continued from yesterday.....

So what are systems? And why are they important?

Imagine that for years a patient comes to see you and likes coming to your practice because he / she likes your personality, the way they are welcomed by the front-desk team, the way you all know about their family, their pet dog, where they work.......etc .......

Lets then say you decide to employ an associate or a new practice manager and they don't then welcome that patient in the same way and they don't know all their personal details or they have a different style with people. That patient is then going to start to feel uneasy......its true, as humans we don't like change! And it is also true that we like to be treated in the same way every time we visit somewhere - it is predictable and safe.

Therefore, systems come into place to ensure that you, your associates, your practice manager and your whole team ALL operate in the same way. And, to ensure that if one of your team is unavailable (including you), the patients will have the same great experience dealing with someone else. It releases you from having to always be working "in" your business and gives you freedom to realise your personal goals in life whilst still earning an income.

Practical suggestions:

* Write procedure notes for everything! How to answer the phone, how a patient is welcomed into the practice, when they receive certain documents, when they pay, how they pay.... the list goes on. This needs to be updated regularly, referred to regularly and used to train new team members.

* Ensure good team selection when recruiting. Make sure your team "buy in" to your policies and way of thinking

* Don't fear delegation because you think "well someone else cant possibly do this as well as I can..." - it is better that someone else gets it 80% right than you having to be tied to your business, afraid to leave for fear of what may happen when you are gone.

* Invest a little money into good systems for the practice, such as a database. This can store valuable information about a patient (such as how they like their tea made!) so that if that patient visits it is not reliant on the person who knows how that patient likes their tea to be available.  Whoever is on the front desk can simply look it up on the database and say "Good Morning Mr Jones, Dr Smith is going to be a few minutes, can I get you a cup of tea? Milk and 1 sugar isn't it?" .....now ....would that impress you? And make you want to stay and make you want to refer others?

Finally.....

So these are a few suggestions of many. If this subject interests you and you want to find out how you can advance of working on your business not in it please get in touch. We run a number of different workshops (1-1 and group) that may be of interest to you.

If you fancy some further reading on the subject, I can personally recommend The E-Myth by Michael E Gerber

Hope this has been a useful 2 piece entry. More business tips to follow tomorrow.