Plan Out 2021
Growing a successful cosmetic surgery practice is a team sport. You can’t do this on your own. You need a team of trained staff who care about you and growing the practice, AND they need your leadership and direction. So you’ll want to come up with your What – why and How plan for 2021. Here are my best tips to help guide you.
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Plan Out 2021
Good riddance to 2020
So crazy
Biz stopped, then really busy
This uncertainty will continue:
Politics, stock market, economy – who knows
All you can do is plan the upcoming year so you have some clarity
Give it your best guess
Set up a plan to follow and plan your behavior
Then check in regularly with your team to monitor that behavior and tweak as you go
So here are a few tips and tricks to plan for a successful 2021:
Growing a successful cosmetic surgery practice is a team sport
You can’t do this on your own
You need a team of trained staff who care about you and growing the practice
And they need your leadership and direction
So you’ll want to come up with your What – why and How plan for 2021
Let’s start with the what:
Have a team meeting and come up with this year’s theme
This will be your guiding light for the year and help keep everyone on your team motivated
For example, last year our theme was to simplify
This year, we are calling it the year of resurgence
Come up with your own that everyone agrees on. Display it in the staff lounge and talk about it regularly.
Now decide on your overall objectives for 2021 and keep it general for now: for example:
Devise an Automatic marketing plan to get new cosmetic patients at will
Win Best Surgeons award in your area this year
Choose a local charity to support
Improve the patient visit experience
Institute a patient retention plan
Simplify your processes and so on
Now answer the question why?
Why do you want those things?
Obviously you want to make money since that’s what keeps your doors open, but your staff needs their own reasons as well such as:
To transform even more lives.
To give your patients a great experience they will brag about to their friends
To have fun at work
To give back to the community
To make a living so your staff can enjoy their interests such as family and hobbies.
The why will get your team through the difficult times so please get clear on this.
And now you answer the question, What do we want specifically?
Tip: these are the goals of the practice you strive for.
Tip: rather than talk revenues, talk number of things instead. For example:
Compare your numbers from 2018, 2019 and 2020 and go with averages for:
# surgcial procedures performed
# non-sx treatments performed
# patient list
# patient visits
# surgical consults
# sx performed
# reviews
# referrals
# b/a photos in gallery and so on
And now Decide to better your best and increase those numbers by a certain percentage.
But it won’t happen just because you say it.
You have to plan it.
Here’s another tip: rather than state the outcome, you plan the behavior it takes to reach your goals. For example,
– Your receptionist will use the 5 Phone Fixes guide on each call
– Your team will follow up on each lead using a 9-point checklist
– You will post to social media 2x per week
– Your coordinator will block time while you’re in sx to make pre-consult calls
– You, the surgeon will make short weekly FAQs videos and so on.
The secret is to actually do it by blocking the time and then holding each other accountable by meeting with the team regularly to review your numbers to see what’s working and what’s not so you can brainstorm how to make it better.
And that is a good framework for planning out 2021 to give you more control and certainty.
And allow your team to be more productive, less stressed, and overall more creative and satisfied in their positions
Of course, I’m here to help so please reach out to me at cm.com or DM on IG
I wish you a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year and I look forward to bringing you much more of Beauty and the Biz so stay tuned.
Transcript:
Beauty and the Biz
Episode: 81 Plan for 2021
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: What Your Patients Are Saying, and consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and more profits. It is the week of New Year’s Eve and the new year of 2021. What we’re going to talk about is called plan out 2021. Before we do, we’re going to look at 2020 for a second to say good riddance. This is going to be the most epic moment in history we got to be a part of and it’s all in how you look at this. I think it taught us a few lessons. I’m in California and we were going under lockdown earlier than a lot of other states. They continue to mess around in Sausalito and it’s a ghost town. I feel bad for all these small businesses and restaurants.
