered. Think of this as your old Rolodex on speed.

During this pandemic, this gives you the ability to let your third parties like elderlaw attorneys and existing an potential new clients know you are still here, still care about their needs and show them what preventative steps you have taken in

Advertise Your Agencies Coronavirus Universal Saftey Precautions

Use the e-mail newsletter to update contacts on your staff’s training in universal precautions and use of all the necessary masks, gloves, and PPE . You should assure that caregivers are required to take their own temperature prior to each shift and all shifts are available.

Share Community Resources During Pandemic

You can let clients and 3rd parties, know helpful information about coping with “shelter in place”, in your town. For example, a list of all the grocery stores that deliver, as older people are not supposed to go shopping or if they do -the times when only they are allowed in the store. If your care providers can do that shopping you could add this to the newsletter.

If you do a Virtual Quality of Life Program for lonely and isolated seniors unable to get out during Covid-19, share your service in the newsletter. If you do not offer a Quality of Life program, point them toward geriatric care manager Nina Herndon’s excellent virtual quality of life program.

If you have a partnership with your county health department, which is a very good idea, you can add that in your newsletter. You can keep customers up to date on Covid-19 information in your area. You can both use it in your agency and share it through your newsletter. Other ideas are adding photos of your staff in PPE or even staff making masks if you have sewing talents. Or there is a volunteer group in your county making PPE for hospitals, share that and with photos in your newsletter

Care Management Start-Ups -Start an E-newsletter Now

Any aging life or geriatric care management business has to start out with a foundation of great customer relationships. Get an email marketing database now or before you open your doors and fill it up with contacts including old, new and potential clients,3rd party referral sources like- elder law attorneys, trust officers, concierge physicians, and all target professionals who refer families to you who need GCM.

You, the aging life or GCM marketer, must connect with aging families who need your product at this time of the pandemic and at all times in the future. The best way is through your social media database.

As your company expands these Aging Life or GCM business connections grow more sophisticated. You start to manage a myriad of connections, across time, within each referral contact you do business with.

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19Products

Boost Your Sales in COVID-19 Slow Down

Sales have severely declined in COVID-19. Learn how to increase your, clients, through all your

products but especially new Covid-19 and telehealth. Sell Successfully this and any GCM product in a 2-part intake. Closing the sale means the client signing your

contract and giving you a deposit. Most care managers are untrained and terrified of this process.

They are more terrified of going out of business with COVID 19

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

How to make the sale in the inquiry call -with a complimentary consultation

How to ” Identify needs using client” challenge questions” to find the problem you need to solve to make the sale

How to present your offer by selling solutions to the problem with a mini care plan

How to manage objections if the caller has concerns about price or product

How to close the sale with non-aggressive closing questions to have your contract signed, get a deposit, and grow your business with a new client

SIGN UP FOR FREE

5 Things Geriatric Care Managers and Concierge Physicians have in Common & and How Do you Market to Them

May 18, 2020

What Do you Have in Common with a Concierge Physician

Concierge Physicians and geriatric care managers have much in common

They both serve must serve the top 10% in the US. because of Income equality

Geriatric care management and long term care are not covered by Medicare, so the top 10% can only afford private geriatric care management.

Medicare rates for the physician are so low, especially Geriatricians,(who are the lowest paid that they disappearing), is one of the reasons physicians have fled to a concierge practice. This allows them to actually see a client for more than 10 minutes and make housecalls where they can actually observe the most about the patient’s ability to care for themselves.

Both in Business, Serving the Elderly & Wealthy taking health care into the world of Profit.

The third commonality is Concierge Physicians and geriatric care managers both make house calls have small practices and spend time with a patient like an old fashioned doctor. More important they both know that you see the most about the functional ability of the client/patient in their home not a brief office visit

Small CASE Loads a big Similarity

The fourth similarity is the caseload. Concierge Physician has an average caseload of 50, while the average internist has 2500 patients. The average GCM carries a caseload of 25-35. But even that may be too high when serving highly entitled concierge clients. Wealthy clients can demand boatloads of attention, have more family friction between adult siblings and the older parent-based on too much money, not enough love, and no skills passed on to nurture when the parent needs care. This constant bickering or worse cut off and often elder physical and fiscal abuse siphons lots of hours of the GCM’ s time to get the care that the older client needs. So large GCM caseloads among the uber-wealthy are almost impossible.

NO WAIT TIME TO SEE GCM OR CONCIERGE PHYSICIANS

The fifth kindred feature between the GCM and concierge physicians is “wait time”. Wait time to see your doctor in the US can be a very long time. According to the New York Times”A survey released in March by Merritt Hawkins, a Dallas medical consulting and recruiting firm, found it takes 29 days on average to secure an appointment with a family care physician, up from 19.5 days in 2014. For some specialties, the delays are similarly long, with a 32-day wait to see a dermatologist and a 21-day delay at the typical cardiologist’s office. But Concierge Physicians get back to their patient’s right away because of the small caseloads and the personalized one to one care they represent. Care managers, who offer gold standard care, generally get out to see new clients within a day. Both professionals go by ” Ask and Ye Shall Receive”.

