Masters of many business disciplines

It’s been said before, of course - Practice Managers have to be masters of many business disciplines.

There are human resources, legal compliance, financial management, IT support, administration, and customer services to master for any Practice Manager in today’s Primary Care environment - and all that was before Alan Johnson stood up at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth in September and blew the lid on the next one.

That’s right, yours is going to be a competitive market as never before, with your patients (customers) about to be encouraged to shop around - so what else do you have to tackle to stay at the top of your practice manager profession?

Competition isn’t new!!

Competition isn’t new of course. The fact is though, that your practice is going to have to adapt and find its niche if you are going to be commercially successful.

To my mind, this means that you are going to have to add marketing to your skills quiver.

And I don’t mean creating the odd job vacancy advert for the local paper and next weeks’ GP newspaper - critically, you are going to have to create a marketing strategy.

What are your Your key competitive advantages?

Fundamentally, you need to decide what your practice’s key competitive advantage (or ‘differentiator’ to use marketing twaddle is).

What do you and your practice offer (or want to offer) patients that sets you apart (for the better!) from other practices and is a fit for the direction that your practice wants to take?

You need to find something that, of course, really matters to patients as opposed to something that you or your partners feel is great, but that doesn’t really make your patients say ‘wow’.

Make your patients say “WOW”

It may be that you have new, easily accessible and well-lit premises, or that your teams’ customer service skills are terrific, or that you operate what is acknowledged as a magnificent mother and baby clinic, or that (gulp!) you are open on Saturdays and until 9.00pm Monday to Friday.

Whatever your competitive advantage is doesn’t really matter - so long as it’s worth promoting to patients and means something positive to them.

Note that I have not said that you need to grow.

You and your practice colleagues may decide that you want to shrink - but change the demographic of the patients who choose to use you.

Either way, it’s up to you.

Critically, in tomorrow’s competitive market (and here’s the contentious bit) telling yourself that everything you are doing now is just fine and doesn’t need to improve, adapt or change is a recipe for ruin.

You can be sure that other practices will be hungrily eyeing the best aspects of your practice and aiming to copy or take them - whilst looking at the worst aspects and aiming to make capital from them.

It may all sound a little bit daunting - but don’t worry.

You have a proven ability to keep any number of plates spinning.

You aren’t going to let any smash now.

Your marketing role is 3-fold

1. Agree with your partners the “target” patients that you want to keep or attract.

2. Create a means of doing so.

3. Implement the means and measure the effectiveness.

Why you want them is up to you.

It may be a financial reason, or may be a caring and vocational one - either way it needs to be heartfelt and understood.

As far as (1) is concerned, play to your strengths.

Look at the demographic map of your local catchment area (which you might, incidentally, now expand if you are in the ‘cherry picking’ business) and marry it to the skills and aspirations of your clinical and administrative team.

Then consider your target alongside your commercial requirements - and make sure that they can be reconciled.

With regards to (2), keep a look out for the next edition of Primary Business Today where I’ll be laying out my approach to creating the perfect marketing plan.

As far as (3) is concerned, well you are already a great Practice Manager or you wouldn’t be reading this magazine, so you are already well used to measuring the effectiveness of everything.

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Jon is a highly respected sales and marketing professional with proven expertise in healthcare, grocery, homeware, and construction markets.

He speaks to wide ranging audiences on business development topics whilst also working at the sharp end with organisations to improve their sales and marketing results.

Jon is an accomplished facilitator of leadership and teamship development programmes, particularly in a customer service environment, and works hard to promote the idea of individuals as architects for positive change.

His business experience includes successful senior management and Director level development roles with Tarmac Quarry Products, Yule Catto, Wedgwood, Fiskars UK and Williams Medical Supplies.

His development success stories along the way include Tesco, B&Q, Ralph Lauren, Tiffany, National Association of Primary Care, Marks & Spencer, Pfizer, numerous NHS primary care trusts and even Diversions - The National Dance Company of Wales for whom he is a non-executive Director.

Jon now leads Jon Wilks Associates, a network of business development professionals with a diversity of exceptional skills including leadership, coaching, psychological profiling, teamship, innovation and strategic process.

Focused entirely on the development of peak business performance, Jon works with any business for which mediocrity represents opportunity.

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