If you own or manage a Veterinary Practice then one question you should be asking is:

How Can I Generate More Client Referrals For My Veterinary Practice?

It is generally accepted that the best type of new customer is one that has been referred from an existing happy customer, as they are far more receptive, more easily satisfied and less price conscious.

That being the case, do you know how many of your new clients come from referrals from existing clients?

If you don’t then make it a priority to start keeping track of who is referring, how many they refer and how frequently they refer. You also need to keep track of referral activity including which staff members are doing the most to encourage referrals.

According to Joe Girard, the author of How To Sell To Anybody, the average number of attendees at both weddings and funerals is fifty-two. His contention is that, in marketing to consumers, each customer has the potential of referring fifty-two other customers. Now you could argue that in the case of a veterinary practice this number would be less, as not all of the fifty-two will be pet owners. Well according to the U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook (2007 Edition) 37.2% of U.S. Households own dogs while 32.4% own cats. More recent statistics suggest that 63% of U.S. holds own a pet of some description.

So, even if we err on the side of caution and cut that fifty-two number in quarter:

Is your practice averaging thirteen referrals per client?

The answer is probably not, in fact most will average less than one and some might not even get thirteen referrals per month in total! Putting measures in place to generate

referrals from your clients should be a key weapon in any veterinary practice’s marketing arsenal.

The 3 Golden Keys to Client Referral

So, how can you take your practice from averaging less than one referral per client to double-digit referrals per client?

Well, essentially, there are three golden keys you need to unlock the referral flood gates and, in doing so, condition your clients to be serial referrers:

Golden Key #1 – Give Them Something To Shout About!

First of all let us start by defining what we mean by ‘refer’.

What we really mean is ‘promote’ and clients will not actively and abundantly promote your business unless you give them something worth promoting. That ‘something’ we refer to is an experience so awe inspiring and different to what they expect from any typical veterinary practice that they just can’t help but tell everyone that will listen about it.

Clients do not enthusiastically refer the ordinary, the satisfactory or even the above average. However, they will contagiously refer the outstanding, the unexpectedly wonderful and the downright memorable.

You need to create that ‘wow factor’ for your clients that will make your practice the talk of the town.

If you can create the buzz then your clients will be happy to convey their experience, whether they are meeting with friends, talking to other parents at their kids school soccer game or talking to work colleagues.

Golden Key #2 – Ask Them!

As it says in a very old but very wise book, “Ask, and it will be given to you” and you MUST ask your clients for referrals.

Here are just four ways that you can do it:

1.       Let them know that other clients refer – use notice boards, your newsletter and your website to publicize to your clients that other clients refer and you expect them to as well.

2.       Run referral promotions – run a competition to see who can provide the most referrals. Give away top prizes, such as flat screen TVs  for the top three referrers. The value to the client is huge but, based on the fact that the average annual value of veterinary client in the USA is around $400, you wouldn’t need many referrals to afford it.

3.       Hold Referral Events – if you want to meet a lot of potential new clients at once then hold a special event for your clients and ask them to bring their pet owning friends.

4.       Ask Them Why They Don’t Refer – This last one takes a little bit of courage but if you have a pet owner who has been coming to your practice for years but never refers, you need to ask why.

Golden Key #3 – Reward Them!

We mentioned earlier about ‘conditioning’ your clients to refer, and rewarding them plays a key role in this conditioning process.

We are based just north of Orlando and, therefore, SeaWorld is a frequent destination to take our kids. If you go to see the Shamu Show, you will notice that each time the giant killer whales perform a trick they are rewarded with some tasty fish. Over time the whales have been conditioned that, if they do as their trainers ask, they will be rewarded and so, doing the tricks becomes second nature to them.

What you need to discover is, what is the ‘fish’ you can give your clients to reward them for referring, so that referring becomes second nature to them?

You must make referrals a big deal and at the very least call your clients to say thank you for the referral or send them a thank you note and/or gift.

Do you think that if one of your clients received a nice thank you card, with perhaps a gift certificate, for making a referral that they would be willing to refer someone else?

You bet they would!

Not only that, but how many people would get to know that they’d received a thank you from their vet?

If you need more new clients and you’re not getting a flood of referrals consistently then you need to create an experience that your clients are compelled to tell others about.

Start today and watch the patients flood in!

If you own or manage a Veterinary Practice then one question you should be asking is:

Why should a pet owner choose my practice as opposed to every other veterinary practice available to her?

What is it that makes clients want to bring their pets to your practice?

If the answer for the majority of your clients is either “you’re the nearest Vet to home” OR “you’re the cheapest Vet in town” then your practice could be living on borrowed time!

You see, if you want your practice to thrive and grow bigger than you ever dare dreamed then you must have a compelling story to tell, a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), that will make clients drive past the Veterinary Practice close to home and the cheapest practice in town to bring their pets to you! If you don’t then it is only a matter of time before either an existing competitor or a new practice does and you get left behind!

