Medical Spa MD - Information for Plastic Surgeons, Dermatologists, Cosmetic Physicians, & Medspas.

Monday

02Jun

Medspa Specialist

medspa_medical_spa_specialist If the world is really bigger, if you can find the best in the world to do what you want, no matter what it is you want, does that change things?

If I need heart surgery, I can find the world's best heart surgon. If I need an actinic keratosis looked at, I can find the best dermatologist. If I need SEO help, get me the world's best SEO person. If I need breast implants, I can find the best breast implanter in my area. Not the second-best or someone who will try really hard or someone who is pretty good at that and also good at other things. Sure, there are times when a diagnostician with wide-ranging experience is important (but I'd argue that that's a specialty in and of itself).

When choice is limited, you want a generalist. When selection is difficult, a jack of all trades is just fine.

But whenever possible, you will choose a brilliant specialist.

If you're shaking your head in agreement with this obvious point, then the question is: tell me again why you're a generalist?

6 Comments |

Jeff Barson | in

Monday

11Feb

Medspa MD: 9 Rules for Setting Your Prices

Setting prices for your medical spa or laser center?

Part guesswork, part experience, part number crunching - how ever you look at it, determining how much you're going to charge is a difficult task. Here are nine factors to take into consideration:

1. Your Costs
If your prices don't include enough just to break-even, you’re heading for trouble. Medical businesses are expensive to run. The best thing to do is add up all your costs so that you absolutely know how much you need to make each month. If you've made the mistake of paying your staff on commission, you'll need to figure all of this out as well.

Also make sure you factor in all the hidden costs of your business like insurance, services that never get paid for one reason or another, and everyone’s favourite - taxes.

2. Your Profit
Somewhat related to your costs, you should always consider how much money you are trying to make above breaking even. This is business after all. You will actually need to decide how much money you want to make.

3. Market Demand
Cosmetic medicine is in high demand, but the markets getting more and more competitive as well. You should be aiming to make your services more expensive. Conversely if there’s hardly any work around, you’ll need to cheapen up if you hope to compete. You're fortunate here in some respects. There are ways of maximizing physician time for where it's most needed, physician treatments and consultations.

4. Market Standards
It’s hard to know what others are charging, but try asking around. Find out what all the spas, medical spas, plastic surgeons, and dermatologists charge. The more you know about what others are charging and what services they provide for the money, the better you’ll know how you fit in to the market.

5. Demand level
If you're a plastic surgeon to the stars, you're going to be able to charge more. If you're a GP that's offering Botox twice a month, you're going to be charging less. You need to be realistic, not about what you think, but about what the marketing thinks. We all know that injecting Botox is not that hard, but the truth is that the market doesn't know that. You'll need to come to grips with what demand you can expect.

6. Experience
Although often bundled with skill, experience is a different factor altogether. You may have two very talented doctors, but one with more experience might have better client skills, be able to foresee problems (and thus save the client time and money), intuitively know what’s going to work for a certain audience and so on. Experience doesn't mean medical experience but a combination of medical and business experience. The markets acceptance of how much experience you have should affect how much you charge.

7. Your Business Strategy
Your strategy or your angle will make a huge difference to how you price yourself. Think about the difference between Revlon and Chanel, the two could make the same perfume but you would never expect to pay the same for both. Figure out how you are pitching yourself and use that to help determine if you are cheap’n'cheerful, high end or somewhere in between. (More on this in future posts.)

8. Your Services
What you provide for your clients will also make a big difference to your price tag. For example you might be a touchy-feely doc who will do whatever it takes to get a job just right, or perhaps you are on call 24-7, or perhaps you provide the minimum amount of communication to cut costs. Whatever the case, adjusting your pricing to the type and level of service you provide is a must. Surface charges a premium since we specialize. Generalists tend to have less pricing pull.

9. Who is Your Client
Your price will often vary for different clients. This happens for a few reasons. Some clients require more effort, some are riskier, some are repeat clients, some you'd do for free since they know everyone, some you wouldn’t want to go near with a stick. You should vary your price to account for these sorts of factors. While it's often assumed that only the rich are cosmetic patients, we all know that's not true. We have patients arrive in both limos and busses.

Give it lots of thought
Your pricing needs to be carefully thought out. I see a lot of physicians who set their prices on what the doc down the street is charging. There are a lot of docs who continually try to undercut the prices of everyone, exactly where you don't want to be. There can always be only one lowest price and the patient who will come to you based on price, will leave you just as fast.

