How I Stopped Chasing Activity Metrics and Started Teaching Referral Partners Instead — Melanie Stover

0:00Activity doesn't mean productivity. So there is a good push. You'll hear other sales trainers or even owners talk about, we're gonna do 50% sales cause a week or we're gonna do 60% sales cause a week. There is some benchmark to that, right? We recognize that you have to do some activity in order to get the results that you want. But we've seen where reps are doing 60% sales cause a week and census is going down. And it's counterintuitive. People will be like, whoa, we're doing more calls but we're not getting the results. You're listening to Home Care Hindsight, the podcast where we talk with home care leaders about the big mistakes they've made and the even bigger lessons they've learned along the way. I'm David Nack, head of sales here at Zingage and I've built a career on the idea that we learn a whole lot more from our mistakes than from our successes. Which is great cause I've made a lot of mistakes. I've gotten to know some of the leaders in this industry who've built amazing businesses and are super well respected. So I thought it'd be fun instead of asking them

1:00about the great things they've accomplished to have them tell the story of one of the biggest mistakes that they've made and how that mistake changed their thinking and the way they run their business. All right, welcome back to another episode of Home Care Hindsight brought to you by Zingage. You may have seen some of this if you pay attention to what our company's up to in LinkedIn but we just had a webinar in partnership with Anthropic which is one of the big AI labs. They do the LLM called Claude. If you've used that or seen that around before but it was a really cool webinar that my CEO Victor Hunt did to promote the work that we've been doing within Home Care in collaboration with Anthropic who's a partner of ours. So anyways, check that out. We're gonna put the link to that in the show notes here but exciting to see some of the ways that we're not the only ones building in this space so some of the larger labs are thinking about how to work with companies like us to really bring technology to the space. Anyways, welcome back to Home Care Hindsight.

2:02I'm your host David Nack and I'm joined this week by Melanie Stover. Melanie, welcome to the show. Thank you, David, nice to see you. Good to see you as well. For people who aren't familiar with you, how would you introduce yourself? Yeah, thanks for asking. So I help agency owners just like you with their growth strategies around sales training and the only OT-led sales training firm for home home, hospice and in home care in the country. And I didn't really come up through sales. I came up through the hospital and that's exactly why I teach this differently. What's the biggest difference about how you approach sales? You know, you come into an agency, you see the way that they're approaching their referral sources. There's this whole, I think we'll probably get into some of this like the B2B versus B2C sales within home care. We kind of throw one person at that and expect them to be good at both. I'm terrible at B2C sales. I'm pretty good at B2B sales. And so what's the biggest change that you see

3:02when you come into an agency and then you leave that agency the biggest change in process they have? Yes, so we often see that owners will hire a sales person and think they can do this. They'll throw them a zip code and call it a strategy. Go out there and do that. What we know to be true is that we have to speak the way that the clinicians are referral partners here. And so our job at home care sales is to teach your sales reps how to elevate their conversation so that they can be seen as a care partner and really reach into the caseloads of those referral partners and get you the referrals that you deserve. Reach into the caseloads is a really good turn of phrase there. And I think like speak the language of the prospect, speak the language of the referral sources, the right thing to think about there. I remember I was in an event and I was chatting with somebody who's a marketer and I said to them, I said, how are you thinking about approaching

4:03your referral sources differently? And like how do you message that? Because I find that a lot of times people get really comfortable going into the home and sharing their why of I'm in home care because and it's the personal story that they have that is really, really powerful. And then they take that same story to a referral source and they go, hey, the reason I got into home care and they, you know, the Charlie Brown, Trombone thing starts playing in the background is the referral sources like, oh my God, I've heard about this again. I've got these discharges I need to work with, I've got these challenges. And you just tune it out because you've heard that same song and dance a bunch of times and it doesn't say anything to you in the language that you speak day to day. And so give me a like referral source and I'll like, here's how to speak their language that, you know, is top of mind for you. Yeah, so we have a methodology we call DX cell or diagnosis-based celling. It's trademarked we've been doing it since 2008 and one of the things that we know to be true as a clinician, I was taught in terms of diagnosis. So if I said to a clinician, think about the last COPD patient

5:05that you cared for, every clinician, including myself, I haven't touched a patient in 20 years, right? We'll be able to see in their minds I, that particular patient, come for life. And so what we do is we teach the sales reps how to speak that language. They're not gonna get clinician. They're not gonna become an expert in the infraction rate for CHF patients, but what they can do and what they are experts in is home-based care. How does their caregiver, how does their nurse, how does their therapist care for that particular diagnosis or condition type? And we teach that we run it every week because what we know to be true is that reps who come in and simply ask for a referral, hey, who can we help today? Or who could benefit from home care, don't get it. Because our referral partners can't marry what you do with what they know or their patient caseload.

