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Create a Thriving Practice Even in the Toughest of Times!

21 Mar 2012

Is business at your practice thriving or diving right now? Are you creating enough cash flow from treating patients and product sales to cover your bills? If you are treating more clients, are you consciously reducing the costs associated with those treatments and keeping more of the money that you are making?

I know some of these questions seem very confronting and may even seem daunting to you but these are just a few of the questions you need to be asking yourself to gain clarity about where your business is at right now, in order to know how to get it to the next level up.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is because my partner, Dr Terry Loong, who is an Anti-Aging and Aesthetic Consultant, was amazed that these business fundamentals had not been taught in medical school, yet there are thousands of practitioners starting their own practices without any experience and struggling to get by. So, whether you are a mobile practitioner and looking to set up on your own or whether you own your own practice already, these 7 fundamentals will help you to create a more sustainable practice or clinic.
These business fundamentals have been used to help thousands of entrepreneurs and SME’s (small and medium sized businesses) around the world to increase revenues, reduce costs and build cohesive business teams to create sustainable businesses. These principles although they may seem simple, have also been used with companies such as Redken, Deutsche Bank, Singapore Airlines, HSBC and Millenium Hotels.
So let’s get straight into this.

The 7 Fundamentals to building a successful practice In our experience at Sales Partners, the 7 fundamentals you need in any business include:

1. Knowing how to Communicate, Promote and SELL because Sales equals Income. No sales means no income. You have to proactively promote yourself and your products in a compelling manner and communicate your value, otherwise you will not be able to grow your customer base and earn more money. It’s not only about selling services but also about selling ideas to colleagues. Wouldn’t you like to earn more money and get what you want? You can if you know you to communicate well and sell.

2. Building a TEAM that helps you grow your practice. Now, I know you may be thinking: “I don’t want to or know how to manage a team of people” or “I don’t want anyone else interfering with my business.” The truth is though, that if you have this mindset, your business will never grow to its full potential. For a lot of practice owners, they do EVERYTHING – from doing all the treatments, marketing, customer service, accounting and administration. So instead of creating a business, they create a job for themselves, where they work longer hours for maybe even less pay! If you want to recruit more practitioners into your practice, make sure they are helping you to bring in more business. Some experts you should have on your team (or have in your network) are a great accountant, tax advisor and a lawyer.

3. TEACHING your team about the tools and skills needed to deliver the service and product offerings you provide, but also teaching them how to communicate the value of these specific treatments and products to patients and customers. Are you and your practitioners teaching/educating your customers about the different services available? If you educate them in the right way, they will buy from you!

4. Having good documented and duplicable SYSTEMS.
All great businesses have excellent systems – administration systems, selling systems, accounting systems, customer service systems and training systems etc. As I mentioned before the problem with most practise owners is that THEY ARE THE SYSTEM! They do everything, and if you haven’t taught your staff how to run various systems, it becomes difficult to step away because the business depends on you.

5. High Levels of ACCOUNTABILITY. How do you hold everyone on your team accountable to doing the things they are supposed to do? Don’t you hate it when someone is supposed to do something in a certain way and they end up either not doing it or doing it in the way it was supposed to? This includes running systems like they are supposed to and holding your team of practitioners accountable to speaking to a certain number of people every week to drive income.

6. Having a CODE OF HONOUR™. A Code of Honour (COH) helps build integrity within your business and integrity within each person you have on your team. Its a set of behavioural rules that governs how each person in the team behaves. The COH will also help you to qualify who joins your practice team, as those who don’t agree to the rules are obviously not right for the team . It will help give you team direction in pressure situations so chaos doesn’t ensue.

7. Lastly but most importantly, knowing how to handle the LITTLE VOICES™ inside your head. You know the Little Voices I’m talking about? Yeah, that’s the one. The one that just said “What Little Voice? I don’t have a Little Voice!” That’s the one I’m talking about. Your Little Voices can be your biggest asset or they can be Public Enemy #1. Problem for most people is that their Little Voices are their own worst enemies. It’s the biggest thing that stops you from achieving all your dreams, the money and great relationships you’ve always wanted. Knowing how to master your own Little Voices and the Little Voices of your team and patients will help you tremendously especially in stressful situations.

I hope you’ve found this useful and look out for more articles in the coming months, where I will be going more in be sharing with you a simple 6-step sales process help you make more money in ANY economy.

Thank you the time you took to read this article. As a special thank you, I’ve included a bonus below for you. Just scroll to the bottom of this article to receive it. If you have any questions, comments or AHA’s please feel free to connect with me via email kurtw@sp-ww.com or via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

By Kurt Won

Kurt Won is the co-founder and director of Sales Partners West London. He is part of a team of international entrepreneurs who have helped thousands of businesses to increase their income 15-18% in just a matter of weeks, reduce costs and build sustainable businesses.
Website: www.SalesPartnersWestLondon.com
www.twitter.com/KurtWon
www.LinkedIn.com/in/KurtWon
www.facebook.com/kurtwon8

If you want more information on how to add more value to your practice and to your patient’s every visit while making more money in a growing, successful, profitable business, call me on me on 07960 360 951 for a FREE 45 minute Business Consultation worth £197!
 

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