Episoder
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Your old receptionist would probably teach the new hire their old habits with mistakes.
The best practice is to record videos on all standard operating procedures and put them somewhere where you can share them with your team.
Imagine how many times you have already onboarded someone and how much time you would save if you could share with them one link where they would have all these videos.
For more best practices, join our free facebook group here.
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Always drive every patient enquiry to the call first.
But there are still some that do not want to call, or they are not ready yet. To capture those potential patients as well, you need a contact form.
Most forms we see on the clinic's websites are not that good. Usually, name, email, and sometimes phone, which people put the fake phone number. Yeah.
That information you're going to get from that potential patient is going to be weak. And also, you're not proving your quality as a clinic of excellence through the form, which you can do if you set up the series of questions correctly.
The more questions you add to the contact form, the fewer enquiries you'll get, but they will be of higher quality.
The perfect form needs three qualifiers, which are need, time and money.
What type of treatment do they need?When do they want this treatment to be done?Would you require financing to pay for this treatment? or Would you like to prepay to book your consultation ahead?Based on the answers, you can score enquiries. Your non-medical team should prioritise high-score enquiries (e.g. needs high-value treatment, needs it now and have money to pay for it).
Lastly, add your contact form link to all your social media and third-party profiles instead of your homepage.
We've created a template contact form you can copy and implement in your clinic. You can grab it for free in our facebook group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/clinicboost
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Introduction
Dear clinic owner/manager,
Thank you for reading this. I know our time is valuable and I will do my very best to earn your trust by getting straight to the point.
So, the purpose of this blog post is to share with you in less than 5 minutes with 5 simple images, exactly what you can be doing right now as a clinic to reach more new and high-value patients.
Think of it as getting an "MBA in Clinic Marketing" and explain it in such a way that even a 12-year-old, a non-English speaker can understand it.
About
Before we get started, (and because I really want you to take this information seriously) please allow me a moment to briefly introduce myself.
I am the co-founder of a relatively successful dental clinic, (5 doctors / 5 million euros per year) with learnings from 13 years of consulting for more than 126 clinics both small & large across 26 countries to increase their revenue, reputation & results collectively by over 31% - yes, even during the COVID pandemic & lockdowns.
During those years, I too have been confused & misguided in the past about how best to reach new patients, thinking that there are so many different ways to choose from.
I was wrong.
I want to save you from the same mistakes.
So here it is:
No matter what "marketing agencies" and "business growth consultants" want you to believe...
There are only 2 ways to get your clinic more new or high-value patients...
Only 2 Ways
Yes, just 2. And that would be to:
1. Do Marketing (nothing new here, apart from the fact that there are just 6 sources of new patient inquiries for you to focus on, so easy to do, and just 1.5 of those strategies cost real money, (1.5. is not a typo, I'll cover that later)
or...
2. Optimize The New Patient Journey (most clinics overlook this, but it is even easier to get more patients this way - and there are only 5 things to look at which I'll cover later)
Ideally, you're doing both.
But, unless you've just opened your doors to your very first patient just a few weeks ago, or no matter if you have just:
10,
100,
or 1000 patients per week in your clinic,
I'd start with...
Read more here:
https://www.clinicboostmethod.com/blog/only-2-ways-to-reach-more-high-value-patients -
Do you remember the last "great idea" that you tried to implement in your clinic?
How did it turn out? Take a moment to think right now about the last "big improvement" that you thought about but never managed to implement.
What happened there?
Well, if you're like most clinic owners, this "great idea" slowly suffocated. In-between patients, team motivation issues, technical, legal or other competing priorities in your medical practice and life outside of the clinic, your "great idea" then quietly took a bow and disappeared without anyone noticing, not even you.
If you've done the thought exercise that I mentioned above, you've probably remembered once again that "great idea" you wanted to implement a few months ago. Now you may have decided that it wasn't the right time anyway and that you'll do it sometime soon.
Perhaps this isn't your case; every "great idea" you have is put into place and gets tested and worked in the clinic immediately. However, in our day to day dealing with clinics owners and their teams all over the world - failure to implement good ideas and grow isn't as unusual as you might think.
We have found that the best practice of the "quarterly review" changes this problem forever for the clinics that we work with.
Instead of the "daily whirlwind" of dealing with patients, team & admin issues devouring all the time and energy your team desperately needs to focus on growing your clinic, the quarterly or annual review (when supported by the other 3 accountability cadences that we suggest implementing through the clinic boost method) makes sure that your "great ideas" get implemented fast.
In this podcast, we'll discuss why the most successful clinics have a morning/afternoon off for getting their whole team together every 3 months away from the clinic to reflect on the 3 months past and set goals for the next 3 months to come.
We'll also share with your the exact quarterly review & quarterly agenda taken from clinics of excellence so that you can implement the same in your medical or dental practice.
Ready? Let's dive in.
Why have a quarterly review in your clinic?
Without the quarterly review, you'll continue to stay in chaos with:
Repeated MistakesUndiscovered team growthStalled growth of your clinic"We're already too busy!" I hear you say, so why have a meeting that takes half a day!? Yes - why do most successful clinics have a scheduled practice of taking a morning/afternoon off for a meeting with the whole team every 12 weeks and at the and / beginning of the year?
Well, just like you do with your patients, this is a necessary time for a check-up of each system and person in your clinic to see if you are moving towards your ideal state.
It's also a time to set new targets & implement new best practices.
Here's a summary of how we suggest you should do it, based on the best practices of the clinics that we have worked with.