Pricing isn't simple. You should keep an open mind about your ability to charge a premium. If you're charging too much or to little the market will tell you. Be receptive.

2 Comments |

Jeff Barson | in

: How to build a Medspa,

How to's: | |

Tuesday

17Jul

How to become a Heroic Physician in the eyes of your patients.

Ready to add more to your bottom line from word of mouth patient referrals?

What you need is a hero.

You likely already know that effective marketing is not about blatant self-promotion. (If you don't, well, you should.) Your focus should be building your authority and credibility that provides true value to your patients. Over the long term, this snowball building strategy will easily convert a good percentage of your patients into active zealots (patients who actively promote your practice).

It's medical practices with an active zelot-building strategy that are healthy, growing, and profitable.

But there's a catch. (There's always a catch.)

The only really effective way to build this kind of proactive patient population is not through a frontal assault, but with a carefully organized strategy of soft, outside promotion.

Is it ever okay to do some “hard selling”? Absolutely, but your best bet is to do it in a way that doesn't come across as selling. The good news is that the technique you can use is one of the most potent forms of selling around.

Confused? Let’s take a closer look at the bad, better and best approaches.

Bad: Blatant Self-Promotion

See: Physicians get the consultants they deserve. Marketing that focuses on telling people how wonderful you are is bound to be a flop. If it comes across as self aggrandizement, you're shooting yourself in the foot. No one wants to go in and have a consultation of buy something who thinks he's God's gift to mankind. (Note: If you think that you might actually be Gods gift to mankind, there's no need to continue reading this since it obviously won't help.)

All great marketing focuses on the prospect, and all great medical marketing focuses on the patient. You’re wasting your time telling people how great you are, because odds are no one will care enough to decide whether to believe you.

Better: Customer Testimonials and Media Blurbs

As I’ve said a couple times before, what other people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself. This is the foundational aspect of testimonials and third party endorsements. Board certification is a perfect example of this. Plastic surgeons show that they're board certified so that patients will feel a sense of security knowing that this third party has said that this doctor isn't a complete sham.

Testimonials and media mentions are important because of the concept of social proof. We all, to vary degrees, look to others for indications of what to do and how to behave. Social proof is the basis of buzz, word-of-mouth marketing and fashion trends, but it’s also an important aspect of our day-to-day lives. We avoid sensory and information overload by looking to social indicators for judgmental heuristics that help us make decisions.

When patients pull up to your clinic, they don't want to see you driving up and getting out of a beat up VW bug. The fact that you have a BMW, Rolex, a good haircut, and staff wearing jackets with their name are all forms of social proof that show that you've got money because a whole bunch of other patients choose you. So, a patient can fee that they're not stupid choosing a doc who so many others have chosen before.

However, outside of a focused attempt to get someone to take immediate action (like order a product or call you), testimonials are not very compelling. Simply regurgitating what someone has said about you is not nearly as interesting as it is when it’s read somewhere else. In short, testimonials do not make 'great' sales fodder.

Can we do better?

Best: Hero Stories

What’s a hero story?

A hero story is similar to a testimonial, except that it transcends praise and becomes a compelling, engaging narrative that your patients can directly relate to. Instead of you or your business being the center of attention, your patient or client is the “hero” who solves a problem utilizing your solution. Bingo.

Here are some key characteristics of the hero story:

The story is not about you or your company
The story is about your customer and how they solved their problem
First, introduce the hero
Next, introduce the problem
How did the hero solve the problem?
What did the hero learn along the way?
What specific results did the hero achieve?

Woven into the story, of course, is you and your solution. But you’re really just an “extra” who supports the hero. You want the hero to speak to your readers and prospective customers in terms they can relate to. Or in other words, a hero makes you look good in ways that are difficult for you to achieve yourself. People will tune out your own horn-blowing, but they’ll love a good story with a protagonist who conquers challenges that are similar to their own.

A Hero Story is Simply a Good Story

The key, of course, is a good story, and a good hero story is just like any good story—it contains drama, obstacles, conflict and resolution. And the key to writing a good hero story is to be engaging in your presentation.

I could use multiple examples but I'll relate one that I've coached some of our physicians to use during consultation training.

We have a before and after picture of a patient we treated who had with a large port wine stain along the right side of her face. The mark, the size of an outstretched hand, covered her from above her hairline, over her ear, down her cheek and neck and to her clavicle. Since she was born, this huge and obvious mark had ruled her interactions with people. Her teen and dating years were marked by peril at what boys and others might think or say.

