One Time or Lifetime Patient?
As a surgeon, it makes sense that you focus all of your efforts on finding “one-and-done” prospective patients ready for plastic surgery.
However, it’s difficult to win today with that strategy.
When you change your strategy and mindset from a one-time patient to a lifetime patient, your world opens up to new opportunities.
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One Time or Lifetime Cosmetic Patient
Because after consulting with plastic surgeons for over 20 years, I have found that plastic surgeons tend to focus on surgery and that creates a “one-and-done” mindset.
Because if you’re a surgeon, it makes sense you want to perform surgery. So, you focus all of your efforts on finding prospective patients ready for plastic surgery.
However, it’s difficult to win today with that strategy. You will go broke trying to find enough “needle in the haystack” plastic surgery patients ready for surgery in today’s competitive world.
When you change your strategy and mindset from a one-time patient to a lifetime patient, your world opens up to new opportunities.
This might help….
Think of every single cosmetic patient as a $50,000 revenue stream.
One patient can be worth $50,000 when you consider what they themselves invest in your surgical and non-surgical cosmetic services, but also what their friends, family, colleagues and internet friends invest in your services as well…..when done right.
When you look at it this way, you realize you don’t need to spend as much time and money on “one-and-done” plastic surgery patients because you have a steady stream of patients who return, refer and review.
For example, if your average surgical procedure is $8K, it takes 125 of them to make one million dollars. However, you only need 20 patients when they are worth $50K to you to get to the million-dollar mark.
Do you see how exciting that is? Now you can scale to multi-millions of dollars per year because you are working smarter and not harder on these one-time hits.
That sounds great but how do you do that?
How do you fill up your practice with more of these high worth patients?
The secret is to make your patients feel special because they are.
Treat your patients like your family and friends and they will reciprocate.
But don’t leave this to chance. It’s not your patient’s job to nurture a relationship with you.
It’s you and your staff’s job to treat these patients with friendliness, kindness, respect and continue to nurture these relationships for a lifetime.
Here are 3 ways to segment and nurture your plastic surgery patients for a liftetime:
- VIP Status
After a patient has had surgery with you, invite them back for their post-op visit and let them know you have a gift waiting for them.
Also let them know you’ll be taking “after” photos and you would appreciate a video testimonial if they wouldn’t mind.
Now present them with a VIP card that entitles them to special perks for the next year. Some perks could include:
- Valet Parking
- No-Waiting Botox Appointments
- Massage chair session in private room
- 20% Off all laser treatments
- Free Monthly Peel and so on
They will feel so special, they are bound to brag about you to their friends.
2.Exclusive Private Events
Once COVID subsides, Hold fun catered events in your office after hours for your surgical patients and they are to bring a friend to introduce to you and your staff.
You can have special guests such as an author or artist or give a mini presentation on what’s new in the world of plastic surgery and non-surgical technologies.
Your patients who had surgery can show off their results and talk you up and their friends can bond with you and your staff and talk about the possibilities of surgery.
Offer the guests a complimentary surgical consultation gift card and offer to book their consultation at your event to save them time.
3.Patient Loyalty Program
In today’s competitive world, it’s smart to do everything humanly possible to attract a new patient to you and then KEEP them for the long run.
However, our industry has been fairly commoditized, but you don’t want to compete on price. Instead, offer a better patient experience and reward them for returning, referring and reviewing WITHOUT discounting.
If you want an easy way to do this, just text the word EASY to 415-377-8700
Now, There are many loyalty programs available but most of them fall flat for a variety of reasons:
They are too complicated for the patients to understand and get excited about
The staff is confused by all the rules involved
And they are poorly marketed so they just fizzle out.
So please be sure you choose a loyalty program that is easy for your staff to implement and your patients are eager to participate in.
Again, If you want an easy way to do this, just text the word EASY to 415-377-8700
The point is to spend as much time building your practice from the inside out with patients who know, like and trust you as you do trying to attract new stranger Internet patients.
So now that you know more, do you want a one time or lifetime cosmetic patient? Please say lifetime 😉
Ok, that’s it for this week.
