Fast-forward almost 40 years and NO I didn’t become an equine orthopedic surgeon.  I didn’t even become an equine veterinarian even though I wanted to through most of veterinary school.  And, after being in small animal practice, I really didn’t like surgery.  Obviously, it  wasn’t meant to be.

However, I really do miss horsing around.  I truly admire the equine veterinarians that I have been around and those that were my educators and mentors in Illinois.  It is obvious that we have come a long way in the world of equine medicine and surgery and it’s fair to say that we still have a ways to go.

I tip my hat to all of the equine veterinarians of the world.  I send kudos to the backyard horse vets, the racetrack vets, and equine reproduction specialists.  I honor the equine veterinary dental specialists, the equine orthopedic and soft tissue surgeons, and the equine upper airway experts.

There is no animal as beautiful as a horse in full gallop and no domesticated animal as dangerous as a horse out of control.  There is no practitioner that risks his life and limb everyday like the horse doc.  Ironically, when I was in practice, I actually hired an equine veterinarian who, because of an injury, was unable to continue to practice equine medicine.  Dr. Lori’s first surgery at our practice was a two pound cat spay.  Lori was a successful contributor to that practice for over a decade and continues to be a great small animal veterinarian.

I still think about what it might have been to be an equine surgeon.  I think about the barn and the hay and the sites and the sounds and the smells.  And I wish all of my equine colleagues all of the success in the world…you earn it every day and you deserve it.

About Dr. Peter Weinstein: Dr. Weinstein attended Cornell University undergraduate and the University of Illinois to receive his DVM. After graduation, he worked as an associate for three years before opening his practice.

While running his practice he identified the need for business acumen to make his practice successful. While managing and practicing full time, he attended University of Redlands to receive his MBA.

Politically, he served as President of the Southern California Veterinary Medical Association and the California Veterinary Medical Association and is a Past-President for VetPartners, the national consultants association. Additionally, he acted as Medical Director overseeing the Claims Department for Veterinary Pet Insurance.

Dr. Weinstein provides small business and corporate consulting via his company, PAW Consulting.

In 2007, with Dr. Steven Kornfeld, Dr. Weinstein created Veterinary Success Services to provide coaching and consulting services that are accessible from the comfort of your home or office.  www.veterinarysuccessservices.com

Presently, Dr. Weinstein is the Executive Director for the Southern California Veterinary Medical Association.

Dr. Weinstein has spoken and written extensively on practice management, team building, leadership, collegiality, marketing, and other topics focused on making the veterinary profession better for all those affiliated with it.

Trust

When clinic owners make hiring and evaluation decisions, they should look at each candidate or employee through the eyes of their most critical clients. Every position in the clinic plays a critical roll in garnering the trust and respect of each client. Clinic owners and leaders are reselling the services of his or her staff in the veterinary clinic. To create a lasting relationship, employees have to provide sound reasons for each client to highly value his or her experience and desire to return in the future.

Pet owners who have a relationship with their pet care provider not only bring their pets in for wellness visits and sick care visits, but also they refer their friends and acquaintances to the clinic as well. They do this because they want others to have the same benefits they receive when interacting with clinic staff. They understand that supporting their favorite clinic is just as important as the clinic providing excellent health care for their pets.

A critical component of having a trustworthy and respectful clinic culture is for the leaders to be actively engaged as leaders and not just doctors. Leaders show respect for their clients and employees by ensuring that every experience at the clinic is favorable and worth their time and money. Leaders help employees deal with problems and service delivery issues quickly and effectively. Effective leaders demonstrate their caring attitude with every interaction, whether it is with a patient, client, or employee.

It takes every employee performing well every day to create and exhibit an environment worthy of your clients’ trust and respect. Serving clients and patients is serious work, complicated by the fact that our patients are not our clients and our clients are not our patients.

There’s simply no reason not to expect employees to exhibit the highest standards of client and customer care possible. That’s the only way clinics are going to get a high relationship rating from their clients.