As a result, she always wore turtlenecks and covered her mark with hairstyle and makeup. It was an onerous, deeply threatening condition that in many ways ruled her life. At her wedding she had had no photographer and had forbidden pictures to be taken.

She became a Surface patient shortly after she was married. During her lifetime there had never been a technology that could treat her condition and when we came on the scene, one of our other patients who was a close friend, recommended that she come in for a consult.

It took six treatments, but we were able to remove the entire mark to a level that you would never be able to tell that a port wine stain had ever existed. For her, it was a miracle.

For the first time in her life, she dropped the turtlenecks and wore her hair back. In fact, she went further and assembled her entire wedding party and had her wedding pictures taken in her wedding gown. It took her six months to adjust to the new way that people speaking to her looked at her eyes and didn't constantly look at her mark. She loved it.

We were happy to be a part of it.

Heroes? Sometimes.

Jeff Barson | in

Wednesday

27Jun

4 Tips for preparing your patients for price increases.

How to Prepare Your Medspa Patients for Price Changes

When Allergan increased the price of Botox, I was not happy. (Not that Allergan and my Botox rep think I'm happy with them anyway.)

You never want your patients to be surprised by a price increase for something that they're already used to (Botox or Restylane being prime examples.) Pleasantly surprise them all you want with price decreases for packages on hair removal, but when you’re increasing the prices, up-front communication is key to preventing a rebellion at your front desk.

If your business costs are rising, you’ll eventually have to pass that on to the consumer. Here are some tips to make this increase as complaint free as possible.

1: Explain Why

When you put yourself in the position of delivering bad news (increasing your prices) with the reasoning behind it (Allergan or Thermage is screwing you again, etc.) your patients are more likely to accept the increase as inevitable and reasonable. The apparent absence of reason of will annoy your patient and she will assume you’re just trying to squeeze more money out of your relationship. (Even if you aren't.)

How to: I've used a front desk sign with an explanation. The sign mitigates the heat that the front desk has to suffer from patients who were expecting the price they already know. We're also sure to alert any patient who may be in that position. When we increased our Botox pricing, we made sure for months that every confirmation call included a reference to the new price to avoid any unpleasant front desk scenes.

2: Provide Advance Notice

Don’t pull a price increase out of thin air. Give your customers an advanced warning that changes are coming. Include the timeline of when changes will happen.

How to: Again with the confirmation calls. If I think I'm aiming for a price increase I'll often use the 'for a limited time' around advertised pricing.

3: Grandfather Your Previous Pricing

A price increase is a great opportunity to give your current (and hopefully loyal) customers a sweet deal. Give your existing patients the opportunity to maintain their current pricing by paying for services in advance.

How to: Say you're increasing your Thermage or Obagi Blue Peel pricing. (Something that might be a recurring treatment.) Offer you patient the option of pre-paying for any number of treatments they'd like at the current pricing. This is especially effective since the patient is now included in the decision making and you're in the position of receiving payment up front for treatments you haven't delivered yet.

4: Open Communication Equals Retention

Once you notify your patients of a price change, some may start shopping your competition. There's nothing you can do about that and those are not the patients you really want anyway. (Someone who comes to your medspa for price will leave you for price just as fast... And there can be only one lowest price.) You should know that increasing your prices will lose you a few potential patients but your revenue per patient or treatment will be higher. If you end up with more revenue it was a good decision.

When you surprise your patients with a price hike, even your loyal patients will start to shop around. Why? They’re mad.

Keep them informed and keep your patients.

Jeff Barson | in

Tuesday

19Jun

Spa vs Spa: Analyzing your medical spa competiton.

Get to know the competition.

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Contrary to what some may say, growing your clinic or medical spa isn't a single event.

Successful clinics and medspas look for 'incremental wins' that compound over time. The key to winning market share is to differentiate your company by providing products, services or solutions that your best prospects will find more desirable than what's offered by your competitors.

Experienced marketers know it's easier to fill an existing need than to create one. Someone who is already using the type of product or service you offer is a great prospect because he or she has a clearly defined need and is looking for a solution.

The job of convincing qualified prospects to buy from you instead of your competitors' is where the real work begins. One of the first steps is knowing what the other clinics, day spas, medical spas, and others who might be competing are up to in your market.

