Practice for Profit - Reeling in big fish

Have you ever stopped at a traffic light or just walked through a new section of town and inhaled the smell of garlic coming from a local Italian restaurant or the unmistakable aroma from a BBQ eatery? When you are paying the bill, do you ever wonder how you made the decision, spur of the moment, to fill up with pasta or ribs?

Gerald Snyder VMD

You decide to take in a movie after dinner, your hunger sated. As you walk through the lobby, you are assailed by the aroma of fresh popcorn and without conscious effort, you find yourself shelling out 10 bucks for a super-sized bucket of crunchy munchies and a drink?

Fishermen call that chumming! Your senses are spring loaded and you just had to eat something!

Now, chum is actually a frozen block of fish oil and tasty morsels of fish guts.

The fact that it does not appeal to you means nothing if your objective is to troll for finer cuisine. We make the catch because the catch is primed to make the decision to change its behavior in the direction we are seeking.

The real stink

How does fishing apply to practice? Drive by your hospital and use all of your senses. Do your eyes find the property well maintained and professional looking? Is your landscaping clean and in good repair? Drive by again at night. Is your sign visible to all who never knew you were there? Are all the bulbs working? Does your logo register in the back of your cerebrum at 40 miles an hour, or is it too small or too confusing? Your sign is your best investment in getting new clients. Make it a pole sign if permitted and the largest size permitted by code. There are two areas you should not try to save money: your sign and your practice management software.

Are you chumming effectively or are you just wasting good bait? I have been known to cast an un-baited line into the water just to be able to enjoy the environment and fresh air without interruption, but while that was refreshing, it wasn't really productive.

With buildings set back from the road and effectively blocked from view, I usually recommend dog-shaped topiary or a life-size and life-like painted concrete statue set as close to the road as building codes allow. People really will slow down if they think they see a loose pet that might run out into the road. I love the sound of screeching brakes, and they do see that there is a pet hospital there.

Paint the trim of your building a different color whenever you repaint. Highway hypnosis is an epidemic. You will find people so happy someone finally built a veterinary hospital when they finally notice the paint difference despite the fact that they have driven by every day for the last dozen years. Ever notice when you buy a seldom-seen whatsamacallit car that suddenly, there are many others on the road?

Name game

Are you a veterinary hospital, an animal hospital or a pet hospital? Ditto for clinics.

Do you treat veterinarians, animals or pets? If you want to evoke a more caring feeling, become a "pet hospital" or "clinic." Take down the flying duck pictures so common to our hospitals, and put up pictures of children playing with their pets. Hire a professional photographer to take a half-dozen pictures for 11 x 17 framing showing docs in surgery, looking through a microscope, putting on a cast or giving an IV drip.

Put up a double X-ray viewer showing fracture before and after fixation.

Your staff wears blue or burgundy colored uniforms and all have name tags. Calls are answered from somewhere else, not the reception desk. Reception is called reception because your staff receives your guests and their pets. They should not be kept standing around while your receptionist is busy on the phone.

By now you probably are saying, "What's with Snyder? This is not his typical column." So what. Get over it. I'll be funny next month. This month, I'd like to help you get more new clients and stop wasting money on advertising.

Do not rely on the Yellow Pages. Display advertising is the biggest waste of your overhead dollar that I know, second only to TV advertising for veterinarians. About 99.99 percent of Yellow Pages recipients already have a veterinarian, just got their vaccinations last week and have no need for a new one now.

Your best advertisement is word of mouth from a client you spent "just enough time with." Your best reference is a medical history questionnaire and medical exam report card properly filled out so your client can actually retain medical terms long enough to run home and Google them, resulting in pet owners finally understanding what went through their left ear and out their right! [Forms available free from Owen Business Supply (800) 634 1876.]

So ask any good fisherman, "Would you rather catch six-dozen minnows that might give you one meal after a lot of cleaning or several big fish that will provide your practice with income every year for a long time?"

Dr. Gerald Snyder VMD, a well-known consultant, publishes Veterinary Productivity, a newsletter for practice productivity and is available for in-practice consultation. He can be reached at 2895 SW Bear Paw Trail, Palm City, FL 34990; (800) 292-7995; vetprod@bellsouth.net; Fax (772) 220-4355.