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Medical Conferences Need To Be More Relevant

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I have registered for a couple of conferences in the next couple of months (the  نظام تجارة النقد الاجنبى الخيارات الثنائية BAAPS and ISAPS conference in London and http://1conn.com/?binarforexar=سوق-الاسهم-السعودية-مباشر CATBBAS in Belgium).

These conferences are enjoyable because you get to see old friends and you may pick up a http://gl5.org/?prikolno=%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%B3-%D8%AB%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A-%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%8A%D9%88%D8%AA%D9%8A%D9%88%D8%A8&79a=40 titbit or a nugget that you can take back to your practice.

However, I am becoming more and more frustrated as I look through the programs of these conferences as I think they are missing a huge area when it comes to الخيارات الثنائية أفضل الكتب practice development that none of these conferences really tend to address.

There is a small section about practice management where clinic owners talk about their experience of owning their own clinics, and of course this is of interest to me because I own my own clinic, but I don’t think it is particularly helpful for http://investingtips360.com/?klaystrofobiya=%D9%83%D9%8A%D9%81-%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%85-%D8%B9%D9%86-%D9%85%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B9-%D9%88%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%87%D9%85&262=57 the majority of surgeons who do not have the desire to have their own clinic.

It is not about owning your own clinic

…the struggle that most of us are facing can be boiled down to one sentence –

how do I get and keep customers?

Since opening my clinic, I had to rapidly start thinking of my practice as a business.

I spent a lot of time going to seminars and meetings with other business owners, and I have realised that حساب التداول التجريبي الخيارات الثنائية it doesn’t matter what business you are in you need to spend time working on getting and keeping customers.

موعد تداول اسهم ام القرى This is true for car mechanics, shopkeepers, accountants, lawyers, builders and doctors. 

When it comes to getting and keeping customers, of course doing a good job is كيف التداول بالذهب في الامارات a crucial part of it.

…and medical conferences cover this aspect very well.

However, the gains that you come away with are marginal and will often be aimed at making your clinical work more efficient or easier in some way

http://asect.org.uk/?ilyminaciya=%D8%AB%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A-%D8%AE%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%84&6dc=54 …only rarely will there actually be a tangible effect on the outcome experienced by the patient.

I would like to see more time spent on looking at the patient experience as a whole.

This would encompass a much wider remit and would mean looking at all aspects of customer service,

  • how enquiries are dealt with whether they are by telephone or e-mail
  • what can you do if you miss a call or can’t get hold of someone
  • what your system for reminders are
  • what details are sent to patients before consultation and before their procedure
  • how patients are treated نصيحة الخيارات الثنائية during and after their consultation
  • what get link ongoing contact you have with patients before, during and after their operation

These are areas that we never talk about but I strongly believe will have a much more شراء اسهم من بنك الراجحي profound impact on your patient’s satisfaction and ultimately your patient’s result.

The stunning thing is, that by looking at these aspects and by engaging with patients at every level, you will actually كيف اشتري سهم achieve a better outcome.

This is because,  follow url results are so often subjective,

…so it is not enough to just give good clinical outcomes,

…it is important to make the patients feel they are being treated well and that they are being looked after

…and if you combine this with a good clinical outcome – rather than just having a happy patient you will have a قناة الخيارات الثنائية raving advocate that will spread the word and promote your services better than any advert ever could.

We all spend a lot of time learning how to do surgery and perform procedures, and I think it is quite right that we continue to develop professionally and keep up-to-date with the latest techniques and products.

However, in my experience, most patients are happy with the results of their surgery and whether we like it or not, the fact is that follow most patients will get an average surgical result.

I have found that go here the difference between the poor, average and good results, comes with the other aspects of their care.

For instance,

  • if they have spoken to someone on the phone or at the hospital who has been rude or unhelpful
  • if they haven’t been sent the right invoice or been treated well on the ward
  • or haven’t got the appropriate information following their discharge

…these are things that can turn a good surgical result into an unhappy patient

…and the flip side is true, that an go average surgical result can be turned into a happy patient when all of these things are done right.

I am constantly thinking of ways that I can get and keep customers and dedicate large portions of my working week to this end.

Yet I find that many doctors give absolutely no consideration to this aspect of their practice at all, and are subsequently delivering less than optimal results for their patients.

I believe that this is all part of good medical practice and that doctors in the independent sector need to spend a lot more time considering the service that they are delivering and making sure that their patients are happy with the whole process.

It is the lack of this kind of support and information that is currently available that has led me to offer support and mentoring to other consultants in private practice.