1. Do some detective work. Ok, this is a little spy like, but don't think all of your competitors aren't doing it to you and it's just good business sense. Start by gathering your competitors' marketing tools and advertising materials. Read their web site, print and broadcast advertising, and articles in which they've been featured. Request their brochures, price lists and any collateral materials. You may also be able to do some mystery shopping, which will allow you to experience what these medical spas are offering and how their positioning themselves. You'll want to send your staff rather than visiting yourself if you want to avoid embarrassing situations. (Surface has had more than 45 plastic surgeons, dermatologists and other physicians attend our seminars over the last five years in this type of sneaky capacity. They're not hard to spot and often they're 'outed' by women in the audience. They're the guys (mostly) who are sitting in the back scribbling furiously while their estheticians sit up front and ask telling questions like, "Now types of sutures do you use?".)

2. Evaluate your "slant" competitors. Chances are, you have a lot more competitors than you think. In addition to real competitors, evaluate the marketing tools and materials of any businesses your prospects perceive as offering a similar set of products or services. It's very common for day spas to attempt to compete with medical practices by offering a few medical services from a NP or PA. Microderm is often touted as some sort of medical type treatment. OBGYN's, FP's, pretty much whoever is in the market or wanting to get in. Know who's saying what about you.

3. Focus on the message. Once you've gathered the materials, the next step is to analyze what's being communicated and how. Identify the key promises made by your broad field of competitors. And don't be surprised if you see a lot of "me too" marketing. There's so much out there that's mediocre or worse, you may find the majority of your competitors have similar messaging, with only a few front-runners showing anything approaching real positioning. (This probably refers to you but we'll work on that.)

After assessing the most effective messaging, look at the actual tools and materials themselves. What formats seem to work best overall? At this point, your competitive analysis will reveal whether your company is lacking any standard tools that prospects expect everyone in your industry to offer.

4. Find a unique spin. So now comes the 'look in the mirror' moment. You've gathered all the materials and have learned the key message points of your real and perceived competitors. It all boils down to this: How does your clinic meet its patients' needs in a way that is both unique and compelling?

To find the answer, consider not only the products or services you sell, but also how you operate, including any company-specific characteristics, such as a higher level of customer service or uniquely specific positioning. If you can't find a selling point based on your current service offering that will help you stand out from your competitors, use what you've learned in this competitive analysis to retool what you sell and how you sell it.

If you can't see any difference between yourself and your competitors, why should you think any patient would choose you?

2 Comments |

Jeff Barson | in

: How to build a Medspa,

Advertising & PR | |

Monday

11Jun

Retail Medicine: The Sopranos & the expectation paradox.

Seth Godin (Yeah, I know you don't know who he is) posted about the final episode of the Sopranos and the expectation paradox.

The expectation paradox

So, people are upset because of the non-ending of the Sopranos. People are always upset when a TV show ends with a big finale, because it never meets the hype, never meets the expectations. If HBO had been quiet about it, hadn't done the full page ads and the radio shows and the newspaper articles, it would have been fine. Expanded expectations led to big disappointment.

The paradox: if expectations hadn't been raised, fewer viewers would have tuned in.
...In each case, the paradox is at work. On one hand, you want to raise expectations, because without doing that, you diminish trial. On the other hand, you want to exceed expectations, because that's what generates word of mouth.

As word of mouth becomes an ever more important component of marketing, the scales are tipping. Undersell, overdeliver. It's the strategy that works in the long run.

Every marketer has a choice... to make the first interaction the best of the experience, or the worst (least best).

Managing patient expectations is a constant challenge for many docs. It's easy to oversell and overpromise... don't. It leads to unsatisfied patients who feel 'sold'.

I had a long talk with a doc in FL today about this very subject. He's hired a 'marketing' person who will be incented to close sells and increase patient flow. Here's the potential problem: It's easy to overpromise in this situation leading to an unsatisfied patient and creating a situation where you're constantly having to feed new patients into your clinic. As the wise man said, "That ain't good."

Read more about paradox in relation to medspas: The paradox of unlimited choice

Jeff Barson | in

Thursday

07Jun

Non Compete Agreements: Keeping your Medspa staff from killing you.

Are Non compete Agreements Valid?

It's common for physicians to ask about how to prevent nurses, estheticians, or even other physicians from leaving to work for a competitor?

Many physicians ask their staff to enter into broad non compete agreements or employment contracts with non compete provisions to prohibit departing employees from working for a competitor or from using information they acquired while working for you. Or perhaps you just want to specify how soon an employee can begin working in a similar business.