The end.

About Mr G. Lynn Davis: The owner of Paladin Business Consulting, specializing in veterinary practices.  He has wide interests and varied professional experience, having owned, started, and managed several successful businesses in Nashville, TN area.  He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management, graduate of the Ingersoll Rand Management and Leadership School, and coursework in the University of Tennessee MBA program.

Lynn believes that successful businesses have one thing in common.  The leaders are able to create a culture that promotes and recognizes the energy, intellect, and creativity of its human resources.  He believes that most business decisions should be made at the point of the service delivery by the people doing the work.  Therefore, he assists business and practice owners in the difficult task of cultural development.  For small businesses, such as veterinary clinics, he defines success as maximizing profits while enhancing the lifestyle of the owners.

He was born and raised in Music City, USA.  He is married and a dedicated father of three sons, three daughter-in-laws, and stepdaughter.  He is the proud papa to three granddaughters.  His community service efforts have mainly centered on substance abuse and family assistance programs by serving as an officer and on the board of the Alcohol and Drug Council of Middle Tennessee for 12 years.

Practice owners need to be constantly growing their business because there is no “treading water”:  you’re either growing or dying.  And I believe that one highly effective way to grow your practice is to focus on the little things that have an outsized effect on the way your clients and employees view you.  That’s right….the way your internal clients (i.e. employees) view you will play a big role in how they act in front of clients.  Especially in a service business where clients have a choice of where to go, little things matter.  If they see you cutting corners, they’re going to cut corners.  If something is not important to you, it won’t be important to them.  If you don’t return client calls enthusiastically, it will send a message that client communication isn’t that important.

So what are some other examples of the “little things” that matter?  Don’t make cats sit/lie on a cold exam room table.  Make a show of getting them a towel or clean foam pad for them to lay on—cat owners will notice.  Clients also pay attention to whether or not you have clean exam room tables and floors.  When they’re waiting in your exam room with nothing else to do, you can bet they’re looking at the floor and exam table.  Paw prints and hair from the previous patient in the room is not only gross, it calls into question your attention to detail.  If you’re saying to yourself, “We’re in the animal profession…floors and tables get dirty and clients don’t care”, I respectfully disagree.

Think about this….if you’re on an airplane and you put down your tray table to find a big dried coffee stain, what’s the first thing you think?  For me, it’s “Boy…I hope they take care of the engines better than they took care of this tray.”  It’s an example of a little thing that matters because it points to a bigger thing:  quality.  There is probably no better differentiate of your “product” than quality, and continuous attention to detail is imperative.  Finally, you’re much more likely to get staff “buy-in” if you explain WHY you’re focusing on these things.  One last tip:  perform routine client surveys.  They are inexpensive and can be done in-house if you want, but they can yield a treasure trove of insight into what your clients REALLY think.  Your clients will tell you what’s on their mind, but you have to ask them.

About Mark D. Olcott, DVM: Originally from upstate New York, Dr. Olcott received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology from State University of New York at Geneseo.  He graduated from the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in 1995 and moved south to get away from the 6-month long winters!  After an 18 month stint as an equine veterinarian, he has been a small animal practitioner since 1997.  Over the last several years he has been the co-owner of 5 DVM small practice, a mobile ultrasonographer, and an emergency clinician at The Life Centre in Leesburg, VA.  Dr. Olcott has particular interests in cardiology, pain management, and the use of ultrasound as a diagnostic modality in small animal practice.  He is a published author, and holds two patents for an intelligent, automated pet feeder he invented.

He lives in metro Washington, DC area with his wife and 3 children.  They have numerous pets including a dog, 3 cats, a rabbit and a saltwater tropical fish tank.  Dr. Olcott in enrolled in the executive MBA program at the University of Maryland, and in his limited free time is an avid outdoors-man.

