You want to develop your business, what do you need to consider?

By Geoffrey Cooling

Business development, another hot topic in our profession. The application of best practice to our business, be that clinical or commercial best practice. I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to shape and develop several business in my tenure at Widex. For some reason some people seem to think that my ramblings, thoughts and advice have value.

To those people I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to shape my thinking through application. In order to assist the businesses that placed their trust in me, I devised a process to follow. This process was designed to assess current business practices, outline discussions on those practices and practices I thought had value and finally outline a strategy to move forward.

Initially I would send a document to the business that covered outline frames for discussions on the following:

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  Practice management strategy

   

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  Strategic use of practice management software

   

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  Tactical use of practice management software

   

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  Data entry rules for practice management software

   

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  Branding of a Practice

   

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  Refurbishment of a Practice

   

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  Leveraging display for profile

   

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  The Patient Journey

   

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  Tactical deployment of the Patient Journey

   

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  Maximising Patient Retention & Referral

   

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  Ongoing Consultation Auditing

   

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  Ongoing product training

   

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  Upselling strategy

   

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  Increased ancillary revenue

   

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  Loyalty Club deployment

   

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  Possible use of a Practice newsletter

   

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  Twelve month Marketing Strategy

I think that these are important headers under which we can assess business practices as they are currently applied to a hearing healthcare business. They also keep in mind processes and procedures that are accepted as best practice for a hearing healthcare business.

I have detailed some of the headers below with some expansion of parameters for assessment ;  

Strategic use of your practice management software

With reference to your strategic goals, we need to discuss a policy for data entry on your practice management software to ensure maximum efficiency of filter searches and automated processes that you may set up.

Tactical use of your practice management software

Again pertaining to your strategic goals, we need to discuss a policy for the tactical use of your practice management software utilizing the full power of the programme to realise those goals. This policy would include Patient Journey, one month letters to TNSs, one year letters to TNS, letters to prospect contacts, follow up letters to prospect contacts. Integration of your loyalty programme, communications for the loyalty programme.

Data entry rules for your practice management software

Data entry rules are inherent to your success and need much thought, without them your entire strategy is at risk.

The Patient Journey

A Patient journey covers every touchpoint with your Practice that you expect a Patient to have under normal circumstances. This needs to be assessed and set in stone This will allow you to plan all Patient communications, scheduling and assess cost of delivery.

Tactical deployment of the Patient Journey

This pertains to the automation of communication processes in reference to the Patient. Again this relates to your practice management software policies.

Maximizing Patient Retention & Referral

We need to discuss a way to pull all the strands together to maximize your Patient retention; this would include many elements of your practice.

Increased Ancillary Revenue

I think we should look at formalizing a strategy to increase your ancillary revenue, I also think that once this is done we should set out a policy that will allow us to deploy the strategy.

Loyalty Club Deployment

We need to discuss further the strategic goals of a loyalty club and how it can be deployed to maximize ancillary revenue, Patient retention and referral.

These set the frames of reference for the conversations I have, I hope you find them useful for self assessment of your business.

Regards

Geoff