Stagnant, unchanging, same old same old, not-going-anywhere practices can suck the life out of you and your team. You can get to feeling like there’s no point to getting out of bed in the morning and you start to feel just plain bored to death.
Or, on the other side of the picture, maybe you have just re-opened your practice after lockdown for Covid-19 and it is slowly getting back up to the production levels you were used to before the pandemic. Expenses are still out-weighing income, some staff are reluctant to come back to work, and patients are still hesitant to come in.
How can you jump the practice into high level production again? That depends on overcoming 5 key barriers.
Barriers vs. Goals
- Factually, everyone needs goals to be working towards or they are going nowhere, just living each day as it comes along … virtual apathy. Therefore, the first barrier to growth is undefined goals – especially ones that inspire you and that you feel passionate about. Enthusiasm for what you are doing, learning and creating is contagious to all who are around you as well. Shake things up by doing some goal-searching for the practice (similar to soul searching for personal goals). Decide where you are going and communicate this to your team.
- A somewhat invisible barrier could be not enough leadership skills to take your team to new heights of perfection of service and care. Even though you were not taught these skills in college, the lack of them can be a barrier to the growth of your practice. (We offer an Executive Basics Course for just this reason.) (Also read GOOD BOSS, BAD BOSS.)
- Many practitioners are back to “normal production” after the pandemic while others are still struggling to get patients or clients comfortable enough to come in for service. There are a multitude of messages that can help with this. Sometimes the reluctance of your team to come back to the practice communicates to the patients rather than inspiring the patients to come see what’s new and to continue the good care you offer. This requires good communication with your team and bonuses for production levels achieved, etc.
- Next, you and your team are not necessarily marketing geniuses (your superpower is probably your profession) and you may not know how to attract enough new patients to cause rapid growth. We spend a good portion of our consulting time getting the practice’s internal marketing points all in place and functioning as well as instituting external marketing plans. Note that old marketing plans may be one of the biggest barriers because what USED TO WORK is no longer producing enough new patients. Change it up with more current marketing like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Podcasts, Blogs, updated website and so on.
- Lack of a bonus system based fairly on production and service quality on a weekly or monthly basis (NOT at the end of the whole year) is definitely a barrier to increased production. It needs to be based on objective key production indicators (statistics) with proper tools to improve stats. Managing by statistics can, all by itself, cause rapid growth when you are trained in how to read them and know what to do to increase them.(Yes, we do offer courses on this.)
How many of the above barriers exist in your practice? Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Get busy and overcome the above barriers and experience some rapid growth!
With care,
Janice Wheeler
President, AMI
Call us at 416-466-6217
for a FREE Practice Assessment!
