You’ve probably been there. You take a look at the pile on your desk, or the to-do list, or you scroll through your mental file of marketing tasks you should be tackling, and suddenly all the initiative just drains right out of you. For any one single task, you probably know what to do. The problem seems to be deciding where to begin. Things are just too complex in their present form.

Sometimes, the best place to begin is with the low-hanging fruit – things that don’t take a lot of time or money, but deliver great results. This is particularly true when you need to get results quickly.

Perhaps you’re in a dip in practice, for example – maybe client visits have slowed and you want to take action, but you aren’t sure what’s going to get faces in the door the fastest, and you can’t afford to waste time and money on things that won’t deliver for a few months. You’ve got a lot of marketing ideas floating around in your mind. You may even have a bunch written down somewhere. But every time you look at the list, your brain kind of fogs up, and you just end up pushing paper around or checking your email.

Here’s the system we use to find the low-hanging fruit. Don’t be deceived by how easy it is – this is a great way to build momentum and confidence, and get results.

What You’ll Need

I’ve made the simple template we use available here (PDF). Just download it, and print it out.

The steps are pretty simple. You can probably get through a trial run of a full single page in about 10 minutes.

Step 1.  The Brain Dump

Our first job is to get as much of your “to-do’s” on paper as quickly as possible. In this case, you want to simply write down, as quickly as possible, all the marketing & practice growth  ideas already you have in your mind or on paper, and any more you can generate in 2-3 minutes of brainstorming. Write them all down, one per row in the first column.

Here are some we wrote down the last time we did this:

1. Contact new clients who never showed up for their first appointment
2. Send out an email newsletter
3. Create a video for our website showcasing the clinic and our services
4. Arrange a lunch date with another practitioner
5. Start a Twitter feed
6. Contact existing clients who’ve fallen off the radar
7. Send a letter to other practitioners who refer to us

Try to come up with at least 20. They can be big ideas, or small tasks. Your sheet will start to look like this:

Step 2. Prioritize

If you look across the worksheet, you’ll see two columns near the right: Impact and Ease. For each item you’ve listed, you’re going to allocate a score between 1 and 5 in the Impact column, and the Ease column.

Impact: This is your guess as to how effective this item will be. Something that will generate a lot of business in your practice, for example, would score a 5. Something that might do very little would be closer to 1. In our case, contacting the new clients who for whatever reason had to cancel their appointment, was likely a 4 (or even a 5). They’re already interested – we just have to get in touch and rebook.

Ease: This is your guess as to how much this is going to cost you, in time and money, to do. In our case, making a video was going to take a lot of time and money, so it got a 1. Reaching out to those new clients who had to cancel was just a few phone calls – it was an easy 5.

The trick here is to estimate. Sometimes you don’t really know – don’t worry about it. Use your judgment and guess. You may have something that will have big long-term impact, but nothing for a while. Because we’re looking for quick results, that’s going to get a lower impact score.

Now the important part: for each item, multiply the ease x the impact. You should get a number between 1 and 25 for each item, and a sheet that looks something like this:

Step 3: Final Details

Next circle the top five scores in the Total column. You’ve now got five things that are easy to do, and deliver results!

You’ll notice, however, that there are three other columns. You only need to use these for your five circled items. Here’s how to use them:

Next Action: Sometimes the items on your list are just a single to-do, like, write an article for the local paper. In that case, the next action is really just that. Sometimes, though, it’s got a few more steps. To create an email newsletter, for example, you might need to pick a system to use, sign up, add your email addresses, etc. before you can start writing. It’s not hard, but there are a few steps – to avoid being overwhelmed, you’ll want to decide, what’s the very next action for this item?

Person: If you’ve got help, then it’s not always you that needs to actually do the thing on the list. If you have some admin support, or a web guru, or a willing partner, this is where you offload to them.

Date: When will this item be done by?

Step 4: Accountability

This step is optional, but it truly makes a difference. Find someone who can hold you accountable to those top five. Their job is to check in with you on those five easy, high impact choices, and make sure you’re on track. Just forward this to a colleague and ask them to partner with you – it’s that easy.