BOTH TREATING COVID-19’s Hand of Death Reaching for Seniors

During the coronavirus both doctors and care managers, see their clients/ patients the largest target of the deadly virus, dying in deadly droves, especially in

nursing homes and are themselves overwhelmed by the stress of not being able to save or even see their caseload.

So when you market the Concierge Physicians, what benefits to do you offer that will allow her or him to refer to you.

We will use the “So What” that show benefits to any profession

1) You serve the same upper 10% with the same 1-1 hands-on excellent care “So What” you can support the physician’s patient without training

2) You do facilitation with dysfunctional families ( often in these patient caseloads) “So What” You will use your skills to get families to agree on care for the older person so concierge physicians will not have to deal with these difficult barriers to care

3)You will manage adult siblings who often disrupt older parent care because of ” Mom Loved You Best” squabbles “So What” so the Concierge physician can give the medical care the parent needs without hiring a social worker or trying to be one.

4)You can counsel families through technology through the fears of COVID1- and strategies to help clients cope with the choices they may have in the epidemic so what so the mental health breakdown of the aging family can address.

Join Me in My Latest Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19Products

Sales have severely declined in COVID_19, geriatric care management is not deemed essential business. Learn how to increase your, clients, through all your products but

especially the new Covid-19 and telehealth. Sell Successfully this and any GCM product in a 2-part intake. Closing the sale means the client signing your contract and giving you a deposit. Most care managers are untrained and terrified of this process. They are more terrified of going out of business with COVID 19

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

How to make the sale in the inquiry call -with a complimentary consultation

How to ” Identify needs using client” challenge questions” to find the problem you need to solve to make the sale

How to present your offer by selling solutions to the problem with a mini care plan

How to manage objections if the caller has concerns about price or product

How to close the sale with non-aggressive closing questions to have your contract signed, get a deposit, and grow your business with a new client

SIGN UP FOR FREE

How To Create a Team in the Long Distance Family During Covid 19?

May 16, 2020

OFFERING A COVID care plan product with Long Distance Care Providers

The first step for the Long-distance family members (LDF) worried about elder exposure and hospitalization of Covid-19 can be to take a team approach. This can be a call with a geriatric care manager for a consultation that will help long-distance families work as a team to keep elder family member safe while you are at a distance This Care management consultation can be done with a HIPAA-compliant video conferencing services

The first thing that the geriatric care manager works on is to find out if the older person has the required legal documents – Advanced directives, POA/HCPOA & GCM HIPAA release because of the risk of both hospitalization and death due to age-related COVID-19. If these documents are not present, the care manager will have a discussion with senior and the long-distance family regarding their wishes, explaining older adults over 65 are at higher risk for severe illness. The care manager will discuss who is to be the health care decision-maker with the older adult and suggest they consult a family attorney or elder law attorney to complete. If they choose not to use an elder law attorney, as time is of the essence in the pandemic, they can suggest access AARP advanced directives documents for any state which can be executed quickly.

If documents are completed, locate in the home and provide explanations to the family that they must give a copy to emergency contacts and physicians as required and place in planning binder. In the planning “Go binder” list all emergency contacts with phone numbers/e-mail addresses – family, friends, physicians, pharmacy, professionals providing in-home services. Also, list all medications and prescribing physicians in “Go Binder”. Upload documents into caregiving applications like caring village.com so the long-distance from always has the updated documents.

Join my new GCM on Line Classes Working on Covid- 19

This research was done by my geriatric care management student GCM Maryann Prudhomme. My students are working on Covid-19 products in both all of my two new online classes in blackboard right now. If you are interested in joining our class and

learning tools to be a geriatric care manager go to cathycress.com online classes

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19 Products

Sales have severely declined in COVID_19. Learn how to increase your, clients, through all your products but especially new Covid-19 and telehealth. Sell Successfully

this and any GCM product in a 2-part intake. Closing the sale means the client signing your contract and giving you a deposit. Most care managers are untrained and terrified of this process. They are more terrified of going out of business with COVID 19

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

How to make the sale in the inquiry call -with a complimentary consultation

How to ” Identify needs using client” challenge questions” to find the problem you need to solve to make the sale

How to present your offer by selling solutions to the problem with a mini care plan

How to manage objections if the caller has concerns about price or product

How to close the sale with non-aggressive closing questions to have your contract signed, get a deposit, and grow your business with a new client

Memorial Day Trail of Dead Aging Veterans’ Felled By COVID-19 &VA Cuts

Stalag-VII-A Moosburg Bavaria

Patton Liberates The Prison Camp

Holyoke Soldier’s Home Prison Camp

Death By A Million VA CUTs

How To Create a Team in the Long Distance Family During Covid 19?

OFFERING A COVID care plan product with Long Distance Care Providers

Other problems that geriatric care managers who offer consultation can solve for long-distance family members

Join my new GCM on Line Classes Working on Covid- 19

Join Me in My New Free Webinar

Conquer Care Management Sales- 5 Steps Close the Sale on COVID-19 Products

When?

Date Tuesday, June 23

Time 2:00 PM -3:30 PM

You will Learn

What are Covid-19 GCM Services you can offer

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”