The CBM Quarterly review
Who: everybody
Where: Away from the clinic
Duration: 2-3 hours
When: every 3 months
Preparation: Scoreboard, Printed 4 Questions of Accountability, Printed 4 Quarterly Questions
The CBM Quarterly agenda
Part 1
What worked?What didn't?What learned?What different?Part 2
Setting your WIG (wildly important goal) for the next quarterChoosing best practices/systems to help you achieve that goalSetting up the ScoreboardCreating a Cadence of Accountability -
(That's a quote by James Clear from a great book Atomic Habits.)
When I talk to clinics they usually belong to one of these 3 groups:
1. Freestyle
They have vague goals. Just doing day to day work, hoping things will get better in the future.
2. Goal oriented
This is much better, these types of clinics do have exact goals based on facts, but they are struggling to achieve them.
3. Systems oriented
This is the way. These are the clinics that not only have goals but also put systems in place that are executed every day to bring them closer to their target and track their progress.
By having systems that are followed, your clinic goals are not wishful thinking anymore but a reality that just needs to catch up with the present.
What systems do you have in place to support your goals as a clinic? -
When you are tracking your patient journey numbers (such as messages, calls, consults...etc) don't rely on the automatic log of activities in your CRM.
Make your admin team log it manually as well. It helps them to:
- be accountable
- perform better
- know how they are standing in real time instead of end of the day
Try it and see your new patient numbers rise. -
Here we explain how we look at hiring and how it closely mirrors the patient journey.
Messages - receiving lot's of CV's into your inboxCalls - discovering if they are potential fit for your clinicConsults = Interviews - here's where you'll make an offerTreat = Job - here's where they start working for you and you start monitoring their performanceRecommend - having your new hire recommend your clinic to their friends and ex-colleagues -
A good thought excersise is to simply a pick a patient who visited your clinic today and think about how they experienced your patient journey.
Does it match how you want it to be for the majority of your patients?
Let's say potential patient decided to write you a message.
- Have you engaged them in conversation or just send them big templated response?
- How quickly have you responded?
Then you call with them.
- Are you listening or talking too much? (80% of talking should be done by potential patient)
- Have you identified their true pains and needs?
They book a consultation.
- Are they greeted when they enter your premises?
- Coffee/tea served?
They go for treatment.
- Everything explained before? (fear of unknown)
- How long did they wait?
Post-op consultation
- After-care package?
- Did they give you review/testimonial? -
Here's a brief summary:
the way your calendar is and the way you want it to becomethe way your numbers are and the way you want them to become
Importance of being proactive vs reactive, by taking 5m a day to look at:Reactive clinic owner/manager will never find the time to make changes to grow.
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If you don't roll the dice at all (i.e. do marketing) you will loose.
There are 6 results you can get, when you roll (i.e. do marketing).
You might think that the goal is to only roll the highest possible result.
But the ones who win are the ones who roll the most. -
Marketing to:
1. new potential patients
2. existing patients
3. new potential team members
4. existing team members -
Apart from making more profit, obviously. The main goal of increasing pricing is to provide a better service to your patients and have less stress in the clinic.
Don't price based on competitionLook at how much profit you want and reverse engineer back to get the final priceFocus on high-profit treatmentsFast: tell everyone about the price increaseSlow: only new patients have higher prices
More patients doesn't always equal more profit. -
1. Daily reporting
- how many calls?
- how many messages?
- what are the results?
2. Objections diary
Every time someone doesn't book consult, write the reason down. You will soon find out there only couple variations of objections that you need to overcome.
3. Story bank
Facts about the product are hard to remember for potential patients but they will always remember stories. Collect stories for every feature/benefit of your service. Find nice parallels. Make them unique to your clinic. -
Common mistake that we see many clinics do is revealing the price of the treatment too early.
Sometimes they say it straight in the first message and sometimes on the call.
It's important to realize you're making it way harder for yourself, if you reveal the price too early.
Why?
According to Way of the wolf by Jordan Belfort (excellent book) there is an equation constantly going on in the head of your potential patient - is the value I'll receive more than the money I'll pay for it? This is important, because you always want to build value of your treatment first before you say exact price.
I don't know about you, but I like things easy. And what I realized when I worked as a patient coordinator that a lot of value building is done for me, when the patient is on the consultation.
They see our premises. They see lot of patients going in and out (social proof). They speak with the doctor (authority). All of this helps, so when I asked them to sign the treatment plan with exact price, it's much much easier.
Also you can use the price as an bait for potential patient to come for the consultation.
From looking at data of many clinics, we see major bottleneck doesn't happen on consultation because there is doctor present (authority) so on avg. 70% will go for treatment. However call to consult ratio is much lower, usually around 50%. So I don't know about you but I rather offer them the price and treatment on the consult where I have much higher chance of success.
Key takeaway of this is: Don't try to "sell" the treatment on the call, that's hard. "Sell" consultation, that's easy. -
Don't know what you want (communication)Don't know how to do (training)Don't want to do it (motivation)
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Look at your numbers 5m/day and have 15m weekly meetings about the numbers and ask these questions:
What was good?
What was bad?
What did you learn?
What will you do differently? -
1. Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) vs Possibly Important Goals (PIGs)
They have specific goals with deadline.
2. Pro vs Amateur
They know their exact numbers and can make good decisions because of them.
3. Acquisition
Their main focus is on the patient acquisition system. They do not leave it to chance. -
Daniel & Alex discuss difference in marketing to someone who needs a treatment vs someone who wants it.
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Just increasing your availability can sometimes grow your business much more effectively than doing paid ads.
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Daniel & Alex discuss where to focus your marketing resources. How to identify "hot spots" that are producing you disproportionate results.
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