Be Easy To Do Business With
By · CommentsIt’s important NOT to project your assumptions on your patients and not to spend their money for them. You never know someone’s financial wherewithal so keep your options open.
An aesthetic patient may have the cash but may not want to use it – especially during uncertain times or they may not have all the cash and need an easy-pay alternative.
If you don’t offer your patients an easy way to pay for your services because the finance company charges you a fee, you are getting 100% of nothing! The patient is not going to wait until they have the cash. They will go to your competitor to see if they are willing to help them get what they want now rather than wait. Now you lose not only that patient and the revenues from that procedure but you also lose their future revenues and those of their friends.
When you offer financial alternatives, it can change the mindset of the aesthetic patient. Because now the patient is thinking HOW to move forward rather than IF they should move forward.
Work with a vendor like CareCredit to put together great patient pay plans that are easy on your wallet as well as your patient’s.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
Is Price Everything?
By · CommentsThere is one more false belief that can cripple your effective interactions with your aesthetic patients and that is the one about money – or lack thereof.
If you and your staff believe “nobody has any money”, “they can’t afford it” and “my patients are cheap”, you will project those beliefs onto your patients so they don’t buy as well as your prospective patients who will appear cheap to you because that is what you believe. But please consider this:
If pricing was the only determining factor, then:
- - everyone would drive a Honda
- - everyone would wear a Timex watch
- - everyone would shop at Walmart
- - everyone would eat at McDonalds and so on..
I promise you, the majority of your aesthetic patients are not looking for the cheapest price but they are looking for a good result at a fair price so it’s the value they want.
The point is if your patient is only concerned about price, it’s because you haven’t educated them about other variables they should consider when choosing an aesthetic physician.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
The Aesthetic Physician in 2010 and Beyond
By · CommentsThankfully, the worst of the Recession is behind us. A recent survey on CNN shows that 27% of people believe the economy is going to be much better… and 77% of that same group of people says they personally are doing better – yeah!
To read what that means for you, and how your competitors are reacting, CLICK HERE.
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See FREE videos on www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com where Catherine Maley lays out 5 easy ways to introduce aesthetics to your current patients. Her firm specializes in attracting cash-paying patients to a medical practice using PR, advertising and creative marketing strategies. Catherine can also be reached at (877) 339-8833.
You have (or had) patients who feel they were not treated right by your receptionist, a staff person or you. It could have been something benign such as your receptionist did not acknowledge the patient when they first walked in the door and it could be something more serious such as they believe they got a mediocre or bad result and have lost trust in you.
On the one hand, aesthetic patients have elephant memories. They may be prone to holding grudges if they are treated badly in your practice or if they “perceive” they were treated badly.
Frankly, your patient’s perception is your reality so you have to deal with their emotions. Please remember this:
Aesthetic patients won’t remember what you told them.
Aesthetic patients won’t remember what you showed them.
Aesthetic patients will remember how you made them feel.
On the other hand, patients can be quick to forgive IF they feel you value them and want to make them happy. That could mean you simply reconnect with them or it may mean you show significant remorse so they know you understand how they feel.
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth It
Obviously, the best thing you can do is to avoid bad feelings with your patients so you don’t lose them. You want to have the friendliest and most informative receptionist answering your telephones. You want to employ staff that bonds quickly with the patients and knows how to direct the patient to a decision to choose you over your competitors. You personally want to connect with the patient so they like, trust and believe in your recommendations.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
How a Multi-Million Dollar Practice Becomes Just That
By · CommentsThe multi-million dollar practice becomes just that because they get good at the fundamentals which are to:
- - Attract high-value patients
- - Qualify them to ensure they are a good fit
- - Convert them to procedures, treatments and products
- - Retain them for a lifetime
- - Testimonials – document all the good things they say about you
- - Referrals – continually encourage referrals from other like-minded patients
The successful aesthetic practice realizes every step in the patient’s experience is vital so they spend time, money and resources to train, retrain, enforce, and reinforce never-ending improvement in their staff, in their processes and in their promotional efforts.
They see the value of one patient and do all they can to attract, convert, nurture and retain that patient as well as their friends, family and co-workers.
They most likely are no more skilled than you are in aesthetic medicine; however, they are skilled at patient relations and promotion. Those skills make the difference between a 6-figure and 7-figure aesthetic practice.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
Challenge of Promoting a Service vs. a Product
By · CommentsYou, the aesthetic physician is in a tough position when it comes to promoting aesthetic services. You don’t have a product your patient can hold, touch and feel. You don’t have a product she can use all of her senses to see, feel, hear, taste and touch a tangible product to then determine its value to her.
With an intangible service such as aesthetic enhancement, she can’t “see” the quality of your materials or the effort that went into the details of producing the finished piece which is the result she gets.
Since the aesthetic patient can’t see the excellence of your expertise and cannot touch or feel the superiority and knowledge that will go into the aesthetic service you will provide her, you are at a disadvantage.
The aesthetic patient has to go by proof such as photos, testimonials, your credentials, celebrity, your office, your shoes, your greeting, your staff and any other detailed detective work she can do to give her clues to help her determine if you are the right physician for her to give her what she wants.