The Beauty of the System

You’re now staring at five things that are easy to do, and deliver results. It’s like having someone say to you, “Just do these five things in order. It’ll be great for your practice.” All you have to do now is just follow orders.

The beauty of this system is that it quickly finds the low-hanging fruit – things that are easy to do, that will almost certainly work. Because of that combination, you get great results quickly, and build some success and momentum. It makes it easier to keep going. It’s inspiring, effective, and takes that tough dilemma of what to do next off the table.

The Rest of the List

And as for the rest of your items? Don’t throw them away. Those things still have value, they’re just not fruit that’s as juicy and easy to pick.

There are likely things on that list that are critical in the long term. You’ll still want to tackle them. But when you’re feeling overwhelmed and need quick results, this system really works well.

Today I get to say that book is here.

The Practitioner’s Journey hits the shelves today. You can find the paperback on Amazon, download the eBook version right now, or order it at your local bookseller (ISBN 978-0973978247).

If you’d like a taste first, there’s an excerpt here. (There’s also a deal on the combined eBook editions of Escape 101 and The Practitioner’s Journey at the end of this post.)

The Path to Success

The Practitioner’s Journey is a unique blend of story, business insight, and practical strategies. It’s based on our experiences in part, but mainly on those of the untold number of practitioners that we’ve interviewed, visited and coached over the past half-decade.

During the research for the book, we realized one thing early on: regardless of our profession in health care, we’re all facing the same challenges. Four of them, in fact. This book is about overcoming those challenges and finding your way to that elusive place called Success.

Not only do the challenges in practice share common threads, but we also saw over and over again that one of the trickiest parts of creating the practice you want isn’t the things you have to do. It’s how you think about what you have to do. The journey we all make as practitioners, it turns out, is just as much an inner one as it is an outer one of clients and clinics and money and treatments. Sometimes it’s not knowing what to do. It’s knowing what to do next.

If you’re struggling in practice, or feeling like things aren’t quite where they should be yet, this book will help. Among many things, you’ll learn how to:

• Attract new clients without feeling sleazy or uncomfortable, or spending a fortune
• Build a practice that needs far fewer clients in order to thrive
• Protect yourself from economic changes and competition
• Find and maintain life balance for your entire career
• Build a long-term future as practitioner by transitioning from practice to business

The book is filled with practical, specific strategies for overcoming the challenges of private practice, and finding your unique place in the CAM universe. Interestingly, it’s also the same framework we’ve used to do our strategic planning for that past three years. It’s a way of thinking about practice that makes it easier to plan, and less complex and overwhelming to make the steady forward progress you need to find your way to that elusive place we call Success.

As part of the launch, we’re offering Escape 101 AND The Practitioner’s Journey in ebook for $14.95 (the ebook editions are $9.95 separately.) If you’re more of a print person, the paperback is here on Amazon. The book’s so shiny new that the cover image hasn’t arrived on Amazon yet, but rest assured it’s the right book.

Enjoy the book, and thanks for being part of our journey!

-Dan & Tara

Order The Practitioner’s Journey: The Path to Success for Holistic, Alternative and Integrative Health Professionals

Whatever the reason, it happens, and we’ve often wondered if we should be doing something at those times. Recently, instead of just continuing to wonder, we decided to try an experiment.

We have a dry erase board in the staff room, and lately we asked the team to simply write down clients when they think of them out of the blue. Pretty simple stuff, really – just write their names on a board.

For a while we wondered about the best way to connect with them, though. Call? Write? Email? We’d been using personal letters to reengage old clients, but the truth was we wanted to connect with those people. After all, we really did want to know what was happening with them.

In the end, we decided to experiment with email. Tara wrote six personal emails to clients who had appeared on our “mental radars” in some way. The result was incredible: people loved it. All six responded quite quickly, and at least two have booked to come back in. Just like that. Minimal time investment, zero cost.