6:06And so our intention and program and methodology revolve around how do we teach that, elevate the conversation so that you're seen as an equal to the discharge planner, case manager, doctor, whomever you're working with so that they could see you as a resource and help them with their outcomes. One of the things I'm hearing in that too, I think early in my sales career, I came across this guy's name, Skip Miller. And one of the things that he says, and he's not like a hard driving used car sales, like I am the alpha sales person, I can close every deal, like he's not like that kind of guy. And so as I was reading his stuff and he's got some videos that I've watched, one of the things that he's really opinionated about is sales people have to control the sales process. And is it pretty like laid back, like go with the flow kind of guy myself that was kind of a, at least I present that way. I'm very anxious inside, but I don't tell people about that. But as a very like go with the flow person, that to me kind of rubbed me the wrong way at first.

7:08I was like, no, no, no, like this is collaborative. They need to buy, I'm not pushing them to sell. Was that a great seller at that point? No, but that was my kind of belief. And the more that I've been in the sales world, the more I've realized like oftentimes sellers show up, and they throw up, and then they expect the prospect with a referral source to like connect the dots and make the right decision. And what I'm hearing you say is like, you guys have to have a plan when you go in, you've got to know what you're going to say, and you've got to know what the next action is as a result of this conversation. And you're not going to get it every time, right? Like not everybody's going to immediately refer you somebody. But really controlling the conversation, directing it where you want to go, being much more specific about the kinds of clients that you're looking for, I find is actually a lot better for people to connect the dots in an adjacent way. They're like, oh, if you do COPD, but having a hard time with my CHF patients, is that something that you guys do stuff with? And you know, you know, your stuff, you could say,

8:09oh yeah, you know, we just had this one client and here's their situation. Use that kind of client story around, you know, what we did in the care plan and how that supported the goals of whatever the referral source is with its home health, or whether it's a hospital or post-acute rehab, or whatever, being able to get super specific, I find in a counterintuitive way, makes your referral source actually widen their lens of who you are a good fit for. And they ask you good questions. So two things I wanted to share about this. Number one, I started in this business in home health as a clinician. And when I came to patients' homes, I was a young therapist. I didn't always know what to do, but we had clinical pathways or clinical protocols. And so, sure, I could now become a better therapist because I could follow those protocols. I still got to be me. I still could infuse my personality into that protocol, but I had a step-by-step protocol or pathway

9:13to get that patient from here to the outcome that we were desires of, right? As functionally independent as possible. When I came into the sales world, I didn't see a program or pathway or protocol that I could follow every time. And I kept thinking, where is my clinical protocol for sales? I didn't know it at the time, but it was sales process. And so, like you, I went out and I studied and I took all the classes and I tried my best to understand what sales process was and then brought it back in the home care sales to create a specific industry sales process for home health, hospice, and in home care. And today, that is what we follow. So, for the folks that we coach and manage and help them with their growth strategies, is that we look at not only sales process, but then to your point, we layer on top of that an educational message each week so that those reps know exactly what they're gonna talk about.

10:15And then people will say to me, Mel, well, if you talk about COPD and they have COFER, won't that just knock you out and then you're not gonna get them? And here's what I know to be true after being in the field for 25 years, is that people will say to me, I don't have COFER or I don't have a stroke victim or whatever the topic is of the week, but I do have fill in the blank, can you care for that or how would you care for that, right? And I really appreciate that. And the other thing that I hear often when I go out in the field, because I still go out in the field with the teams that we coach and manage in addition to our coaches, is that referral partners will scrunch up their nose if my educational message of the week is something that they don't think of non-medical care as caring for. So, if you're, let's just say our condition this week is diabetes. Before talking about that, they may scrunch up their nose and go non-medical care

11:17for diabetes, like what would you do for that? And it's the perfect opening for me to go, I'm so glad you asked. And that turns the conversation from a pitch fest of, you know, here's my brochure to, let's have a conversation about care, which ultimately is where you wanna get to. Yeah, and I love that idea of bringing in different kinds of diagnoses that you're able to help with, because I think if you go in and you're just like, well, here's who we are and here's what we do and yada yada, they're gonna go, okay, so like if I see somebody who's kind of lonely and needs like some kid companionship care or doesn't have somebody to cook meals for them, then that's the kind of person, but any kind of clinic, like any kind of like disease state complexity, I can't, I can't refer to these people because they just do non-medical care. 100% and I think people will also, and this is where we find our case managers or social workers or discharge planners who are like, we're referring to Medicare certified home health.

