Hello all,
It’s been a few months since it’s been my turn to write a Sales Corner article.
In my last entry – I marveled at how well we as a team, as a family had been weathering this COVID crisis, and how we managed to adapt, overcome, and succeed despite every road block put in our way.
Our people in the field have continued to work everywhere they can in many respects moving and accomplishing things on our projects even faster given the previously low census in many hospitals prepping for COVID. Their work remains massively impressive; this work is what moves us forward.
For our office and support staff, well, we’ve made it to the point where we are actually able to see each other in person, not just on Zoom. We’ve been able to get back to the office in many respects. Sure, we are maintaining proper procedures and making sure we social distance, but at least we’ve been able to get back to our real workspaces, not just our kitchen tables or bedrooms.
Things are beginning to resemble “normalcy” a little more every day. Not sure things will ever be “the way they were” pre-COVID but it remains refreshing and invigorating to be able to interact with each other, as well as our friends and customers, in the flesh.
The one thing that was still not quite “back” was our hospitals releasing us to work just as they had pre-COVID. While we were able to work on some of our projects, many of our larger IDN customers like HCA and Tenet had stopped all work. They told us to stop work on any current projects and held back on issuing PO's (purchase orders) we were expecting.
We had new construction type work but not much in the way of our typical ongoing nurse call hardware retrofits.
It has seemed clear to me, once we realized the extent of how COVID was affecting our ongoing business, that when we started to get “retrofit” work we would then be turning the corner on the COVID effects on our work pipeline, on the issues COVID was causing for those hospitals that employ us.
I'm very happy to report that, just this week, we have been released by Tenet Corporate to resume work full speed on three projects that had been put on hold.
Each day is one day closer to HCA releasing us in the same way. All signs pointing to it only being a few weeks until we are full go again for them as well.
We should receive a PO in the next few weeks for a large R5 retrofit in San Antonio.
As you can see - our customers are turning our way again, just like they used to, to provide our family brand of Life Safety. This allows us the opportunities we need to show them things like Responder Enterprise – an evolution of Responder 5 that will allow Lone Star to provide a revolutionary, difference-making nurse call solution for our hospitals.
As I said in closing my last Sales Corner – I just want to repeat how proud I am to be a part of this family, this team, and its purpose.
Stay safe everyone. We are moving forward together and have proven that we are stronger for it. Let’s keep this thing going.
-CA