Marketing Tip #1 for physician business owners

I was lucky enough to attend one of Dan Kennedy's seminars this week in Los Angeles as I got to learn a lot AND observe a true Master at work.

For those of you who don't know Dan Kennedy, he is a very famous marketing expert, author and speaker, with a carefully cultivated in-your-face curmudgeon personality.  The fee to attend his seminar was a great big zippo! And yet I know he made buckets of money that day with his back-of-room book sales, his self-referenced "first three months free" membership program and his joint venture with a very cool customer service/business management software program.

So that was lesson #1: you can offer to be a free speaker and still make lots of money, if you are clever about it!

But he made many pithy and often provocative statements that I captured, intending to share them one with you one at a time, as Marketing Tips.

Here then is Marketing Tip #1:

All business failures are earned.

According to Kennedy, our current recession is an "economic enema", designed to flush out all the poor performers. This will leave the strong candidates standing, and on the brink of great opportunity.

In other words: What if your competitors were hardest hit in this tough economic climate because of mediocre business practices, and you survived and flourished because you had:

• outstanding customer service?
• excellent, consistent ,attentive and personalized follow-up -- regularly, without fail?
• well-defined and executed internal business processes and systems that prevented you from overlooking anything?
• such high standards for your employees that you would fire anyone who regularly failed to greet patients or clients enthusiastically or forgot to follow your careful training in how to use your systems?

Think about it - are you willing to be the practice or business that limps along in its mediocrity and runs the risk of being "flushed away"? Or are you ready to take advantage of the opportunity awaiting anyone who is really good?

What is happening in your business or practice right now?

Do you really know what is going on between your staff and your patients or customers?

What are you tolerating?