If you are interested in finding out more and would like to come to a discovery day at my clinic in Birmingham, you can find out more here and we can arrange a time to talk.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to the conferences, but am not looking for any major breakthroughs.

…the only major breakthroughs in my practice in the last couple of years have been from learning about how to run a business rather than how to do surgery.

You Get Out What You Put In (So You Need To Put In)

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antiques-road-trip

I am loving Antiques Road Trip at the moment.

In case you haven’t seen it, two antiques dealers travel around the country with a budget of £200 and they have to buy antiques and then sell them at auction with the aim of making the biggest profit.

They go around and look for antiques that they like, but more importantly, that they think will make a profit at the auction, because they are not buying the antiques to have at their home – they are doing it to make money.

Their budget is set, so sometimes they see pieces that they can’t afford, so they don’t buy them – but only because they are told how much they are allowed to spend.

If they were left to their own devices, if they saw something for sale that they thought they could bring to an auction and make a profit on, they would buy it.

Who wouldn’t?

If you can buy something for £x and sell it for more than £x, then you would do it, wouldn’t you?

That is what investing is.

Putting money into something with the aim of getting more money out.

I talk to some doctors about my Discovery Days and they think it sounds great and they would love to spend a day really focusing on their private practice

…but they can’t afford it at the moment.

I totally understand this as it is a big investment at £997, but what do they mean when they say they can’t afford it?

Do they mean that they can’t physically get their hands on £997 at the moment?

….in which case, fine.

The Discovery Day probably isn’t really for them anyway.

…or do they mean that they think it is too expensive?

I think most people think it is too expensive.

But what you really need to think is

am I likely to get more than £997 back from my investment?

If they answer is yes, then do it

…but if not, then don’t

That is the question you really need to ask yourself .

It is the same with advertising.

People say that it is too expensive to advertise, but that is nonsense.

You either get a positive return on your investment or you don’t.

If you get a good return then it is worth doing – the problem is that most people don’t know if they are getting a return on the investment and don’t have processes to measure it, so they just dismiss it.

When I am looking at advertising and PR, I really want someone to say to me,

if you pay me some money, I will guarantee that you will get substantially more money back

In other words – you will get a good return on your investment.

You see, this is not about buying something nice for your home.

It is not a question of ‘can I afford this’

It is a question of ‘will I get a good return on my investment’ – plain and simple.

I have spent a lot on advertising and promoting my practice and I have learned what works and what doesn’t.

…but I have learned the hard way!

Spending thousands on an advertisement in a magazine and nobody calls the number!

I wish they had given me a guarantee because I would have got my money back (or they would have made sure that people would have called the number before allowing me to place the advert).

That is why I am offering you a guarantee

If you are accepted on a place on the Discovery Day, then I will guarantee that you will get a return on your investment.

Not only that – I guarantee that you will get a return on your investment in 2 months.

You will make at least £1000 in the first two months after the Discovery Day by implementing the plans that we make.

…and if you continue to implement – it will continue to pay dividends and you can expect to make a more significant return on your investment.

I am offering a no-risk guarantee.

As part of the Discovery Day, I will keep in touch with you every fortnight to make sure that you are on track with your plans and we can make adjustments along the way.

We will track your monthly revenue for the 2 months after the Discovery Day and compare it with your revenue in the preceding month.

…if you haven’t make at least £997 extra revenue in the 2 months, then I will refund your original investment IN FULL.

So, you can’t lose.

You may ask, why am I doing this?

Surely it is a  risk for me.

I am doing this for two reasons:

  1. I don’t want anyone to feel short-changed or ripped off because I rely on my reputation and so in the unlikely circumstance that you do not benefit financially from the Day, at least you will not have to pay for it.
    I think that the likelihood of this happening is very slim because I have an application process to make sure that I won’t waste your time and will only see people who I feel that I can significantly help.
  2. I want to prove the value in working on your business.
    I want to show you that the best way to grow your practice is to focus on looking after your patients, not necessarily from the clinical input.
    I hope that you might want to carry on working with me and join my Private Consulting Class, which is a mastermind group of Consultants who meet regularly and have regular contact to make sure that things are progressing towards their goals.

If you think that might be interested in coming along to a Discovery Day, then you can find out more by clicking here.

Whether or not you come along, just remember, that if you want your practice to grow – it is not going to just happen.

Well, actually, it probably is going to just happen, because most people’s private practices do grow organically over time – but it takes years.

If you don’t want to wait until it is time to retire before you have a thriving private practice, then you need to invest in it.

That means investing your time or your money (and probably both).

Only then can you expect to get a return on investment.

You reap what you sow – so if you don’t sow anything, don’t be surprised when nothing grows!