12:19They got that patient covered, we don't need you, we only need you when we don't have a caregiver. True, I mean, that would be beneficial, for sure. I would also submit to you that many owners listening might say, wow, Mel, you're a little too medical for me, and I get that sometimes, sometimes owners and even big friend chasers have said to me, you're a lot medical, you know we're non-medical, right? And over the last five years, I think we've really brought to the surface an elevated conversations of care around social determinants of help, which is all non-medical, right? I mean, all of that is really impacted by non-medical care, home care. We talk about outcomes. I know as a therapist and you know this to be true, as an OT going into the home for Medicare certified home health, I was going in two days a week or three days a week, and they were doing their home exercise program, two days a week or three days a week, right? They were not doing it when I was not there.

13:22But again, home care can support the medical treatment plan in a non-medical way and get the outcomes that all partners are desirous of right now and being judged on. And I think not is the message that needs to come forth more frequently than it does now. Okay, this is great. Well, Melanie, you've been in the industry for a while now, helping folks with sales and messaging and referral sources and stuff. So you've had a good career. You've accomplished a lot, but I didn't bring people on that show to talk about those sorts of things. And so instead I want to ask you about the big mistake that you've made in your career that changed the way you think about life or about business. So anyways, what's your big mistake? Yeah, so I think our path is littered with them. But let's talk about one that sticks with me has stuck with me a long time. So it's one of my very first consulting clients. And I am responsible for home health, hospice,

14:23DME, infusion are my four reps that I'm responsible for. We're sitting in a sales meeting and a woman walks in that I have never met before. And she says, indign it with her hand on their hip. Why have your reps not been sending me patients? I've said to her, who are you? And why have they been in our meeting? And she said, I'm the director of nursing for the home care division. And it was in that moment that I was like, oh my gosh. I didn't even know we had a home care division. And the leadership didn't even think it was important enough to share it with me, to introduce me to the director of nursing for non-medical in home care. And it really stuck with me that this was an underserved, undernoticed division. And I think that can be true of many non-medical home cares.

15:24They're just not getting the attention they deserve. Nor are they being placed at the front of the line or at least alongside care partners like home health and hospice. And so our mission at home care sales is to create a continuum of care through that total patient care delivery model. Whereas non-medical is seen not only as a care partner, but as someone who is a solution provider and an outcome producer for our medical referral sources. That mistake has stuck with me. I can see her to her face. She was so mad that we were not promoting her line of service. And I think that's pretty true of many home care agencies that sit inside of a hospital-based agency or anti-lary services that doesn't get the attention that it deserves. I'm thinking about putting myself in her shoes.

16:27What are the things you think she could have done differently? Because this goes back to our listeners who are looking for more referrals from all of those providers that you were coaching. What could she have done differently to get a seat at the table? You know, that's a great question. Here's what I know to be true is that you have to insert yourself in the process. And she did that. We came down to sales meeting and said, you know, you're supposed to be leading this sales team. Or where are my referrals? At the end of the day, everyone's looking for census. No matter where you sit on this bus, you need more clients or patients to serve. What she could have done differently and what I would submit any owner or director of nursing or care coordinator or marketer could do is to insert yourself in the process with your care partners wherever they are. Because what I also know to be true is that they probably don't know how you fit.

