How to (massively) Reduce Your Local Practice Competition
OK let’s cut to the chase - having other practices locally to you is almost inevitable!
But it isn’t necessarily a problem.
The problems only occur IF you’re finding it difficult to set yourself apart from them.
If that’s you then please pay attention 😳
Competition - Let's Shift Your Perspective
Instead of worrying about your competition 😫, I want you to use them as motivation and an opportunity to make your offering more complex. Complexity is the key to eliminating ANY competition.
Why You Have Competition
Let's take a step back and I'll explain…
Say, for example, you offer a simple nail-cutting service.
Your patient comes into your standard clinical space, you follow standard hygiene protocols, cut their nails, have a chat, they pay and leave and there is no follow-up of ongoing patient contact - that's all there is to it.
The problem here is that there are other practices locally providing this exact same service. No one is offering anything different, so selling this service becomes competitive as there is nothing unique about your offer. Even worse, once a service becomes a simple replicable commodity, the price will be driven down!
Patients can not differentiate between you and the practice down the road – you have competition and reduced margins 😳.
Eliminating ANY Competition 💪🏼
To remove yourself from any kind of competition, you need to make it difficult for other local practices to duplicate your offering, by identifying areas you can improve on that will help you stand out from the crowd – here’s how…
There are 5 areas of your service, the patient experience, that you can work on to differentiate you from your neighbouring practice.
1. Your clinical offerings – How can you extend the clinical elements of a service?
Think about different ways you can expand or extend the service clinically. Will you be offering to run routine tests? Are you providing additional elements of therapy? Is there an additional therapy that could combine to improve the patient experience? Is there anything that you are (or could) be offering to your clients that makes each service you offer different clinically from your competitors? Finding ways to clinically excel in your industry will help you wow your target audience and stay ahead of the competition.
2. Your facilities – What impression are you making in your practice?
Outperforming your competition is about more than just the clinical services you offer. Your patients will remember you for the small details that are important to them, such as your beautiful decor, nice lighting, lots of plants, or the relaxing music you play in the waiting area. Investing in comfortable seating or even using quality teas and coffees makes your offering more complex and can give you the edge over your competition, and your patients many more reasons to keep coming back.
But to do this effectively you need to know what little touches your dream patients will appreciate.
To do that you need to know who exactly is your dream patient - have you done that work yet?
If not hang fire because our next 2 blogs are going to show you exactly why and how to do this for maximum impact in your practice.
3. The human element – Are your patients feeling warm, fuzzy, and valued?
Building a practice of loyal patients is key to your success, and to achieve this you need to make sure your patients feel genuinely valued and cared for. From the way you welcome them, to the care you take during treatment, or even when making their coffee. It all matters.
Training your staff to provide a warm and friendly welcome every time, every patient walks through the door, saying thank you, remembering important facts about them and their lives, surprising and delighting them when they least expect it, and going that extra mile when they need help will all go a long way to making them feel very special and valued.
These elements of your service are very difficult to replicate because how you do them will be unique, so add as much complexity as you can in this category.
4. Your patient follow-up – Can it be improved?
Do you offer a follow-up service?
Are you emailing patients or sending an SMS on the completion of their appointment?
Do you follow up to confirm the next steps, that a referral has been made, or to share test results? Creating a solid follow-up process and including additional human interaction is another complexity that when added to the service that you offer, will help you stand out from the crowd, and differentiate you from other local practices.
5. Product offerings – Can you make their life easier?
Think about connecting the service you offer with a product you can sell to make it more appealing to your patients. Show them that your support doesn’t begin and end with the service in your practice. Providing them for example with quality nail clippers that they can buy there and then, without the inconvenience of having to go looking for a supplier elsewhere, meaning they can go much longer between appointments, will build goodwill with your patients and add more complexity to your offering, moving you further and further from your competition.
The More Complex the Better 👍🏼
So hopefully you can see that by adding lots of different elements to a relatively simple service, you create a more complex offering that will be much harder for other local practices to replicate. The more layers of the onion so to speak, the more complex you make each of your services, the less likely you are to have any direct local competition, especially if you target these complex offerings at a very specific dream patient.
Your Take Away
So now you need to look at your own practice and figure out what elements you can add from each of the above 5 categories to each of the core services you offer inside your practice.
Some elements will be consistent across all of your services, like making eye contact when every patient walks in and greeting them with a smile. Others will be unique to specific services, like bundles of relevant physical products offered for sale during the treatment.
So please schedule some time to sit down and work through each service you offer over the next few months and work out how you can make them more complex.
This will improve the service your patients receive, building real loyalty and helping you increase revenue as well as moving you further from your competition and away from the cheap end, simple commodity services.
Developing a string of unique services means you’re much less likely to be impacted by other local practices offering exactly the same service. For even more of an edge, you could provide videos that support recovery in some way or show patients how to use the product they just bought!
I'm sure there are elements of complexity that you could add to every single one of the services you offer.
The more complex you make your offering, the further you remove yourself from any kind of local competition
Now your service is not JUST a simple easily copied nail-cutting service…
Thank you soooo much for taking the time to stop by our Practice Momentum blog today.
I really hope you found value in spending some time here today.
If you'd like more marketing insight and effective strategy know-how to boost your practice performance, be sure to come and join our free Practice Momentum Academy.
Until next time,