Why did it work so well? I think part of it was the medium – email’s less invasive, and more convenient for starting a dialogue. Letters aren’t great for instant dialogue, and it’s often hard to get people on the phone at a time that’s convenient for everyone. More important, though,  I think it was because these were in no way “salesy” emails. They were genuine inquiries: we were thinking of you and wondering how you were. The decision to reengage with the practice was entirely their idea.

The lesson? If someone’s on your mind, then maybe it’s time to be on theirs, too.

Update: The Practitioner’s Journey is off to the presses! We’re really excited about this book. It’s the end of a long stretch of writing and rewriting, but best of all, it’s going to change the way that many practitioners think about growing their practices. More details to follow as the book hits the shelves, of course, but in the meantime, we’ll be moving AHP to a new online home. With any luck, that’ll be a seamless process, but if things get dark and strange in here for a while, you’ll know why!

Escape 101

The Secret Language of Money,

Go-Giver

I’m happy to say now, however, that our guide to success in practice, The Practitioner’s Journey, is on its way. Until it hits the stands, though, I’d like to introduce you to someone else’s book. Not only is it available now, it has the advantage of also being free.

There are a lot of free ebooks out there, but Practice Building 101 by Brooke Thomas is great because it’s great, not because it’s free. You don’t need to sign up to get it – it’s just there for the taking. You’ll find it a super-practical guide to growing your practice, particularly if you think you should be doing more online, but aren’t sure what the heck that means, or where to even think about starting.

It’s full of helpful, easy to digest ideas and resources, and Brooke has a great track record in growing her own practices (three in three different states, if I recall correctly!) – she knows what she’s talking about.

Brooke also has a great course called Practice Abundance – registration starts today, and last just until March 20. You can find all the details here: http://practiceabundancecourse.com/sneak-peek.

Happy Reading, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

-Dan

Practice Building 101

This is for both new and established ND’s – you can get all the details and register at NDSuccess.com, but let me give you the highlights here.

You’ll spend two full days immersed with us and a select group of naturopathic doctors, where we’ll cover a wide range of topics including:

• New, ND-specific opportunities for practice growth
• Key practice shifts for more patient retention and referrals
• Strategies for work-life balance, including locums, mat leaves, sabbaticals and more
• Solutions to staffing, associates and other HR challenges
• Options and models for transitioning from practice to business
• Building an action plan to guide you when the workshop is over

In a nutshell, the weekend is about defining what you need from your practice and building a practical plan to get you there.

This has been brewing for a while – we get lots of requests for coaching and help – so I’m excited to see it coming together. Private practice can be a lonely role at times and this is a great chance to connect, learn, and most definitely grow. It’s going to be a fun, inspirational and super-practical weekend – we can’t wait to see you there!

To register, visit NDSuccess.com. Space is definitely limited, and there’s a great early-bird special that ends March 1.

See you in April!

-Dan & Tara

PS – If you know an ND that could benefit, can you pass this on? Many thanks!

This year at our strategic planning day, one of our team members came up a great idea for reactivating some of those old patients. It only takes a few minutes a week, and although we’re just starting out, I think it’s a great plan.

5 Random Files: How it Works

After this idea came up,  Tara reminded me of a chiropractic marketing guru  – I’m pretty sure it was Dr. Demartini -  who talked about how his staff would pull a random client file every week at the office and just…well, just think about the client.

According to the story, more often than not that person would call out of the blue and return to the practice. Kind of a law-of-attraction approach.

Our process is a little different, but geared toward the same result of re-engaging past clients in our current practice. Here’s what we’re doing:

1. Each week we pull five old files at random from the archives. (If you don’t keep files, you could just as easily check old appointment records, invoices or other client notes.)
2. We quickly review the files to see if we have anything new to offer, or some reason that we may be able to help now, when we might not have in the past
3. Where applicable, we write a personal letter to the client, describing when and why we saw them last, and why we think we might be able to better serve them now.

That’s it! Just a few minutes down the memory lane of your practice past to see if there’s anyone you might be able to help.

