The following is the text of one of our soon-to-be affiliates, Kevin Doherty, L.Ac. He writes a pretty good email, (and blog) I must say. This is good, logical, clearly spelled out information.

There is a link to one of his teleseminars at the bottom of the article. I’ve never taken one through him so would be interested in hearing if anyone out there has and what they think.

All my best,
Eileen

A lot of small business owners are feeling the sting of the economic downturn right now.  I have personally heard many practitioners say that their practices have slowed down significantly over the past couple of months.

Does it have to be this way?  What can you do to ensure than your practice is not adversely affected?

After all, there are many practitioners out there who are still doing fine, some even doing better than ever before.

All it really boils down to is busy practitioners are implementing systems to ensure the stability and growth of their practice that most others are not.

Let’s cover 3 of these crucial steps right now.

1.  Marketing Systems–  A lot of business owners are making the fatal mistake of cutting back on their marketing budget during this time.  This is the last thing you should do.  The life blood of any business boils down to how well and how consistently it is marketed.  You have to make sure that you are actively promoting your practice week in and week out.  An example of this would be setting up 2 lectures in your community every single month.  This is a marketing system that is proven to work (as long as you know how to set it up) and is free or low cost to implement.  Create several marketing systems and stick to them, whether your practice is slow or busy!

2.  Patient Contact Systems– You have to make sure that you have an organized way to stay in touch with old patients, current patients, and prospective patients.  One of the most effective ways to do this is having an ezine, or online newsletter.  I want to encourage you to learn more about this because it’s a big topic and there’s a right way and a wrong way to set up your ezine.  But it is very, very important to have something like this that you implement on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

3.  Patient Education Systems– You need a structured and effective process that you take each and every patient through.  This willl ensure higher patient retention which is a real issue for many practitioners right now.  You also need to educate people exactly how you can help them with issues that are relevant to this current time.  People have to see the value in coming to see you for the stress or anxiety they feel; it has to be clear to them how spending money (which they’re already worried about) on your practice is going to help alleviate their distress.

All 3 of these are big topics that I encourage you to study in more depth.  Our next teleseminar series will be going into depth on each of these topics and I encourage you to join us if you’re looking for ways to ensure the stability of your practice and even thrive during this time.  It is possible!

You can register at www.buildyourdreampractice.net/attractleads-patientretention.

If this teleclass helps you generate one new patient or retain a current patient for a couple more sessions with you, it will have easily paid for itself.

Sincerely,
Kevin Doherty, L.Ac.
“Helping You Achieve Your Dream Practice”

www.buildyourdreampractice.net