17:27I tell this story because it's a true story and it also backs us up as a clinician in the home, in the clinic, in the hospital. I never one time referred to non medical care. And that really breaks my heart. As soon as I recognize what home care is and does, all I could think of was all the patients who deserved a referral and didn't get one. And I find that to be true today. I often work in the continuum, right? Agencies who have home health and hospice and home care. And it is mind blowing to me the amount of work that I do on gaining referrals, appropriate referrals from sister companies, right? I work for an agency right now who are in the same building, but they have a wall in between and there's no door. It's like a metaphor. There's no door between their offices. We have to go out of the building and in the front door

18:29in order to go to their sister company. Do they refer to each other? No, that is why they hired us to help them set up a process in a system to consistently refer, appropriate patients to home care and vice versa. I'm just picturing how that metaphor is so perfect. You have to walk outside. So there's not going to be any referrals when it's raining or it's too cold. This is very seasonal. The referrals, it's nice and sunny. It's April, there's no showers, it's May. Oh my goodness, the referral traffic volume in May. I guess they've got a fax machine that they can fax referrals back and forth through the wall. They just, it's a weird fax machine that only faxes from this machine to that machine. They just drill a little hole in the wall and thread a little cable through for it. That's awesome. Yeah, and it happens more often than we think, right? We recognize, I believe deeply, that every Medicare certified home health referral,

19:31patient also is where the referral to in home care to non-medical. It doesn't mean that they can afford it. It doesn't mean that they're going to take it. But how many of us have been out there and have patients or clients or families say, oh my God, I wish I would have known about you for my mom, my sister, my aunt? And the intention is, let's get them the knowledge and the access. Because for me, it's about a care access issue more than anything else. We don't want to reduce access to care and in today's environment, non-medical home care can be the answer to so many of the challenges. That's good. Okay, well, I want to transition next to asking you about something that you think is overrated in the industry. Everybody's talking about it all the time, but you don't think it's actually all it's cracked up to be. Yeah, so overrated. Let's talk about activity doesn't mean productivity. So there is a big push.

20:33You'll hear other sales trainers or even owners talk about, we're going to do 50% sales cause a week or we're going to do 60 sales cause a week. And there is some benchmark to that, right? We recognize that you have to do some activity in order to get the results that you want. But we've seen where reps are doing 60 sales cause a week and since this is going down and it's counterintuitive people will be like, whoa, we're doing more calls but we're not getting the results. And when we dig in, what we recognize is they're showing up to those sales cause with no value. They're coming in with a brochure or they're coming in with, we do non medical care, bathing, grooming, dressing, all the ATLs. And let me tell you, I'm an OT, I love ATLs. But that is not going to get you as seated at the table. Before our partners don't think they need another home care company, there's 300 in this city.

21:33You think they need one more rep showing up and saying, well, we get really care nurses. We have really great caregivers, whatever it is. No, they don't need it. So what I recognize is that we have too many reps, creating too much noise. We did it to ourselves. I got all these reps in town, right? Who are competitors of mine and they're showing up with nothing. Maybe sick, who nuts? Well, I don't want to be the downed girl. I went to school for seven years. I'm not going to go there, right? So our intention is to make sure the reps that we coach and manage have a educational message of the week. We believe deeply in educational-based marketing. And I would say the most overrated thing is just do more activity. That isn't going to get you the results that you desire. It's activity with the right message. I'm curious about there's kind of the two ends of this, right? There's the 70 sales call a week person

22:36who's just dumping a brochure and some cookies and running out the door. There's also the like lazy rep that's effective. Can you think of the laziest, most effective rep that you've seen in your career? Oh, yeah, and I loved her. So what's also true is this rep, when we think of a marketer, we kind of think of this people person, right? Who is highly likable, tends to be a little scattered, trying to organize everything. Probably goes to 100 networking meetings and it runs into referrals pretty much because they're out there and they're making connection, right? So when ours think of marketers, they kind of think of that, right? The rep that I'm thinking of is highly targeted. She would always, and I've coached her at an agency we had a contract with for 12 years. I was part of their outsourced sales management team.

23:38And the thing that I knew about her is she was going to only work with referral partners who were good referral partners for the agency. He was making sure that they were good referrals quality, high quality referrals, they would come on as clients and that they would stick. The second thing I knew about her, she wasn't afraid to hold her referral partners accountable. So when they would try and kind of dump some patients on her because they had both Medicare certified and non-medical hum care, she'd push back. She was constantly refining her account list and having meetings with those referral partners to show them what they gave her, you know, what referrals actually came. How many did they take? How many did they take under care? Who was still with them? And so she was giving them data, which were huge proponents of. So she wasn't calling on them, you know,

