by Catherine Maley, Mba September 2, 2021

When you turn your staff into revenue generators, you finally get the peace of mind you’ve been looking for to stabilize your practice revenues.

Because you now have certainty knowing you have a team backing you up to help promote and build your practice.

When it comes to growing your cosmetic practice, the number one complaint I get from plastic surgeons is they have great staff. But they are just not skilled enough when it comes to promoting you to your prospective cosmetic patients.

So, you hear callers hang up without scheduling an appointment and watch prospective patients walk out your door without scheduling plastic surgery procedures.

That is a clue things are not as good as they could be.

Cosmetic patients are a fickle group. Their experience with you and your practice starts and ends with your staff.

Anytime a prospective patient calls and visits your office, the amount of interaction with your staff gives them an impression about you and your practice – good or bad.

It is frustrating because you pay all of this salary overhead for staff to work with your cosmetic patients so you can focus on what you do best. But, you come to find that only that 2 or 3 out of 10 of the prospective patients who came in for a consultation decided to wait, or worse — decided to go to someone else!

Your staff can make or break your practice – period. Nothing is more important to your success than the patient relations skills your staff has or doesn’t have.

Your patients will spend more time with your staff than with you. Frankly, you may not even get the chance to meet new prospective patients if your staff doesn’t have the skills or interest in getting them in the door and through your processes.

EVERY MINUTE YOU’VE SPENT AND EVERY DOLLAR YOU HAVE INVESTED IN PROMOTING YOUR PRACTICE WILL RELY ON YOUR STAFF’S SUPPORT TO SUCCEED.

The reality is your staff may be unknowingly sabotaging your best promotional efforts because they don’t have the skills necessary to promote you.

For starters, nobody will ever care as much about the success of your plastic surgery practice as you do. Your staff just doesn’t have as much “skin-in-the-game” as you do.

However, that doesn’t mean your staff can’t be a huge asset to your practice-building activities. There is a tremendous amount they can do to promote you.

But it starts with hiring the right people who WANT to help you grow.

They are open and anxious to promote you, and your services.

They go above and beyond to get you more conversions, more reviews and more referrals.

So, do you have the right people on board? If so, did you give them the strategies and tools to promote you professionally?

HERE ARE 3 EASY WAYS FOR STAFF TO GENERATE MORE REVENUES FOR YOU:

#1: Train your front desk staff to pre-frame before giving out pricing.

Prospective patients calling your office want answers, and one of them is typically about price.

It’s difficult to avoid price, so I recommend giving a range or a start fee.

However, your receptionist must pre-frame you before price.

Prepare 2-3 facts about you that increase your value so the caller better understands why you charge what you charge.

This also helps avoid sticker shock. You need them to quickly see that there is more to this than just price.

For example, your receptionist can tell the caller:

• You have performed a certain number of surgical procedures with great results;

• You train other surgeons on your innovative techniques; or

• You were voted the Top Doc in your local social magazine.

It’s imperative you have a well-trained receptionist representing you on the pho.

#2: Reach out to old cosmetic consults who did NOT book

These patients who did NOT book might have just been saying NOT NOW or NOT YET.

You just never know.

• People change

• Circumstances change

• Life changes

So circle back with these prospective patients to see if they are now ready to move forward.

But here’s a tip: it’s always more compelling to make a call for a reason rather than say, “I’m just following up.”

Instead, say something like, “Sara, it’s been a while since we last spoke, and you weren’t ready to move forward then; however, we have a new finance company that offers a 24- month 0% interest-free payment plan, and I thought of you. Does that sound interesting?”

Now your coordinator needs to zip it and let the prospective patient answer. It might be just what they needed, or they may tell you the real reason they haven’t booked.

It’s critical you have a well-trained coordinator able to convert your consultations.

#3: Assign one team member to be the social media roaming reporter in your practice.

Social media is here to stay, and it’s time to embrace it in a big way. You want to mix information with entertainment and a little promotion. But like anything else, it doesn’t just happen.

You need a plan and one person responsible for executing it.

Choose your most tech savvy-person that is a good writer and have them capture the ins and outs of everyday life in your practice.

Their objective is to make you look good.

They can snap you walking down the hall to meet a patient, consulting with a patient, scrubbing in for surgery, and so on.

So here is the point…

Your team either enhances your image and revenues or destroys them.

They either add to your bottom line, or they don’t.

Be sure you have the right team members in place, and they are trained for success, so they stay motivated and “plugged in” to help you grow your practice.

If you need help finding and training staff to be revenue-generating rock stars, let’s talk since this is the easiest way to increase your revenues without hiring even more staff or throwing more at advertising.

Since The Year 2000, Catherine Maley, MBA has been a plastic surgery growth business and marketing consultant, author, speaker, trainer, blogger, and podcaster. Her website is www.CatherineMaley.comArticle articlebiz.com