Friday 18 May 2012
The Reason Why Working "In" Your Clinic Is Detrimental To Your Clinic's Success
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Over the last few weeks, I have been getting a lot of emails from fellow chiropractors telling me how their clinic numbers are dropping or just staying stagnant even though they've been spending so much time at their clinic.
Is it the economy? Is it the bad press?.... No it's not!
Here is a typical letter that I have received in the last few weeks...
"Dear Richard,
I've been in practice for a couple of years now and I work 5 full days a week. I already have a relatively slow practice and now my numbers are starting to drop. I went from seeing 80 patients/week to now only seeing 50-60!
What should I do? Please help!"
First of all, this doctor only sees 80 patients per week, that's only 16 patients per day (with working 5 days) and 80 patients is what a chiropractor can typically see in just a single day.
So going back to the title of this blog... The Reason Why Working "In" Your Clinic Is Detrimental To Your Clinic's Success, whether you have a super busy clinic or a super slow clinic, working "IN" you clinic can make your numbers drop.
As someone once told me, the key to chiropractic clinic success (or any business for that matter) is to work "ON" your clinic not just "IN" your clinic! That is to say, doing activities that will build traffic to your clinic.
For instance, the chiropractor above could easily keep his chiropractic office open just 2 1/2 days per week. By doing this, he will benefit in 2 immediate ways...
- By shortening up the work week, he will make his clinic look much busier. Having a busier clinic makes your office appear more successful, which in turn, will make converting consults to patients much easier.
- Cuts down on your expenses (e.g. don't have to pay your receptionist as much)
Meaning, you now have the freedom to do more talks, more promotions, more networking, more strategizing... more practice building things.
See, all too many chiropractors and other business owners think that they have to be at work to build a successful clinic/business. This is just not the case!
Unless you have, what I call, PASSIVE PATIENT ACQUISITION TECHNIQUES - promotional techniques that will automatically drive new patients to your clinic without having to actively get them (which will be the topic of my next blog! Here's a major technique... ALL chiros need powerful chiropractic websites.
If you're not networking or doing a promotion, go to a coffee shop with a pen and paper and think of ways to improve your clinic, think of cool referral contests, places to do talks, new marketing material - marketing to MDs, Lawyers, other chiropractors.
Here's a task you can do on your time off (and we'll talk more about this in the next blog)... think of 75 to 100 ways to get new patients through your door. It's a challenging task, but a fun one.
Just think of it this way... if you just get 1 patient per month from each of these ideas, that's potentially 100 NEW PATIENTS PER MONTH!!
Now say, just 50% of your ideas brings you 1 new patient per month... that's 50 NEW PATIENTS PER MONTH!
Even if only 25% of your marketing ideas work, that's still 25 NEW PATIENTS PER MONTH and that's still an awesome number!
And when those patients start coming in and see your busy clinic (because you're still only working 3 days a week), it will appear that you have a successful clinic, it will increase the likelihood of your consults starting care and it will increase your referrals!
And so, as you increase your patient numbers, start to increase your working hours. For instance, when I started practice, I only worked 2 1/2 days per week and seeing about 40-50 patients per day. Later, I increased my days to 4 full days and I was seeing about 80-100 patients per day.
I could have increased my work day to 5 days per week, but I have always been a big fan of long weekends and so I have never worked a Friday, Saturday or Sunday (well, I did but only on rare occasions).
So to sum it up... you WILL develop a more successful clinic when you work ON your clinic than if you work IN your clinic.
Just make sure that when you take those days off you PROMOTE your clinic AND WORK FULL days ON your practice. Don't just use it to run errands or watch your recorded episodes of Dexter (lol).
So tighten up your work week, spend less time in your clinic and build yourself a wildly successful clinic!
Remember, I'm here for you. If you ever have any questions or concerns, just like the doc in the email above, please feel free to email me at contactus@promodocs.com. I will ALWAYS give you free advice and will ALWAYS try to reply within 24 hours.
One last thing... Promodocs has created the most powerful chiropractic website templates for chiropractors that is truly breaking industry standards. Our team has incorporated features that no other chiropractic website company offers that will drive huge amounts of new patients to your clinic and give your clinic massive online exposure.
And the price? It's unbelievable! So check us out at www.promodocs.com
Just to let you know, the new site and chiropractic site will be up in just a couple of day. So we're a bit late on our launch date, but that's a good thing because we are adding another exclusive Promodocs feature that will make your Promodocs Website so much more effective!!
Hope this helps,
Richard
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