 

How To Get To The Moon (And Back)

Space Shuttle Landing
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I’ve heard it said that, if you want to go to the moon, all you need to do is to plan how to get there and how to get back.

The trick is to plan both before you leave.

The problem with many doctors with a successful private practice is that they believe that it is worth something when they want to retire or stop operating.

Unfortunately this is not the case.

If you are running any business, you need to accept that at some point, you will want to retire or stop doing it.

This may not be for many years, but you need to start thinking about it early.

If you start thinking about selling your practice when you want to sell your practice, you are toast.

Why would someone pay you for your practice?

What would they be buying?

Think of it from their point of view.

You may have a very successful practice with busy outpatient clinics and theatre lists, but why are people coming to see you?

Is it because you are a nice person and well known in the region and you produce good results for your patients?

If so, what is your practice worth to me?

Answer: not much!

If you want your practice to be an asset that is worth something when you retire, rather than a liability (because you are worried about who will look after your patients), then you need to start thinking about your trip back from the moon now, not when you are up there.

You need to develop a brand.

You need to build assets in to your practice that sets you apart from others.

Of course you need to be a nice person and deliver good outcomes, but there is so much more.

This is what my next ‘How To Grow Your Private Practice’ Meeting is all about.

How to build a brand that will differentiate you from your competitors.

How to run a practice that delivers fantastic outcomes and that people want to come to whether or not you are a nice person and well known locally.

How to deliver a consistently good service to your patients that is independent of how you are feeling that day or whether they happened to enquire in the school holidays or when your secretary was off sick.

The meeting will be dedicated to helping you to build your own personal brand and to develop assets in your practice that will have value and be worth something when you retire.

This stuff is not easy and it takes commitment and dedication.

But it will payoff in the short-term and in the long-term.

In the short-term, more patients will want to come to see you and you will be able to treat them better and give them better outcomes.

…and in the long-term, you will have a system that you can pass on and allow someone else to gain value from, so that you will be investing in your own personal pension.

Click here for more details about the next meeting, but remember, places are limited, so register today.

Drop Your NHS Sessions While Maintaining Your Income

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Dreams Are Free.

Goals Have A Cost.

Time, Effort, Sacrifice And Sweat.

How Will You Pay For Your Goals?

-Usain Bolt

Everyone has dreams.

Dreams are easy.

Whenever I tell people that I have left the NHS and I am now in full time private practice, pretty much everyone I speak to looks at me and says:

I wish I could do that.

It is a shame really because there was a time when people would think you were crazy to leave a full-time permanent NHS consultant job before retirement age.

But now people look in envy and most wish they could do the same.

Since I have started talking to people about developing their private practice I have realised there is a big difference between dreams and goals.

Everyone has a dream, this is a good thing.

You might want to reduce or completely cut your NHS commitment.

You might want to pay off your mortgage or move house, get a nicer car or put your children through private school.

These are things that we all dream of. 

Having more money or more free time or both.

If you ask most people if they would like to earn more and work less – it is a ‘yes’.

It is easy to dream about these things.

But it is another matter if you actually think about and set goals that will allow you to achieve you dream and even more difficult still to ensure that you achieve your goals.

You see, goals are tangible and specific outcomes. 

Goals are things that you can be held accountable to. 

Goals are hard and most people would rather just dream because it is a lot easier.

Perhaps your dream is to drop two sessions in the NHS.

Well if you want to achieve that dream what would need to happen?

Perhaps you need to make more money in your private practice to account for the shortfall in your salary.

So, how much more money would you need to make, an extra £1,000 a month, say?

So, what would need to happen to make an extra £1,000 a month?

Do you know what your average customer value is?

Maybe you need to treat an extra one or two patients every month.

How many more people would you need to see in clinic in order to generate one or two extra operations?

Do you know what the conversion rate for outpatient appointment to operation is?

Perhaps you need to see 4 more people that month.

So how many more enquiries would you need in order to generate 4 more initial consultations?

Do you know what your conversion rate from enquiry to consultation is?

Perhaps you need 20 more enquiries every month.

That is 5 more enquiries every week.

Now you have a goal.

If you can regularly and predictably get 5 more enquiries every week, you should be able to generate enough financial stability to drop the NHS sessions and achieve your dream.

Of course, you need to monitor it and make sure the new enquiries you generate are as good a quality as previous enquiries to make sure that your conversion rates are representative and that it all filters through to the increase in revenue or profit that you have forecast.

Of course it does not end there.

The next step is to think about how you are going to generate an average of 5 new enquiries per week every week.

How do you generate enquiries now?

Have you even thought about that?

