hen planning a sales conference for a company I
worked for some years ago, I asked managers what
they thought our conference theme should be, and
everyone agreed that ‘Let’s get back to basics’ would be
the best way to go. I didn’t have any argument with the
suggestion but thankfully I found myself asking everyone this question: ‘what are the basics that we want to
get back to?’ To help people with their responses I listed
just a few key business issues that could be considered
‘basics’…such as our unique proposition to customers,
our special standards needed to sell the proposition, our
training methods, our supervision process, our incentive program, our service, etc.
The team then individually listed what they thought
our ‘basics’ were…and no one gave the same answer;
some didn’t have a response at all for some ‘basics’!
It is not possible for us to return to a place we have
never been to, and the same principle applies to business development. At the time of the meeting we were
trading quite well and therefore saw this ‘gap’ as a sizable opportunity…and I hope that you too view this
challenge as being helpful and necessary. Here are
suggestions on involving the practice team on moving
‘forward to basics’:
Agree together on a list of the most crucial basics
that matter most to the practice and your patients at
this time. These would include the following (in your
terms): a promise to attend to patients first (‘serving’)
and achieving for them second (‘up-serving’); creating
standards of staff conduct to ensure that the promise is
kept; selling staff on the need for the promise and standards, as it affects the patients, the practice and also the
practice team; a dietary form of training to enable staff
to perform according to standards set; supervision (positive pressure) to check that staff are behaving according
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to standards; goals and incentives (perhaps) to create
accountability and recognition…and focus.
Once the new ‘basics’ have been agreed, you can
then make a plan to gradually tackle each one (or
two, depending on time available and priorities) each
month or quarter…which will guarantee the creation
of a significant progress path for the foreseeable future.
Additionally, the process of moving ‘forward to the
basics’ should be reenergized every year or two…so that
the practice continuously improves and grows.
I am available to all practices that deal with Vionic
to a large or small extent, to talk with you via Skype
about your list of basics, and to help with training for
your team using Skype…at any time. It is in our mutual
interest that your practice grows…plus we have a number of free ‘MRI services’ that you should know about,
so please ask me or your rep for details.
Current Pedorthics January/February 2016
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