Practice Tip 5 –New Clients

NEW CLIENTS:
THE LIFE BLOOD OF YOUR PRACTICE...

I spoke with a DVM new practice owner that was simply following the “build it and they will come” business adage and painfully waiting for new clients to arrive, all while his practice expense meter ticked away in the background! A nail biter? You bet. A couple of things need correcting with this situation.

First is the viewpoint of the owner. It’s too passive.
Fact: simply hanging out your shingle or just physically being there in most cases is not sufficient enough to attract the right amount of attention to your practice. New Clients are the life blood of your practice. You need 30 -40 of them each month for each full time DVM. Don’t ever forget this. (Note: If you have lots of new clients and are the only game in town, then just wait until you get some new hot-shot DVM move in…). So don’t wait! You need to pro-actively market - I.e. do things to turn up the spotlight on your practice and drive new clients in. Your external marketing division is one of your key 7-divisions of practice management.

Secondly, your marketing needs to be effective in bringing new people in. Effectiveness is the key word here. I am not against Yellow Pages or any other form of advertising or promotion if they are effective. So how do you know if your promotion is effective? Count the number of New Clients separately from your regular transactions. Track where they come from. Ask them “where did you find our phone number to call us today?” You may be very surprised. Remember: A healthy practice should be bringing in 30 – 40 new clients a month for each 40-hour a week DVM.

And thirdly know this: an effective marketing program creates a strong emotional response in potential clients by “pushing their button”. A button is something you push that produces a response. The response you want is obviously for new clients to choose you as their veterinarian. What is not so obvious is if you fail to properly align even one aspect of your marketing and presentation – your pricing, positioning, quality, presentation, design, staff friendliness and so on - you won’t hit your clients’ button. And these buttons can vary with different communities. So there’s not just one that is standard. You have to do your own market research in your area.
If you are at all interested in learning more about this subject then consider signing up for our 2010 Online New Client Builder workshop. It’s a 3 part workshop that gives you an excellent overview of veterinary external marketing and a step-by-step program to follow.