Why It’ll Work For You

Here’s why this approach is likely to bring back some old faces to your practice:

• You’re better now than you were then. Since you last saw these clients, you’ve probably gotten better at what you do. You’re more experienced, more confident. You may have done some continuing education, or have some new treatment tools at your disposal. Or perhaps your pricing, service, staff, hours or other aspects of your practice are more appealing.
• It’s personal. Each client is getting a letter just about them, talking about why they visited in the past, and how you might be able to help now. It’s far more personal and relevant than a newsletter or bulk mailing, so your clients are more likely to respond.
• It’s cheap & simple. Really. This is a no-brainer. The first few letters take a few minutes to put together, but after that it starts to get faster and faster as you realize part of what you’re saying each time is similar. In total, it only takes about 20 minutes a week of time commitment, and a under $5 in stamps, paper and envelopes.

Why five files? It just seemed like a manageable number. Five was small enough to ensure the job gets done and retains its individual patient focus (of each five we pull, there are only 2-3 that get letters), but big enough to get through quite a few files in a year.  You can do just one, if that’s what works best for you.

I’ve got high hopes for this effort, and I love the personalization of it. It’s also really rewarding to see how much more we offer now than we did a few years ago. It’s easy to forget how much progress you make over time!

A year later, we’re looking at a long list of improvements. They range from warm slippers and adding additional  soundproofing between treatment rooms, to 30-minute guarantees on returning messages during business hours and softer toilet paper. I thought I’d share how we did it in a little more detail, and tell you about our new Project 52 for 2010.

How To Start Your Own Project 52

1. Create a Visual Way to Track Progress

Of course, if you’re going to make 52 improvements, it makes sense to track them. Not only can you monitor how you’re doing, but as we’ve discovered, there’s a nice side bonus of ending up with a sort of “diary” of customer service improvements over the year. It’s easy to forget just how much change you actually make in a year – it’s a pretty rewarding feeling to look at our list of enhancements.

For us, a piece of flip chart paper was the easiest, cheapest way to track our progress. Draw a grid with 52 squares and you’re done. Total time: about 2 minutes. Total cost: about two cents.

You can use a computer file if you want, or something smaller than a big flip chart. Just make sure it conforms to the next tip, which is…

2. …Post Your Tracking In a Visible Place

We have a small staff room in the clinic, so we hung our chart there. It made it top-of-mind for everyone. There was always this mild pressure to come up with a new idea. If progress slowed down, it was visible to everyone. And when we were stuck, we could…

3. …Ask for Ideas

Making 52 little changes isn’t actually that hard. Surprisingly, the hardest part can be to think them up. It’s easy to come out of the gate quickly – I had a good dozen on my mind when we started – but as things get busy, it can become challenging to think of new improvements.

Looking over our list, the vast majority didn’t come from Tara or I. They came from other people. If you get stuck, try the following:

• Ask your clients: We did a very brief survey over the course of a couple of weeks in the office. It had two questions: What do you enjoy most about your visits here? and How can we make your experience better?
• Turn on your radar for subtle “hints”: once you get tuned into this stuff, you realize that people are giving you service feedback all the time – it’s just not in the form of outright complaints. Listen for those comments that aren’t really complaints, but are indications of less than ideal service.
• Ask non-clients: great service tends to be similar across great businesses. If you ask a few friends about where they receive the best service, and why, you might find you’ll get some great ideas.
• Ask your stafff: If you have help, ask the folks on your team. They’re the people getting all the front line action and fielding most of the comments and complaints. In our case, the credit for pulling this off goes to them. Including our high-tech tracking system.

3. Collect Ideas Somewhere Safe and Visible

Some ideas aren’t implemented right away. Some you won’t use at all. What’s important, though, is to have a place to keep track of them. We taped our Project 52 list to a whiteboard so anyone could scratch down potential ideas as they occurred.

