Hello, and welcome to the Online Marketing For Doctors TV and Podcast show, the place to be to grow and scale your practice.
I’m your host, Steven Tait, a strategic marketing consultant to medical clinics, getting them more patients and more profits. In today’s episode we are going to be discussing “The 8 Most Common Traits of Well Running Practices”
The best part of being a marketing consultant to a lot of medical clinics for many years now, is getting to see all of the different ways that they’re built. Building a brand, surrounding yourself with staff who support you, strategising your marketing plan to attract new patients and so on.
And what can look like a practice that is super busy and running smoothly, can be chaos internally. That’s why this saying is so appropriate… “Never judge your insides by someone else’s outsides”. Boy, is that the truth!
There’s nothing easy about building your own practice. And everyone seems to have their own special and unique ways of doing it. But there are also some common traits that well running practices seem to share in common. So, what you can do to learn from others who did figure it out? The following is a list of eight traits of best run practices.
It’s imperative to implement these 8 common traits to give yourself the best chance of success with building your practice.
Trait number one, the practice owner has a growth mindset. All arrows point to the practice owner. So, they should have the best vision for where they want to go and they have the drive to get there. With a growth mindset, they’re open to growing as a person, as an owner and as a leader. They think in abundance versus lacking, and they see the opportunities in both the good and bad things that happen along the journey.
They’re also very passionate and competitive, about growing their practice and striving to better their best. That means they stay open to new technologies, new marketing trends and new techniques that will give them a competitive edge.
They learn new skills such as leadership, managing people, business and marketing that keeps them evolving and adaptable to the constant change happening around. Having this growth mindset at the top of your practice, is fundamental for positioning your practice for long term growth.
Trait number two: The practice owner will treat their staff very well in best run practices. Staff is seen as an asset rather than a liability or an overhead expense. The owner knows that they can’t do this alone. They understand their team is actually their practice building secret weapon. So, they make this part of their practice a priority.
And the team supports the owner because they’ve built a culture of shared values and regularly communicate to their team about their vision. So, they have clarity. However, they’re also not afraid to hire slow and fire fast if someone does not fit into their culture.
They will set the standard for how they expect their team to act with clients, and with each other. So, they themselves need to be a role model of good behaviour that increases their team’s respect for them.
Number three, the owner and team meet regularly.
Now most practices are so busy. They barely have time to eat. Let alone meet.
However, the best run practices find the time because they know that if they spend a little time up front, they save a ton of time in costly mistakes, week processes, staff turnover, and a toxic environment. So, they meet with their team regularly and get their feedback from the front lines because they’re listening for ways to improve and they’re open to change.
So how do we make the best of these meeting times? We keep the agenda short and sweet. First, celebrate recent wins. Then the owner should repeat the vision and expectations. Then review key numbers that are making the biggest impact on the business, talking about what is/isn’t working, and the solutions to fix it.
Then they brainstorm growth ideas, which is followed with a final recap and to-do list generated from the meeting, which documents who does what and by when, so the owner is able to let go of control and micromanaging. They will trust in the people around them, and holding staff accountable later, especially with these meeting.
Trait number four, the best run practice spends money to make money. They’re frugal with their time, not their money, because they understand that money can buy them time. So, they recognize the opportunity costs of doing things that should have been outsourced, such as learning SEO and writing your own web copy.
They know that they can’t shrink their way to success. So rather than focusing on saving money, they focus on making. Yes, they do cut expenses that are no longer necessary, but they know the real way to wealth building is to focus on assets, revenue, and income. They see marketing and excellent staff as an investment to grow their practice.
For example, they know, it’s a whole lot smarter to give a star player a raise when they ask for one, rather than to cheap out and create dissatisfaction, or worse, lose them and then spend weeks or months finding someone to replace them or having to hire two cheaper people to replace them, train them, and then hope they fit in and they get up to speed eventually, with no guarantees that they will.
These practices will see that it can end up costing them so much more in the long run and just not worth it.
