by Dr. Ginger Bratzel
[When New Clients Doesn’t Solve The Problem]
This question came to me from the ole email bag:
“Hey, Ginger, I think I need more clients. What should I do? And how do I get them?”
Well, that seems like a simple question. But that’s a complex answer.
But the truth is, it does depend. While it feels like a knee jerk solution to think you need more clients. In some cases, that’s true. You do need a certain amount of people coming in to feed your business, because you have an attrition rate with people move away, losing customers, or they just kind of age out or finish out with your services, and they don’t need you anymore. Therefore, you need a certain flow to it.
But new customers, new clients, and new patients are not necessarily the answer to all the problems.
(QUE THE SHOCKED FACE: ala Kevin from “Home Alone.”)
Before we dig in and spend money (marketing ain’t cheap, y’all) and time, we need to make sure your business is fully PREPARED to handle new clients.
And that comes down to the numbers.
Everyone knows what they produced last year and how much business revenue they generated. If we want those numbers to increase, the business mind often jumps to the conclusion to make that number grow, I need more new clients.
But that’s only part of that equation.
Physicians do blood tests to find out what’s going on within your body. These tests show where your body is functioning normally and what areas need a deeper look. The same is true for your business. You also have key markers to show what’s happening in your business at each as part of a diagnosis of where any issues exist that are deterring your growth.
Monthly new client numbers are certainly one thing we look at in comparison to industry standards. But when I start pulling back the covers on other areas of the business, I can get a different kind of feel.
For instance, here are a few things I look at before planning a new customer campaign for one of my private clients.
- WHERE are these new people coming from?
- Are most of them are from external sources like social media, Google, and paid ads, then we need to find out why existing customers aren’t referring?
- How long between the time a new client, customer, or patient contacts you and their first appointment? While businesses get excited if they’re ‘booked two months out’ as an indicator of how busy they are but in reality, new clients will only wait so long. If they find someone else that can start sooner, they will be likely to choose them over you.
All these things, along with several more, give a lot of intel, about your operations that your current customers WON’T always complain about or bring up that will affect how successful your next marketing push will work to convert prospects into long term clients.
Click over here for the full video where I give you examples and ideas of how to do a self check for your business, too.
Would You Like to Dive Deeper Into Getting All The Clients You Need for Your Business with an Exploratory Call with Me? Click here.
If you want to talk more about how to do this or other strategies for your office, you want to start with the simple or you want to go with a big and you’re ready to do that and you want to get things cloned again, reach out to us and we’ll do a “Getting All The Clients You Need” session to find your next step.