The Secret to Lasting Success in Private Practice

“The secret to lasting success? Don’t compete, differentiate” – Pam Underdown

The bold and dark line that every medical aesthetic practice owner would like to have between his or her services and the local competition’s is getting fuzzier.

Lack of differentiation between competing services is becoming an endemic rather than accidental condition. Whether you think of this as a copycat phenomenon or evidence that good ideas have a way of catching on, the outcome is the same:

There are very few Medical Aesthetic Professionals out there today that are perceived as providing a unique advantage in themselves or their business offerings.

Even in those cases where a bold dark line does exist, before you can blink an eye it has been here and gone. The marketplace and the media are much better informed about the services available to them. Thanks to Google, they can very quickly access details of all the qualified, accredited and highly recommended Aesthetic Practitioners working in their area and quickly find any negative reviews.

Today, most of your patients have done their home-work. They already know what you can offer. And they very often perceive that everyone is offering much the same. As a result, they make their decision purely on price.

They don’t perceive a penny’s worth of difference between one clinic’s services and another, so they give their business to the one with the lowest price. The result? You are forced into a seemingly endless price war, grumbling as you struggle to embrace a ‘Lose-Win’ outcome.

That is why the concept of additional contribution is so important, and why the most successful people in business today spend so much time and money researching their patient’s needs, so they can contribute something of additional value to their results.

Standing out from the crowd is not about doing one or two big things, it’s about doing one hundred little things with care and consistency, with every single client, every single visit.

Train your team to give outstanding consultations and amazing service. Keep at it and don’t give up. Don’t accept mediocre from your team and before long you’ll be attracting the staff that don’t want mediocre either.

In simple terms, the best way to differentiate your practice and stand out from the crowd, is not to cut back on costs when times are tough but to invest in the right areas of your practice; your patients and your staff.