4. Don’t Worry About “Big”

In addition to service, one of our other core values is continuous improvement. Project 52 is a visible, measurable manifestation of that. But to continually improve, you need to let go of the idea of massive, sweeping improvements that hog resources. Something as small as our parking bowl improves the client experience by a tiny bit. Those tiny bits can add up to whether or not a) a client returns to your practice and b) they refer other people to you.

And this year? Our new Project 52 is called Random Acts of Wow! (Yep – we love naming stuff.) It’s similar to last year (there’s a flipchart), but with a couple of differences. This year, we’ll focus on making exceptional acts of service on an individual level. Little gifts, thoughts, calls, notes and other random acts of kindness for our patients.

To make it happen we’ve established a massive Project 52 budget of $50 per month. That can be spent at the discretion of anyone on the team. The only rule is this: you don’t have to ask, but you do have to tell. In other words, be kind, and share the stories with us via the Project 52 board.

Everyone seems pretty excited about this one. I suspect that most of the things that fill the chart won’t cost anything. Kindness, after all, is usually free.

Happy 2010 everyone. Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful year of helping and growing!

-Dan & Tara

Sometimes, though, the very thing that makes many practitioners so good at what they do – their ability to connect with and be sensitive to others -  also makes them very, very uncomfortable with the idea of marketing. Behind many of the questions we get from practitioners is a common theme: I’m shy/introverted/timid/reserved. How can I  promote my practice?

To answer that, let’s start with a few key truths about practice marketing for introverts:

Introverts Have an Advantage

So you’re an introvert. You’re inward-looking. You prefer the company of yourself, or a close interaction with one other person. You’re insightful, a good listener. All these things, as it turns out, make you a kick-ass practitioner, too. What no one may have told you, though, is this:

The same things that make you a great practitioner can make you a great marketer, too.

Not only is being an introvert not a flaw, you also have a unique set of advantages, well-suited for health care and health care marketing.

• You Listen Better – One of the greatest complaints about lousy salespeople and marketers is that they don’t listen. You’re telling them you want green, but they keep sticking red in your face over and over. As an introvert, odds are you’re a better listener than your extraverted counterparts. That means you stand a chance of actually hearing what it is your prospective clients want. What’s the biggest sales technique you’ll hear over and over in sales training? Listen to your prospect. It turns out that you’re a natural.

• You Get Others Talking – It may be that you don’t like to be the center of attention, or it may be those great listening skills, but whatever the reason, introverts have a knack for keeping others talking. That gives you a much better chance of hearing about a health concern or a subtle detail that might never come up otherwise. It means you learn far more about prospective clients than anyone else.

Introversion Isn’t a Character Flaw

We live in a culture that tends to value extraversion. Don’t buy in.

If you tend to be energized by time alone, and a little introspective, you’re in good company. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Steven Spielberg? Yep – all introverts. Who says introverts can’t find a little success in business?

And remember, just about everyone feels the way you do at some point. You are neither broken nor alone.

Introversion and Extraversion Aren’t Permanent States

Introversion and extroversion are one continuum. We move around that continuum depending on our environment and experience. While there are genetic components to personality, they are, as with most things, not the whole picture:

Even a broad category such as introversion is like Silly Putty once life gets hold of it: a “genetically shy” child whose parents gently encourage her to get herself into the sandbox and mix it up with other kids is more likely to outgrow her shyness by age 12 than a shy child whose parents take her trait as a given. <source>

Instead of thinking yourself as flawed because you’re nervous about getting out there, think of yourself as inexperienced. We don’t blame kids for not being able to ride a bike, we just support them as they learn. You should cut yourself some of that same slack, and go easy on the labels.

Extraversion Isn’t Bad

For many, the idea of marketing a practice isn’t the fear of the actual act of say, networking, but a fear of becoming an icky extravert. That stems in large part from our stereotypical view of the marketer as the deceitful used-car salesman in the plaid jacket and snakeskin boots.

Just as introversion doesn’t mean “loser,” extraversion doesn’t mean “phony.” You can adopt aspects of extraversion without compromising your integrity or losing your personality.

