It doesn’t matter if you are a solo ambulatory practitioner or part of the management group of a large, multi-vet hospital—without growth of your client base, you probably won’t survive.
Why?
Because businesses always lose customers, and unless you are “filling the funnel” from the top with new people, soon you will find you don’t have enough clients to pay your bills.
The Business of Practice podcast is brought to you by Dechra Veterinary Products.
Pownall said the three most important things about Growing Your Practice are:
- Know your customer,
- Know what they value, and
- Offer it.
In Episode 7 of The Business of Practice podcast, we visit with Mike Pownall, DVM, MBA. Pownall is a Canadian-based veterinarian and a partner in Oculus Insights, which is focused on helping veterinarians and other members of the animal health care industry improve their businesses.
- Know your clients
- Survey your clients
- Offering services
- Get current clients to spend more
- Reputation and branding
- How to see the horse more often
- Marketing
- “While you’re here doc”
- Slow months vs show months
- Upstream and downstream value
One of the challenges that businesses have is competing against our colleagues rather than providing what our customers want, said Pownall. Regardless of whether you are English sport horse, cutting horse or breeding practice, really try to understand what your clients want and what they are trying to get out of the whole veterinary relationship.
Each person with horses wants different things, noted Pownall. And if you go to a barn, the owner and trainer of the horse want different things. “The dressage horse owner wants what is best to the horse, and the trainer makes money when he goes to horse shows, so he says, “So what can you do, doc, to get this horse back to the show ring?”
That balance is important. Each person should want what is best for the horse, but how they get there can be different.
The Business of Practice podcast is brought to you by Dechra Veterinary Products.
