Enliven Beverage Deal Podcast Episode #5
People trust their healthcare provider more than they trust their banker, judge, or newscaster. It’s no wonder that major brands want to partner with the healthcare sector. Heather Neisen, Enliven’s Healthcare Practice Leader, joins the podcast to explore all the reasons that brands crave healthcare partnerships – and how healthcare executives can take advantage of it.
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Related Resources:
The Best Customer Engagement Companies in the World Adopt Pouring Rights (And You Should Too)
Why Coke & Pepsi Care That the Healthcare Sector Now Employs the Most People in the U.S.
Why Pepsi and Coke Love Hospitals
Transcript:
Tim Harms:
On today’s episode, I am welcoming Heather Neisen. It’s a great interview. I think you’re going to love it, but before we do that. I want to tell you about a new service. We’re just introducing a new way to help save you money. For over 15 years, we’ve been negotiating beverage deals, best in class beverage partnerships for some great clients and every engagement we actually then turn to manage the resulting beverage contract for the life of the term. In the process, we ensure that our clients are getting every cent they’re due in rebate payments and sponsorship funding, in price protection payments. We make sure they’re not being overcharged over and above that price they worked so hard to negotiate. We ensure that all the volume is being tracked and accounted for properly. In the process, we have literally recovered millions of dollars and it is no exaggeration to say that we find error rates of sometimes 40 plus percent.
Tim Harms:
In the past that service has only been available for those clients for which we’ve negotiated the deals. But now we’re offering that service for everyone, and we’re calling it The Enliven Beverage Deal Audit. If you’ve negotiated an exclusive beverage partnership, then you’ll want to take advantage of this because there is a high likelihood you are being either overcharged, you’re being underpaid, or volume is not being counted. Now there’s a variety of reasons for this, but the fact remains, it’s possible, it’s actually probable that you’re not getting everything you are due and you should find it and recover that money. That’s what The Enliven Beverage Deal Audit is all about.
Tim Harms:
The best part is it is a hundred percent risk free to you. If we do not find and recover you money, then you don’t owe us a dime. So how do you get started? Go to www.beveragedealaudit.com. Once again, that’s beveragedealaudit.com and it only takes 15 minutes for you to sign up and give us all the information we need to get started. 15 minutes of your time, risk-free to you, and chances are you could recover hundreds of thousands of dollars for your organization. It’s a no brainer. Do me a favor, go to beveragedealaudit.com and sign up today.
Tim Harms:
Welcome to The Enliven Beverage Deal podcast, we’re all about saving and making you money by taking both the guesswork and the legwork out of your beverage partnership and by leveling the playing field when it comes to negotiating your beverage contracts. I’m your host, Tim Harms. We’ve got a great show for you today, stay tuned.
Tim Harms:
Thanks everyone. Welcome to our podcast. Today, we have back the miss Heather Neisen, Enliven Healthcare Practice area leader. She is also a black belt in Googling. I did not know. Welcome Heather.
Heather Neisen:
Thank you, Tim. Hi, great to be here.
Tim Harms:
Heather, I got a question for ya.
Heather Neisen:
All right.
Tim Harms:
Do you have a favorite superhero?
Heather Neisen:
Oh man. Favorite superhero. Okay. This is like one of those icebreaker questions. Well, I got a good answer for ya. Wonder Woman. I’ve got to say, favorite superhero. But part of that is because, so you know this Tim, but for those listening is, I have two kids, they’re both daughters. As a treat for mother’s day, I can’t remember how long ago it was, my husband said, “You should go to the movie theater and watch Wonder Woman by yourself.” But I think part of it is I have these little girls, and then I got to go to this movie theater. So maybe it’s the experience, but I do love Wonder Woman. So there you go.
Tim Harms:
Wonder woman, you know what, as we’re recording this, we are in shelter-in-place mode during COVID-19 and they’ve released The Last Dance. Docu-series about Michael Jordan. So I don’t know if he classifies as a superhero, but I definitely am reliving all of my childhood dreams to be like, Michael Jordan.
Heather Neisen:
That’s a good hero. Yeah, nontraditional. I like it.
Tim Harms:
You know, we’re talking about heroes that we want to be, that we’ve wanted to be as we’ve grown up. But man, I have been so, just honored and jazzed about how our society right now during this global pandemic crisis has really recognized our healthcare work force as the heroes that they are. I know you’ve got to be proud Heather, as our Enliven Healthcare Practice leader.