I will always maintain your best source of enquiries is your current database, both of patients and GPs. 

This is the first place to go if you want to build your practice.

The last place most people think of is your easiest and cheapest source of income.

5 Steps To Building A Valuable Practice

Download my FREE guide where I share the lessons that I have learned while setting up and building my own clinic.

Check out your inbox for a copy of my guide.

A good source of new patients is by holding a free consultation event.

It is amazing that although many people offer free consultations in their normal clinics, if you start advertising that you are holding a free consultation event, you are much more likely to get patients to attend.

Make it an evening event to make it sound more special.

You do not necessarily have to lay on anything too fancy – you could just have it as part of your normal clinic.

Of course you need to get people to attend and again you cannot just wish this to happen.

You need to set goals.

Make a goal of say three people.  You should be able to get three people to come to your event shouldn’t you?

How are you going to get those three people?

Start by inviting your current database.

Send out an email or a letter to all the patients on your database letting them know that you are having a free consultation evening.

Ideally you will have segmented your database (will will talk about this at the next meeting).

You will have a group of patients who have enquired but never come to the clinic and these are the ones that might be worth writing to if you have their address.

You will also have those who have already been to your clinic and so you might write to these and ask them to bring along or recommend the event to a friend.

You could make your consultation event have a theme.

If you are an orthopaedic surgeon, it could be patients with knee pain or if you a dermatologist, it could be skin lesions.

You could write to the GPs to let them know you are holding this free event and maybe include some cards or flyers to leave in the waiting room for their patients.

These sort of things take time and effort to think about and execute. 

And you need to monitor the response.

It is hard work to start off with but if it works, it is the sort of thing you can repeat every month, perhaps changing the topic of the event.

So that is your plan to get an extra three patients a month – where do you get the other two from?

What about people who have enquired over the last month or two and for whatever reason you have not been able to get hold of.

Would it be worth giving them another call?

Let me answer that question for you:  Yes it would!

What about people who came to see you in the last few months who said they would go away and have a think about it.

What about the DNAs, have you followed up with them at all? 

These are all great cheap sources of patients.

They are cheap because they have already found you and made an appointment to see you so you have got their contact details.

Everyone is busy and if you are in a competitive speciality patients might well be receiving topical and relevant information on an ongoing basis from your competitors and so it is easy for them to forget about you unless you remind them.

Again this sort of thing is difficult to start off with but if you find a system that works, you can just implement it into your practice so that you automatically contact patients a week after they have enquired or a month after they have been to the clinic to check in with them and see if they need any more help or information.

You will be surprised at how effective this is in improving your conversion rates.  It also shows you to be a caring person and it is reassuring to the patient that you are engaged and contacting them to give them the sense that they will be looked after afterwards if they do choose to have the procedure with you.

Do not just take my word for all of this, try it yourself.

If you do try it, make sure you have a baseline of numbers before you start so you know whether it is making a difference or not.

You need to look at the events at every step of your practice and you need to measure and monitor these regularly, at a minimum monthly (if you don’t know what these are – download my free guide below).

5 Steps To Building A Valuable Practice

Download my FREE guide where I share the lessons that I have learned while setting up and building my own clinic.

Check out your inbox for a copy of my guide.

You see, I never said this was going to be easy.

It takes hard work and sweat which is why most people do not do it and they just continue to dream about financial freedom or a busy successful practice.

If you really want to make changes in your life you need to have goals, not dreams. 

You need to hold yourself accountable to those goals and if you do not reach the goals take a look back at them and break them down as much as possible into constituent parts to see where you need to improve things.

Is it that people were not taking action on the email or letter you sent out, talking about the consultation evening?

In which case you need to change the letter, change the people you send it to or make it specific for a particular topic or ailment or not make it specific for a particular topic and make it general.

Is it because you were trying to follow-up on patients who have enquired and you could not get hold of them?

Do you need to send them a text or do you need an alternative method of contact?

On your contact form, do you ask for email and/or phone.

You do not want to ask for too much information, but perhaps some people prefer the options.

If you cannot get someone on a mobile phone number, do you text them?

Do you realise the email open rates are usually around 20-30% whereas text open rates are around 90% in the first five minutes.

You heard that right, in the first five minutes!

Text open rates are not only massively higher but they get read straightaway.

If you are not utilising text messages you should be. 

You see this stuff is not simple and you may not get results straightaway.

You may have to tweak things and change tack.

General Eisenhower said:

Plans Are Useless, But Planning is Indispensable

Or as Mike Tyson said:

Everyone Has A Plan ‘Till They Get Punched In The Mouth

We need to be prepared to change our plans if we are going to achieve our goals.

