December 07th, 2015

Is your Success a Dream or a Goal?
Recently my wife told me about a blog she read that outlined a formative moment in boxing great Evander Holyfield’s mental development. It spoke to the moment he recognized the difference between a goal and a dream. Read about it HERE.

Dreaming and using your imagination are wonderful and often underutilized skills. I encourage you to develop both; I received this link from my cousin earlier in the week that may help you understand how powerful this can be. http://www.proctorgallagherinstitute.com/6179/develop-your-imagination

In business, however, dreams and imagination have to be followed by concrete goals to help them develop in a purposeful manner. A practitioner may dream about having a large number of new patients or retaining their current patients longer but may not know how to achieve that. When we speak of retention and marketing, PVA (Patient Visit Average) and ROI (Return on Investment) need to be calculated to understand the current circumstance so that the dream can become reality. 

PVA
To truly understand what a PVA means to retention, you need to know how frequently a patient is typically seen by the clinician in that office. There are other retention measures you should simultaneously monitor:

1. The number of people that complete your initial period of care.
2. The percentage of these people that still have an appointment after one year of care.

ROI 
In marketing, the cost of an event creates the ROI needed for the event to be financially successful. I suggest you target a 10x ROI for each direct marketing event (like a screening or health show). This is a short term strategy; if the screening opportunity costs $1000, then in the following months you should ideally recover $10,000 in revenue to consider it a successful investment. 

Have fun while you build your practice, increase your profits, and enjoy your life!

Dr. Jeff Scholten