Heather Neisen:
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It’s been really exciting. I mean, we’ve worked with healthcare for a decade and a half. I think we know just by watching these healthcare professionals day in, day out. Kind of in thankless jobs and I don’t know if we ever used the word hero, but we’ve got a lot of respect for them. And so it’s been really, I don’t know, just mind blowing in the past couple months just to see these folks that already work hard, kind of be put on triple shifts. It’s been great to see how our nation and then kind of our whole global community has come around these folks in really cool ways, parades and everything, and just said, “Hey, we see you and we salute you, we know you’re going to get us out of this.” It’ been really cool.
Tim Harms:
Absolute. I mean, I was joking about looking up to Michael Jordan and wanting to be like him. If you know me, that’s the farthest thing possible from the truth. I have no athletic bones in my body. But, I do kind of get goosebumps thinking about kids during this time looking up to healthcare workers and I wonder how many kids out there are seeing the hero status that we’ve rightfully placed on healthcare workers during this time that say, “You know what, when I grow up, I want to be a nurse. When I grow up, I want to be a doctor. When I grow up I want to be a disease expert.”
Heather Neisen:
That’s a great point.
Tim Harms:
Yeah. And so I think actually the world is waking up to what marketers and major brand companies have actually known for quite a bit and candidly, I don’t even think are some of our healthcare clients realize how they have been seen by the world, particularly big major brands. So you wanted to come on here, you had an idea to talk about why healthcare employees are a coveted audience for major brands. Can you explore a little bit more about that, Heather?
Heather Neisen:
Yes, absolutely. Well, perfect. Yeah. We’ve talked about how the Coke, Pepsi beverage companies, the major brands. So, it’s easy to kind of lump them into a group and think they’re out to sell a 20 ounce soda, or they’re out to sell a fountain beverage with your meal today. But really they’re brand companies. They are all about building brands. The iconic logos. They’ve been part of your childhood and so that’s what they’re great at and what they want to keep. So Tim, you’re right. When you start thinking about healthcare, especially now, but we’ve seen it for years, how a strategic way that Coke, Pepsi, et cetera, have looked at building brands has really been through healthcare. I’m going to throw some stats at you, Tim, because I think we started digging into this and we know this to be true.
Heather Neisen:
We feel it in the room and we’re with the companies, we’re with healthcare. What we started to find some really cool stuff. All right. So Bureau of Labor Statistics, healthcare professionals are highly compensated. So their wages are 72% higher than the average American worker.
Tim Harms:
Wow.
Heather Neisen:
Yeah. So, folks who have, hopefully, some cash to spend. But they’re highly compensated. They’re highly professional. They’re skilled. They’re also highly educated. So healthcare professionals are 77% more likely to have at least a bachelor’s degree than the average American worker. And we know this, these are healthcare professionals, professional programs, medical school, nursing school.
Tim Harms:
That’s right. I mean, when I think about going to the doctor going through the nurse, I assume that they’ve probably had 40, 60, 70 years of education already. They people are highly educated.
Heather Neisen:
Yeah. Yeah. And then I love this Gallup poll, just showing how trusted healthcare workers are. So Americans trust their healthcare provider 20% more than their banker. 64% more than their judge. I mean, this one, you mentioned where we’re in the time of COVID. Right. But this, 80% more trusted than their news anchor.
Tim Harms:
That’s actually kind of low.
Heather Neisen:
I know. So you’re looking at this group of people who are more trusted. I mean, I think that’s crazy, more than their banker. But, just a great group of people and then some other really interesting things. So, registered nurses actually are one of the largest segments of the US workforce. Among the highest paid, but 58% of those nurses work in general medical and surgical hospitals. The federal government also just released that they believe that more than 200,000 new registered nurse positions will be created every year from 2016 to 2026. And, of those, 91% of nurses are female, and an ink.com article recently said that women drive 70 to 80% of all consumer purchasing. So, you’re talking about just fascinating demographics. If you’re a major brand and you have access to these highly compensated, educated, trusted folks, access to purchasing power through just the nature of the fact that nurses are female and they drive a lot of the consumer purchases. You’re talking about a really strategic audience.