I did not know how many there were until they all closed and I don’t know what’s going to happen but it’s been insane. Business and surgery stopped and the smart practices took time to regroup. They worked on their processes, they did some staff training; they got their ducks in a row and it was before it started slow. Then there was this huge demand for cosmetic surgery. I know we all know how it was because people had time for downtime. They were working at home, which you have to think about this. How your coordinator always says, Oh, it’s all about price. They said no, because of price, price, price. It’s not always about price. Downtime is a huge issue in our industry. I would get together with your staff and figure out how we can make downtime minimal, and as hassle-free, as pain-free as humanly possible.
I saw a meme the other day, and it said, I’m not buying a 2021 planner until I see a trailer. I thought was hilarious because this uncertainty will continue. We had the elections and was making us uncertain about things. We’re still uncertain about the politics of the stock market. How is it going to react to politics? How’s the economy going to react? Who knows, nobody knows, all you can do is plan your upcoming year to give yourself clarity, and all you can do is give it your best guess. I would act as if you’re going to be successful, you’re going to have a successful year, you might as the alternative is to give up and would be silly. Plus, you guys are doing pretty, keep up the pace. Don’t forget to work on your business and in your business. You want to set up a plan to follow and then plan your behavior. I’m going to give you a couple of tips on goals and not necessarily goal setting, but planning for this upcoming year.
The goal is to plan but then check in regularly with your team to watch behavior, and then tweak as you go.
I’m going to give you a few tips and tricks to plan for a successful 2021. Growing a successful cosmetic practice today, and as always has been a team sport. Although you are the star player, you couldn’t be doing what you do on your own, you must have a support system surrounding you to make the marketing work. The pre-surgery work, the surgery work, the post-op surgery, all the pieces go into this, you need awful people to help you do. You need a team of trained staff who care about you, and they care about growing the practice. But your staff needs your leadership and your direction. You’ll want to come up with your what, why, and how to plan for 2021. Let’s start with what you want to have a team meeting and come up with this year’s theme. I have always thought this has worked out. In my business, we always have a theme and it becomes your guiding light for the year. It helps keep everybody on your team motivated, for example, last year, our theme was to simplify, I being my type A personality; I run after shiny objects like you’re all purported to do.
I love to say ‘yes’ to everything but then I confuse the team. It gets complicated and then nothing is getting done. It’s all getting done, but haphazardly, so we simplified. This year, we’re going to call it the year of resurgence. I feel like we’ve been cooped up and I want to research with new and great energy. I want this to be a lot better. You want to come up with yours everybody agrees on and that’s the secret, get everybody on board and buying into this. Because that way they own it, and they’re much more apt to see it through. When you’ve come up with your theme, you want to display it in your staff lounge, and you want to talk about it regularly and make a big deal out of it. Because when the stuff hits the fan, and people are like those days where you’re not feeling it when you want your theme. Remember where you’re going with things, you want to decide your overall goals for 2021 but keep it general.
You can say things like, for 2021, we want to devise an automatic marketing plan to get new cosmetic patients at will. We want to win the Best Surgeons Award in our area this year; we want to choose a local charity to support; we want to improve the patient visit experience; we want to institute a patient retention plan; we want to simplify our processes. But you want to answer the question, Why? Why do you want those things? You want to make money since that’s what keeps your doors open. But your staff needs their reasons as well. Because it can’t be we’re here to make Dr. Smith rich, it’s difficult to get behind because there’s nothing in it for your staff. Come up with things that are interesting to them, for example, to transform even more lives than we have in the past, to give our patients a great experience they’ll brag about to their friends, to have fun at work. Everyone’s stressed out, nobody has any fun anymore.
