BUSINESS STRATEGIES

Record Growth, Straight Ahead

6 key strategies for growing your business in 2016

BY TOM BOWEN

As I’ve traveled across North America these past few months speaking to colleagues—and as we take inventory of client growth in 2015—I must say I’ve been encouraged.

Yes, I did say encouraged. Despite the challenges of seemingly endless regulation, increasing competition, Internet refractions, practices being gobbled up by the “buyer-uppers,” and all the rest, you can still grow your practice as you choose to.

Case in point: I just got off the phone with an impressive young doctor in the great state of California. He started his practice cold six years ago and is now doing $750K in revenue.

He also purchased a practice three years ago that was doing $200K, and already it’s earning $600K. While so many ECPs are asking if it’s still a good time to be in solo private practice, he’s decided he wants to look at ways to move his practice “to the next level.”

Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’re looking at the new year ahead as the perfect time for a record year.

And, if so, this is a discussion for you. These key strategies will help you take your practice to the next level.

1. Expand Your Brand Strategy

People respond to specialties that align with their needs and wants. Establishing your brand strategy is a great way to position yourself as the right specialty solution.

For example, our clients have adopted brand extensions like “Glaucoma Management Specialties” or “The Vision Performance Center” that show which specialty segments they are catering to. Think about all the specialty ways you can help your patients, and remember that developing brand extensions is a great way to teach them what you know but they don’t. (For more on specialty segments, see sidebar on page 60.)

2. Realize You Control Revenue per Patient

It’s mighty tempting to fall in line with those who say that in today’s healthcare environment we no longer control our ability to offer patient solutions that result in strong practice revenue.

If they’re right, why is it that week after week I encounter multiple-O.D. practices where there is a $200 difference in revenue per patient among the individual doctors? One doctor has a revenue per patient of $450, while another is at $250.

In exactly the same community, in exactly the same healthcare system, amid exactly the same vision plans, with exactly the same economy and Internet, inside exactly the SAME FOUR WALLS. Don’t fall for it. We can still control this if we choose to.

3. Target Your New Patient More Deliberately

In the early going, we’ll take any patient who will sit in the chair. We all understand that. But as we grow the practice, and are more booked up, we need to become proportionately more deliberate about choosing who our new patient will be. That’s the great thing about marketing. You can actually target your next new patient.

You can deliberately appeal to a consumer who thinks a certain way and wants to consume a certain way. When did you ever see a practice specifically promote itself as the perfect solution for people without a vision plan?

It’s so obvious that we want to attract such patients, but we don’t even make that known, or develop specific programs to appeal specifically to these people. Remember, there are more consumers without a vision plan than with one.

4. Realign Your Objectives—and Go for It

There are different measures of capture rate (spectacle lenses, contact lenses), but this metric is simply the percentage of prescriptions written that are actually filled (or “captured”) in-house. Once upon a time, a typical private practice’s capture rate was 80%. Today many practices are closer to 50%, with the average about 60%.

I hear of practices setting this “benchmark” of 60% as their objective. So the objective of your amazing practice—this shining light for your patients in the healthcare darkness—is 60%?

The walk-in mall store has a capture rate that may well be over 100% (yes, they fill more prescriptions than they write). But you have great products, great service, a great patient relationship—there’s no need to settle for half of your competitor’s capture rate.

What if you worked on this one in the year ahead, and raised your capture rate from 50% to 75%? What would growth in revenue look like? What impact would this have on inventory turnover? Better yet, how would this affect your patients’ quality of life and your team’s morale?

5. Reach Them Where They Are

Many consumers in this day and age want you to reach them where they are, not where you are. So do it.

Bring your products and services to them, where they want to shop, rather than require that they come to you. The reason they buy online is not necessarily that they want to buy from someone else; it’s that they want to buy from the convenience of their home (or the office, car, or while they wait in line). Offer a convenient e-commerce experience, and watch that capture rate and other metrics move up.

6. Protect the Relationship

I’ve said it a million times (perhaps literally), so what’s the harm in saying it once more? If you want someone to know something, tell them. Let’s make sure in the new year that we tell patients how much we value the relationship.

In the exam room, hand your patients a well-designed flyer that explains how you view your relationship—and your intent to service that relationship, no matter how healthcare changes—as the single most important thing in your practice. Patients are often amazed that a doctor would say such a thing.

So, let the good times (and profits) roll, colleagues. We’re seeing clients with record revenues, month after record month. As eyecare professionals, we have to be more deliberate. We have to start with a goal and work backward with our initiatives to reach that goal. But let there be no doubt, we can get there, despite the challenges of our day.

Here’s to a record year in 2016.

Tom Bowen is executive vice president and co-founder of the Williams Group, which specializes in eyecare practice consulting and is based in Lincoln, NE.