If you do not have any goals, you will not have any plans.

If you do not have any plans, all you have is dreams and dreams are nice but they do not count for anything. 

If I have put you off making goals and making a difference then that is fine, carry on as you are.

There is no shame in that, but do not be surprised if you are in about the same position this time next year as you are now.

If you want to make changes you have to do something about it.

Remember Einstein said:

The Definition Of Insanity Is Doing The Same Thing Over And Over And Expecting A Different Result

Make plans, make changes, make a difference.

“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.”

-Jack Dixon

I Gave Away My Secrets, But That’s OK!

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This weekend, we have just had our first ‘How To Grow Your Private Practice’ Meeting here in my clinic in Birmingham.

It was certainly a long day and I knew it was always going to be difficult deciding on what to focus on and what areas we could realistically cover in a day.

In the end, it was actually quite easy to decide on where everyone would get the most benefit.

I’ve been doing some mystery shopping (I encourage you to mystery shop yourself and others, you learn a lot) and it is very clear that most people do not have robust systems in place to deal with an initial enquiry, and perhaps more importantly, to follow up on that enquiry.

Not only is that letting business (and ultimately money) slip through your fingers, but it is also not a very good way to treat people.

Even though we are in the private sector, we are still doctors and at the end of the day, an enquiry is a patient who is contacting us for help.

If we do not respond to that enquiry promptly and efficiently with relevant information, then we are not giving our patients a very good service.

Forget about advertising or PR or doing a lunch meeting for the local GPs.

If you are not able to deal with an enquiry effectively when it comes through, don’t waste your time trying to get more enquiries!

You should focus on looking at how best to service an initial enquiry, whether it comes through by phone or email, and put in place a system so that every enquiry is dealt with in the same way.

This is basic stuff, but it is absolutely vital.

Not only that, it is relatively simple thing to implement.

And that is the next thing – implementation.

It is all very well spending money going to a meeting to learn about how to make your practice better, but the only point in doing this is if you are actually going to make a change to what you do.

To be honest, this is the hard part.

My wife was actually a bit worried about me hosting this meeting because she knows that I have spent the last 3 years attending business conferences, at mastermind meetings and in marketing seminars learning how to build a solid business.

She thought that I was crazy to tell everyone all of the secrets and tips that I had learnt about and honed in my own practice, but I actually wasn’t too worried.

For two reasons:

1)First of all, one of the things that I talk about is having goals and one of my goals is to do more of what I enjoy. I actually really enjoy the process of building a sustainable business.  If I can spend part of my working day helping others to build their businesses, then that will be enjoyable to me, that is why I set up the Private Consulting Class.

2) Secondly, it is a sad truth that most people will not implement half of what I talked about. We all get so busy doing our jobs, that it is hard to find the time to spend on the things that will make our practice run so much better, but that aren’t actually essential.

Everyone who came to the meeting already had a good private practice.  They were busy and making money from it.  They could easily go back to work on Monday morning and not change anything and it would all still work fine.  They are not accountable to anyone.

And this is one of the problems.  You haven’t got anyone to tell you off if you don’t implement things or to praise you when you do.  So it is really hard to actually motivate yourself to do these things.

Trust me, I know!

That is why I am very keen for everyone who attended to feel that they got value from the meeting.  Not just because it cost several hundred pounds, but because they gave up a precious Saturday away from their families to come to attend.

I know that each person could achieve a significant return on their investment if they just implemented a couple of small changes to their practice.

So we all agreed on some achievable goals for the next two weeks and I am going to call everyone up to see if they have achieved what they said they would.

You know what, I bet they will have.  Because I am holding them accountable.

The fact is, that it makes no difference to me whether they achieve their goals or not, but the mere fact that I have said that I will call them and check up on them puts a significant extra level of pressure on them.

This is how this stuff works.

When I was in my mastermind groups for business growth, we had regular coaching calls and would talk about what I had achieved since the last call and what I was going to achieve by the next call.

It is amazing how powerful that is.

The day before the call, I would force myself to do the blog post, or write the email sequence because I knew my coach was going to be asking.

Of course I could lie about it, or I could just say I hadn’t done it, it didn’t matter to my coach, but the psychology of being held accountable to someone is really strong.

Goal setting

Accountability

Knowing what to focus on

That is what the Private Consulting Class is all about.

If you couldn’t make it to the last meeting but are interested in attending the next one, then you can register to be put on the Priority List here.

I hold the meetings at my clinic in Birmingham and the numbers I can accommodate are small.  If you want to be the first to know about the next meeting, register your interest here to get Priority Access to a place at the next meeting.