Your compelling story, becomes the focal point of your marketing efforts, the talking point that gets you more referrals, the source of pride that makes your employees proud to tell their friends they work at your practice and the reason why your clients will be happy to travel further to see you even after you have raised your prices.

You must position your practice for success and by positioning we mean controlling how your customers, and prospective customers, think and feel about your veterinary practice compared to the other practices that are competing for their attention.

You must constantly ask yourself:

“Why should a pet owner choose my practice as opposed to all of the other practices available to them.”

So, if you haven’t got a story to tell or USP then how can you get one? Well the easiest way is to address what your clients like and don’t like and to establish that, just ask them!

Ask every client that comes into your practice, over the next seven days, what are the top three things they appreciate when bringing their pet to your practice and what their top three dislikes are. For example, if most of your patients list the waiting time to be seen as a dislike then can you give an “On-time, Every time‟ guarantee that stands you out from the crowd?

The next time you make a buying decision, whether it’s deciding on which restaurant to have dinner at, which car to buy or even just where to get coffee, ask yourself what’s their story?

Why are you choosing them and not the least expensive or most convenient? For example, why do people choose Starbucks over other less expensive coffee shops?

Why would you travel 20 miles to see a dentist when they are several just around the corner?

If you want a good business role model then look no further than the Ritz-Carlton hotel group. The lengths to which the Ritz-Carlton staff will go to assure their guests have a memorable experience are legendary.  In fact, every day, employees of every department in every Ritz-Carlton hotel around the world gather for a 15-minute staff meeting where they share "wow stories." These are true stories of employee heroics that go above and beyond conventional customer service expectations. In one, a hotel chef in Bali found special eggs and milk for a guest with food allergies in a small grocery store in another country and had them flown to the hotel. In another, a hotel’s laundry service failed to remove a stain on a guest’s suit before the guest left. The hotel manager flew to the guest’s house and personally delivered a reimbursement check for the cost of the suit.

Now you may be thinking “the Ritz-Carlton can do these things because they make millions of dollars each year!” but the reason they make millions of dollars is by doing these things!

So what can you do in your practice to ‘go the extra mile’ and create a reputation for world class patient care and client service?

One thing is for sure, if you get your story right, you won’t just attract and keep customers, you will create raving fans who will be avid referrers and who will be bringing their pets to you for life!

Another frequently asked question on How To Grow Your Veterinary Practice Is:

How Can I Track If My Marketing Is Working Within My Veterinary Practice?

This is a very good question because the key to any successful marketing campaign is tracking.  This is also the difference between the sort of advertising that comes out of Madison Avenue and the sort that actually works for small businesses including veterinary practices.

So how do you go about tracking?

Here are four ways you can track if your marketing is working:

1.       Campaign Specific Telephone Numbers

Did you know that it is possible to rent tracking telephone numbers? These are telephone numbers that you can put on your adverts, letters and web pages that when dialed will ring in your office but will be also be logged. For example, say you were running an identical promotion in two different local newspapers at the same time at the ad generated 50 new clients for your practice. If you used the same telephone number on both then you wouldn’t know which newspaper had generated the most new clients. You might then be tempted to run the same ad again in both newspapers the following week when, in fact, one of the newspapers had generated 45 new clients and the other one had only generated 5! However, if each ad used a different tracking telephone number then you would know exactly how many had come from each.

2.       Campaign Specific Codes

An alternative to using telephone numbers is to use different codes for each campaign. For example, you could specify in your ads or letters: “Please mention offer code XYZ345 when making an appointment.” This is a cheaper than telephone numbers but also not as reliable as you are relying on the client remembering to give the code and your reception staff remembering to keep track of it.

3.       Campaign Specific Vouchers

Another well used tracking method is to include a voucher/coupon on your ad that the client has to bring with them to qualify for the promotion. Again not as good as telephone numbers but still a lot more than the majority of veterinary practice do.

4.       Campaign Specific Web Pages

If you want to track clients that have come as a result of visiting your website then you could use different ‘landing pages’ for different campaigns which could include any of the above tracking methods. You can also have Internet only offers so you know could only have been found on your website.

Use a simple spreadsheet which lists each campaign and the total cost of the campaign i.e. postage, paper, advertising costs etc. Then have columns for the number of responders (leads), the number of conversions (sales), the Cost Per Lead (total cost/leads), the Cost Per Sale (total cost/sales) and the value of the sales made. By doing this you can track if you are getting a return on your investment and determine if it is worth running the campaign again.

So don’t waste money on advertising and marketing that doesn’t work. Track your campaigns and focus on the ones that actually give you a positive return on investment.

Just heard this saying and had to share it with our readers.

Remember, when the going gets tough in your practice you can either moan about it or roll up your sleeves and do somthing about it!

