Over the years I have heard tales of woe and success from around the country concerning business owners and their efforts to generate new business.Their solutions have been many and varied but in their mantra of reasons “why” they are not increasing the volume of their business is a common thread which winds throughout all inaction in that area.Why wouldn’t someone take effective action to generate new business?Is it that some of us feel we just can’t squeeze another free minute out of our already jammed days?Or is it that over our years in business we have achieved a level of success large or small, which we have settled into and from that vantagepoint we cannot recognize that there may be solutions, which work that we haven’t tried?Some business owners are amazingly creative in their efforts.But they may also have stacked up failures or their successes have been hit or miss because they lack a basic understanding of what it is that actually produces a result in the Public relations and marketing arena.Their mantra then becomes “I’ve tried it all, what else is there to do?There is no real solution.” How many of us have gone out on marketing calls, have had what seemed like a great “meeting” only to never hear from them again?How many of us have experienced the up and down roller coaster of generating new business and then, from the increase in business which winds us up with us directly on the day-to-day production lines, seen our new business again wane?We can sometimes feel like we’re riding a wave, a wave over which we have no control.There is a solution, which works.A simple solution that involves taking the time to put together a realistic plan for the future that encompasses not just the actions needed to drive in new business but also the actions needed to ensure that you can deliver what has been promised.The steps, roughly, can be said to be:1. Determine what needs to be produced in each area of your company over the next six months in order to meet the goals you set for your business this year.2. Starting with the areas that handle the actions necessary to drive business into your company, work out a plan that meet the target. 3.Now you need to work out how this much new business will be serviced.This may include the addition of new personnel, more space, and more equipment.Once the above is done, ensure that all of the plans align with each other and that based on the data to hand they will result in meeting the targets you have set.Now as the owner all you need to do is simply ensure that each step of the plans are executed completely and on time.
Both Shaun and I have been traveling a lot over the past 6 months. We are now delivering seminars in cities across the United States and Canada and while it is great getting out of the office it hasn’t left a lot of time for us to write. So this month we decided to post a sneak peek into the New Patient Course. I hope you find it useful.
You have worked hard to become the best possible physical therapist and private practice owner - now it is time for you to have the practice of your dreams and to have the freedom to achieve your goals.
In order to do that you must have new patients and marketing is the key to a sustained volume of new patients. But what are the correct steps to take?
Marketing your physical therapy practice is essentially communicating with the outside world. Sounds simple enough, you want new patients and so you send out newsletters, e-mails, birthday cards, holiday cards, and informal “thinking of you” letters to current and former patients as well as “thank you” notes to doctors who send referrals. You visit doctors and buy lunches in the hope that it will result in more referrals but there is no guarantee.
As our clients learn in the New Patient Course, typically what happens in most practices is that they have a certain patient volume or ceiling that they consider is all they can treat because of the current staff situation. This results in a patient volume that looks like a rollercoaster. New patients go down so you have to go out and build relationships and meet with doctors. New patients go up and you stop doing the actions that resulted in the increase of new patients because now you are treating.
As time goes on, the practice statistics take on an appearance of going up and down, up and down, up and down over a period of years. Since many practice owners may be commonly used to the rollercoaster and were not completely certain as to why the statistics went up to begin with, they are not surprised to see them fall.
The solution to this is simple and it is based on knowing how to correctly staff your clinic not just on how to market your practice.
Here is something interesting…
If you were just starting a new physical therapy practice and you are the first staff member as the owner/PT, the office manager/receptionist/administration/collections is the second person you hire and typically the third person is a PTA. The third person you hired in this scenario is your first mistake in private practice. Ideally, the third person you should hire is someone who drives in business into the organization, doing whatever is necessary. Typically, it is an omitted step. So how does this manifest itself in most practices? What happens is, the numbers are down, and the PT/owner has to go run out and try getting referrals. So whom do you go see? So whom do you go see? Do you see the doctor who likes you, and is sending you a lot of business or the person who is sending you a couple of guys? You go see the one who is sending you the most business already. You get the scenario of a large practice depending on four or five doctors! 60% of the people who attend our New Patient Course have lost a major referral source within the last 6 months, or there is a threat of one. Doctors who do not refer you business do not like you! Plain and simple. Don’t take it personal. They may simply not know you but regardless of the reason if they are not referring to you then they don’t like you. The doctors who do refer a lot of new patients to you do like you and when you go to see them they like you more. So how do you break this cycle?
The question you must ask yourself is this, if you could increase the number of new patients into your practice without having to go meet with doctors who don’t like you and if you could do it with out actually having to do it yourself, would you? Let us know.
One of the first steps is knowing how to play the game.A lot of you can do the physical therapy hat very well – you’ve gone to college, invested money and time on being expert on getting that hat completely on.Now that you are private practice owners and not just physical therapists, you also have a multitude of hats in your business, some of you have so many hats that you wear that they are stacked up to the ceiling.
