Audits
Time for a check up
Keisha Paul on how auditing your clinic can help improve sales
Welcome to the business owners club. Your new, shiny, clinic is just the vessel to fulfill all the dreams you have been secretly compiling during your journeys home from gruelling after gruelling shift. Unfortunately, the excitement of having your own enterprise has begun to wear off because of just one problem; traffic, or lack of it in your case. “Where are all the customers?” is the main thought going through your mind, shortly followed by, “Why aren’t the customers coming to me?” All business owners and managers will feel this way at some point or another but what separates them and certain business death is what they choose to do about it.
If these questions are keeping you up at night, you must attack them during the day. Begin with an audit of your business, and this audit is to help you improve your sales. One of the first things you should do is assess your marketing plan. If you do not have a marketing plan then keep on reading and take notes. Your marketing plan should list out all the various mediums or tools that you can use for marketing and it should coincide with the months of the year. For example, this plan can be represented in an excel spreadsheet with the far left column listing the marketing medium, such as social media, your website, seminars, networking and events, while the top row of the spreadsheet should list the months of the year. One would fill out this spreadsheet by listing what action they will be taking with each marketing tool to improve sales over the course of the year. Make sure that your marketing plan reflects the tastes and preferences of your customer base. An example of this would be, if you are operating in an area with a large Asian demographic, various Asian holidays need to be accounted for in your plan and in promotions. Need more inspiration? Instead of promoting your procedures by the name of the drug or tool used, use names that your target market will respond to. To elaborate on the example given above, “After coming to XYZ Clinic, you will be able to give your guy the Bollywood Eye! Visit the website for more details!” Sometimes customers can be hiding or getting lost in emails, missed or unreturned phone calls and lack lustre greetings.
One of the second steps you can take to audit your clinic is to cold call, or email your business to see how long it takes for someone to get through, have their call returned or email replied to. This gap in time is critical because your customer has a problem that they need to be solved and only too much competition to offer a remedy. If you are really committed to increasing sales and the quality of your clinic, get a friend to come to your clinic as a secret shopper to see how they are treated. Make sure that your little spy takes note on how your staff treat all those present in the clinic, how long it takes to receive a greeting and how organised they are. If the results of this step in the audit are poor, do not be too hard on your staff, as they are a key factor in your success. If there has not been a precedent set on the above items, speak with them about it and work together on how to improve. You are not an island and for you to be successful those around you must know about your new venture.
The third way to audit your clinic to improve sales actually includes your friends, family and acquaintances. Make a list of all the influential people in your life and ask a random sampling of them if they know about your new venture. If these people cannot give specifics or have no clue completely, they are not equipped to help sell your business. This is when being modest, humble and shy is a hindrance. Your community can help increase sales and networking should always begin with them because they have a vested interest in your success. Take time out and start telling people about your clinic and what you want to accomplish. Pay special attention to those with large social circles or those that always seem to know the best place to eat, shop, or lounge. These people will educate the community around them and help to develop a buzz about your clinic. The final audit may be the most difficult to implement as it deals with assessing yourself. If you are the medical aesthetic practitioner of your practice, you are literally selling your skills. You need to assess your ability to sell yourself and your clinic. Challenge yourself to concisely (30 seconds or less) explain what it is that you do and what you sell. Now try to do so in a way that would make someone want to extend that conversation. If you are having trouble it just means that you need some more practice. Unfortunately, you must become reasonably comfortable with public speaking because the relationships that you will have to develop to increase your commercial traffic will require it. People usually cringe at the idea of having to engage in sales but this action is not beneath you, it is essential to the way of life that you are envisioning for yourself. Invest time and energy into either being comfortable with it or getting better at it. You can start with gaining tips from internet videos and articles as there are many on the subject. The suggestions in this article are all inexpensive in termsof time, money and resources; however, to be implemented properly will require insight and honesty. Should you uncover any faults in the way you are currently running your clinic make it an urgent priority to resolve them. The audit alone will not improve your clinic but the first step to success is learning about your own weaknesses and having the courage to improve on them.
Author Biography
Keisha Paul is the business development manager of KT Training. Keisha graduated with a BComm (Hons) degree from the IH Asper School of Business in Canada. She has had previous experience in the medical field and has worked with clinicians to help develop their businesses.
