Do you wish you were more fully booked? Do you have holes in your schedule? Do you ever have times of the year that are “softer” than others? Do you wish you were booked out solid for the next week or three? Many practitioners pine for more tightly scheduled days since you are paying one and all to be there to deliver to patients.
What can you do about this, you might have wondered?
Here are a number of quick and dirty solutions:
- Follow up letters. If you have been in practice for more than 3 years, there are probably patients or clients that you haven’t seen for a while that have dropped off. Your staff could go through all the charts, one by one to find these people. Then you could have your staff drop the person an interested note to see how the person is doing. This can be sent by email if you have the person’s email address as you are more likely to get an answer. Do not ask if they have gone to another practice or if you should close their file (never, ever ask that). You could also ask if they are upset with the practice in any way, especially if it has really been a while. A note should be put in the chart that says that such a letter was sent so there is a record.
- Start a Referral Campaign. Ask your patients or clients to refer their friends, family, co-workers and neighbours to your practice. Give them a couple of your business cards. Anyone in the practice can be delegated to do this. Ensure that it IS being done routinely.
- Follow Up Calls. You or your staff could call patients or clients who you treated a little while ago just to see how everything is going now. Showing interest in their well-being leaves a very positive impression that you really do care.
- Email a Newsletter. Make a one page email newsletter with some interesting information … not long dissertations – more like 1-2 paragraphs. Have a joke in it or a cartoon. (Look online for these things – there are millions.) Put a little note in it: Please don’t be shy about referring friends and family to us, we will take good care of them too. You can send one of these newsletters out once a month to your client base.
Bottom Line:
There are a million things that can be done. This was just a sampling of some very easy things to do. The basic concept is that you need to outflow help and communication. By doing this, it will cause an inflow of business.
Have fun ramping up the outbound communication!