As always, thanks so much for listening and please subscribe to Beauty and the Biz if you haven’t already
A review would also be appreciated if you are getting value
And I’d love to hear from you.
Transcript:
Beauty and the Biz
Ep.78: One Time or Lifetime Patient
Catherine Maley, MBA: Hello and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery. I’m your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice and consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and more profits. And in this episode, we’re going to focus on the one time or lifetime cosmetic patients. And I hope I can give you a new perspective on this. Because after consulting with plastic surgeons for over 20 years, I have found that they oftentimes tend to focus on surgery. And that creates a one and done mindset. Because if you’re a surgeon, obviously it makes a ton of sense for you to want to perform surgery. So, you focus all of your efforts, all of your budget on finding prospective patients ready for plastic surgery. However, I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s very difficult to win today with that strategy. Because you can literally go broke trying to find enough needle in the haystack plastic surgery patients ready for surgery in today’s competitive world, one of the issues I see is you spend a ton of money on leads. And that is exactly what you should be doing if and this is a big if, if you have your ducks in a row when the phone rings. So, you have to be able to convert these callers to appointments, appointments to consult and they have to say yes and actually pay you money or those leads are just what they are, leads. Nothing counts until money changes hands.
So, when you change your strategy and your mindset from a onetime patient to a lifetime patient, your world really does open up to new opportunities. Now, this might help you change your perspective. Think of every single cosmetic patient as a $50,000 revenue stream. Now one patient can be worth $50,000, when you consider what they themselves invest in your surgical and non-surgical cosmetic services, but also what their friends, family colleagues and internet friends invest in your services as well. But you’ve got to do it right. So, when you look at it this way, you realize you don’t need to spend as much time and money on one and done plastic surgery patients because you have a steady stream of patients who return, refer and review. So, for example, if your average surgical procedure is $8,000. And you know what it is I know a lot of you have $50,000 procedures but I just want to keep it real because you could have anywhere from a you know a 5000 procedure to a 50,000. But I just want to keep it real. So, if you have a surgical procedure that’s $8,000, it takes 125 of them to make $1 million dollars. However, you only need one of these patients when they’re worth 50,000 to you to get to that million-dollar mark. Do you see how exciting that can be? So now you can scale to multi millions of dollars per year because you’re working smarter and not harder on these onetime hits. Now that sounds great but how do you do that? Well, how do you fill up your practice with more of these high worth patients. The secret is to make your patients feel special because they are, they really are. They’re the ones growing your practice for you or they should be. Treat your patients like your family and your friends and I swear they will reciprocate. I have seen this over and over. You can run a factory like one and done operation or you could slow it down, get to know your patients and live a longer healthier life and more profitable by the way. But don’t leave this to chance. Okay, it’s not your patients’ job to nurture a relationship with you, it’s you and your staff’s job to treat these patients with friendliness, kindness, respect and continue to nurture these relationships for a lifetime.
