4 Top Pain Points for Practice Owners
Sometimes when you visit a small practice it's noticeable what their pain points are if you know what you're looking for. If you don't know what to look for, you will usually bump into them because, they are right there for everyone to see, especially your patients.
You can search "top pain points for small business" in any search engine and if you read any of the top few articles, you will see a list similar to this:
1. Time Management, Not enough time in the day
2. Marketing, Advertising and Social Media
3. Dealing with customers / patients
4. Accounting and billing
I can't help you with all four right away. But I'm pretty sure at least 2 of these 4 are causing you problems right now. The others might not have showed themselves to you yet or you have figured out a way to solve them. In that case, good job! But for the rest of us, lets look closer at this list.
Time Management and Not enough time in the day. How many times during the week do you say or feel "I don't have enough time?" Don't worry, most everyone says this and they are not practice owners. It's a common problem. But as a practice owner you have a big job of maximizing your time so that things in your practice move at a profitable pace. This isn't easy when you are bouncing between patients, calendars, billing, receiving orders, programming hardware, managing computers, passwords, printers and ... and ... and ... it never stops! How many times in a week do you or someone in your practice apologize to a patient because someone is behind schedule? I can go all day long and show you examples of why you don't have enough time.
Marketing, Advertising and Social Media is a common problem as most people are not experts on this subject. It seems everywhere you read you need to be doing more marketing, better advertising and absolutely be managing or starting your online presence with social media! Why haven't you started yet? Oh wait, let me guess, it's that Time Management thing creeping up on you again. As soon as you shake that time management issue, you will get on this marketing, advertising and social media. I'm sure I don't have to be the first to tell you, that is a sure fire way to slowly choke your revenue to death. Don't fall into that trap. Find time or find a way to outsource. Your practice cannot grow and be profitable if you cannot have new patients walking through those doors.
Dealing with customers / patients. I'm not talking about your happy and loyal patients that keep returning because of their unwavering faith in your service, product and prices. You never really have to "deal" with them. It's those that are less loyal or less happy. You need to keep touching those patients to make sure they remember you. You need to expose them to other positive areas of your practice. Maybe it's the service or kindhearted team member found on your staff. No matter what it is that sets you apart from your competitors, you need to make sure your patients see it and remember it. You need to be proactive and call them prior to appointments. You need to follow up after to make sure everything is exactly as they needed it. I'm sure you have plenty of time to do that, right? Oh no, not that time management thing again! That one is really starting to get under my skin.
Accounting and billing. This one has to go without saying! What a nightmare this is for me personally! I didn't go to school or take classes on how to do any of it. I have read books. I have watched training videos. I have listened to hours of endless chatting on how to improve my billing and stay on top of the accounting. Payroll is hard enough. I should have been a CPA! Ok, maybe it's not that bad for you. For me and many other people it's not what we got into business to do. There has got to be the right way to do it and to have it done right for your practice. I know someone has figured it out. But lets roll up our sleeves and get going on this, right when you have more... Time.
I am really disliking this untouchable thing called time!
I hope I can share with you something that will help free up your time. Something that will remove this endless stress and allow you to get more done and spend time on things that need it the most!
The solution can be found in the new role called Audiology Assistant. This assistant isn't like a personal assistant that will magically make your life wonderful. This assistant is specific to the improvement of your practice. The assistant can do much of the work done in the lab, order and receive hearing aids, clean hearing aids and equipment, show your patients how to care for their new investments. They can be that smiling face greeting them to the practice and the loud and clear voice calling them to remind them to pick up equipment or prep them for the next appointment. The assistant can also work on the social media that many of your patients and potential patients are looking at. The assistant can be that extra set of hands, ears and voice to help you manage the limited time in the day.
There is so much the Audiology Assistant can do for you and your practice.
Increase your revenue
Allows you to see more patients
Less time spent on menial tasks
Removes some stress from you
Adds a cost effective team member to your practice
Saves you Time
After you find your Audiology Assistant, we can help you train them in as little as 10 weeks with online classes and guided hands-on training in your practice doing it "your way."
Once you have your new Audiology Assistant working full swing in your practice and you have more time to work on the practice instead of in your practice, you can thank me. I would love to hear from you.
So, what are you going to do with all this extra free time?
