Do You Know You’re Naked?

With all the news of the indiscretions of Wall Street, politicians and large corporations are we to think our little businesses are any less exposed? Not any more! There are numerous web sites that people are using to review and comment on every business they encounter. I have been playing with yelp.com and foursquare.com on my iPhone. Both can use GPS to identify where you are and identify businesses in your area that have been reviewed. Usually I am looking up restaurants or coffee shops but you can look up hotels, bookstores and yes even veterinarians. Next time you are running late for an appointment or an appointment is not going particularly well you might want to think that your client might be sharing their experience with you on one of these sites. Scary isn’t it?

An excellent and free way to see what discussion there is about you and your practice on the web is Google Alerts. When you sign up you can add topics and the web is scoured for references to it. I search for our practice and my name. You can be really devious and search your competitions name as well. It’s a great idea to hear both the pros and cons of your competitors.

Like it or not the transparency of the web leaves us all very exposed. At least there are ways to monitor what is being said about you.

Next time we can talk about what to do when less than complimentary things are said about you. You can turn a negative experience to a positive one. In the meantime check out yelp.com or foursquare.com to see if the world has been talking about you.

Make Your Employees Want To Work For You. Daniel Pink Has The Answer

If we dealt only with animals life would be great. Every veterinarian has said that at some point in their career. From clients to employees people tend to be our biggest challenges. In veterinary practice human resource costs are generally the biggest expense. In these economically challenging times reducing the expense of employee turnover and getting the most of the staff you have are necessary. The problem is that we always feel that we cannot afford to pay them what they want to stay in a job or produce more. But is money all that is needed to motivate staff?

I have just finished reading the new book by Daniel Pink called “Drive”. In it he explains how the typical way we pay and motivate people may be doing us more harm.

To give you an insight into the book I took the following from his web page.

“The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action. Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.”

Like all things that are good for us the premises in this book will require some work from you. Cultures will have to change, people will have to adjust. If the end result is a happy, motivated and engaged work force it is a no-brainer to me.

Treat Your Best Customers Like They Are Your Best Customers

I found a great article in The Globe and Mail  about treating your loyal customers well. In this article the writer, Dave McGinn, took his cell phone plan to a competitor after 10 years of loyal service because he did not feel appreciated. I know I have felt this way before when dealing with companies. We all want to feel special. My first reaction after reading the article is what do we do for our excellent customers? Then I wondered can we even explain what a great customer is to our veterinary practice? Is it longevity or amount spent in a year or amount referred? The more I thought about this I became determined to find out who are best customers are? I am going to develop firm metrics of what makes someone a great customer. Then I am going to develop a reward system for these clients. Finally, we will make it known to our clientele that we have a reward system for our clients. I expect our customers will appreciate that we are being active in recognizing them. When it is transparent they will know what to expect and what they need to do to become a superior client. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Does anyone have experience doing this? Let us know what you did and how it worked out.

What Can We Learn From Other Professions

Whenever I have discussion with equine veterinarians, I am amazed at how we think the equine vet business is different from any others. We complain that “Nobody else shares our hours, our cutthroat competition or our risk of injury”. There is nothing wrong with this, and I am sure all professionals do it. But are we really unique? Let me describe a business that we probably visit at least once a week. With respect to the old TV show “What’s My Line” lets see if you can recognize this profession.

• Horribly long hours. It is not unusual to work 12 plus hour days 6 days a week. Maybe you will get Christmas off.
• The constant work and irregular hours makes it hard on family life.
• Only the rare few make a good living at it. The rest are constantly struggling just getting by or working at places that are not what they dreamed of when they went to school.
• Injuries are commonplace and to be expected. When they happen you bandage them up and carry on. If you are not working you are not getting paid.
• Most of the clients are great. Some become friends. But there are a small minority if people that are rude, insulting and do not show any respect to us at all.
• Even though you have spent years getting an advanced education you are stuck in a dead end job that gives you no satisfaction at all.

Who am I? 

Believe it or not I have described the life of a chef. One doesn’t have to scratch the surface much to see that the restaurant business has many similarities to the equine veterinary world and indeed the horse world in general. You ask, Why does this matter to me? Well it is easy to find comfort that our situation is not unique, but I like studying other businesses to what I can learn from them and apply that to our own.

Here are a few problem areas of equine veterinary practice that have sent me to other industries for insight.

Develop new profit centers:

How do clothing stores introduce new fashions twice a year?

How does Apple bring to the market new products with such success?

Veterinary compensation:

How do lawyers and accountants pay their associates?

Dealing with the slow season:

How do businesses in resort towns survive during their slow season?

What prompted Bombardier to develop the Sea-doo to give them another product than the Ski-doo?

And what did I learn from the restaurant business? The successful ones treat their clients like they are very special. The successful ones have the same staff year after year because they treat them well and train them to have pride in their work. The successful chefs have a well trained sous-chef so they can take some time off. Those of us who think their clients want them and only them could learn from this. Restaurant patrons won’t know that the main chef is not cooking that night if the sous-chef is confident, competent, and well-trained. If you have chosen and mentored your associates properly there should be no reason a client would be unhappy with them working on their horse. Do you really think Gordon Ramsay is cooking at all of his restaurants every night?

What are some problems you have about your practice that may have been solved in another industry? Email me or write in the comment section and we can work together to look for alternative solutions.