The Golden Rule

"Treat others how you want to be treated."

That's BS.

Okay, before you click off this blog, let me explain. I had lunch with a friend today who just read a management book.

"It was a lot more spiritual than I thought. Compared with a lot of the stuff we talk about, which is more nuts and bolts," he explained.

I wondered if we have been having the same conversations. We certainly do talk nuts and bolts; he does our billing, so it's more like dollars and cents. Our conversations are often practical and technical. But our more memorable conversations, for me at least, get to be a little more big picture, more global.

So, the first quote above was the take home message from the book he read. It might work out well in a spiritual sense and it is a great message. But in business it hasn't worked for us.

My business partner and I started out trying to design our business with that very principal in mind. We designed it the way we would want it to work if we were customers or employees of the company. What we learned, often the proverbial hard way, is that what we like and what motivates us is not always the same as our customers and employees.

Think of it this way. Do you think Ray Kroc wanted a burger? Do you think Henry Ford wanted a Model T? I don't know if they did. But their customers did. They knew their customers.

And that's the key. Know your target audience. Michael Gerber calls it marketing. Others call it market research. But learn all you can about your customers and potential customers, what motivates them, excites them, frightens them and worries them. Learn their hopes, dreams, aspirations and fears. Then address those through your business.

So, instead of "Treat others how you want to be treated." You can "Treat others how they want to be treated!"

It's not about you. It's all about your customer.

Emails & Contact

Right after putting up the last post and mentioning contact with patients and clients to keep your services in their mind and let them know that they matter to you, I stumbled upon this article, It's no LOL: Few US doctors answer e-mails from patients. If you don't use email to correspond with patients, it's worth the read.

On our clinic websites, www.SFPhysicalTherapy.com and www.WestBayPT.com, we have all of our therapists' emails listed. We also put them directly on our business cards, the ones we hand out to patients. It makes for an easy way to interact with patients, send them occasional updates and reminders, and provide them another level of access. The remarkable thing is that it has hardly ever been abused.

And as Dr. Sands puts it in the article, "Any message that takes more than two volleys back and forth should not be done by e-mail." At that point you just pick up the phone or recommend that the patient come in to see you.

If you are not using email to communicate with patients, consider it and maybe run a short pilot. You might be surprised at the results.

Lifetime Market Value

For most healthcare providers, thinking in terms of Lifetime Market Value is new. In a system where everything we do costs money, it is essential to have an understanding of the issues Mr. Straight brings up below.

Lifetime Market Value can be applied to any business, healthcare or otherwise. How many times do you get coffee in a week? I probably buy a coffee 3-4 times a week. I'm simple and only get the cheap, small kind. The coffee costs $1.55 and I also tip the servers. I'm out of town a bit, so let's say I buy my coffee at my favorite store at $1.55 each time, 3 times per week for only 40 weeks out of the year. I'm worth at least $186 per year to the coffee store.

We can complicate things with up-sells and cross-sells, all the tactics they use as a business to get me to spend more money when I'm there, and I often do. My real value might be closer to $250-$300 per year. And I bring friends sometimes or my kids or wife, and even if I'm not the one buying that day, the coffee store still gets their revenue.

And the servers? If I only tip $0.45, the change left over from my coffee purchase each time, then I'm worth at least $54 to them this year, too. And I often leave them more than that.

So, I'm worth a base of at least $350 per year to the coffee store and their employees. But I bring others. I buy a sandwich sometimes. I'll buy my kids a yogurt or milk, or sometimes the fruit salad, which all serve to raise my value to the store. And I'll go there for the next 5 years, as long as my office is where it is. So, I've turned my $1.55 a day habit into a Lifetime Market Value of about $2,000 for this one store. And this started out as only coffee, and the small, cheap one at that.

You can use this type of analysis to take a look at pricing, services offered, how much an average client spends, how many referrals you get from clients, and then make better decisions about where to devote your resources.

A great article that addresses this in the context of customer retention is at http://www.marketingprinciples.com/customer-retention-plan. Staying in touch is a huge step toward retention.

Do the exercise for your practice, whether you are an internal medicine physician, an orthodontist or a podiatrist. Estimate the services you provide to an average patient over the course of treatment or on an annual basis. Multiply by the number of years, recurrences or new care episodes, and then multiply by the number of friends or family they will send to your practice. Now think about what you do to stay in touch with that patient and what you can do to help them recommend you to their friends and family.

Marketing and maintaining contact doesn't have to be expensive, it just needs to be focused.

Please contact me with questions or comments on this or any of the articles at sturdy@rocketmail.com.