24:38insensitantly in a big list, she would take a very focused approach. She had a small number of accounts, 20 accounts that delivered her monthly quota and results and she made sure that those accounts were bulletproof. That doesn't mean that she was doing 50 sales cause a week because it took time for her to gather the data out of the EMR and the scheduling software system to sit down and put it together. So she had standing meetings at these referral partners. The referral partners would call her in for case conference or care conference. So when the families were considering discharge, she would come in and sit with the interdisciplinary team of the SNF with rehab and have conversations with family about home health and in-home care. So for me, hers was not about quantity as in number of accounts, but hers was about quality and through that quality,

25:41she became the number one branch at her agency because she was able to grow each one of those accounts exponentially and just really bulletproof them. It was those relationships were locked in a vault. She didn't have to really worry, of course she worried, but she didn't have a lot of folks knocking on their door saying, pick me and the facility saying, yeah, let's do that. Let's try, let's try David. Even though she's been doing a great job, let's try. So I would say to you, work smarter, not harder and focus, the shotgun approach that kind of spray and prey or random acts of marketing doesn't really work. We know it to be true is that a focused effort is gonna get you focused results. Yeah, I just think that job design sounds so much better than you've got 200 targets and you hit each of them once a month and you do 50 calls a week and you're just going everywhere,

26:45doing all the networking events, having a glass of wine with other people who are also asking for the same referrals from the same places and to have 20 accounts to do 10 sales calls a week, but have those be collaborative sales calls where you show up and the people are engaged in the agenda and are looking to find mutually beneficial solutions for their problems, that just sounds like a lot more fun to me. And I think it's a lot more strategic, right? I think a couple things I'm working on a project right now for advanced sales skills for in-home care hospice and home health for a large agency. And the thing that we focus on in that level two environment is how are we helping them produce revenue or protect revenue. Once I come to that level of referral partner, once I am the answer to either producing revenue

27:45or protecting revenue, I'm the winner and I will be the winner and have a seat at that table and get invited in as a almost a consultant to their facility, senior living community, wherever you're going, right? It's a next level strategic rep activity, what we're describing. It's also one that stays a long time, produces big revenue and really increases the barrier to entry for your competitors. It's really hard to have someone come in and say, I'm the new kid, let's try me when you already have this system in place so that your referral partners are winning every time that you care for a client or patient or resident. Very good. I want to transition to asking you, we talked about a big mistake that you made, but what's a little mistake that you see other home care owners make all the time? And if they quit, it makes their lives, their businesses like 10 times better. Sales management is really tough.

28:48It's not like your scheduler or your caregiver supervisor or your caregiver's that for that matter. You know, what I see is that they hire a sales rep, point them at a zip code and call it a strategy. And you have to manage the activity and the methodology. Otherwise, you're just paying for someone to drive around your area with a bag full of brochures and you could have hired a courier for that. Sales reps are expensive. And so what I see is that, you know, it is hard. I'm not gonna lie to manage sales reps. However, what I know to be true is if owners or office managers have just a few core KPI metrics to manage your sales reps, it's gonna make all the difference in the world. I've heard different flavors of this story over the last quarter, which is, you know,

29:51we hired a rep and they weren't really producing and then we realized they were at the bullying alley for three hours every day. And it's, you know, but there's different, like that's the kind of egregious example. And I've, again, I've heard a number of different ones of those, but thank goodness for company vehicles in that case because you can GPS track them and you know, that's how you'd figure it out. Maybe look at the data a little sooner and figure out what happy hour is taking place at the bullying alley every single day. I don't know, but regardless, that's like the egregious version of the thing. But there's all of these like little ways that a bad rep or a core rep, like an okay rep, but with no structure is gonna cut corners and kind of beat around the edges. Sales people, the reason you hire sales people is they learn how to manipulate a compensation plan to maximize outcome for the least amount of work. And you've gotta make sure that the structure that's required of them holds them accountable to real metrics because otherwise they're gonna coast by, do the minimum and, you know, find the maximum efficiency

30:54for the most amount of money for the least amount of pain. And so that's not every, you know, there's great sales reps who are really intrinsically motivated, but many times you hire people who aren't an A plus plus rep, but are a B rep that maybe you could with the right structure could get to an A. Here's what I would submit to you. The people that we attract in this business are good people, fundamentally. What they lack is the know how. So they're nice people or somebody elevated a caregiver or they hired, you know, fill in the blank home care rep from ABC and thought that because they were hiring an experienced home care rep that they would be able to hit the ground running in like a magic unicorn, you know, fly off and get referrals and come back. And that doesn't happen, right? Even with the best reps, what we find is the system is responsible for about 50% of whatever referral. So we always say, are you gonna build them

