Do you run a medical or aesthetic clinic and do you want to work less and make more money? Of course you do, who wouldn’t.

Well in this blog post, I will show you how thinking of your clinic as a well-oiled machine, will accomplish just that!

You're a healthcare professional, so you probably don’t think of your practice or clinic as a MACHINE. But that's exactly what it is! It's a machine to provide a service to your client or patient and to generate profit. Those are the 2 primary - some would say ONLY functions of the machine -  the machine that is YOUR CLINIC OR PRACTICE - to provide a SERVICE and to make a PROFIT. 

There are 5 interlocking cogs that make up the blueprint for your successful vein or aesthetic or other type of medical clinic - your machine.

Let me show you the blueprint and at the end I’ll explain how having that blueprint will enable you to make more profit whilst at the same time freeing up more of your own time. Time to do what you want: to take a vacation while your clinic still works - servicing patients and making a profit.

Important Aspects of a Health Business

Content Creation

The first cog is content creation. Content is everything that someone might read, watch, listen to, hear about your clinic. You may not regard yourself as a content maker, but you are. In fact, everyone in your clinic is a content maker.

Whether you realise it or not, you must continuously make sure that your potential clients and patients are provided with relevant content about what you do.

So what is relevant content?  Relevant content is that which connects you with your target audience. So for example, if you run a vein clinic, like I did you need to talk about  transformations you offer. Can you get your patients or clients from A to B? Can you get rid of those unsightly spider veins? Can you free them from the ache and throbbing of varicose veins? If you are an aesthetic clinic, can you reduce lines or wrinkles? Can you give your clients a more youthful appearance?

Can you connect with your potential clients' concerns and use their language rather than talking about lasers, tightening, peels, fillers et cetera etc? Our target audience is interested in results and transformations - not processes.

Marketing

The second cog is marketing - the distribution of that relevant content to generate interest in your practice and clinic.

How do you get eyeballs on your clinic? Well, pick one or two distribution channels - it might be Facebook, it might be Youtube, it might be an email newsletter - and go out and broadcast! So how do you pick that broadcast channel? Well first of all, think about your ideal patient and find out where they hang out. If you're not sure, then ASK.

Ask your existing clients and patients whenever possible, ask new clients how they heard about you.

Sales

The third cog is sales. Many doctors and nurses and others in healthcare regard sales as something a little unpleasant or beneath them, but if you run a clinic or private practice, you must be interested in sales. “Sales” is simply the process of converting that interest that has been generated by your content into customers or paying patients. So here, you want to make sure that it is super easy for potential customers to contact you or your staff. 

Now in healthcare, most people will want to check you out with a phone call. So make sure that the telephone is answered, seems obvious doesn’t it. Make sure your telephone is answered quickly and that calls are returned.

To make sure calls are not missed or left unanswered why not employ an answering service?

Customer Support

The fourth cog is customer support: customer support keeps your clients and patients happy so that they continue to buy other services you provide, ANDi if they are happy,  they will recommend you to others.

Once again, examples of this might be follow up telephone calls, texts to enquire how they are getting on. Giving your patients a way to contact you personally if they are concerned and being prepared to see your patients quickly if something unexpected occurs.

Customer surveys and questionnaires are an important way of ensuring that you continuously improve your service and that customer support is doing its job. 

Business Operations

The fifth cog is operations. It's sometimes called service delivery. It means the management of your staff, your services, your processes, your risks in your business.

This aspect can be very complex if you run a clinic, particularly clinics on multiple sites, but it is much less complex if you have a private practice. For a solopreneur, this might mean good software. For a clinic it means a good clinic manager and the appropriate systems for HR, Risk Management, Stock Control, Accounting, et cetera -  you get the idea. 

So as you can see, your practice or clinic is a machine with interlocking cogs. They all have to work to have a business which provides a service and makes a profit. And what’s more, they all have to work in harmony. If you don’t have a system for content creation, customers won't know anything about you. You will be invisible. 

If you don’t have a system for marketing, you won’t generate interest.  If you don’t generate interest, you won't have sales, if you don’t have sales, you won’t have a private practice or clinic, and if you don’t  have a private practice, you don’t need any staff, products, policies or procedures.

All the 5 cogs in your business are equally important. If any cog grinds to a halt,  that machine won't work - a clinic that delivers a service and makes a profit is a machine that works.

Now at the beginning I said that I would explain how having a blueprint will enable you to have more profit and free up your time at the same time.

More Profit

To make more profit, you need to continuously refine the working of each cog. And to do that, you need to document the process and systems that make up each cog.

Document how content is created, document how it is distributed, how the sales process works, how customers are kept happy and document how your clinic runs day to day. Once you have a blueprint documented you have a way to drill down on each of the cogs and make tweaks.

For some clinics, the tweaks will be massive. There is no reason why a website, for example, might not double its conversion rate. If you make the changes I discussed in a previous blog, you can certainly drive more traffic and conversions via your website.  

Now, imagine if you could achieve consistent improvements in the operation of each cog, every year for 5 years, what might that look like. So the first benefit of thinking about your business as a machine is that you can continuously fine tune each of the areas of your machine and oil the five cogs.

You will have a systematic approach to easily make iterative improvements to your business. In short, you will be able to service more clients and make more profit, which after all is the aim of any business - to provide a service or product at a profit.

Work Less

Now, here’s the second benefit and you might not have thought of this.  If your business is documented, you can effectively delegate a lot of what you might be currently doing to someone else. You will have a way of handing over elements of your business to your staff.  You can have more time to do what you want to. Heck, you might even be able to take a vacation and the business would work without you. Imagine lying on a beach, and your clinic is still servicing clients and making a profit for you.

Who doesn’t want more money and more free time to do what they want! Think of your business as a machine and it will give you both!

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