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By Christopher Young
10/09/07
Tips for Creating Synergy Between Billing and Sales
Sales and marketing and billing and collections are perceived as two separate
and distinct, unrelated processes in the laboratory, but they are actually
very related.
Complaints related to billing often are among the biggest customer-service
issues that labs face, notes consultant Christopher Young, President of Laboratory
Management Solutions (Phoenix, AZ) and former Sales Manager for Sonora Labs
in Arizona.
“The billing process starts with the first visit by sales
representatives to the physician’s office,” he says. “If
they neglect at that point in time to address billing issues, you’re
going to have billing problems later. Often, failure to address these issues
in some manner that the physician accepts can cause them to go to another laboratory.
You need to have synergy between the billing department and the sales department
if you’re going to have a successful outreach program.”
What are
the billing problems? Typically, they involve clients (physicians) not providing
complete and accurate information on the lab requisition. Other problems include
clients not giving patients accurate information about lab billing or clients
who do not pay their bills.
Not surprisingly, the perspectives of the billing staff and the sales staff
often are in conflict. The billing staff typically believe that the billing
department does not get the respect it deserves, that the sales staff don’t
care about billing issues, and that the sales department would rather take
write-offs than take the chance of losing a customer.
The sales staff, on the
other hand, believe that the billing staff don’t
care about customers, don’t understand the sales process, and are inflexible
when it comes to helping clients. They think, “If there are no customers,
there are no bills to send.”
“It probably is true that billing staff
don’t really understand
the sales process,” acknowledges Young. “They probably don’t
know what it actually takes to go out there every day and visit physicians
in their offices.”
Creating Synergy
Lab management is responsible for making sure there is synergy between the
billing and sales departments, says Young, who advises lab managers to adopt
the following best practices:
•Realistic
orientation.
- Make each new employee “stand in the other’s shoes.” Periodically
require employees from the billing department to go on calls with the sales
staff and require sales employees to work in the billing office.
- Show how each department’s functions contribute to the
overall goals of the laboratory (i.e., the lab must have sales AND collect
money to grow).
- Use common training materials and hold joint training sessions.
- Include customer service in billing department training sessions.
•Effective
communication.
- Means more than just periodic meetings, which too often end
up turning into gripe sessions.
- Discussions must be based on real data and information, not
speculation and anecdotes.
- Channel communication through department leadership.
- Keep each other apprised of activities or changes that may affect
the other department.
•Participation
in development of each other’s processes.
- New client setup (billing staff should have input in forms and training
materials developed for sales representatives to use with clients).
- Choice and design of tools used to help clients provide necessary
information (sales and billing staff should have input into requisition design
and choice of computer systems).
- Training of phlebotomists, who often are the only people in the lab
who have direct contact with patients. Billing staff must be involved in training
phlebotomists on what information they need to collect.
•Interactive
efforts to solve customer complaints and problems.
- Always work with data and facts. Never guess about a problem’s
possible cause.
- Select billing employees to go to the client offices with sales
representative to help resolve client problems. Alternatively, create a position
in billing specifically to deal with customers who have billing problems.
- Work with the client’s business people to resolve billing
problems.
- Show a united front to clients when trying to resolve billing
problems. Don’t allow sales staff create inappropriate expectations.
Both the billing and sales staff must be on the same page.
- Be flexible; don’t try to force clients into your way
of doing things. Remember that the physician is a customer and can always choose
to use another lab.
•Equitable
incentives and rewards.
- Use incentive program to reward sales activities that are desirable.
- Don’t pay for “bad business.”
- Be willing to dock sales commissions for clients who don’t
pay.
- Provide bonuses or incentives for the billing department employees
for customer service and sales success.
- Performance appraisals should include items for creating synergy:
sales item for properly setting up customers, completing paperwork, and reducing
client problems; billing item for good customer service and fewer customer
complaints.
- Celebrate big sales successes together.
Young suggests using customer suggestions
to make realistic improvements in the billing process and using customer-oriented
billing processes as a company feature during the sales process. “Finally,
make sure your billing people understand the sales pitch. One of the best ways
to do this is to have the sales people do the sales pitch for the billing staff,
or have billing staff go with the sales reps on client calls.”
Labs that are successful at creating synergy between the billing and sales
departments can use it to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace,
says Young. Labs that do it well can retain clients for a long time, which
is much more cost-effective than constantly finding new clients.
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