Rather than get into how to set prices for vaccines or office visits, which is information that is readily available elsewhere, I think it’s more important to take a step back and ask yourself some more fundamental questions.  Questions you may never have asked yourself before.  Questions like:  What is your strategy?  Do you even have a strategy?  Do you want to be a low cost/low touch provider?  If so, you’ll probably be very busy and may generate a lot of revenue, but you need to have laser focus on your costs or you will be in big trouble.  The Southwest Airlines model obviously works, and there are some veterinary providers who navigate this road very successfully.  The simple fact is that there are far more “C and D” clients than “A and B” clients, and fewer providers going after them.

On the other hand, you can decide to be a high cost/high touch provider, like Nordstrom.  You wouldn’t go to Nordstrom expecting to find low prices, but you fully expect fantastic service and high quality products.  Veterinarians who choose this option can charge a premium for their services, and they hope that high quality service and patient care will bring in those “A and B” clients who are not necessarily budget conscious, but expect concierge service.  If you choose this path, you must be constantly vigilant against surly reception staff, dirty exam floors, and inconsistent messaging.  It’s easy to say that this is the path you want for your practice, but it’s far more difficult to actually “walk the talk”.

Finally, remember that you don’t want to get stuck in the “mushy middle” of trying to offer high quality AND low cost.  It can’t be done, and your brand will suffer as you struggle along, wondering why your revenue is flat.  Pick your strategy and implement it, but make sure all your actions are consistent with this strategy, or your staff and clients will notice.  For more on the topic of strategy, start with “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy” by Richard Rumelt, or anything by Harvard’s Michael Porter.  Shoot me an email for additional recommendations, and good luck!

About Mark D. Olcott, DVM: Originally from upstate New York, Dr. Olcott received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology from State University of New York at Geneseo.  He graduated from the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in 1995 and moved south to get away from the 6-month long winters!  After an 18 month stint as an equine veterinarian, he has been a small animal practitioner since 1997.  Over the last several years he has been the co-owner of 5 DVM small practice, a mobile ultrasonographer, and an emergency clinician at The Life Centre in Leesburg, VA.  Dr. Olcott has particular interests in cardiology, pain management, and the use of ultrasound as a diagnostic modality in small animal practice.  He is a published author, and holds two patents for an intelligent, automated pet feeder he invented.

He lives in metro Washington, DC area with his wife and 3 children.  They have numerous pets including a dog, 3 cats, a rabbit and a saltwater tropical fish tank.  Dr. Olcott in enrolled in the executive MBA program at the University of Maryland, and in his limited free time is an avid outdoors-man.

Overwhelmed Issue Number One: Since most veterinarians and their staff have had to conduct very little marketing until recently, there is a steep learning curve to get up to speed. Most veterinarians still tend to be between 1996 and 1999 in their online marketing initiatives. Hospitals still try to build websites themselves, have servers located in their physical buildings and are struggling weather to use Yellow Pages or not. The problem is how to quickly learn 15 to 17 years of knowledge in a short period of time? Where to start?

Overwhelmed Issue Number Two: Who in the heck does the marketing program? Many hospitals are trying to tackle it completely by themselves and noticing it causes a juggling problem. Multiple people are tapped to do different aspects of the marketing program but nobody really is in charge.  Then the message from the hospital is not consistent either in tone or timing. Or the marketing program goes really great until a new problem or focus comes into play and it is forgotten for awhile. This causes gaps with building and growing relationships which is the primary function of online marketing today. The problem is how to have the staffing resources and time to keep the marketing program ongoing.

Overwhelmed Issue Number Three: How much money should be ear marked for marketing? Since this is a relatively new experience for the hospital what is normal? Do I need to hire a new person? How much should a marketing company cost? The problem here is the lack of experience and knowledge to fall back upon when making this decision.

