INCOME BOOSTERS
7 Easy Ways to Boost Your Income
BY WILLIAM LYNOTT
Re-examining your practice can help your whole business prepare for any challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Here are seven easy steps you can take now to simplify your life, lower your expenses, and boost your net income.
1 INOCULATE YOUR PRACTICE AGAINST TELEPHONE SICKNESS
Your telephone can be a powerful practice builder or a destructive practice killer. Every time a patient or prospect dials your number, it’s a request for information, help, or even a possible appointment by a new customer. Any failure to skillfully deliver on these needs indicates the unerring presence of Telephone Sickness.
Inoculate your practice against Telephone Sickness by training everyone in your operation to understand the importance of one of your most powerful business tools—the telephone—and the urgent need for treating every caller with courtesy and respect.
OPERATING: PHONE TIPS
• Make sure that your telephone is always answered promptly.
• Never allow it to ring more than three or four times.
• Make sure that everyone identifies himself or herself by name in a cheery voice.
• Never leave a caller on hold for more than a few moments.
• ALWAYS, call the client back when you have promised to do so. Never force a patient or prospect to wait for a call that never comes.
2 ELIMINATE THE TARDY INVOICE
If you do any of your own billing, never forget that neglected accounts receivables can be devastating to your financial performance. It’s essential not to allow your receivables to go untended.
This is as important to your financial success as the quality of the work turned out by you and your staff. If your patients learn that you are cavalier about money owed to you, you can be certain they will stretch your patience (and your cash flow) to the limit.
You’ve earned that money. You have a right to it. You need it.
3 BEWARE THE INVISIBLE LOW PERFORMER
Even one slacker in your operation is a virus that will eat away at productivity, patient satisfaction, and employee morale.
Dealing with an underperforming employee is a challenging task for most eyecare professionals, but failing to face up to the problem will make a bad situation even worse. It can result in added stress on other employees who may have to take up the slack—and resentment among those who can’t understand why the offender is allowed to continue.
The cure? Show your top-performing employees how much you value their work and that you won’t tolerate a slacker.
4 BEWARE OF THE INVISIBLE EMPLOYEE
In the course of your demanding schedule, it’s all too easy to fall into a pattern of superficial contacts with employees. Consider this exchange overheard between an owner and an employee passing in a hallway:
Employee: “Good morning, Mr. Smith, looks like we’re going to have a nice day.”
Boss: “Fine, thank you. And how are you?”
That sort of disconnect between an employee and a busy manager is all too common today; it preys on the susceptibility of workers who are starving for individual recognition and the essential dignity that goes along with it. Failing to supply it provides a perfect setting for the loss of initiative, lowered work ethic, and destructive depression on the part of the offended employees.
CASE IN POINT
When L.L. Bean, founder of one of the world’s most successful catalog order firms, was starting out, he suffered what could have been a disastrous setback.
Shortly after he began shipping his first waterproof, hand-made boots, complaints that the boots leaked started coming in from customers. Determined to fulfill his promise of customer satisfaction, Bean returned the full purchase price to every customer. Then, he set out to correct the flaw in the boot’s design. That was the beginning of the customer loyalty that helped to make L.L. Bean what it is today.
Fortunately, eliminating the Invisible Employee virus is easy even for the busiest practitioner. One of the simplest and most effective ways to develop and demonstrate sincere interest in your employees is to take the time to find out something about each one.
5 ELIMINATE THE FOGGY INSTRUCTION VIRUS
Do you think that the instructions you give to your associates and patients are always crystal clear? If you think so, there’s a good chance that you’re wrong. The ability to communicate with precision doesn’t come naturally to most of us, regardless of the extent of our education and practice know-how.
Industrial psychologists studying the effectiveness of communications among humans uncovered an astonishing weakness in this vital area of our lives. Much of the problem, they say, is the result of a limited vocabulary and the way many of us choose our words (see sidebar, below).
If you’ve ever been frustrated by the failure of an associate to follow your instructions or carry out a task the way you intended, it’s quite possible that the fault was your own—that you failed to make your instructions unmistakably clear. Too often, we assume that everyone will, or should, understand everything we say or write; this situation provides a happy breeding ground for the Foggy Instruction Virus.
6 GO THE EXTRA MILE
Never forget that a complaint from a patient can easily be turned into a valuable asset. Some years ago, a major retail marketing study revealed that customers whose complaints were satisfactorily resolved became better customers of the company than they were before the incident that triggered the complaint.
Some of the most successful companies in the world have been built on a foundation that revolves around the principle that customer complaints provide a valuable opportunity to build the practice (See sidebar p. 88).
Sometimes, satisfying a customer complaint calls for measures that you may feel unreasonable. When that happens, think of the cost in time and money as an investment in your future.
Once you’ve sold yourself and your team on why your practice is the best choice for customers who require the utmost in care and dependability, it’s essential to focus your marketing efforts on ways to promote this image to both customers and prospects. Make customer satisfaction the hallmark of your practice.
VOCABULARY BY THE BOOK
Some years ago, a detailed study on business owners and managers revealed that a broad vocabulary was the most-often-seen characteristic in successful executives.
That’s not surprising when you consider that words are the only tools we have for communicating our thoughts to others. Because an eyecare professional often must rely on the efforts of others for customer satisfaction, the ability to express thoughts with clarity and precision is an obvious necessity.
In his classic book, “Six Weeks to Words of Power,” Wilfred Funk wrote: “Success and vocabulary go hand-in-hand.”
Another educator, John Dewey, Ph.D., said simply, “Thought is impossible without words.” Henry Thomas made a similar observation when he wrote, “Words are the materials out of which we build our thoughts.”
These sentiments, echoed by countless experts, lead to an inescapable conclusion: Since words are necessary in the formation of our thoughts, an expanded vocabulary will improve the quality of our thinking. However, they say, you should not take the job of building a powerful vocabulary to mean the relentless addition of exotic words just for the sake of sheer numbers. Quite to the contrary. The most appropriate word will seldom be the longest or most obscure one. The possessor of an unnecessarily large vocabulary runs the constant risk of being misunderstood.
The trick is to master enough words to allow clear expression of your thoughts without resorting to the use of words that are beyond the understanding of all but college professors.
7 ADOPT A MARKETING MENTALITY
If patient satisfaction is the mashed potatoes, marketing is the gravy.
But keep in mind: marketing involves far more than an ad in the Yellow Pages or social media and passing out your business cards. Marketing is a complex challenge, all the more so in a practice operating in a specialized niche such as yours.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
Break the ice with employees with simple questions such as:
• Names of spouse and children
• Employee hobbies
• Special interests
• Follow through with questions that show you are genuinely interested
If you are to achieve optimum success in marketing your practice, you must be willing to spend time studying, reading, and analyzing your market and your competition.
Keeping your practice healthy and profitable requires an ongoing marketing program. Marketing embraces all facets of your operation. To be an effective marketer, you must nurture and promote your practice image, sell yourself as well as your practice, and concentrate on making your practice the best choice for discriminating customers.
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