Tim Harms:
Wow. So highly compensated, they got a lot of dough. They’re highly educated, meaning they’re very trusted and they drive purchasing decisions for their home and they’re growing, man. That’s a great recipe. If you’re a global brand looking to build your brands. And by the way, these people are now seen as heroes in our society because they are genuinely doing life saving work, putting themselves on the line every single day.
Heather Neisen:
Yeah. I think often you just say health care. I think a lot of people generally think about patients. They think about their experience with healthcare go to an appointment, but they don’t think about how an employee, if you think about the life of a nurse, how many hours he or she spends in the four walls of a hospital, and how much is spent in a cafeteria, in a break room. And just how much opportunity there is for a brand, whether that be a beverage brand, or whether that be any other kind of brand to have influence.
Tim Harms:
Talk a little bit about a unique environment about the hospital as well. What makes it different than even other properties, or companies that global brands can partner with.
Heather Neisen:
Yeah. Yeah. So, hospitals and healthcare, so you have employees that are there, right? You can’t work from home as a nurse necessarily. I mean, I know there’s some tele-health medicine out there, but by and large, a healthcare professional needs to be with the patient. So oftentimes these major beverage companies invest heavily in places that are really exciting, like a movie theater, but movie theaters right now are vacant. They also invest heavily in ballparks, sporting events, really exciting crowd oriented experiences. But those are all silent right now, but hospitals are buzzing. They don’t have closed hours.
Heather Neisen:
Even in a normal state, that’s not COVID-19 response rate, hospitals are open 24/7 and they are places where refreshments happening, refueling is happening. There’s so much goodness to you associated with hospitals. Babies being born, patients defeating cancer. And right now, I mean, defeating COVID-19, I don’t know if Tim, if you’ve seen, but I keep seeing these videos pop up of a patient who has defeated COVID-19 gets discharged. You know, the staff is lined up, it’s victorious. It’s kind of like a sporting event, honestly.
Tim Harms:
Yeah. But so much more too.
Heather Neisen:
Yeah, so much more meaningful and really the good guys won. There’s no real losing team in that. So yeah, hospitals are this unique environment, again, not even just right now, but even more so right now, healthcare workers like we’ve talked about are heroes. They’re superhuman. What have we seen, words like warriors, brave fighters. I keep seeing ads on TV for insurance, cars, you name it and everybody wants to help this crew. Right. Because they’re kind of our front lines, our army right now. So again, this is kind of a unique environment that isn’t closed that will sustain longterm and it’s where people are. So I think, if you’re talking about beverage company, there’s so many neat things for them, not only getting access to those folks, like we’ve talked about through promotions and sampling, getting their brand in the cafeterias, but also things like, there’s new health and wellness brands that are really exciting to put out there, like sparkling waters and probiotics. So those are really neat. But on the flip side, it’s also a great place for iconic brands.
Heather Neisen:
So, you have a really long shift. It was hard, like what better than getting yourself a treat. The soda that you grew up with as a treat after your long shift. If you think about it from brand building beverage company perspective, they can really grow their traditional brands, but they’re really able to grow new brands. Like their sparkling waters and their kombucha’s and all kinds of new things that really hit the mark in healthcare. So, it’s just this beautiful ecosystem that Pepsi and Coke have really understood to be that next frontier that I think a lot of us don’t naturally think about.
Tim Harms:
Well, Heather, this has been very enlightening. This is such a good conversation, a new way to think about the health care channel as a coveted asset for brands to pursue. I don’t know about you, but I hope we never go back to a time where we take our health care workforce for granted. They truly are our heroes in this time and man it’s been so gratifying to see everyone step up in some big ways.
Heather Neisen:
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, Tim, for having me on and I appreciate it.
Tim Harms:
Thanks everyone for listening in. Hope you found that informative. If you have a burning question about your beverage negotiation or partnership, we’d love to hear from you and answer it on this podcast. Reach out to us by emailing podcast@enlivenpartnership.com. And hey, before we sign off, I want to remind you that you can take both the guesswork and the legwork out of your beverage partnership. You can level the playing field in your beverage negotiations and you can save or make your company millions through a new or an improved beverage agreement. The first step is a free beverage opportunity analysis, which will tell you just how much you can save, or you can make. Sign up for your free beverage opportunity analysis at enlivenpartnership.com and by clicking free savings estimate. On behalf of everyone here at Enliven, thanks for listening in.