Being overwhelmed is an unpleasant feeling. Plus, it tends to put us in a deer in headlights mode and it stops the process cold. Solutions are need to move forward. Keeping it simple is a strong motto to follow. At Beyond Indigo Pets/Equine we recommend the following solutions to keep your Marketing Journey manageable and maybe even a bit of fun.

1. Determine Your Budget Most veterinarians we talk to are starting with 1 to 1.5% of their gross revenue as their starting marketing budget. As you progress into your Marketing Journey we recommend up to 3% of gross revenues be allotted towards your marketing. Another factor to your budget is figuring out where in the heck money is being spent now on marketing. Check your Yellow Pages on and offline, pay per ad clicks, brochures etc. Are these marketing solutions providing return on investment? If not maybe it is time to switch where some marketing dollars flow to better options.
2. Start with the “Big Three”. Successful marketing strategies include multiple areas where your hospital’s message is seen. Start with the top places where people visit. We focus on the “Big Three” which are online reviews, your website and search engine optimization. If a searcher finds your reviews lousy, your website uninformative and stuck in the year 1997 and/or cannot flat out find your business it will matter little if they can find your hospital on Facebook. Instead your marketing story should grow and add credibility each place a pet owner is searching for your business. Once a veterinary hospitals reviews are solid to stellar, the website is engaging, content rich, and can be continually found THEN it is time to move to other aspects of a marketing program.
3. Keeping Learning: Remember the first couple days of either undergraduate or graduate school? The number of books, the long syllabuses, and the work that was due caused an overwhelmed feeling? It is because you were trying to absorb massive amounts of information. Today if you were asked how to do a spay/neuter no big deal right? At one point in your education it was an overwhelming process to learn. Same with your marketing. Education is the key to reduce the oh my gosh feeling. Take free online webinars through Beyond Indigo Pets/Equine, attend marketing seminars at conferences, sign up for our Social Vet series at www.thesocialvet.com. The idea is to keep learning. When you stop then you have to catch up which places you in the overwhelmed camp again.

Your Marketing Journey is on its way.

For your marketing Journey there are a few essentials to sneak into your travel back pack that will be your roadmap and guide along the way. Every aspect of your marketing should fall into these guidelines.

Guideline number one is your marketing must get your found. If pet owners cannot find you then they are unable to utilize your business. Your website needs to be found in search on Google, Yahoo and Bing in local and organic search as well as other areas such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and more.

Guideline number two is to educate your consumers. Right now other companies such as Pet Meds, Walmart, Kruger grocery stories are educating pet owners that veterinarians are expensive and a hassle to use. In fact, they are starting to build relationships with your customers through education.  Your edge is you already have a relationship with your clients. You are their trusted source of information. Provide education about your services and products through content rich marketing to keep a strong relationship with pet moms and dads.

Guideline number three is engagement and interaction. Every single aspect of your marketing program needs to elicit two way conversations between you and your pet owners. In fact this communication has a name. It is called “InBound Marketing”. Examples of engagement are, leaving thank you notes when people write your business a review or forms on your website where people are able to sign up to be a client. Social media marketing needs to ongoing and daily with conversations happening between you and your viewers.  Today’s standards on the Internet is the expectation that we can build and have a relationship with your business 24/7/365.

Guideline number four is connectivity. Every aspect of your marketing should connect with every other aspect of your marketing. Think of a spider web and how the points of the web connect with the other points of the web to make a single whole. Everyone uses a different “door” when they are searching for information on the Internet. Some people start with Google, others look at online reviews like Yelp or places like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Pinterest and more. Regardless of where a person starts their search they need to be able to find your business easily and quickly on other places of the Internet.

While we are on this marketing journey remember the rules of the road that people have come to expect when using the Internet. If you violate these rules of the road you either will cause frustrated users or just won’t be used at all.

Give me what I want when I want it. Meaning if I want to find information I as a searcher expect to pick up my device (phone, laptop, computer, tablet etc) make a quick search and find a satisfying result immediately.

