qantas A380
Fed up paying out huge fees to travel to management conferences and learning nothing? I’ll save you the trouble. In the last month, I’ve travelled to three continents, attending and presenting at both WSAVA/BSAVA in the UK and CVC East Coast in Washington DC.
Three continents, two conferences and one crazy veterinary world – here’s what I learned.
1. Net Promoter Score rocks – you can read the book for more detail but it boils down to this: how many of your clients are actively recommending you and are advocates for your practice? Getting client feedback, and better still, having this immortalised online in the form of reviews is going to be a huge advantage.
2. Coach your staff like a sports team was Shawn McVey’s advice. If you train hard, have talent and play by the rulebook you generally get to play for a good team, earn more money, have a nicer car, etc. If you do something the coach doesn’t like, coach blows the whistle, pulls you aside and tells you what to do differently. If you consistently fail to do what coach asks then you get dropped, have to play in a smaller team with less pay, smaller house/car, etc. This is how it works in just about every field of business. So why do we struggle with it in veterinary medicine? You are the coach, do you have a playbook and are you blowing your whistle?
3. Be different and be good if you want to succeed. This was the message from an inspirational Marwan Tarazi. Marwan is a small animal practitioner from England who has posted some stellar performance figures from his start-up practice. His targets were to generate annual revenue of £150,000, £250,000 and £350,000 for years one, two and three. He’s smashing these targets out of the park and in his third year is on course to deliver £750,000 – from a one-vet practice! What’s his edge? Marwan would have you believe it was laparoscopic surgery, but we at The Hamster Wheel know different. While everyone was amazed by the success of the clinic, the shrewd members in the audience knew that Marwan would have posted these figures whatever he did. His secret isn’t technology; it’s commitment, passion and chutzpah. Good on you, Marwan.
4. Stop trying to fix people who are psychologically broken. It’s not your job and you are not a shrink. This means you are wasting your time. Instead learn better ways of hiring people who help you achieve, not hold you back.
5. Write a blog. Google will love you and only 4% of clinics do this, so you’ll stand out a mile from the crowd. Post a blog every week if possible and you will out-rank your peers on any search engine listing you like. Think new client gold rush
6. Sign up for a twitter account and get into some meaningful conversations with clients and potential clients. Not convinced? Then come and see me present at a CVC show or in Melbourne at AVBA.
7. Email is most definitely not dead. Use it to save money, time and get better engagement from your clients. Sack your marketing person if they say otherwise.
8. Even though we are in the economic doldrums, there are a lot of clinics that are growing fast and are very busy. They are doing something dramatically different. In fact, they are doing a lot of things dramatically different. If you’re suffering and haven’t changed anything then you need to act because you’re running out of time.
9. We recruit people really, really badly. We should be getting more help from qualified professionals. Great people power great businesses. It is worth the time and investment to hire well.
10. Getting out there, meeting new people and catching up with old friends is great for the soul, fights isolation and exposes you to different ways of thinking. Make it a priority to attend a conference you have never been to before and throw yourself in hook, line and sinker.