You’re Already Marketing

Those great client skills of yours? Listening, reflecting, connecting, empathizing, assessing, diagnosing, prescribing and teaching? They’re the hallmarks of exceptional salespeople. The ability to truly connect with another person, understand their problem and provide the perfect solution? That’s all sales and marketing is. You learned it in school, and you’re doing it all the time, but no one ever told you. So I’m telling you right now: you’ve been marketing all along. You just need to get comfortable with the idea of expanding your audience a little.

But How?

Here are a few tips to ease your transition.

1. Start Gradually

You’re not going to change overnight. Commit to some small changes, or one big move per month or quarter. You can find a massive list of marketing ideas here. Pick just one to focus on that’s a small stretch for you. Get it done, and repeat.

2. Don’t Sell. Solve.

If the idea of “selling” is making you feel squishy, that’s good, because selling isn’t what you need to do. Your job in marketing your practice is to connect with others and solve their problems. Your job is not to sell, it’s to solve.

You can never sell anything to anyone. All you can you is create the circumstances for people to sell things to themselves. So think of yourself as connecting, sharing, educating and solving. Not selling.

3. Engage With the World

Clients don’t have to come from information sessions, speaking gigs, media interviews and article writing. They also come from being at the gym, or a mom’s group, or at the hairdresser. They come taking classes, hanging in coffee shops. From art galleries and movie theatres.

The hardest way to find new clients is to never leave your house or office. Just get out there and engage with the world.

4. Use The Buddy System

Despite all this, it can be, beyond a doubt, nerve-wracking for the less-outgoing to…well, go out. If you’re going to engage the world, there’s no rule that says you have to do it alone. Find a buddy, and get out there. Intoverted, extraverted – doesn’t matter. Moral support comes in many shapes and sizes.

5. Focus on One-On-One Interactions

Even though you might teach, or speak to groups, or show up a cocktail parties and open houses, all the good stuff happens one-on-one. Think of crowds as opportunities for a series of monogamous marketing efforts, not a pitch to a pack of rapt listeners. You don’t have to captivate a crowd. Just connect with one person.

6. Don’t Be Distracted By the Easy Stuff

There’s an enormous trend right now toward web-based marketing, especially social media. There’s a good reason for it: it’s a viable way to reach a lot of people.

The pitfall for introverts, however, is that the web is just too easy. It offers the (questionable) promise of riches and practice growth without getting out of your pyjamas, and for those of us who are a little shy, that’s too good to pass up.

So don’t pass it up. You’d be crazy not to use some of this technology to your advantage – just don’t fall into the trap of using it as your only advantage because you’re too scared to do anything else.

In a nutshell, let’s remember the words of Winnie the Pooh, who sums it all up far better than I ever could have:

“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”

Note: Kevin Doherty is one of the first people I stumbled across a few years back when we started this blog. He built a successful acupuncture practice, then went on to become an author and business coach.

He’s a smart guy, which I like, but he’s also walked the talk, building a six-figure income while maintaining a life.

It’s about time we had him sharing his brain here, so I asked him a few questions about finding success in practice…enjoy!  – Dan

1. You’ve worked closely with acupuncturists, but also with a variety of other health care professionals.   How similar are the practice challenges between acupuncture and other CAM professions?

I would say there are many similar challenges that include getting enough exposure and new patients, retaining them effectively, and creating a scalable business model that enables you to have a life outside of your practice.  Every business owner is faced with these challenges.

The difference I see for acupuncturists is that most of them would really prefer to just treat patients and not have to worry at all about marketing.  Chiropractors are much more motivated when it comes to marketing.  They understand the importance of investing in their practice growth through consulting, advertising, and internet marketing.  Acupuncturists are much more resistant to investing in their marketing education.  Because of this, they struggle more than chiropractors and generally make less money.  Acupuncturists often struggle with the whole notion of marketing in general, as it can feel inauthentic to them.  Because of this, they rely heavily on word of mouth and law of attraction principles.

For some, this works.  But for most, they never see the amount of patients they want because they have an aversion to self-promotion.  This is one of the greatest challenges that individual practitioners face, not to mention the profession as a whole.

