Whether for yourself or for your clients, education should be an ongoing process.
Most veterinarians are excellent at sharing information with their clients as they are treating a specific horse for a specific problem or working to prevent some disease. However, no matter how good your work may be, owners would like you to communicate more, and sometimes differently.
According to the AAEP survey of your clients, they want you to let them know that you are “keeping up” with what is going on in the industry. They also want you to share your knowledge with them.
Several articles in this month’s issue center around the basic issue of communication and how it relates to your business. Our cover story gives you tips on hosting an educational event for your clients (and potential clients). This allows you and everyone on your staff to have interactions with the people who pay the bills. You can showcase your skills, equipment and knowledge while encouraging clients to take advantage of all of the goods and services you offer in your practice.
Trying to grow your dental (see spring 2014 issue) or deworming profit centers? Want to educate your clients on how to best utilize your chiropractic or acupuncture services (summer 2014 issue)?
Having those areas of your practice front-and-center during an open house or educational event can create demand for those services.
But creating demand isn’t all good.
Sometimes your clients call you about an “emergency” when in reality the problem could wait until regular work hours. Or perhaps they “watch” a problem too long and don’t call you soon enough so that you could see the horse during regular hours. Education is important in those situations, too!
Knowing how to balance your clients’ worries with reality when it comes to their horses’ health and well-being is an educational balancing act. You want clients to depend on you for answers, but you also need to beware of the burnout that can occur when you’re trying to be everything to every client at every hour, every day (see “Is It an Emergency?”).
In this issue we also discuss pricing in your practice as compared to other industries with Dr. Mike Pownall. And we talk you through building a solid, legal email list and using it to grow your business.
As EquiManagement.com grows, we will have more educational offerings through our website. EquiManagement.com will offer live and on-demand educational webinars, for example, to allow you the flexibility of watching and learning on your own schedule.
You can also get a free monthly newsletter to help you stay up on important news and events in both the equine industry and the veterinary field.
As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions for EquiManagement magazine or our website. Contact me at kbrown@aimmedia.com.