Business Plan: Interview Journal

As an audiologist first and foremost, becoming a business owner proved to be a steep learning curve.

My focus has so far been solely on the patient and business considerations such as profit and loss have never been part of the big picture. So when NexGen Hearing Group offered me the opportunity to co-own a clinic, I was very excited, but also a little bit scared. All of a sudden, terms like profit margin, retained earnings, net income, and fixed liabilities are part of my day-to-day work.

Despite my trepidation, our clinic grew a staggering 61% in its first year and continues to exceed its annual budget each year. There are many factors that have contributed to our success story, but the following stand out: business plan I learned from the management of the NexGen Hearing Group. Below are some recommendations for aspiring clinic owners on how to start your own business plan.

SWOT analysis

As we approach the end of the fiscal year, we need to anticipate what the next year will entail and how we will build success. The best way to do this is with a SWOT analysis. is to A SWOT analysis is a method of analyzing a business and revealing its internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. Doing his SWOT analysis with the team is important. Because we always need to work together to achieve our goals. A fresh perspective is what ultimately drives business success.

study hard is an acronym for:

• Strengths: The individual qualities of your clinic that stand out from the crowd
• Weaknesses: Your practice’s weaknesses and areas you know could be improved
• chance: Potential paths to growth and success
• threat: What are the risks that hinder the clinic’s success?

Simply put, your strengths are what you are good at. It is important to understand what makes your clinic successful and unique. I and many others believe that it is the clinician and supportive her staff that the patient agrees with. Is it your years of experience, education, or training with a reputable individual? Whatever it is, identify and promote it. Talk to patients and they will talk to others.

Then identify your weaknesses. These may be things you don’t do, don’t want to do, or things your competitors are already doing. These are internal weaknesses that you have no control over.

Then look at the opportunities. These are external factors that help your business grow. This could be a marketing opportunity or introduce a new product to your area.

Finally, check for threats. These are external factors that inhibit the clinic, but can usually be mitigated. A good example is our competitors or a particular pandemic that we are all familiar with.

For more information on how to perform a SWOT analysis, we recommend visiting the BDC website (Bank of Canada for Entrepreneurs).

Introduced by

The next step is to check where the patient is coming from. There are two important reports that are typically used to find this data.

• New client referral source: Ask yourself if patients come from billboards or word of mouth. Are they referred by their GP or ENT? Do they come from your newspaper advertisement? From here, rank the top five referral sources for getting patients through the door.
• Referrer sales: For clinics that have been in business for several years, this is often a customer database or word of mouth. If not, this is the perfect opportunity. The top referral sources for new patients may not always match what you see in your sales reports. This is an interesting difference to explore with your team.

These reports are a great way to identify where to focus your marketing efforts.

It’s important to accurately track your referrer data to see how you’re acquiring your audience. Typically this is accomplished when the customer care representative responsible for the new appointment asks how the new patient found out about you.Customer asks her care representative to provide the correct marketing referral code to the patient. Have the management system assign it. It also helps to ask the individual to ensure that the correct referral code is assigned to them at the time of booking. In some cases people may have multiple sources of reference and you need to decide which code is the best to use.

KPIs

The final step before going into goal planning is to review your key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs help objectively measure the achievement of goals. I tend to use:

• conversion rate
• Average selling price
• Return on credit rate
• Cost of sales
• Profit.

The numbers that underpin these KPIs are typically generated by office management systems. However, if this is not an option, your accountant should be able to assist you in providing the required data.

Strategic business development goals

We recommend using KPIs to establish three to four key areas of strategic business development for the year ahead. More than three or four can overuse your limited resources and prevent you from achieving your goals. Pursuing a lower number may do the opposite.

There are many ways to set goals. You can follow in John Doerr’s footsteps in recommending goals and key outcomes, or you can use his more well-known approach, his SMART Goals. In either case, the key factor is that the goal should be specific, time-bound, and measurable.

To select objectives, we recommend reviewing SWOT analysis and KPIs and sources to identify trends in practice. My example of his 2022 goal is to increase community outreach by 15% by March 2023.

For each goal, outline a plan for how you will reach it. For me, this means addressing the following questions.

• procedure: What are the actionable steps you need to take to reach your goal from your current state?
• Obstacle: What can get in the way of planning and completion, and how can those risks be mitigated?
• Fault solution: How will you overcome the obstacles you have identified?
• Success Criteria: How will I know if I am successful? What KPIs should I use?
• budget: How much can you spend on this initiative?
• Completion date: When should this goal be achieved?

working document

As shown on page 30, create a quarterly work document that allows you to select areas of focus from your goals. Break down each focus area into actionable steps and delegate the people involved in this process. Set deadlines and budgets for each item. At each step, you should document your progress throughout the year so you can see the results when you enter the next financial quarter.

final thoughts

To make sure you know your progress throughout the year, allocate time to your schedule and review your monthly business goals. We tend to focus on filling our clinic time with revenue-generating opportunities, but if we don’t set aside time to complete these important administrative tasks, time will pass and all the great goals we set at the beginning will have passed. will notice. This is the wishful thinking of the year.

Now you can make a fun business plan.