Give her as much social proof as you can so she can comfortably and confidently choose you over all others.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
Fix Your Phones
By · CommentsWe offer a mystery-shopping service for our clients. That means we call their office many times asking various questions about their services and then we critique them to determine how the calls could have been handled better.
Boy, do we get an earful! Many of these calls go so poorly that when I report back to the doctor my findings, they almost don’t believe what I am telling them we heard. They are sure I’m exaggerated so, we now tape these calls.
I continue to be amazed at how much physicians complain to me their business is down, their schedule has holes in it and their marketing doesn’t work when I know their issue is “bad phones”. Nothing else you do means anything if the patient can’t get through, is put on hold or is handled in a curt way. Almost as bad is a nice person answering the phone but having no idea how to answer questions and not having enough sense to admit it, get the caller’s name and promise to have a more knowledgeable staff person call them back with the answers to their questions within the hour.
The average practice loses more than ½ million dollars per year on bad phone techniques. Please get your front office staff trained properly on how to answer the phone, bond with the caller, answer their questions and book the appointment. It could make the difference between thriving and surviving this year.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
What’s the Objective of Your Website Home Page?
By · CommentsMost doctors get this wrong. They truly believe the home page is designated to tell the prospective patients all about them, their credentials, skills, expertise and then the laundry list of services they offer.
I guarantee – that’s not it! The true objective of your Website Home Page is to get the casual web surfer to stop-notice-act once they land on your site. How do you ensure that happens? You answer the burning question most on the prospective patient’s mind which is,
“Hey, what’s in it for me?”
The secret is to talk about the patient first – not you. They don’t care about you – yet. Right now, all they care about is do you have a solution to what is bothering me right now? That can be a tall order; however, because you offer many services which is why the most sophisticated practices put up separate Websites for different procedures.
A typical aesthetic consumer is looking for information to a specific procedure so design your Website to give that to them in the form of free reports and videos they can view when they provide their name and email so you can follow-up. Start with emotional copy that addresses their fears and apprehensions, show lots of before/after photos and as much social proof (patient testimonials) as possible. Then, get into you specifically.
I guarantee if you first give the patient what they want which is information, they will then be much more open to learning more about you.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
How Do You Follow Up After the Patient Consultation?
By · CommentsYou may be under the belief that once a prospective patient leaves your office without booking the procedure you and your office just spent an hour talking about, all is lost. You may be assuming they weren’t interested or they got sticker shock or they just chickened out. Not necessarily….
Patients today can be fickle consumers who shop around. There is a very good chance they visited you as well as several of your competitors so they feel as if they can make an educated decision based on comparison shopping.
Let’s say you did everything right and now you are stuck because you don’t know how or even if you should follow up for fear of looking as if you are chasing the patient. Fear not! Use these tactics to follow up professionally and close the procedure:
- Send a handwritten note to the prospective patient immediately. Express how much you and your staff enjoyed meeting them and that “Sara” will be following up on Friday if you don’t hear back sooner;
- Now be sure Sara calls back on Friday to check in to see what additional questions they may have and then attempts to close the procedure;
- Have your patient coordinator call the patient with an important development that just came up; i.e., CareCredit is offering a new 0% financing program or there’s been a cancellation so if they can book now, they can save $500 or whatever.
- Lastly, mail/email them a current article you just found on the Internet talking about the very procedure they are interested in and, again, ask for a decision
And, if none of that works, simply add them to your database so they can receive your invitations, newsletters and email blasts because you just never know when they are ready for you.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
Don’t Mess With Price-Buyers
By · CommentsYou have probably felt the pressure to lower your prices during these tough times – I know I have – but you want to re-think that strategy.
The pure price-buyer is thinking about only one thing and that is “How can I squeeze every discount and freebie out of this practice before I say yes?” They will haggle and spend your staff’s time going back and forth so by the time they are done, nobody is happy except the frugal patient. They are perfectly content knowing you didn’t make a profit off of them and now they’ll tell their other penny-pitching friends to visit and do the same. Is that what you want? I don’t think so.
In case you’re not convinced, here are other reasons to let these thrifty patients go (especially to your competitors):
- - They take up all your time: they will beat you up on price and then want to think about it so they can beat you up some more later. Now they are wasting your time and money.
- - They do all the complaining because they learned long ago the squeaky wheel gets the oil so now they are unpleasant as well as cheap.
- - They drive off your good customers because they bring negativity to your office and infect you and your staff so you are not at your best for your best patients.
- - If they came for price, they will leave for price so do you really want to work with this fickle consumer?
A much better strategy is to see less patients but spend more time and energy on your most loyal, affluent patients who understand you get what you pay for. They want top quality service from someone they know, like and trust and price is not their ultimate deciding factor.
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For more Free tips and videos, visit www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com. Catherine Maley, MBA is Author of Your Aesthetic Practice/What Your Patients Are Saying and her firm offers everything you need to succeed in aesthetic medicine. You can call Catherine at (877) 339-8833 or email her at info@CosmeticImageMarketing.com.
