Do you think that you could get your team to ask your clients just ONE extra question?One of my coaching clients did that and it gave him an extra $80,000 profit in 2017.I show you exactly how in the video – or you can read the transcript.Oh – yes – it increases patient care as well
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Diederik ‘one-extra-question Gelderman
TRANSCRIPTION
BLOG TCYP ONE EXTRA QUESTION
Hi, It’s Diederik Gelderman here; author of the soon-to-be-released Veterinary Success Secrets Revealed and business coach for practices who want to be the exception.
Let me set the scene for you; at least once a week I receive a phone call or an email or an SMS from a practice owner who says “I need more money in the door, I’m not particularly profitable, and I don’t have the time to put in extensive training for the staff on how to make this happen. Can you help me?”
The answer is “Yes I can help you,” and it’s all about asking one extra question.
Let me ask you this; McDonald’s, if you walk into McDonald’s or drive through the drive-thru and you order your shake or your fries or your Big Mac meal or whatever it is that you order, what’s the profit that McDonald’s make on that first sale?
The answer is; zero, nothing, there is no profit on that first sale.
If that young gentleman or that young lady behind the counter doesn’t ask you, “Would you like fries with that,” or, “Would you like to upsize your Big Mac meal to a family value meal,” or whatever it is that they ask, the McDonald’s profit would be zero.
The profit on that second sale is about fifteen percent, and that’s where all their profit comes from, it’s all about the extra question, the upsell, the cross-sell.
You can do exactly the same thing ethically in your veterinary practice. The majority of the your clients who walk into your practice on a daily basis, their pet isn’t up to date with worming, flea control, heartworm, the correct shampoo etc., and if your team simply asks one extra question, then you’ll be of immense service to the client and the pet and also to yourself.
I’ll give you a REAL scenario in a practice that I’m working with at the moment in which—in that practice in January 2017, we set ourselves the goal of asking one extra question to every person that walked in.
We anticipated that that upsell, that question that generated an upsell, and the profit on that upsell on average would be $10.
That may be you know some worm tablets for the pet that they had with them plus the pet at home, maybe some flea control, or maybe some Bravecto, or maybe some Frontline; there are all sorts of things that we can ethically ask questions about of that client.
- We anticipated that each of those questions would generate a profit of $10, and in fact it did.
The practice is open five and a half days, so if you multiply $10 times — they were seeing about clients 30 a day — ten dollars times 30 times five and a half, there’s an extra hundred and fifty dollars a week that goes into the practice coffers, and that can be used for staff wages, it can be used for owner profit, it can be used to buy a new microwave for the staff amenities room.
This is what REALLY HAPPENED. At the end of the year over 52 weeks, that profit was eighty five thousand and eight hundred dollars—say $80,000 just for nice round numbers.
How would you like to get an $80,000 profit boost—now, this is profit, not gross fee turnover, this is profit turnover.
How would you like to have an $80,000 profit boost in your practice in 2018?
All you need to do is train your staff to ask one extra question.
The reason I came up with that one extra question philosophy is that in many, many practices we talk about asking two or three or four extra questions; worming, flea control, heartworm, etc. And yes with time and training and patience, we can train our nurses and our receptionist to ask the client lots of extra questions.
But the one question strategy is much, much, much more simple and easier to implement.
So, if I’m the receptionist and I’ve got the client here in front of me, I’m going to say, “Hey Mrs. Smith, just tell me what did you worm Fluffy with and when did you use it? Did you do the other dogs at home at the same time?”
Note how specific that question is; WHAT with and WHEN.
Another question maybe, “Hey Mrs. Smith, what are you using for heartworm control and when did you last use it?”
“Mrs. Smith, when did you last apply flea prevention and what was the name of it?”
Now, I’ve got that scenario working in about ten practices at the moment. As I said, one practice last year did it as a trial and generated about another $80,000, the other practices who came into that trial situation a little bit later on are also on track for that number as well.
I just wanted to share the profit—the power—of asking one extra question, and surely you can train your team members just to ask every client that walks in one extra question.
Even if it only generates an extra thirty or forty thousand dollars profit for you in 2018, it’ll be well and truly worth it.
I urge you, I challenge you, I challenge you to take up the one extra question challenge.
See you on the next video.
If you enjoyed the tips and the clues and the strategies in this video, and if you’re a practice owner or practice manager or an aspiring practice owner, may I suggest that you go to my website www.turbochargeyourpractice.com. And, register there to receive my newsletter, and in that, you’ll regularly receive more tips, strategies and ways of running and really improving your practice, and they’ll be delivered straight to your inbox every week.
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Diederik (One Extra Question) Gelderman
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow your practice:
1. Keep your eyes peeled and get ready to grab yourself a copy of my new book Veterinary Success Secrets Revealed – it’ll be available soon
It’s the road map to growing your practice and your profits while getting more time off
2. Join the Veterinary Business Academy and connect with other Veterinary practices that want to do better
It’s my monthly membership program (where you also get my person help every month) where practice owners and managers learn to get more income, have a better practice team, improve their marketing and get time off to enjoy life. — Click Here
3. Keep your eyes peeled for my exclusive MasterMind Group
Im putting together a MasterMind study group this year. Membership will be by application only. If you would like to work with me on scaling your veterinary business get in early now. Just reply to this email with the subject line “Mastermind”
4. Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from where you are to where you want to go… just reply to this message and put “Private” in the subject line… tell me a little about your practice and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details!
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