6 Simple Steps to Keep Your Practice From ‘Flying Blind’

6 Simple Steps to Keep Your Practice From ‘Flying Blind’

My son was so excited when the pilot on our flight to California invited him up front to see the cockpit.

“Wow! What are all these dials for?!” he asked with amazement.

The pilot responded: “I use these dials to know where we are, and to make sure we are going in the right direction. Without all these instruments, it would be like flying with a blindfold over my eyes.”

If the pilot knows how to read and use the instruments in the cockpit, he can navigate through storms, fog and night conditions, despite low visibility, because he has all the information he needs to know his exact location and trajectory, regardless of what he might see when he looks out the window.

In the same way that a pilot uses the instruments in the cockpit to know where his plane is, and to make sure he is headed in the right direction, you, as the “pilot” of your practice, need to make sure you are using the appropriate tools to understand where your practice is currently then course correct if you notice you are not headed in the right direction.

These tools are the weekly and monthly statistics that you report to FPC through the portal. Without these statistics, you are flying blind! You may think you know what is holding you back, when in reality, these perceived challenges are just fog and stormy weather, blinding you to what is really going on.

When your coaches get on the phone to discuss your current challenges, we want to be able to look at every aspect of your practice, so we can determine what the true underlying cause of your problem is. Without practice statistics, you are forcing us to fly blind.

We find that the practices that use the statistics tools provided to them by FPC consistently outperform the practices that fly blind. And we are able to provide much more valuable guidance when we can review all these instruments to help you fine tune your trajectory.

I would like to suggest 6 simple steps that you can implement immediately to start gathering information that will get your cockpit instruments up and running:

1. Daily Action Plan (DAP)

There are no excuses not to use this document on a daily basis. Delegate it to one person on the team and have them take ownership to make sure it is completed every day. This simple but powerful document lays the foundation for every other statistic that is measured in your practice.

2. FPC Portal Weekly Stats

At the end of each week, take the numbers from the Daily Action Plan and input them into the portal. Over time, we will be able to use this information to calculate your cost per lead, presentation show and close percentage, ROF show and close percentage, etc. If you are filling out the DAP, then this task should only take 5 minutes to complete.

3. FPC Portal Monthly Stats

At the end of the month, use the DAP to fill in your monthly numbers. This allows us to review the profitability of your practice.

4. Clinic Dashboard

This document really is the cockpit of your practice. This chart combines all the major stats recorded in your daily, weekly, and monthly stats to give you a good picture of how each system is working. If you have different team members gathering statistics, this is a great place to compile all of those numbers.

5. Financial Matrix

At the end of each month, use the DAP and/or Clinic Dashboard to fill in a Financial Matrix.

This document is one of the most overlooked statistics documents, but it is also one of the most powerful. It tracks your numbers all the way through the Lead Flow Process, from your cost per lead, to your ROF close percentage. Fill this document out a few months in a row and you’ll really start to see patterns unfold about where your practice tends to struggle.

6. Deconstruction Analysis of Monthly Revenue

This document can be used to project future months of revenue based off your current performance. If you know your Presentation and ROF close percentages (from the Financial Matrix), you can determine how much you need to budget towards marketing, how many presentations you need to host, and so on, in order to reach your revenue goal.

Written by Dr. Trevor Botts

Before Dr. Botts joined the FPC team as a coach, he was a client for 4 years. During that time he build a highly successful wellness practice in Austin, TX. Now, as a coach, he helps doctors to reach their own big practice goals. He specifically works with doctors to master the art of patient communication. He helps the practitioners he works with to inspire patients to focus on long-term outcomes, to follow all the doctor’s recommendations, and to understand that their health is the greatest investment they can make.

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FPC,FPCCoach,Practice Finances
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