5 Maneras de Mejorar su Práctica!
World Small Animal Veterinary Association Congress Proceedings, 2016
Marco Antonio Gioso
Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

1.  Establish your target client

2.  Rethink your architecture and decoration

3.  Always increase the number of clients

4.  Conquer a first-class team

5.  Build your practice strategic plan

1. Establish Your Target Client

Most clinicians open their companies with no business plan, and consequently without selecting the specific client you want to attend to; a serious error that prevents providing specifically the exact type of service to a particular type of customer (segmentation). Within marketing, targeting the public who want to attend is a key. We need deep study of the wishes and expectations of the chosen segment.

With rare exceptions, a practice can attend to all kinds of public in the same company. Open without knowing who you wish to meet, whether men or women or both, what age, what social class, income, neighborhood, growth potential by location, among others, including niche markets (very specific segments, which have different expectations from the customer mass). Different social classes, for example, have different views of what to look for in a service, going from the decor and architecture, passing through the dressings of the team members. A simple frame or picture on the wall can be felt by different people in opposite ways, and result in confirmation of the sale or rejection. Much of what happens is unconscious in the consumer's head. Therefore, the entrepreneur must study a minimum of marketing to capture these nuances.

2. Re-think Your Architecture and Decoration

Before you think of architecture, the property point should always be checked. All legislation must be followed regarding the property, such as permits, fireman, taxes, etc.

Take much care when using a house that belonged to a family member, because it is cheaper. In general, studies indicate that rarely that will work. Family property may not be located at the point whose target audience you want and the savings made by this way, could result in business stagnation.

The decor and architecture is as critical as the target client. Colors are essential to attract and retain customers as well as pictures on the wall, tables, counters, bathroom. Social classes have distinct preferences for specific colors and decorations.

When a customer is present at the reception desk, in person, that indicates that he really believed in the technical competence of the professionals, once he went to your practice! Now it is your job, and the team's, not to mess it up! Clients fixate on small details that can prevent or close a sale. For example, lack of parking lot, a burned-out bulb, a strange dirt, messy desk, loose floor, ugly paintings, odorous bathroom and dirty or undercared garden, very simple chairs for the audience, crowded cabinets, junked stuff, or even a misplaced word of yours of your teams, among others.

Everything can be intangible in his head! Customers want tangible things (i.e., what is tangible, concrete in his head). Messy rooms, ugly things, piled utensils, bad smell, dirt, indicate a lack of professionalism (cause negative tangibility). When the atmosphere is cheerful, clean, well maintained before their eyes, with a pleasant odor, that causes positive tangibility, and unconsciously generates desire to spend more; the customer accepts what the practitioner indicates, easily. Health professionals think that the most important is their technical skills. Indeed, it is still the most important, but in highly competitive years, details make the difference, and these details are not just on your way to consult the patient and client, but in your surroundings! Convincing the customer is not just knowing how to diagnose and treat above average, but to have high capacity to convince, which is also generated by what is around you, including architecture, interior design and your team.

3. Always Increase the Number of Clients

As a basic rule, your company should have a new client every day, at least. That is, 365 new clients a year. A practice with many years in business, say for instance with 3,000 clients, this is an increase of 12% per year. Ideally, it should be 20% per year, once we always lose customers.

It costs a lot more to acquire a new customer than to keep the current ones. But what about doing both: capture new ones and keeping the old ones? Customers become loyal when very well treated. However what we see is that professionals only "think" they are treating their customers very well, but if they are indeed, why do their practices not grow annually? Because they are not treating them very well, just reasonably well! When the team treat client much above the market average, it creates viral marketing, positive word-of-mouth, when everyone begins to indicate your company, as they become delighted with their experience with you!

There are several ways to attract new customer:

 Media advertising

 Publicity

 Word of mouth

 Increase your networking (show off more)

 Develop your mix of marketing

 Sales campaigns

 Increase the efficiency of telephone calls

4. Conquer a First-Class Team

This item is extremely important, fundamental as a matter of fact, and mostly neglected. If a team is first class, all sales strategy gets easier. Companies with good plans do not increase, succeed because employees do not perform satisfactorily, especially in the retail market, and more still in the care of animals, because the customer expects tenderness in dealing with their pets and high-quality medicine, and will only "purchase" when feels confidence. Credibility is not generated when the professional or any member of staff was not trained in protocols, in the use of talking scripts, on what to say and avoid.

The education that the employees had in their lives are very different between them and the business person. This creates inconsistency in service, and therefore less credibility in the customer's mind, and thus less sales, less acceptance to the professional's recommendation. Many excellent professionals are surrounded by teams that risk the sales closing. You can lose customers because of your team! However, how many hours per year do you train your employees in customer service, leadership, behavior, conflict resolution?

5. Build Your Practice Strategic Plan

KPI are the key performance indicators. In the clinical practice, with the patient, the KPI would be the clinical data, such as temperature, pressure, blood count, glycemia, etc. And what are the KPI of the the company? What are the expected financial results of a successful company? There is only one way: record everything, expenses, costs, and the data detailed according to each business core inside the company (such as clinical and surgical, aesthetic, shop, hotel). A key tip is to compare with a similar company, but much larger and successful (benchmark). Unfortunately, clinicians do not treat their clinics as businesses, just as clinical practices, hospitals, not as an entity to generate profit. It is noticed that is philosophical, conceptual and not quite well accepted as an entrepreneurship cause.

  

Speaker Information
(click the speaker's name to view other papers and abstracts submitted by this speaker)

Marco Antonio Gioso
Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia
Universidade de São Paulo
São Paulo, Brazil


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