Are you confronting decreasing margins after years of Medicare reimbursement cutbacks and now competitive bidding? One healthy alternative is to decrease your Medicare/Medicaid revenue to under 40% and increase your cash sales up to 40% or 50%.

How do you achieve this transformation? Begin by taking control of the sales process. Don't simply process insurance intake and provide one prescribed product per patient. Broaden your home health care (HHC) mandate from medical necessity to medical need by:

1. qualifying the end user;
2. identifying their disease state and health care needs; and
3. demonstrating and selling the core and related HHC products that will best meet their needs.

Two consistently strong retail cash categories are bath safety and incontinence. The primary customers in both categories are women aged 50 to 65. The incontinence category includes the reusable or disposable products that people buy on a repeated basis. By displaying bath safety products in front of the incontinence section, you are able to educate your incontinence customers about them.

A BATH SAFETY DESTINATION

People and households of almost all demographics need bath safety products: seniors, Baby Boomers who are family caregivers, and young families with children under 5 years old. To capture their business, you must become a destination in the bath safety category. How do you become a destination in an HHC category? Follow these basic steps:

1. Stock a complete product selection with good, better, and best.
2. Display as many products as possible in use on the showroom floor—bathtub, shower, and toilet.
3. Use category signage and retail packaging to help customers see what bath safety products are available.
4. Train your salespeople to immediately approach customers whenever they approach this display, and follow the three sales steps above.

The easiest way to lose bath safety product sales is to offer only one item each in that category. If customers cannot easily find what they want, or are not offered at least two choices within a particular product category, their first reaction usually is to leave and shop elsewhere. Why? Customers want to see if the one product you carry is the right product at the right price. And these customers usually end up purchasing these products in the retail store that provides options.

By displaying two or three products per line item, you enable customers to make purchasing decisions in your store, and close the sale on the spot. Not everyone wants a white plastic grab bar; some consumers might want designer finishes such as satin or brushed nickel.

SELLING BATH SAFETY PROFITABLY

Bath displays sell better when placed in the front half of a retail showroom where products will be visible to customers as they enter. Bath safety products are often impulse purchases—and the second and third bath products bought are definitely impulse add-on sales. With samples placed on the floor in an easily accessible location, retail showrooms enable customers to touch, try, and then buy.

Instill in your salespeople that no one needs only one grab bar or one elevated toilet seat. When bath safety products are simply displayed on shelving or slat walls, customers can easily help themselves to their one desired product, purchase it, and then leave. However, when your bath safety products are displayed on the floor in a sample bathroom, customers can see how these products are used together. Plus, your salespeople will have an easier time demonstrating and selling companion products. (Note: If properly trained in cross-selling and bundling sales, your salespeople should average between $160 and $200 per cash bath safety sale.)

Avoid stocking the same brands that the chains and mass marketers sell because you cannot win a head-to-head price war. Focus on medical grade brands.

A DESTINATION FOR INCONTINENCE PRODUCTS

To become a destination in incontinence, you will need:

1. complete product selections;
2. retail point-of-purchase displays;
3. consumer educational literature;
4. in-store marketing tools;
5. sample kits for customers and referral sources; and
6. staff in-servicing from vendors.

The product mix in incontinence includes more than just disposable incontinence products. A HHC retailer should also stock reusable incontinence products, incontinence skin care products, and personal care products (the latter are sometimes located in the patient room section).

Jack Evans

To close sales for disposable incontinence products, space limitations often dictate that two brands are the minimum stocking level for a 4-foot or 8-foot planogram. In a 12-foot planogram, there is enough room to stock a good/better/best selection. Just as in bath safety, do not carry the same brands as the local chains and avoid competing on price only. Focus on private label and medical grade products, such as a distributor's label.

Planograms are important tools for selling disposable incontinence products. Monitor product sales during the first few months and move products around in relation to demand. The top sellers need to be shelved in greater depth at eye level. In a younger community, the eye-level shelves will contain a larger stock of pads and liners; in a senior community, these shelves will contain pull-up underwear and briefs. Stock shelves as people read: from left to right.

SELLING INCONTINENCE PROFITABLY

Use in-store merchandising tools to help sell-through the product:

• Laminated product selection guides are invaluable to show incontinence customers (and those potential customers who currently purchase elsewhere) how the products you stock are as good as or better than the brands they are requesting.
• Consumer education brochures on the shelf help educate new customers about available incontinence products.
• Product sizing charts help customers and staff to determine the correct fit.
• "Free delivery" signage on the shelf helps establish monthly auto-ship customers, because many people prefer the discretion of home delivery over buying retail.

Sample packs are often provided at no cost by vendors for either customers or referral sources. Sampling is the best way to convert a customer who buys a brand that you do not usually stock, or to convert a customer from another brand to your private label or an upgraded product.

Many incontinent people are not even aware of the high-quality reusable incontinence clothing lines that are available. Use mannequins to display male and female underwear with signs highlighting that these are reusable pad incontinence systems. Use shelf-talkers to educate customers about skin care products.

When you combine bath safety with incontinence and skin care, these same customers become much more valuable to the long-term health of your HHC businesses. Imagine customers without the associated costs of billing or waiting for your money. Bath safety and incontinence customers represent monthly cash sales—plus the means to build your bottom line profits.

Jack Evans, president of Global Media Marketing, Malibu, Calif, is an educator and marketing specialist in home health care. He works with HME providers and drugstores to develop retail layout, merchandising, sales training, marketing, and advertising programs. He can be reached via his Web site: www.retailhomecare.com.