Two themes surrounding Business Development and Physician Relations have remained fairly constant and problematic within Healthcare for over 20 years.
Theme 1: Liaisons with a multitude of responsibilities
Staff are assigned a multitude of responsibilities, receive little training and are given limited day-to-day direction. In some cases, they are expected to define their role and responsibilities. Of course, this scenario will render any employee ineffective and unable to be held accountable.
First, it is management’s job to clearly define the job description, determine and monitor expectations and provide direction.
Theme 2: Liaisons know priority one is referral developmentIf management wants the liaison to be an intermediary between the organization and referral sources by having them gather feedback, solving problems and providing news that is one way to use the liaison position. The philosophy here is that performing these customer service tasks will motivate physicians to refer to that facility. However, in most markets with strong competition for both patient referrals and the referring physician’s time this approach is rarely effective in growing admissions.
BD / Liaison staff are told their top priority is generating referrals. However, there are three key success components missing from the majority of referral development programs:
1) The necessary tools, strategies, skill training and performance standards to be truly effective;
2) Accountability - the required direct link between the liaison’s activity and admissions / revenue;
3) Incentive to make this priority a reality.
As a result, business developers and liaisons are challenged to fully achieve growth objectives, managers have difficulty assigning and supporting expectations and results and executive decision-makers clearly do not see value in incentive plans for these field staff members.
Suggestions for leaders
• Recognize the need for standards - the what, how, when and where liaisons perform in the field must be driven by standards of performance.
• Define high priority targets and limit BD and liaison activity to these targets.
• Develop a “sales” process that staff can follow in interacting with targets, so that each meeting is connected to the prior and the next meeting. Provide training in this process.
• Determine the most effective sales / communication methodology for your BD department and your objectives. Provide customized to-your-organization training for staff. We often hear “sales is sales, it is all the same”. The reality is relationship selling, transaction selling, solution selling and consultative selling to name some common ones, are all distinct sales methodologies that serve different purposes.
• Set admissions objectives based on a clear rationale. For example, when assigning admissions or revenue quotas, set a reasonable increase that has been determined predicated on an admissions baseline for each liaison’s targeted referring physicians or accounts. Work at removing subjectivity.
• Track and monitor the activities and standards you establish; tie these to performance improvement plans and to results.
This kind of standardization structure can be installed over time with planned steps. Any actions taken toward a defined structure can lead to improvements. As a very first step, we recommend managers determine and be clear with staff about their primary objectives, how management can help them in achieving these objectives, and how performance will be evaluated.
Kathleen Harkins is CEO and principal of Harkins Associates a healthcare business development consulting and training firm. Harkins Associates develops and re-structures referral / business development programs and departments within all healthcare sectors. Ms. Harkins brings twenty-two years of BD management and training expertise to client organizations helping them achieve sustainable growth. She has authored numerous healthcare training programs, including Healthcare Consultative Selling™, Train-the-trainer and Business Development Management Training. Ms. Harkins has conducted hundreds of seminars over the course of her career.