Welcome to OMD TV & Podcast show – the place to be to grow and scale your practice. Today, we are going to talk about how to stay ahead of your competition and drive more profits for your practice.
To become a successful practice, you need to find ways to stay a step ahead of your competition. Doing so is often easier said than done, and there’s no simple answer to how to beat your competition, your ultimate goal is to increase your market share in the same market.
In this OMD TV and Podcast episode, I’ve put together six ways to give your practice a leg up:
First thing you got to do is to…
- Know your competitors.In the ancient words of Chinese general Sun Tzu, you must “know your enemy as you know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.” Today, we may look upon our competitors in a friendlier light, but it’s essential to understand everything we can about them. For example, what services they offer, what are their pricing points, how do they market themselves and reach out to their target audience, what are their best-selling points? If you don’t know all of these, how can you hope to successfully position against them right?
The second way is to…
- Market your specialty.Once you know everything you can about your chief competitors, you can identify what your practice can offer to your patients that’s unique or special.
That’s because a crowded marketing has far less room for expansion. To compete in a crowded market, you need a unique selling proposition. The more unique it is, the less room for competition there is.
In my experience, specialization in fact leads to a more scalable and successful business. A niche market is actually more reliable, and the prospects are easier to target. Moreover, the patient retention rate is good as well.
Now what you can do is to take a long, hard look at your current offering. If necessary, alter your product or service itself, bundle in additional features or find a way to deliver the same core product or service in a way that uniquely meets the needs of your prospects. Then, build your marketing campaigns around this central theme.
Now the 4th way is to
- Offer more value.Some product and service providers traditionally compete based on discount pricing, but for many other types of businesses, especially medical practices cutting prices is often detrimental.
If you offer a service, for example, and charge the same rates as your chief competitors, cutting your prices may make you look suspiciously cheap and inspire patients to wonder what’s “wrong” with your practice or the services it provides. A better idea is to offer something of additional value that your patients will find attractive.
Moving onto to the 5th way which is to
- Tune into your patients.To remain highly competitive, you must understand what your patients want.
I’ve always said “your wealth is in direct proportion with how well you know your target market”.
Unfortunately, your patients’ needs and preferences can change quite frequently, so you should have systems in place to regularly solicit their feedback.
As a practice owner, you’re actually in the enviable position of being closer to your patients than some of your big-business competitors.
You may know many of your patients or clients by name and have the advantage of being able to contact them periodically to check in. In addition, you need to make sure to initiate regular surveys as well as solicit ongoing feedback via your website.
The final 6th way here is to
- Keep the momentum.Complacency is the enemy of small-business success. It basically kills business.
Have you ever wondered why certain people seem to be an icon of success and other people don’t seem to make much progress towards their goals? Do you ever wonder what separates these two groups of people? Have you noticed how it seems like it’s going to be impossible to catch up to the icons of success?
So, what is it that makes these people the way they are? It comes down to this: MOMENTUM.
It’s much harder to stop or catch up to a moving object than it is to compete with somebody who starts at the same time that you do.
Professional athletes are quite similar to entrepreneurs in that sense. The secret of professional athletes is that they have never stopped perfecting their craft. At a certain point they achieve mastery of the basics and from that point their progress accelerates rapidly. Again, they hit momentum.
One thing you have to be careful of is becoming a victim of your own success. If you hit momentum, this is not the time to sit back and relax. When you’re in that “momentum” phase of your business that’s when you really want to start pushing your own limits because you’ll accomplish so much more. If your business is a moving car, then STEP ON THE GAS PEDAL.
If you want to stay ahead of your competitors and learn the most effective ways to generate new patients and referral, I’d recommend you check out our latest webinar called 3 Must-Use Strategies to Generate New Patients and Referrals on Auto Pilot.
I’ll leave a link to it in the show notes so you can sign up.
Thanks for turning in and hope to see you in our webinar.
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