Challenges in plastic surgery and competitiveness are common within the aesthetics industry.
Many plastic surgeons may find themselves asking questions such as what is the best way to attract more customers and grow when you often find yourself thinking:
“I don’t have enough patients” or
“I’m not busy enough”.
Growing a practice may come with challenges that require competitiveness if they want to be overcome. This is why plastic surgeons will need to be prepared. From successfully being able to differentiate marketing and business infrastructures, to learning how to truly be a great leader.
So how can plastic surgeons elevate their practice to set themselves apart in a competitive industry?
- Leading The Process
- Your Vision For The Future
- Successful Marketing
- Great Teams Come From Great Leaders
- Staff Training
- Laying The Right Foundations
- Conclusion
Leading The Process
Leading the process in the role of plastic surgeon within a practice helps create clarity for all those within the environment.
First and foremost, what is your message? As a practice, the ability to establish a clear message is crucial for prospective patients and staff. Understanding the practices’ true values and the reason behind these beliefs.
Your message will enable people to understand your core values. In addition, create an opportunity to build a deeper connection when being vocal about what you stand for. Also, it’s just as important, what you don’t stand for.
Identifying exactly who you want to be is also an additional element that will prove beneficial. This goes hand in hand with clear values. In order for prospective patients to select you amongst a world full of other practices, they need to be enticed and have a true understanding of who they are putting their trust in.
Being Relatable To Patients
For example, if they view your practice as relatable, therefore, would feel more comfortable making contact with you. This is a significant way to lay the right foundations by considering prospective patients beforehand. This being before they even walk into your practice for information or a consultation.
The more information out there easily available and helps give a better patient experience. People like it when things are accessible and transparent. Both elements being very important to build trust.
This can range from having a unique story surrounding your practice. From the founders and staff who make up the company, down to the reason why the practice was opened.
Sharing personal experiences and allowing prospective patients to understand that you are there to resolve their problems. Whilst staying personable, informative and emphatic.
A Clear Plan To Avoid Challenges In Plastic Surgery
The running of any business should not be left up to chance. This is why planning is required at all stages of opening and running a practice. This can range from implementation of ideas. Such as, regularly following up with staff to attend to their well being.
By doing this, practices allow for analysis on a larger scale in order to see how the practice is truly running and which areas may need improvement, considering everyone’s perspective.
What Is Your Message?
Having a clear message builds up the story of your practice and what you stand for.
Who Do You Want To Be?
You have the opportunity to decide what you want to be known for. Think of your speciality and become the best at that in your city, nation, or even country as your practice progresses, says Richard McKeon of The Beauty Business Journal. Alongside this, making plans for the future is also an important element to success in business.
Listen to the Finally podcast with Richard Mckeon
Your Vision For The Future
Asking questions such as “what is your vision for the future?” helps create solid foundations for any practice. Identify such things that give clarity and guidance to staff members and promotes a healthy approach to setting goals and targets. Whether they be individually allocated or for the practice as a whole.
The benefit of setting targets within a practice is that it gives individuals something to strive for. Often people need that reason to find their true purpose and sometimes an extra element that will enable them to push themselves further.
A business without clear goals and targets may not only leave team members deflated, but leaves risk to possible disorganization and challenges in plastic surgery.
On the other hand, when people reach certain goals that have been made, this opens the way for celebration and positive acknowledgement for team members. When people within the team perform well, there is an opportunity to show appreciation, thus creating a more positive work environment.
Successful Marketing To Avoid Challenges In Plastic Surgery
Successful marketing needs to be a collaboration of ideas and healthy input, says Strategic Business and Leadership Coach, Brian Hayes.
The combination of the two play a crucial role in approaching this side of business in the most effective way. So how can practices combine the collaboration of ideas with a healthy input from all those who make up their team?
Great Teams Come From Great Leaders
“Great teams come from great leaders”, says Brian. This stresses the importance of how surgeons can make or break their practices simply by the way they choose to lead.
From relationships with staff members to organization within the practice. It is the surgeon’s job to lead the way with certainty but also give space for team members to play a significant role within the practice, allowing a healthy input of ideas and giving responsibility.
Listen to our podcast with Strategic Business and Leadership Coach, Brian Hayes
Correct Staff Training To Avoid Challenges In Plastic Surgery
Correct training of staff can limit challenges in plastic surgery. Firstly, when staff have extensive knowledge of how to approach patients in the correct way this plays a huge role in prospective patients’ experience.
The right conversations and an empathic approach can make patients feel comfortable, contributing to building trust. On the other hand, the wrong approach may leave prospective patients ready to rule out your practice after the first 10 seconds of interaction. So whether it be an assistant surgeon or the staff member working on the front desk, successful staff training is essential to ensure nothing less than exceptionally good customer experience.
Great leaders can do many things and which elements a surgeon may choose to focus on can simply depend on what kind of practice they they want to have.
After identifying your message and who you want to be, there are other areas to consider that can massively impact leadership success, and it all comes down to how you deal with your team. Done in the right way, this is the key to laying successful foundations for your practice.
Laying The Right Foundations To Avoid Challenges In Plastic Surgery
Making People Feel Valued – making people aware of how important their contribution is to the makeup of a successful team as a whole is extremely important.
Listening To People’s Ideas – never underestimate people within the team who give suggestions and new ideas. Staff members should be appreciated when they show initiative. Furthermore, one crucial element is to not become a victim of staying stuck due to being afraid of trying new things in order to avoid challenges in plastic surgery.
“Busy doesn’t always equal productivity”, says Brian. Whilst we may often feel accomplished because we are busy, this does not always correlate with output success.
Things such as being open to new technology can have an enormous effect on productivity within a practice. Technology holds an opportunity to save valuable time by enabling the completion of tasks more effectively for example.
Whether this be new technology and procedures, or adapting to new team dynamics. Moving forward and being open to healthy transition may be the secret to a practice limiting their challenges in plastic surgery and the industry overall.
Conclusion
Through the accumulation of the above, the time will arrive to join together the foundations of everything that has been set for a practice. Identify the most important elements for your practice personally and focusing on them.
Whether that be through staff training or creating a distinctive brand identity, putting your best foot forward and holding the ability to understand which areas require more focus.
By doing so correctly, this allows a practice to stand out and represent themselves in the best way, with the best chance for long lasting success.