31:55or are you gonna buy them? And if you're gonna buy them, know that, and every rep, every owner that I talk with, this is why I tell them, if you're gonna buy a rep, whatever they say that they're bringing in, cut it by 50%, because at least 50% is coming from the operators. I have a book of business, I have great referral sources, they'll follow me anywhere. So nail that number by, you know, 50%. And then I always say, can you live on 50% of that? Because there's going to be things that they, they, meaning the rep egocentric says, that was all me, producing that, but really it was the old agency who was helping them achieve those results in the structure that they provided. So recognize that if you're gonna buy them. If you're gonna build them, there's a lot of benefits, and of course we build them every day. So I'm more oriented to building them because you don't bring bad habits. All the baggage doesn't come with,

32:56that mold them in your philosophy or your paradigm. So I would prefer to build them, but not everybody has the capability to build them. And I recognize that for me, sales equals scale. If I am an owner and I am like, I have got to get to the next level. Sales is the way that you get there. It's profound service to our referral partners, it's profound service to our clients and to the families in which we serve. That I think is one of the biggest challenges in our industry is that owners have been burnt before, as you indicated, the rep was at the bowling alley or the rep was here or working out. And I think oftentimes it's because they just didn't know how to put a plan together. They weren't necessarily given the message each week to go out into the field with. The owner simply said, here's our brochure and go.

33:59And it's no wonder they show up with cookies and donuts and all that jazz, but I don't want to be the gal, the candy gal. Like that is not what I want to be known as. I want to be known as Melanie, the gal who helps patients get home and protects our outcome. Do you have a perspective on the compensation structure for marketers in the home care world? Sure. So the one that we look to most often is base plus commission. And it looks, it's a math problem. So your agency may have a tremendous amount of overhead that I have to account for, whereas someone else's may not. And so when you hear people say out in the world, oh, they've just got to do so many hours. You'll hear this from the stage sometimes. You'll hear other folks say, oh, they just got to do this. We hold them to this amount of standards. And I would like to do a cost justified compensation plan,

35:03which basically means taking an account, your financials to make sure that the numbers fit for you as opposed to just kind of a blanket statement of, oh, we give them this. Yeah, I've talked enough to people about the compensation structure and have been in enough other kind of seats in different industries to see, I think one of the things that's interesting to me is when we're hiring sales people within home care, we're doing two things that I think maybe bring in more bad fits than it ought to. The first is we call the role the marketer. Don't do that. But second, because that's a cushy gig where you're on Canva and you're meetin' and greetin' and you're shaking hands and kissin' babies. And we're asking people to do friggin' door-to-door sales. We are asking them to go into a hospital and figure out how to get past a gatekeeper who sees people coming into the ER for all kinds of crazy issues every day. But that's crazy. But second, I think there's a lot of the cop structure that I hear that is like base plus commission,

36:03but it's like 85% base and 15% commission. And so I think that is gonna naturally attract the most risk-averse types of sellers where we're already attracting the most risk-averse types of sellers because we're calling it a marketer role. So anyways, that's my soapbox about sales and home care. Well, you know, I'm very bullish on sales as you can imagine. I don't think it's a bad word. Clearly, I named my company 25 years ago, Home Care Sales. And back then, when I started the company, home care was an umbrella term. It meant home health, hospice, and in home care, home-based services, right? And depending on where you live and where you're listening to or from, home care can mean different things to you. Home care in California is non-medical care. Home care in Arkansas really refers to private duty nursing. So it's very nuanced. I recognize that. So we kind of have a little bit of an identity problem there. We also recognize that then we call things marketers, right? We call things people.