Do not make it wait for it. I want it NOW. Slow pages, having to hunt for information causes frustration from the searcher. This starts your relationship off to a bad start with your current and future consumers.

Do not make me work for it. Minimal effort is what we have been trained to use when finding information. In fact if it takes to much effort to find what we are searching for we just all give it up.

The next stage of your journey is deciding what “stops along the way you need to be making. Next month we will be covering the “must see and be” places for your marketing journey. It is time to start your adventure.

• Top marketing tips for the year ahead
• What kinds of marketing are most effective for your practice?
• How to manage marketing time and costs

Didn’t have a chance to participate in our December 12 webinar conducted by our CEO, Kelly Baltzell?  Don’t fret for a limited time you can review this latest webinar by clicking on the link below.

https://student.gototraining.com/8q508/recording/1850664234019871488

We will be offering more webinars in the new year and encourage you sign up for these free webinars hosted most Wednesdays at 12 :00  PM Central Time.

The first marketing dollars you spend should go toward purchasing a professionally constructed website that is search engine optimized (SEO). The next dollars go to create high-quality content social media sites. I recommend that clinic owners create a monthly allowance for maintaining their position on the first page of a Google search and for refreshing the content of their website as well as social media pages. The Internet is not a new kind of Yellow Pages where people go to get your office hours, telephone number, and directions. Internet searches are the way people perceive the value you have to offer your clients.

Most clinics spend very little on marketing-related activities. Even the ones that do rarely have an effective marketing plan determining where and when they spend money to attract new and keep existing clients. Furthermore, few clinic owners fully appreciate the impact the Internet has had on all industries, especially the veterinary industry. Veterinary clinic owners are accustomed to an introverted marketing style. Typical introverted activities include building a nice facility and hiring nice staff, and then hoping to be found when pets gets sick or needs shots. The introverted marketing style works well and is cost effective as long as the market being served is a growing and expanding market. Once markets mature and stop growing, or even begin shrinking as in the pet care market, then the businesses serving those markets must compete with each other for fewer dollars.

When a pet owner is searching for a care provider, the clinic that gets chosen is the one with the highest perceived value. The clinic that is perceptively better than the others is chosen. Today, virtually every pet owner uses the Internet to determine the perceived value and convenience of businesses even if they’ve previously had a word-of-mouth recommendation. If you’ve got a free or low-cost website, it’s probably costing you lots of money every month.

When clients ask me what uplift they can expect from an SEO website and social media content, I tell them that they can expect a 5–10% increase in new clients. Given estimates that every client spends about $25,000 on each pet over a lifetime, web-based marketing generates a high return on the investment.

Your clinic only has three seconds to make yourself perceptively better. That’s less time than taking one breath—so don’t blow it.

Communicating tends to be one of the hardest aspects of all relationships.  For the doctor/patient relationship, it’s easy to assume that because the doctor provides health information the pet owner hears it. But do they? Not really.  Why? Horse owners today tend to:

• Have their face in their phone.
• Are overwhelmed with the medical information the doctor is presenting.
• Focus on other anxieties in their life and aren’t focusing on the present.
• Are emotionally processing the first piece of information presented and miss the rest of the medical update.
• Forget or modify the content of the information presented over time.  (Think of the game telephone).

Retention of information by the horse owner can occur.  It takes awareness and education.  First, the doctor needs to recognize that one pass at the medical information is insufficient.  Additional educational avenues need to be established through the hospital’s marketing program.  For example:

• Written information about the medical problem given in the exam room and shown on an iPad where that data is located on the hospital’s website and blog.
• YouTube videos made on the most common how-to pet care tips such as giving medicine to a cat, disabilities care, post surgical care etc.
• Handouts in person and online that explain why using the hospital’s services like the pharmacy, is better than other big box vendors.

Giving horse owners multiple ways to continue their relationship with your hospital outside of your brick and mortar walls is essential.  Just remember, if you say it make sure your clients hear it.