"Training your employees on practice marketing,
medical practice management, medical practice
marketing, and real business success requires an
effort that magnifies your practice income."
(Continued from Part 1---where you learned how to motivate employees
by understanding your employee’s needs—interview questions that allow
you to correctly evaluate a prospective employee’s capacity for marketing.)
Employee training program for medical practice marketing as well as medical practice business management...
Employees, to be of significant assistance in the marketing side of medical practice, must be trained. If you have the knowledge, you train them. If you don’t feel qualified, hire someone with the expertise to do it for you and mentor your office staff employees. It would not be too difficult for you to read a chapter in a small business book or in a book on marketing the evening before and present those thoughts to your employees as a group the next afternoon. You learn along with
your employees.
You may discover that another physician is doing the same thing with her own office staff and arrange for your staff to attend her discussions. You may find that the local junior college is giving courses on business and marketing, which you could very inexpensively send your office staff to.
You might hire the junior college teacher to train your own office staff. By arranging for several office medical staff to join yours, the expense can be shared among the physicians.
In the end, it will be necessary for you to separate out the various medical practice marketing strategies and methods you intend to use for your own goals and get deeply into those methods with your staff before you begin your practice marketing campaigns. You can pull the specifics out of your marketing plan you have personally created. Yes, you do need a detailed medical practice marketing plan to use whatever you decide to do with your medical office staff.
One very important issue relating to hiring the best people is one of demographics. The trend in our society is towards an aging population. That fact offers one great advantage for physicians seeking employees capable of accomplishing great things in their medical practice
business planning.
For physicians starting private medical practice, already worried about how they will pay off their huge educational debt, hiring young people who are starving for work is less costly to your medical practice business. However, attached to that are obligations you have to educate and train them about medical practice marketing that they have no knowledge about.
It’s wise to consider hiring people who are older, already have medical practice marketing knowledge and training to some degree, are more loyal, more reliable, and are much less concerned about wages. Their maturity after 30, 40, or 50 years of experience in the medical practice business world is something you can tap into to increase your practice growth.
This “gray power” carries with it extensive additional experience in customer service, lists of contacts you can take advantage of, and a work ethic that younger people often lack.
Tips for implementing your office staff into the medical practice marketing process...
a. Have an employee marketing idea box-- Make each employee once a week drop a marketing idea or suggestion in the box. It has to be a mandatory recurrent weekly job.
The ideas can be from what they’ve heard other offices doing, what they’ve read in magazines or newspapers, what they’ve learned in previous jobs, what they’ve thought up themselves, or what they’ve seen on TV, movies, or road signs. It forces them to consciously look at all kinds of marketing and advertising during the week, recognize how what they saw could be adapted to medical practice marketing for your practice.
b. Recognition incentives--You’ve seen in other offices such things as plaques on the wall for employee of the month with their photo—recognition for performance above and beyond the call of duty or requirements of their job.
It seems so simple to do such a thing, but it is highly effective in motivating employees to go the extra mile. Any employee at the bottom of the totem pole looks for any form of appreciation and recognition, no matter how it is shown, no matter how simple it is. (www.motivationusa.com)
The employee incentives can be much more than a paid half day off work, a coupon for a meal at a restaurant, movie tickets, or small salary bonus. They can be extended to include a short vacation for “employee of the year” status, airline tickets to go visit family or friends, or a special gift that an employee might need at home, like a new refrigerator.
Resource... ( www.compensationresources.com)
A recognition program for your employees gives them a goal to strive or compete for, especially when the reward is something they probably would not ever get otherwise.
Placing a small handwritten note in the envelope with the paycheck telling them how much you appreciate their work efforts and that makes them aware of their importance to the office team and the office business success, even when you have already told them so verbally.
c. Money incentives--Of all the incentives designed to stimulate employees to exceed their usual work ethic, money speaks the loudest. Once your office personnel are knowledgeable about the medical practice marketing process, they can use the tools they have been taught to dramatically increase the influx of new patients, regain old patients, and draw in more referral patients.
For medical offices, one should consider giving cash rewards for great practice marketing ideas, generating increased referrals, outstanding customer service, and voluntary work on office projects done outside office working hours. These incentives should be available to all employees willing to give the extra effort.
d. Marketing Library for employees--One of the best ways to increase an employee’s motivation to want to help with your medical practice management and marketing is to provide the educational tools and employee training program in a part of the office space where employees can extend their practice marketing knowledge. It should include such materials as marketing books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, marketing magazines, on a wide range of marketing topics.
Book—“1001 Ways to Energize Employees” by Bob Nelson (1994)
You must be forceful about employees taking advantage of the opportunity to learn more by taking the practice marketing materials home and studying them there as well as in the office setting. Make it quite clear to your employees that this is what you expect them to do and you will be looking for evidence of their increased medical practice marketing knowledge. Add new physician marketing materials to the library often. (www.Amazon.com)
(Continued in Part 3 --- More tips to motivate your employees
to help with your marketing efforts.)
----Professional Probe----
"Of all the motivational tactics to get your office
staff to work harder, more efficiently, and
even recruit new patients for your private medical
practice, offering them money will always do the trick.
It can be a bonus once a month for each new patient
they refer and makes as appointment to be seen.
Articles © 2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #23 3-16-22
