The phone is ringing, employees are clamoring for your attention, and one of your company vehicles just broke down. With all that goes on in your day, taking a step back to see if there are overlooked opportunities for your mobility company is hardly your top priority.

You are not alone. Many mobility product providers I speak with are missing out on even old proven methods to increase revenue.

Fortunately, discovering methods to increase revenue may be easier than you think. There are a couple of ways to identify opportunities. The most common method is simply to wait for a situation to develop that requires a solution. When the solution proves useful and repeatable, we can call it an opportunity and begin to develop revenue from its repeated use.

The second method is more proactive and can be more prolific. As a mobility dealer, consider your customer’s entire environment. This environment is not just the seat in a wheelchair or scooter. It is everywhere that device may go. Mobility customers may use their devices at home, at work, at school, and in their recreational and social activities. They may go shopping, visit the doctor, or pack up their wheelchair, power chair, or scooter and go for an automobile ride.

Next, describe the needs of the people in your market area that require mobility devices. Include both residents and visitors to the market. Consider their ages, employment, why they are in the market, what they do with mobility devices, the types of homes they live in, the types of transportation they use, etc.

Then consider the kinds of devices and accessories required to fill these needs. Finally, survey your competition to identify which needs they may be filling. Are there any gaps between the needs of residents and visitors in your market and the needs filled by other local mobility product providers? If there are, these gaps may produce new sales opportunities for your company.

Some tried-and-true opportunities many mobility providers fail to take full advantage of include:

• Cross-selling. This is the act of creating a sale from one product line because of a previous sale in another product line. An example is selling a scooter and then selling an elevator to get the scooter to the second floor of the client’s home.

Cross-selling is a well-known method, but it is underused because it requires a mobility provider’s staff to learn to identify the cross-sale opportunities, approach the customer with the idea, and discipline themselves to pass the information on to other parties in your company.

For example, accredited companies usually have good client assessment forms, but they rarely use the information on the form to generate sales opportunities. Assessment of mobility customers is one of the most powerful sales tools you have. It can help you identify all of the uses the customers have for their wheelchairs, scooters, or power chairs.

Once these uses are identified, you can find sales opportunities by integrating the device into a customer’s whole environment. Ask the customer questions such as:

• How will you transport the device?
• How will you get it into and out of your home?
• Can you access all parts of your home while in an assisted mobility device?
• Can you perform recreational and social activities you enjoy?

When you have these answers, you probably have new sales opportunities.

• Vehicle Rental. What does a hotel’s airport shuttle do when it needs to pick up a guest that is in a power chair? What does the owner of a conversion van do when his or her van is being serviced or repaired? What does a newly disabled person do while waiting for the delivery of his or her vehicle? How does a family host an out-of-town guest that uses a mobility device?

These questions are opportunities for renting vehicles equipped to handle the needs of assisted mobility users. With a little work, you can set up the right agreements and insurance to provide these specialty vehicles.

• Tourist Rental. In addition to asking physicians for referrals, ask hotel managers. When a guest inquires about mobility equipment, your company will be the one the hotel calls. One dealer I know built his entire business model around providing HME to guests of hotels and resorts in his city.

• Facilities Contracts. Got a theme park or amusement center in your market? How about convention centers, shopping malls, and airports? There is one national non-health care company that contracts with airports to provide wheelchairs. I would bet they do not serve small airports. Contract with these types of facilities to be a concessionaire that provides wheelchairs and scooters. If they have their own equipment, consider contracting for the maintenance.

• Home Modifications. I have discussed opportunities in home modifications with dealers from coast to coast and found that the opportunity is often dismissed because the dealer lacks the requisite licenses or skills. The solution is simple. Create a joint venture agreement with a building or remodeling contractor if you cannot hire the talent and obtain your own license. Dealers who have used this solution enjoy the benefit of cash sales while doing a better job of integrating the environment of their customer.

• Condo Elevators. Many elderly people who require mobility devices also own second-floor condos. Yet elevators are often overlooked as a sales opportunity. Why wait until you have sold a scooter to a second-floor condo dweller before you try to sell an elevator? Start the customer relationship in the other direction. Sell the elevator and get the condo dweller to come to you for his or her service and replacement needs.

Depending on state and local laws, mobility dealers may be able to install the elevator, or they may need to create an alliance with a properly skilled and licensed party. Nevertheless, there are good cash sale opportunities in providing elevators.

Like elevators, most of these opportunities are cash sales that do not require third-party reimbursement. That means no prescriptions, certificates of medical necessity, denials, secondary claims, charts, audits, etc, tying up your billing staff’s valuable time. Considering how much of your revenue dollar goes to third-party reimbursement and collection activities, it is clear that these opportunities are more than ways to make more sales. They make sales more profitable.

Wallace Weeks is the founder and president of The Weeks Group Inc, Melbourne, Fla, a business improvement consulting firm. Contact him at (321) 752-4514 or wweeks@weeksgroup.com.