I would recommend adding more fun into this, to give back to the community and to make a living your staff can enjoy their interests, such as family and hobbies. The Why will get your team through those difficult times. Please get clear on this and make sure they have bought in and they come up with this because that’s what will keep them going throughout the year. You answer the question, what do we want specifically? These are the goals of the practice and the ones you want to strive for. But here’s my other tip. Rather than talk about revenues with the staff, you can go either way. I’ve seen it with practices I consult. If you talk about revenues, the staff often thinks you are rolling in dough, and they don’t realize the overhead goes into all of this. I would rather talk numbers of things and not revenues. For example, you can compare your numbers from 2018, 2019, and 2020. I’m saying those three years because last year was crazy. 2019 was probably an average year, but in 2018, I would average them out because you could have had a terrible 2018, a great 2019, and then a sporadic 2020.
I would take those three years and I would take the averages, and what you’re trying to do is pull out the several surgical procedures you performed, on an average year then other of the average of all the three years, the number of non-surgical treatments performed. Also, your patient list, how many were on your list, before and then or how many are on your patient list, the number of patient visits, the number of surgical consultations, the number of surgeries performed, and then details, the number of reviews, you got the number of referrals, the number of before and after photos in your gallery, because those things also are what grow your practice with new cosmetic patients. When I do the coaching club with my coordinators, we always look at what the patients who said ‘yes’. What did they say to get them to a ‘yes’? We hear it over and over and over, I love the surgeon’s photos; he had great reviews and my girlfriend recommended him. It would add to this number you’re looking for. Because you want to know these numbers, you want to decide to better your best.
Then increase those numbers by a certain percentage. Your goal is not to make 4 million, your goal is to take this list of numbers and increase them by 10%, for example, your staff can wrap their minds around it. But it won’t happen because you say it, plan for it. Here’s another tip. Rather than stating the outcome, you plan the behavior they take to reach an outcome. For example, your receptionist will use the five phone fixes guide on each call, or your team will follow-up on each lead using a nine-point checklist, or you will post to social media twice a week, or your coordinator will block time while you’re in surgery to make pre-consult calls. You the surgeon will make short, weekly FAQ videos. Instead of getting too deep into the numbers, talk about the behavior. Specifically, what did you people? What does everyone need to do every day and use all the tools you can to make happen? Staff can wrap their minds around way more than if you give them a goal of, this year, we have to make 4,500,000. Generally, they won’t know how to do it but when you give them specific, this is what I need you to do.
This is the tool I want you to use. This is how often I want you to do it. That’s how we’re going to increase our numbers by 10%. The secret is to block the time when you’re enormous, fat, and happy. Let’s say you don’t have time to do anything because you’re busy collecting money, I want you to remember, if you don’t work in your practice, you can’t work. If you don’t work on your practice, sometimes when this stuff hits the fan and it always does. There are peaks and valleys to everything you’re going to get blindsided, you must block time to work on your practice. You want to hold meetings at a certain time, a certain day, all year, and you can’t say we’re going to meet, you have to commit to it. You can’t say we’re going to meet every Tuesday at eight o’clock and you never show up. It has to be a commitment, as a leader you want to commit. If you can’t commit to weekly, commit to bi-weekly, but whatever you do, once you commit, stick to it, and show up on time, put your cell phone away, and your staff will take it as seriously as you take it.
At these meetings, that’s when you’re going over these numbers, and you’re holding each other accountable because you’re meeting regularly to check the numbers, to see what’s working, what’s not working, and then brainstorm to figure out how to get these numbers up. It’s always better when you brainstorm when you have one person there who’s doing all the heavy thinking, it’s exhausting and it’s not fair. Plus, you’ll get way better ideas when you’re all involved. This I hope gives you a good framework for planning out 2021 because it’s going to give you more control and more certainty. After all, that’s what clarity does and by the way, money is attractive to clarity.
It also allows your team to be more productive, less stressed, and overall more creative and satisfied in their place and with you in the practice and with their job. Of course, I’m here to help. I’ve got all the tools you need for all the strategies, please reach out to me at www.CatherineMaley.com or you can DM me on Instagram at CatherineMaleyMBA. I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. Please let’s have a great year and I look forward to bringing you much more Beauty and the Biz. Stay tuned.