2. What’s the biggest missed opportunity for most practitioners?

Fully leveraging the power of online technology to grow their practices.  In many markets, consumers are searching for alternative medicine services in the thousands every month with relatively little competition.  It is just crucial to get your practice positioned effectively on the internet.

3. If practitioners were to focus on one single strategy for the next three months, what would you recommend that would have the biggest impact on their practice?

Make sure you have a professional website or blog that has some current web 2.0 features like an opt in form, video, and integration with social media.  Take the necessary steps through search engine optimization, article marketing, and possibly pay per click to get a lot of qualified visitors coming to your website.

4. Many practitioners are in solo practice. Is it possible to make a good living as a solo practitioner and still lead a balanced life, or is adding associates and other staff a step that  practitioners have to make at some point?

This depends on the practitioner.  I, for one, never had a receptionist. Neither did the mentor I trained under.  We were able to see 50-70 patients per week in 3-3.5 days doing this.  This can only be done if you basically eliminate the need for a receptionist.  You have most patients pre-pay and pre-book appointments and you have an effective script in place that lets them know that they should only call your office to reschedule if it is absolutely necessary, as you run a very busy practice.  Basically, you need to be highly organized and efficient in the way you manage your time.  Otherwise, it can get pretty chaotic and exhausting.

Not all practitioners are able or want to see 3-4 patients per hour.  By far the most successful and lucrative practices are the ones that do see at least this many an hour.

I think it is possible to make a solid 6 figure income as a solo practitioner and have a life outside of the practice, but the truth is that this is unfortunately pretty rare.  You have to be pretty developed both personally and professionally to handle a high patient volume and set healthy boundaries so you don’t take it home with you or just end up pretty much living at your office.  Your marketing needs to be mostly automated through effective word of mouth and internet promotion.  Your practice management systems have to be tight and consistent.  These are things most of us don’t learn in school, which is why I decided to step up as a practice building coach.

Note: I think Kevin’s the real deal – he’s a sincere guy, helping a lot of practitioners reach more people and build a practice that supports their life.

If you need coaching, inspiration or help with any area of your practice (or you find all this internet talk confusing as hell ) you’ll find it well worth your time to check out his stuff. – Dan

The challenge is that waiting lists are harder to use than they seem. Here’s how you can make one work for you and your clients with no cost and minimal effort.

The Challenge

We were doing well with our scheduling strategy, but we still had a lot of holes coming from last minute scheduling changes. We don’t double-book, over-book, charge for missed appointments or use any other fixes that I feel reduce our level of service, but we really needed to do something to get the schedule filled more effectively, while still serving clients even better.

The waiting list was the answer. We just needed to use it the right way!

The Benefits

We were already using a waiting list, but it wasn’t working the way we thought it should. This time, we fixed our process for good and noticed the following in just a few days:

• Less waiting for new and existing clients
• More client visits in fewer clinic hours
• More convenient scheduling for patients
• Better daily flow for practitioners
• Greater revenue with the same or lower costs

To make that happened required five key shifts. Not difficult ones, but each is important.

Shift 1: Work Less

In the past, we’d tend to scale up available hours as things started to get busy. Once the schedule approached the 70-80% mark, it was harder for patients to get in at certain times, so we’d add a few hours here and there. It seemed sensible – after all, if there’s not much room in the schedule, you add more, right?

Wrong. This year, we took a new approach. Faced with a busy appointment book, we actually reduced our consult hours. This was the real turning point.

Reducing available time is really a way to push the adoption of a waiting list. It forces you to find a way to truly use the time that’s available in the schedule.  Why book only 75% of 30 hours when you could book 95% of 25? The deliver similar “billable time” but the latter involves a lot less time in clinic.

The result for us? We’re seeing more patients in the new reduced schedule than we did before, and providing much better service.

Shift 2: Change the Intention

In hindsight, “waiting list” isn’t the greatest phrase. I mean, who wants to be put on a list for waiting?