Unfortunately there is nothing you learned in PT school that can help you succeed as a private practice owner.You paid probably over $100,000 to be very proficient on the PT hat.How much money have you spent becoming the CEO of your business?The majority of the time when a practice owner comes to do The New Patient Course at Measurable Solutions, this is the first investment they have made in becoming a little bit more proficient as a CEO.
What does this have to do with beating the competition?Everything!I use to work with dentists in the mid ‘80s in Seattle, Washington in a building in the middle of downtown.There were 80 separate dental offices in that building.When a dentist retired and moved out of the building, a brand new dentist would move into that office.Do you know what?The dentists in the bigger practices would come around and take that guy under his arm and mentor him and show him how to get new patients and show him how to do a better job and show him how to be a much faster success than they were.
Now, what if you had that in this profession?Usually, when a new physical therapy practice moves in across the street from an existing practice, that existing practice says “Oh my gosh, what am I to do?This competition is going to be robbing patients from me before you know it.”
However, there are more people in your town than all the therapists can treat so what is all the worry and drama concerning existing or potential competition?
The problem is this:your community, your referral sources and even your patients don’t truly know what you do; they don’t know what kind of results you get.If you were to grab a clipboard and go walking down the street and ask people, “what is physical therapy?” do you know what you would find?That people think that physical therapy is for athletes, old people or stroke victims.They have no idea that physical therapy is for the housewife whose back aches every time she washes the dishes or the office worker who spends eight hours a day in front of the computer.They have no idea that physical therapy can help them and that it should be their first choice in care!What if everybody in your town knew what physical therapy was and knew all the results you could get?Do you think you’d have any problem getting new patients?I don’t think so.
I’ve told practice owners this datum with regard to competition when they come in as a new Measurable Solutions’ client.They look at me kind of cross-eyed and they think that I’m on some sort of drug or whatever.But, after a while of learning how to expand their practice and gain more control over the business, they come to me and say, “Jeff you were right – there isn’t any such thing as competition.That’s just a bunch of hooey.” They are now equipped to win the game and know that there is really no competition to beat.
We recently started delivering several of our seminars in Canada.This gave us a unique opportunity to see for ourselves how a Canadian practice is run.We noticed immediately that the Canadian physiotherapy differs greatly in treatment methodology as compared to a physical therapy practice in the US. The physiotherapists are exceptionally well trained but are reimbursed poorly.They also deliver in higher volume per week than the typical US physical therapist. Their physios generate as much if not more income per hour than the typical US physical therapy practice. That alone would make them more profitable but what blows the US physical therapy practice out of the water is that a Canadian PT practice doing nearly 300 patient visits a week would only have a single receptionist handling ALL of the admin. How many administrative staff do you need to deliver to 300 patients a week in the US? I bet more than one. In the US, Chiropractors had been very much involved in the insurance model for years. About 15 years ago the AMA and the insurance industry began putting the “squeeze” on the Chiropractic profession. At that point many decided, “that’s it!” and quit the hassle of dealing with insurance companies and moved more and more into a cash-based system for the majority of their services. It is from that exact point the Chiropractic profession moved out from under the thumb of the AMA and the insurance industry. Chiropractors began to prosper and they continue to prosper and let’s face it, the lobbying power of the Chiropractic profession is powerful and a good part of the reason for its power is because they are no longer suppressed. Delivering an economical treatment for patients can be done. Think about a time when you may have worked on a family member. Did you deliver all those modalities, put them on your treadmill or even ice for that matter? I bet you put your hands on them and applied your “magic” that you or any other physical therapist that is well trained to deliver can do and they got better. You do not have to have a bunch of “stuff” to get your product with a patient. This is the key to starting a physical therapy cash practice in the United States.It can be done.You can make a profit and still deliver a high quality of care to your patients.This is not a situation where you have to make a choice between paying the bills or providing a patient with the best possible care.For once you can have your cake and eat it too.There is a simple and easy solution on how to set this up and we want to show you how.
Over the years I have dealt with all types and sizes of businesses.I have seen all types and sizes of problems as well as quite a variety of solutions that emerge to resolve them. Throughout my experiences in consulting various companies and working to unravel the difficulties they sometimes encounter a very basic common denominator is always present. That common denominator is the inability to confront or perceive what is really going on.Now, there can be a number of ways that that common denominator manifests itself. It can be an owner or manager who is unable to face staff so turns a blind eye to what may be happening in the various areas. It might be that there is too much “wishful thinking” going on because confronting what the “dangerous” scene really is unpalatable. It may also be something as simple as not being able to perceive because one has no information in an area such as statistics that reflect the production and viability of the company.Most businesses to some degree or another use statistics.Few however use them to measure the individual production of each staff member or areas of the practice.It can seem like a formidable task but it doesn’t have to be if one has a basic understanding of organization and what products are really important to its survival.If an individual staff knows what it is he or she is supposed to produce and it can be measured then it is not difficult to assign hima statistic that will reflect his production.One of the first steps in solving the common denominator is being able to measure one’s production so that one can confront and “see”. This is an amazing step for most people as it puts them into a position where they can now be in charge of what happens in their own practice as, for the first time, they can actually “see what’s happening.”
