Whether it’s your first clinic or fifth, opening a chiropractic practice in the current health insurance and economic landscape can prove an incredibly challenging undertaking. There is so much more to it than finding the perfect location, hiring competent staff and announcing to the world that you are ready and waiting.
Now more than ever, you need to find a distinct advantage that will significantly improve the odds of achieving the success you desire.
To ensure a successful practice in the short and long term, before committing to that space or buying that building, make sure you have a minimum of 3 wild cards in your pocket. Your wild cards quite simply are the niche captive audience markets that you want to find and capitalize on.
So, think of the wild cards is as 3 major referral sources. Look around you; find a network of people already in place who are referral sources. These resources offer a wealth of opportunities for providing you with a captive audience of new patients and ensuring you clinic growth and success. Just a few good referral sources can keep your practice flooded with new chiropractic patients and while there are many out there, check out the following to get a good idea of what I mean.
Employer referral source: Let’s say you’ve got one employer that’s down the street and you have determined that they have hundreds of employees, good insurance coverage and you know someone there that is a decision maker or you already treat a few of their employees. That is one wild card you need to go after and foster a relationship with. Maybe you’ve got three employers like that. That’s great; you’ve got three wild cards already!
Whatever your ‘inroad’ with local businesses, you have got to work on getting that employer excited about you. You’ve got to get in there deeper by offering free chair massage once a week, free community health talks, or doing ergonomic evaluations; that’s monetizing a captive audience.
Friends and family: Maybe you are looking to open a clinic in an area you grew up and so you will have a lot of close friends and family that work in various businesses around the area and have a lot of their own friends in the area. As well, perhaps one of those family members is a decision maker at a local company. That situation can be one of those wild cards.
Attorney referral source: If you have a couple of busy attorneys who you have a connection with and know will send you all their PI patients; that’s another great wild card.
Granted most of us aren’t going to just happen to have a cousin who is a big PI attorney in town that we can saddle up next to. So, for the unfortunate majority, we have to foster the relationship to build something promising enough to call it a wild card which with attorneys in particular may be difficult to do without a physical location set up yet. However, I have personally established a referral relationship with attorneys in an area that I was looking to open a clinic and got a verbal commitment to use me and my services for their personal injury patients.
And while it is outside the scope of this article, I used a system by where I introduced myself and asked them about their current PI referral habits along with explaining my credentials and experience, holding a simple but effective soft tissue presentation and doing a little follow up. It can be done.
Internet marketing system: Perhaps you already have a website that is optimized for converting visitors into patients and that is backed by a search engine optimization and traffic driving system. Having that in place before you open the doors so you can let people know your are coming and have them ‘opt in’ with their email address to receive your newsletters is another card in your pocket.
So if you are consider opening a practice or already have one off and running now, it’s never too late to identify your wild cards. If you realize you have less than 3 wild card resources that stimulate 8 to 10 new patients through your door each month then now is the time to find them.
Finding these wild cards prevents you from opening a practice blindly which reduces the chances that you are going to find yourself sitting there twiddling your thumbs panicking about how much money is going out while little is coming in.
Do this pre-planning as you’re starting the search for your practice location. Don’t rely on a great location, a stylish clinic, cool equipment or the latest in chiropractic marketing. Sure, all of that helps but again, finding and monetizing on these wild cards will really give you that edge and boost your business dramatically. You’re going to be thrilled with the results. I guarantee you…this is million dollar advice.