Winston Churchill once noted that “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” Run your practice by these sentiments and instill them in your staff, your practice will be a better place for it!

Sent from my iPhone

Another frequently asked question we get on How To Grow Your Veterinary Practice is:

How can I grow my veterinary practice if I’m treating patients all day?

The simple answer to this is YOU CAN’T!

In order to grow your veterinary practice you MUST find time to work ON your veterinary business rather than just working IN your veterinary business. Notice we said veterinary BUSINESS rather than veterinary practice. The sooner you realize that, as practice owner, you are running a business not solely practicing veterinary medicine the sooner you will be to being able to grow a substantial business.

In Michael Gerber’s best-selling book “The E-Myth Revisited” he introduces a premise, which when applied to the veterinary profession, infers veterinarians make the fatal assumption that just because they understand how to do the technical work of their practice – i.e. practicing veterinary medicine – they also understand how to build a practice that does that work.

His reasoning behind this argument is that veterinarians, starting their own practices, build practices that are heavily dependent on their own skills, talents, interests and tendencies. That they end up devoting their time, energy and life to what amounts to “working for a living” even if it is self-employed and finally they sell their “job” for break-even or even a net loss on all of the investment they’ve made.

The Entrepreneurial Veterinarian, on the other hand, builds a practice that can run itself in the hands of professional management, giving her the time to invest in other businesses or whatever else she wants to do with her life. The practice provides an income that she does not have to “work” for and provides a valuable asset for her future. In effect the Entrepreneurial Veterinarian builds an enterprise that can be grown as big as she sees fit.

Isn’t that the sort of practice that you dreamt of building?

To quote Michael Gerber:

“…your practice must be designed, so that it can do what it does systematically, predictably, every single time.”

By introducing systems you can create a consistent excellent experience for your clients every single time.

Why is McDonalds the most successful franchise of all time and the most successful burger restaurant? Well it isn’t down to the quality of their food as there are many burger restaurants with better quality burgers. The answer to both questions is their systems. A McDonalds in Seattle uses the exact same operations manual as a McDonalds in Orlando or New York or London, England or Sydney, Australia.

So while aren’t equating the services a veterinary practice provides with serving hamburgers, we are saying that you can implement systems in your practice. McDonalds has a systems-dependent business not a people-dependent business and you must develop a systems-dependent practice rather a than people-dependent practice.

What are the benefits?

When you systematize your business you instantly create a number of benefits:

1.       Your clients will be happier because they know they will get a consistent experience every time they visit your practice.

2.       Your staff will be happier as they will have a consistent way of doing things.

3.       You will be happier because you know that every consultation will be done your way.

4.       You will be less reliant on any individuals as any new clerical or reception staff can be easily trained to follow the systems that have been created for their area. The days when staff members could effectively hold you to ransom over your perceived fear that your practice can’t run without them are over!

5.       You will be able to take time off from your practice, safe in the knowledge your practice will still be in one piece when you get back.

6.       If you want to open a new practice in a different area you will already have the blueprint and systems manuals in place to get it up and running  very quickly!

7.       If you already have more than one practice you can be sure that things will be consistent to the point where if a staff member from one of your practices needs to fill in for a staff member at another one there will be no training required.

8.       Your practice becomes much more attractive to potential buyers as they will be effectively buying a turnkey operation that runs itself.

What can you systematize in your practice?

In your Reception

Every client should receive a consistent first class experience and every member of staff working in the reception area must know exactly what they need to do to provide it. Here is a sample of some of the systems you should have in place to enable your reception staff to do their job properly:

·         Answering the telephone.

·         Greeting clients.

·         Pre-consultation.

·         Post-consultation. 

·         Dealing with complaints.

Consulting Rooms

Systems for your veterinarians and veterinary technicians to follow in the consulting room are even more important in ensuring first class patient care and a consistent experience for your clients. The idea is not to constrain their abilities as a veterinary practitioner but to ensure that mistakes are not made and that consultations and procedures are carried out in the way you want them to be. Examples include:

·         New patient appointments.

·         Your systems for diagnosis.

·         Your systems for treatment.

Back Office

Your back office should obviously have systems for patient recording keeping, accounting and dealing with staff issues but here we are going to focus on the systems that 99% of veterinary practices don’t even think about which are Marketing Systems. Marketing systems are generally created in the back office and then deployed throughout the practice.

For example at the very least you should have  systems in place for the following:

·         Client Referral System

·         Testimonial Collection System

·         Up-sell/Cross-sell/Down-sell Systems

One of the keys to implementing systems within your practice is delegating tasks to your staff and making them responsible for their completion.  For example, make it the job of one of your team to run your client referral system including the tracking of who was referred by who and the rewarding of referrers.

Most veterinarians prefer practicing veterinary medicine to running a veterinary business but by implementing systems and delegating tasks it is possible to enjoy both!