We’re halfway there…here’s trait number five. They think about how patients are for life rather than one and done. Think quality over quantity. Best-run practices see their patients as friends and family and treat them with respect while focusing on excellent patient relations. They understand that these happy patients can be patients who return again and again, while also referring others.
These practices don’t only play the numbers game by spending a fortune on advertising and then having their staff waste time, triaging through weak enquiries to find the few new ones who are actually serious about moving forward. In some respect, they would rather serve less people. They like working with and who’ll help them grow their practice organically with word-of-mouth referrals. Or writing five-star reviews, sharing their story through social media, approving their before and after photos and making video testimonials.
They know that it’s far easier to keep these profitable existing patients coming back than struggling to find new ones, so they offer comprehensive services to include opportunities for engagement at all stages of life for the patient.
They attract more sophisticated patients who care more about their relationship than saving a dollar, and they do not cater to the price sensitive patients, that don’t value, skill and expertise as much as saving money.
Now here’s trait number six, the surgeon knows their numbers. Surgeons with the best run practices, manage their money rather than abdicate their responsibility.
They take full responsibility. For knowing what’s happening financially in their best run practice. They may have a bookkeeper and/or an accountant do the work, but they review the numbers regularly. Their team knows they’re watching the numbers and this helps avoid any unwelcome surprises. They watch their expenses and they know their return on investment on each surgical and nonsurgical procedure.
For example, before buying an expensive new device, they consider the consumer demand for the service, the supply, and how many nearby competitors offer the same service, including the price point to keep it profitable. They’ll know the time that it will take to pay it off and the advertising budget required to find the business. All of which will help prevent that new device from becoming a coat hanger. Like I see constantly
Trait number seven. The owner has a standard for excellence, regularly honing their craft to make themselves the best at what they do. They stay curious by visiting other best run practices, attending conferences, and talking with their colleagues to learn what others are doing.
Rather than having a negative defiant attitude, they ask questions and then listen back. They get outside help to discover what they don’t know what could be holding them back. Now, these best run practices also find the time to be extraordinary, and by that I means that they do what others won’t don’t or can’t do.
For example, they reply to leads within minutes versus hours. They text patients when they’re running late, so they don’t have to wait. When a challenge comes up, they focus on solutions rather than running from the problem and hoping that it just disappears and goes away.
They also delegate tasks. They dislike using people they don’t trust, but they also follow up to be sure it’s getting done as they desire, and they have very little tolerance for practice drags, such as draining staff and difficult patients.
And then lastly, trait number eight, the best run practices have owners who think big, that are competitive by nature and use that as motivation for grow. But they are also uncomfortable being the only revenue generator in the practice.
Instead, they look for ways to leverage their assets such as their patient list, reputation, experience, and staff. These owners figure out how to scale by working on their practice rather than in it.
They look at other streams of income rather than working harder and longer. Which leads to burnout and ineffectiveness. So ultimately, they spend more time finding, managing, and mentoring key players in their best run practice who become the major revenue generators. So they can focus more on the business side, such as fine tuning their processes, as well as adding more service options.
That was a lot of information!
To recap, the eight traits of best run practices, is that they have a growth mindset. They treat their staff well. The team meets regularly. They spend money to make money. They think of patients as for life, and they know their numbers. They have a standard of excellence and they think big.
There you have it.
The eight traits of the best run practices. Now hopefully this has given you lots of food for thought, as you create your own future success stories. And while there is a lot more to running your own practice like a true business so that it is a well-oiled machine that can run without YOU, having these traits are the best way for you to get started.
Ok that wraps it up for this episode.
If this was helpful to you, please subscribe to the OMD TV and Podcast Show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And please share this episode with your staff and colleagues.
If you want to learn more about Online Marketing For Doctors offers and how our team can help you generate more new patients and referring doctors, please reach out to us and book a 15-minute discovery call with us and we’ll show you the opportunities that you might have with your practice marketing. I’ll leave a link to it in the show notes below.
Thank you so much and hope to talk to you on a discovery call soon. 🥳
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