In the past, we might ask someone, “Can we put you on our waiting list in case there’s a cancellation?” Many would say, “No thanks.” A waiting list wasn’t really a patient-centered offering, and people weren’t interested. And for our staff, who take our clinic values very seriously, the waiting list wasn’t much fun either. For them it felt like a frustrating exercise that was all about making the clinic more financially efficient.

The solution? We changed our waiting list to a rapid care service. I know – it sounds like fluff, but it’s not. It was a fundamental shift in the purpose of the tool. Now the staff can reassure patients who can’t get in as soon as they’d like by explaining our rapid care service that will get them in sooner. Then they delight them a day later when they say, “Guess what? We’ve got a space for you.” Patients love it. It’s helpful for the staff. The practitioners love it. And the clinic is busier than ever, with fewer wasted clinic hours.

This shift is simply about service. A waiting list that is built around the intention of, “not wasting time we could be billing for,” will never work as well as one that’s built to serve.

Shift 3: Just Start

Don’t make this a big deal.  You can start your own rapid care service with a scrap of paper taped to the front desk. That’s what we did, and it worked great. Just get started, and figure it out as you go.

And don’t wait until you’re busy. The waiting list isn’t a tool for booked-solid practitioners. It’s a way to increase the speed and convenience of services in your office for everyone from the clients to the staff to you. That means no matter where you are in your practice, day one or day one thousand, you can use this tool to make life in the office easier for everyone. Even if it’s just you and a small roster of patients, get this habit in place now.

One of our early problems was making this bigger than it needed to be – that kind of thinking puts up too many roadblocks and “buts.” Just get started.

Shift 4: Get Involved

A real turning point was when I manned the front desk for a few days over the school break when we had some staff shortages because of vacation. It’s a job I used to do more in the clinic’s early days, but haven’t done much recently. It’s a great way to appreciate a) the challenges of filling a book effectively, and b)just how often a waiting list can be put to work.

You may be doing your own scheduling, and know exactly what those challenges are, but if you haven’t done the job in a while, it’s worth making a few hours to live in your staff’s shoes by answering the phone and booking appointments.

If you’re not doing your own booking, you’ll still need to be on top of gaps in the schedule. Make a point of checking the schedule regularly through the day. Help your team think of ways to fill any holes. “What about Mrs. So-and-So? She could come in.” Getting your waiting list to work is about changing habits, and that’s going to require you to be leading the charge.

Shift 5: Collect Better Information

To make this work, you’ll likely need to start learning more about your patients than you currently do – or you’ll at least have to start writing it down somewhere. Focus on these three areas:

• Best contact: To make your system work, you need more than just a way to get in touch with people. You need the fastest and most certain way to reach them. If you have a sudden opening in the schedule, you won’t be able to fill it quickly if you’re calling someone at home, but they’re at work for the next six hours. That means you need to know the best way to reach them now. Is it their cell phone? Email? Text? Work number?

• Patient preference: You waiting list needs to have some details – like what service patients are waiting for, and their preferences for times and days

• Patient flexibility: You’d be surprised how many clients have flexibility in their lives. The trick is to know who those people are. They’re the ones that are going to be a) great candidates for your waiting list, or b) the people whose appointment you can shift to accommodate someone else on the list who’s less flexible, and waiting for a specific time slot.

How you collect that info is up to you. Whoever does your bookings will develop a good sense of patient flexibility and preferences, but only if they ask in the first place. You need to be asking patients this information during the booking process. If you can’t reach flexible people in the fastest way possible, your list is going stumble before it gets out of the gate.

Small Effort, Big Benefits

Once you get this in place, you’ll find the benefits tend to spread into the schedule. When you have a great intention, and you can reach flexible clients easily, it become easy to shift the schedule to make it more efficient even when there aren’t people waiting. That frees up more blocks of scheduled time that help you get people in right away without ever having to be on the rapid care list at all.

Don’t be scared to work less to make this work. Test-drive it for a couple of weeks – you’ll be surprised not only at how efficient you can be, but how well your clients will respond.