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Growing your practice requires a multi-dimensional marketing strategy that takes into account everything from your advertising and communication to your office decor and your staff's customer-service skills.
When I say "marketing," I'm really talking about customer touch points and the brand values they communicate about your practice. It's about seeing employee uniforms as brand statements, and your reception area as an opportunity to set the tone for the visit.
It's about knowing consumer trends. It's about understanding your organization's key points of differentiation. And it's about using every means available to exploit your strengths and expose your competition's weaknesses.
Twenty percent of sales are lost because the buyer is turned off by the seller. This can be something physical, a behavior, something seen or overheard, but most often it's a lack of sincerity.
See your business with a fresh eye at least once a year. Experience what your visitors see and hear. This function of marketing starts with your guest's experience. The most aggressive practices use mystery shoppers to evaluate how well they are doing. You don't have to go that far, but you do need to know what your prospective patients encounter when they come to your practice.
Consider this: the very same day they visit your office, your patients have had other retail experiences: at Barnes & Noble, Starbucks, Kinko's, their bank, and the neighborhood grocery store. You are competing for a vigilante-professional-shopper. She knows how to pick the best over the mediocre everyday, and she does it subconsciously. She rates your office during the first minute of her visit. She won't tell you what she doesn't like; she just leaves.
First-time guests are not your patients yet. On their initial visit, they will decide whether or not to release their problem to you. If they don’t, you’ll put them in the “tested-not-sold” category, and wonder why they walked out without accepting your offer of help. The good news is that most of the factors that determine whether or not these people return can be controlled to your favor. Let’s talk about some of them.
IS YOUR OFFICE PATIENT-FRIENDLY?
The big-box stores have taught people to shop in the light. Two florescent light bulbs don’t cut it. People are attracted to the light; light is good marketing! If your premises are a little dim, I challenge you to spend $500 improving the lighting in your practice. You’ll get it back the first week.
Most practices have too much clutter; clutter is bad marketing. Manufacturer’s point-of-purchase material should be displayed in a special area, if you choose to use it at all. Countertops are not for storage. Also, if you have papers and supplies visible from your reception area, move them to a storage area that is out of sight. Better yet, throw them a way.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you haven’t used something in 6 months, you probably won’t. You no longer even see it, but visitors do and it looks like clutter to them. Let me suggest a simple exercise that will allow you to see your clutter: videotape your office, take the tape home, and watch it. You’ll be amazed at how much clutter you see.
Metal file cabinets are out. They say to patients, “We’re like an insurance sales office.” Replace them with open files, which show visitors that you have thousands of patients who trust you. Open files say, “We’re like the other medical offices you trust.”
Being occupied with patient care is good marketing. Front office staff should be busy, not holding personal conversations with co-workers, talking on their cell-phone, reading a novel, or watching TV. These are inappropriate behaviors that say, “Nothing’s going on here. I’m bored.” All of us are leery of businesses without customers or activity. There is energy created in a busy office, and consumers can feel it. They like it.
Your staff (including you) should not engage in personal conversations in the office when there are visitors. Customers don’t want to overhear you making plans for the evening or complaining about your ex-husband. These give your prospect a reason not to like you. Proclaim your office a “happy space,” where everyone is busy taking care of patients. |
WHY UNIFORMS ARE GOOD MARKETING
Uniforms are good marketing, and here are some reasons why:
- Everyone in your office is dressed in the same color everyday; this makes a clean and powerful organizational statement.
- Uniforms solve the problem of a buyer being turned off by an employee’s taste in attire (or lack thereof).
- Uniforms show that your practice is in the allied medical field rather than in a sales environment.
- When the practice owner provides uniforms for the staff, it is actually a benefit for employees because they no longer have to send their work clothing to the cleaners.
Clinicians should also wear uniforms: white lab coats with your name either on a brass badge or embroidered. This is the uniform of authority. The Gallup Poll annually ranks Americans’ trust levels of 25 professions. Since 1976, the profession rated highest by the public for ethics has been the pharmacist, while car dealers have consistently been at the bottom. My point is that you should look more like a pharmacist and less like a car salesman.
STAFF BEHAVIOR IS CRUCIAL
Let’s talk about staff behavior. One of the basic, universal human needs is to feel significant, to be acknowledged, to be treated as important. Consumers’ number-one complaint about their retail experiences is that no one pays attention to them.
So, as soon as a patient come trough your door, your receptionist should make eye contact and smile. Eye contact is essential in confidence building. When you make eye contact with clients, they believe what you say, and feel you’re sincere.
Treat visitors to your office like guests. Receptionists are managers of the reception area, and the way they look and behave should help market your practice. Poise, grooming, and articulate use of the English language send the message to visitors that they’re in the right place. When patients like your reception staff and have a good feeling about how they’re initially treated, they are more likely to release their problem to you.
RECEPTION AREA SETS THE TONE
Your reception area is an important marketing tool, since it sets the tone for the visit. When visitors come to your office, you don’t want to expose them to anything that may have a negative influence. Newspapers and magazines may contain distressing headlines—or competitors’ advertising. Daytime TV programming is horrible, and shouldn’t be aired in any medical practice.
Find ways to influence visitors positively while they are in your reception area. Spend $250 on a professional photograph of each dispensing professional, then frame the photos with a 4-inch mat and display them prominently on a wall with nameplates or matted articles. Elevate your staff. They—not the products they recommend—are the value your practice offers.
Consider using your reception television to air programming that you control, such as video from your most recent mission trip or interesting information on hearing conservation or rehabilitation.
A clean, clutter-free restroom is also good marketing. Take your personal grooming supplies off the back of the toilet and make patients feel this room is for them. A bathroom can have a wow! effect. We all subconsciously believe that the cleanliness of an establishment’s restroom is an indicator of the entire organization. Look at yours with a fresh eye.
The first few minutes a prospect spends in your facility will set the tone for their meeting with the clinician. So, spend time focusing on your customers’ experience and you’ll find their trust level will increase and more of them will release their problem to you. |
