Can A Sense Of Community Be Brought to Your Patients And Drive Your Commercial Strategy?

By Geoffrey Cooling

I have written before briefly on community and my thoughts on how you can build your Practice’s. I believe that this approach can be a powerful part of your commercial strategy. In brief, I felt that you could build a community around your Practice. I also felt that the community would drive Patient loyalty and referral.

In essence, the sense of belonging would drive advocacy for your Practice. That is what we need from our Patients, Advocacy. A satisfied customer is just not enough, you want an ecstatic customer, an advocate or an evangelist as Shep Hyken calls them.

The steps that I suggested to engender this community where

Coffee Mornings
The coffee mornings are just that, a coffee morning get together that involves no sales. No information other than that which is asked by your Patients on the day. A simple get together to meet and chat.

Mentor Groups
Mentor groups are existing experienced Patients that are willing to help new Patients along with their rehab. Answering questions, giving advice, helping with cleaning and care and just being there to speak to in relation to hearing.

Group events
Group events are an extension of the coffee mornings, if your community builds you can consider group outings.

One of my customers has just undertaken his first coffee morning, it was a rip roaring success. He undertook the morning in his Practice for a charity event. He sent out the invites and was astonished by the response. Many of his Patients wanted to come along, he was surprised by the amount of people that RSVP’d.

The coffee morning itself was a massive success, it was well attended not only by his own customers. But also by friends and relatives that they brought along. He had decided to just take it easy and informal with no sales pitch or informational lecture. Just a pleasant morning with what we Irish love, good tea, coffee and chit chat.

There was indeed plenty of that, but he was surprised by the questions of interest he was asked by both his long term Patients and the people who had come along as one other. The morning finished and the recurring question was when was the next one? My customer did not set out to generate tests or sales from the event, he was more concerned with generating some money for charity.

But that is what the event did, more than a few tests were requested on the day and were booked for later on. He thinks that more than a few sales will also be generated by the morning both in the short term and the long term. He is already planning his next event and is considering the use of Mentor Groups in the Practice.

It worked well for him and might work well for you, what do you think?