So, I’m going to give you three ways to segment and then nurture your plastic surgery patients for a lifetime. And I’m going to say it right now, not every patient is going to be your best friend or your best patient advocate. You know you have some patients who you don’t love, they don’t love you, they didn’t love their result. But please don’t focus on the negative, focus on the 97% that do love you, would love you a lot more, would refer a lot more often, would do an awful lot more for you to grow your practice if you would only nurture them. So, here’s the first idea and I call it the VIP status. Now after a patient has had surgery with you, invite them back for their post op visit and let them know you have a gift waiting for them. Now also let them know that you’ll be taking their after photos and you would appreciate a video testimonial as well, if they wouldn’t mind. Now present them with a VIP card that entitles them to special perks for the next year. Now some of those perks could include valet parking, if you’re in a city, no waiting Botox appointment, you could have a massage chair session in a private room, 20% off all laser treatments, a free monthly peel and so on. Just get together as a team and come up with some perks that you know your patients would love or just ask them what would you like and then turn that into a VIP strategy that works well for you. Because when you make your patients feel special, they’re bound to brag about you to their friends. I will use the analogy of the airlines, I used to fly over 100,000 miles a year. But due to COVID I’ve been grounded and it’s been awful, I really enjoy traveling. But the reason I enjoy it is because I play the game. So, I’m with American Airlines. And I’m always with American Airlines because I am part of all of their elite stuff because I fly so much. So, I get on the plane first, I sit in the– first of all, I sit in the lounge which I love, I have my decaf latte, I get some work done, I print if I have to then I get on the plane first, I have a beautiful seat that I enjoy. My bag, I always bring on a bag, that’s my secret of travel, just keep your bag with you because the airlines lose it half the time. And then I have a nice room to work in, I get fed and all of that stuff. I play that game because it’s a lot more fun to travel that way than sitting on top of each other kind of thing. Anyway, so that’s the point. They make me feel special, I stay with them. And it’s the same thing with your practice and your patients. So, here’s number two. And I realized there’s COVID. So, when it’s over because it will end someday, it’ll probably end very soon, it has to because we have to get back to work. But now number two, have exclusive private events. I guess right now they need to be virtual. But the point is to make them exclusive and private and like invitation only. So, hold them– They’re fun catered events in your office after hours for your surgical patients. And then they’re to bring a friend to introduce to you and your staff. Now you can have special guests, it’s not about the plastic surgery as much as it is about the camaraderie. So, you can invite guests such as an author or an artist or you can give many presentations on what’s new in the world of plastic surgery and even non-surgical technologies. So, your patients who had surgery can show off their results and talk you up. And their friends can bond with you and your staff and talk to you about the possibilities of having their own surgical procedure or non-surgical. So, offer the guests a complimentary surgical consultation gift card and then offer to book their consultation at your event to save them time. I used to do a ton of events when I was new to this industry in San Francisco. And one thing I know coming from a sales background, you always introduce your offer and close it up when everybody’s hot for it. So that night, you’ve wined and dined then, you had a really fun event, maybe you had a local author there or you had a comedian or whatever, fortune teller or whatever you did. And they’re all in a really good mood, they also know half the room as head surgery by you so they’re not intimidated by talking about it or showing it off. And what a perfect time to get those prospective patients on the books now. I just find if you wait too long– This is what happens, a lot of you have events and then you’re calling many days later. Well, the thrill is gone. You have to catch people when they’re hot. And so anyway, I always did it right at the event.
And then here’s another one, it’s the patient loyalty program. Now, in today’s competitive world, it’s really smart to do everything humanly possible to attract a new patient to you but then keep them for the long run. However, our industry has been fairly commoditized, especially with the non-surgical but you don’t want to compete on price. I just have watched this forever. And price is getting to be a very big issue. And you don’t want it to be but it doesn’t matter. Because if the public now thinks everything’s on sale all the time, they are definitely more price conscious than they were before. So, you want to deal with that somehow. First of all, I’d like you to offer a much better patient experience, and then reward them for returning, referring and reviewing without discounting. We have to get rid of this discounting thing. It’s a race to the bottom and it’s going nowhere. So, if you do want an easy way to do this, just text the word easy to my cell phone. It’s 415 3778 700 and I’ll help you out with that. Now, just a note, there are many loyalty programs available and most of them fall flat for a variety of reasons. Either they’re too complicated for the patients to understand and get excited about or the staff is confused by all the rules involved or they’re just poorly marketed so they just fizzle out. So please be sure you choose a loyalty program that’s easy for your staff to implement and your patients are eager to participate in.
So again, if you want that easy way to do this, please text me the word easy at 415 3778 700. Now the point is to spend as much time building your practice from the inside out with patients who already know like and trust you as you do try to attract new stranger internet patients externally. So now that you know more, do you want a one time or a lifetime cosmetic patient, please say lifetime. Okay, that’s it for this week. And as always, thanks so much for listening. And please subscribe to Beauty and the Biz if you haven’t already. Of course, I would love a review and would appreciate it if you are getting value from this. And then I’d love to hear from you. If you have any feedback questions or comments, please leave me a message on my website at catherinemaley.com or DM me on Instagram at Catherine Maley, MBA. Thanks so much. Talk to you later.