37:04We call this role marketing, which is a challenge, I believe, that like you, if we called it what it was, and weren't afraid of the term sales, because people think of used car salesmen. I think of sales as profound service. My responsibility is to the families we serve. I am strictly non-medical in home care. And David, you're a case manager at the hospital and you're like, hey, man, I don't know exactly what this person needs. That I have enough working knowledge that I can go to that family and go, okay, yep, non-medical care is right for you, but so is. Maybe it's hospice, maybe it's home health, right? What other community resources do we have out there in the world? And I think that's part of our conversation with the reps is to educate them not only on what they do and how to approach referral sources, but how to be that conduit and that senior expert, care expert so that you can get them to the right place

38:07at the right time. We're looking for the right referrals to the right level of care so that we can be seen as that resource, almost like a one-call does it all. That makes perfect sense to me. I think the last thing that we could say about this and then kind of move on is one of the things that I've heard in kind of my work in the sales side of things and it always feels weird because this is like a brag and it's annoying, I'm sorry. But is people ask me from time to time, hey, have you ever owned a home care agency? Like you sound like you know what you're talking about. I'm like, no, I'm not that dumb. It's a little joke. But like, it's a home care is a hard man. I'm not trying to do all that anyways. But I think like that is signal to me that I'm doing sales the right way is when people say to me, you know this world as well as or better than we know parts of this world. Of course they know stuff that I'm never gonna know. Right, they know how it feels to be on the inside of the thing driving it, but I've done enough of being kind of a tourist that I kind of know

39:07what it might be like to live there. And I guess, I would guess you've probably, I mean, obviously you've had people say, have you been a clinician or you're like, actually, yeah, like kind of a little, a lot. But I would guess some of your reps get similar kinds of questions like that of like, how do you know so much about disease state or ecosystem or referral partnership or whatever? Medicare? I agree. We have a program called the Total Patient Care Delivery Model. And when you go through that program, you become a care continuum specialist. The intention behind that program is to gain working knowledge of the three home-based services. So that when you do go out and you do have conversations that it is not, oh, you're just a sitter service, which is my least favorite term of how people describe us from time to time. I also appreciate it is our responsibility to elevate those conversations so that we get a seat

40:08at the table. We deserve in non-medical home care and it's happening, which I'm grateful for, to have a seat at the post-acute care collaborative in the ACO markets, helping hospitals, having hospitals include us in their discharge planning process and paying for care because they understand the impact that we can make on the outcomes. And I'm grateful for that. I think that's next level reps stuff, right? It's not your first 90 days in. In your first 90 days in, you're trying to find the door handle. And what accounts are going to be qualified to work with you and worthy of your time. But next level selling, next level strategic account mapping is a whole different ballgame. And that's where we see agencies just explode. Get the foundation down and then take it to the next level so that you are seen as a true care partner. Well, we talked about a lot of stuff,

41:09a lot of mistakes, a lot of things that went wrong. But I like to end episode on a high note. So tell me about something that's happened lately in your business that you're proud of. Oh, thanks. So, you know, when I think about this business, it really started with my grandfather. My grandfather was diagnosed with polio when my mom was just three years old. And he lived at home in their dining room for 19 years with the help of family and nursing, skilled nurses came to his house and helped him. This is before Medicare and Medicaid and all that jazz. So home care wasn't just a career for me. It's personal. And in 2026, this marks 25 years of doing this work, founding home care sales. And for me, that's the ultimate win is that we get to help patients and families just like my family every day.

42:11So, you know, you also recognize in this moment where we are, it's a watershed moment for home care. This is our time. We are getting seats where we haven't been before. And for that, I am super grateful. You know, I recognize that you don't get invited to the post-acute care table by talking about bathing, dressing, grooming. You get invited when you speak their language, diagnosis, outcomes, transition, risk. And that's the seat that we've earned. And I'm grateful that we're building towards this moment. Well, very good. Before we get out of here, what do you want to pluck? Well, I'm the only trainer in this industry who came up as an OT before she ever made a sales call and built our programs around that with a guarantee. We put our money where our mouth is

43:13because I know it works. And if you want reps who can actually talk to doctors, nurses, case managers, social workers, come find us. We'd love to have a conversation with you at home care sales. That's great. Melanie, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This is a ton of fun. Thanks. It's always fun to hang out with you. Oh, that's so nice. On behalf of the team here at Zingage, thanks for listening to the show. We'll be back next week with another episode. So be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. Leave us a rating while you're there. It helps other people find the show. If you have comments on the show, drop me a line. Stay with David at zingage.com. We'd love to hear from you, chat with you there. This is yet to come. Oh, oh, oh, oh. You've done this this is yet to come. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

44:14See the days get brighter. And our hopes get higher as a wild dream. I feel the rush of the good life, running through the correct time.