Welcome the newest (and semi new) additions to the Lone Star Education sales team; Shiva McCraw and Roel Hernandez!
Roel is in our central Texas branch and is moving from operations into sales. In addition to knowing the product like the back of his hand, he is great with people and customers love him! He is fearless. He has all the right attributes and skills to make a great sales monster, and we will do just that. I am looking forward to it!
Shiva McCraw joins us in our Little Rock office coming from years of executive level experience in the education industry all the way up to the superintendent level. She went into sales years back and will be an outstanding addition to the Arkansas sales team by helping to build our Education business. She hails from a family of entrepreneurs, so it is in her blood. Plus she graduated college like Doogie Howser. Millennial translation = very early, like when she was 12 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doogie_Howser,_M.D.). She has a smart, delightful, and charming personality. She will be an instant fit into our culture of care and add thrust to our mission. Both start their journey March 1st and will be in the Grand Prairie (GP) office for training all week. I am looking forward to that. Roel get your thinking cap ready, you are about to have the time of your life.
I would like to update you on a couple of other key sales activities going on that you may not be aware of. While we have an incredible 75% penetration in IDN (health systems) beds, we have a 30% penetration in non-IDN, independent / rural Acute care beds. We have had a “Tiger Team” working on this for a year and are making significant progress. Sales is complex, and we don’t play checkers, we play chess. This team is composed of Kellie Cockrell, Carey Cox, Marquis Woodard, Aaron Reyna and myself. We are carefully dialing in the formula to drive speed and predictable growth in this slice of the market. We have carefully selected and added a few new products to help us open new doors faster and to develop recurring revenue. I am very pleased with the progress being made and the clarity of the mission mechanics. Justin and our IT team are also working on ideas to help us with the larger picture by creating methods to deliver cloud based “hosted” services for this market. This will take us from second gear – where we are – to third. Thank you JB and team, bring it.
To close I want to share the best part of my job with you and that is to help develop the selling skills of ALL of our sales teams. I have been working closely with our Arkansas branch commercial sales team this year. They are a blast to work with and have fire in every belly. I am helping them and they are teaching me about their business. We are developing messaging and engagement techniques to take what is already very consistently successful, and turn it to 11 (see Ron Kruse, Houston's Chief Operating Officer, if you need help with this).
While others play checkers – we play chess. I took this saying from a senior executive buddy of mine commenting on our company. For 12 years he was the Senior Vice President of Sales for Hill-Rom Navicare – Rauland’s #1 competitor. After he left the dark side (that is a Marquis plug, because he loves Star Wars) we met and became very close friends. He is a great guy and oh my gosh he is smart. I asked him back in the day what it was like to compete with Lone Star Communications, his answer was “it {expletive}.” I told him that was the sweetest thing I ever heard! Yep, Lone Star Communications is a household name to a billion dollar company’s healthcare team . We terrify them in our market! While sales might be the tip of the spear, it is the power of our collective focus that gives us force. We are a powerhouse that strikes fear into our competition. This is your doing, not sales. Sales takes the message and pulls the levers, but our reputation is what fuels our growth and that is 100% on you, every last soul.
What an amazing team, thank you for what you do to make every customer impression a great one. It is VERY personal to us. Money is a by-product of how successful we are at making our communities safe; it’s not why we do it. We serve a much higher purpose than just making money. That is the best part of the job. jj
-By Joe Jackson, VP of Sales & Marketing, Grand Prairie