‘Dr. Webb’s Desk’ Article originally from October 19th’s 2018 FPC Weekly Newsletter
Written by Dr. Charles Webb.
Crushing It During The Holidays
For the past decade the holidays have been tough. Year after year, it never seems to change so why fight it? I mean, who has the discipline to make life style changes when Thanksgiving and Christmas are taking precedence in every ones lives? Oh yea, trying to get people to see the value of investing in their health during this time is nearly impossible. They’re spending all their money on gifts, travel and parties. Think I’ll just try to stay afloat until after New Year’s.
Don’t tell me you haven’t had those thoughts. I know I’ve been there.
It hit me one day as we were just getting ready to move into the Holiday season. We had just finished up our September with collections at $289,000. I was thinking, “We just did close to 300K which is nothing to sneeze at. Last November we did around $240k and about $180K in December. There is definitely a decline here, so how do I set things up to hold strong through this season? Then it hit me. Wait a minute. $180k in December is a decline for me, but most practices, this would be a huge uptick.”
Here’s what I mean. In reality, December can still be a rocking month. If I can collect nearly $200k in this holiday month, why can’t you. What I am suggesting is that, although it was a slower month, I had plenty of new people coming to me willing to change their life… right then, amongst the hustle and bustle. They were just fine investing their money into themselves rather than traveling and/or buying a ton of stuff.
I admit that I did in fact collect nearly 38% less my previous December than my current September, but as I dove deep into why, I discovered that I hadn’t compensated for the obvious challenges. Yes, there are challenges. Advertisers are competing for your prospects attention, people are focused on buying crap, fighting crowds and partying. Perhaps the majority of people aren’t having such a pleasurable experience after all?
Do you think there might be a ton of folks out there that would like to step away from all the hustle and craziness that the Holidays bring? Haven’t you had conversations with those that simply wished the season to pass?
This is where I placed my focus. I believed that there were plenty of people that finally hit bottom during this season and were fed up of the buying frenzy, fighting crowds, stuffing their face with treats and feeling like crap! They wanted to feel good again. Crazy, but the Holiday events are what triggered them to take action.
I was going to go after them big time. If it cost me $120 per butt in seat during regular months, I accepted the fact that it was likely to be double that during the latter part of November thru the first half of January. I planned out or campaign to include bumping up my marketing budget and stacking my presentations to include 5 in November, 3 the first two weeks in December and 3 the last 3 weeks in January. I chose not to do any presentations from December 17th through January 7th.
The outcome was my November events signed up enough consults to fill the first 2 weeks of December, while my December events helped fill up the second part of January. My marketing budget increased by 35%, but resulted in record revenue months. My profit margin was down, but overall profit up.
My advice is to plan on busting your butt going into the Holiday months. If you’re tight on marketing dollars, get out into your community more often. Get talks scheduled and do whatever you can to offset the 3 weeks of dead time during the end of December through the first week of January.
As a reward for you and your team, shut things down form December 21st through January 3rd. Take time off to enjoy your family. Isn’t that what the season is all about.