Over the years I have heard tales of woe and success from around the country concerning business owners and their efforts to generate new business.Their solutions have been many and varied but in their mantra of reasons “why” they are not increasing the volume of their business is a common thread which winds throughout all inaction in that area.Why wouldn’t someone take effective action to generate new business?Is it that some of us feel we just can’t squeeze another free minute out of our already jammed days?Or is it that over our years in business we have achieved a level of success large or small, which we have settled into and from that vantagepoint we cannot recognize that there may be solutions, which work that we haven’t tried?Some business owners are amazingly creative in their efforts.But they may also have stacked up failures or their successes have been hit or miss because they lack a basic understanding of what it is that actually produces a result in the Public relations and marketing arena.Their mantra then becomes “I’ve tried it all, what else is there to do?There is no real solution.” How many of us have gone out on marketing calls, have had what seemed like a great “meeting” only to never hear from them again?How many of us have experienced the up and down roller coaster of generating new business and then, from the increase in business which winds us up with us directly on the day-to-day production lines, seen our new business again wane?We can sometimes feel like we’re riding a wave, a wave over which we have no control.There is a solution, which works.A simple solution that involves taking the time to put together a realistic plan for the future that encompasses not just the actions needed to drive in new business but also the actions needed to ensure that you can deliver what has been promised.The steps, roughly, can be said to be:1. Determine what needs to be produced in each area of your company over the next six months in order to meet the goals you set for your business this year.2. Starting with the areas that handle the actions necessary to drive business into your company, work out a plan that meet the target. 3.Now you need to work out how this much new business will be serviced.This may include the addition of new personnel, more space, and more equipment.Once the above is done, ensure that all of the plans align with each other and that based on the data to hand they will result in meeting the targets you have set.Now as the owner all you need to do is simply ensure that each step of the plans are executed completely and on time.About the Author Jeff F. Lee is Co-Founder of Measurable Solutions Inc., a consulting firm engaged in all areas of business management. He has found that all the basic principles of how to expand a business apply to any business when delivered in a very precise way. With his partner, Shaun Kirk, he has built the most rapidly expanding company of its kind in the world. Visit his website at http://www.measurablesolutions.com
Do you keep a “to-do list” on what you wish to accomplish each day? There may have been a point in time where you did this quite routinely, and perhaps it has dropped out. Most people will make a list of things they wish to accomplish in the morning and by the end of the day they didn’t get one thing off the list done. Sometimes this becomes so bad that many business owners decide not to even keep a daily to-do list anymore and just walk into the office and wait till the first employee gives them an order of what they need, and the owner does it for them. This is a backwards way of thinking.
The simplicity of placing a couple of targets on a to-do list and making that your known goal and overcoming whatever those not unknowable obstacles are in order to achieve that end, would make you more happy. Simply speaking, if you got your to-do list done each day, how would you feel at the end of the day? Would you feel good or bad? Likely good. Accomplishing any target or any goal that you set out to do will make you happy.
Too often there are a variety of different barriers that get in the way of achieving one’s goal. The unfortunate thing is we tend to put attention on the things that stop us, and not attention on things that allow us to win. Look at today. What are the problems that you are trying to handle outside of the basic production for the day? It’s likely that these problems do not have any impact on your expansion even if you never handled them at all.
Sometimes it is important to recognize the barriers that are in front of you that keep you from achieving your goal and just ignore them. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is nothing while carrying forward towards reaching your known goal. Let’s take a look at how simple this can be accomplished. Let’s say you walk into your office on Monday morning, and you look at how production occurred the prior week, and you have an immediate staff meeting, for say 30 minutes, and you say, with confidence that “we are going to get our production up by 10% before the end of the week.” And then you pose the question to the group: “what can each of you do?” Insist they actually give you an answer to this problem. And then write it down on your to-do list -- those steps that your staff said they could do to get your statistics up by 10% that week. And those would be your known sub-goals toward the overall goal of a rise of production by 10%. And then you overcome whatever obstacles are in the way of achieving those goals until you accomplish the end result you are searching for. Certainly you do this fairly routinely. Most business owners do this or if they don’t, they should be.
This inability or difficulty in getting things done transcends from the owner to the staff. If you give your staff random orders without any recognition of what is important and what’s not, the staff member will take the unimportant to be equal to the vital task. So it is key for you to delegate towards expansion.
By simply delegating toward expansion, putting together a real list of actions to take each day that will result in expansion and completing what is on the list you will increase the productivity of your business. It is that simple.
About the Author
Jeff F. Lee is Co-Founder of Measurable Solutions Inc., a consulting firm engaged in all areas of business management. He has found that all the basic principles of how to expand a business apply to any business when delivered in a very precise way. With his partner, Shaun Kirk, he has built the most rapidly expanding company of its kind in the world. Visit his website at http://www.measurablesolutions.com