There are problems with many non compete agreements valid and if overly broad they're not legally enforceable?

As a general rule, non compete agreements--often referred to as agreements or covenants not to compete--aren't valid or are not readily enforcible. In most states, there's a longstanding, strong public policy against such agreements since they're often so one-sided and impinge upon an individuals ability to make a living which is frowned upon by legislatures. The rationale for this policy is to ensure that employees have the right to pursue any lawful employment of their choice. (The California Legislature has enacted a law that declares void every contract that prevents someone from engaging in a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind.) Of course, as with most laws, there are exceptions provided in the law and created by the courts. In most states, the courts have carved out an exception to the general rule that covenants not to compete are void. They're typically permitted when deemed necessary to protect valid trade secrets of the employer. When former employees engage in unfair competition through the unauthorized use of trade secrets or confidential information, the courts will generally enforce proper non compete agreements.

A non-compete agreement which prohibits someone from working anywhere is far less likely to be valid than one which prohibits someone from working within 10 miles of the former employer’s business but this will depend on the kind of work. Your medical spa may have an interest in keeping an esthetician you trained from competing across the street, but if the non-compete agreement says nowhere in the state, it becomes less reasonable. If the esthetician can find a job in the state 50 miles away, most of the clients will not travel that distance for the service, but will stay with your medspa. On the other hand, this non-compete could force the esthetician to move to look for work or otherwise to travel hundreds of miles.

A non-compete must also be for a limited and specified time. If the esthetician is gone for a year, the medical spa can expect that the vast majority of the customers will have stayed and the estheticians departure will likely do little harm to the business. Thus, keeping the esthetician out of work for three years does little to help the business, but seriously harms the esthetician .

Depending on the circumstances and the language used, agreements not to compete signed by employees when starting a new job can prevent them from legally using secret formulas, recipes, certain protected customer lists and other trade secrets. Of course, merely labeling information as a trade secret or as confidential doesn't make it so. Disputes as to whether certain information is truly secret or confidential are decided by the courts on a case-by-case basis.

A similar issue arises when an employment agreement attempts to prevent a departing employee from taking other employees with them to a competitor. Such non-interference agreements aim to prohibit employees from soliciting other staff members to leave the employer. It's clearly improper for a departing employee to induce fellow employees to breach their employment contracts. On the other hand, if there's not an employment contract, nothing prohibits employees from deciding to join a colleague at a new employer.

In the end, to be valid a non-compete agreement must be narrowly tailored to meet the needs of the employer which will be balanced against those of the employee. If you are preparing a non-compete agreement, you need an experienced lawyer to draft it in a way that it will not be held invalid. If you are dealing with a non-compete agreement as an employee, there are lots of ways to attack it.

However, there are ways to accomplish what you're trying to do without having to rely on non-compete agreements exclusively. The key is that any agreement must be made by knowledgeable and informed parties and can't limit an individuals ability to make a living.

When Surface was first formed I had all of our staff sign non-competes since they were constantly being poached by both competitors and schools who wanted to boast that "the instructors worked at Surface". I found that my energies were better spent elsewhere. My staffs will often receive boastful offers from competitors. Interestingly, they're almost never accepted. (The last one was years ago.) Why? I'm transparent with my staff to an extent that they know they can trust me. (Another post on this later.)

We do prevent our physicians from competing directly with us, but it's not through non-competes.

Of course, as with any legal matter, you are always advised to consult an employment law attorney when considering anything legal. If you do something stupid, it's your fault.

Jeff Barson | in

: Medspa Legal,

Medspa Staff | |

Friday

25May

Seth Godin & Cosmetic Medicine

In sitting down to write this post I was struck with the width of the topic. Not Seth Godin, but cosmetic medicine and how successful medical practices are built and run. It's no easy task. Which brings up Seth Godin.

Seth has a job. He describes it as being Seth Godin, noticing things that don't have an existing vocabulary and giving words to people so that they can talk about concepts that didn't have words before. Seth's quite good at this as, since there's a scarcity of Seth Godin's in the world and he's the only one.

Scarcity. Superstars. Best in the world. Remarkability. Mantra.

All things I've blogged about but not really focused on in a coherent pattern.

In effect, I've missed the forest for the trees. I'm going to try to talk about a few of those trees. They're the ones you're using to build your business.

There are now many smart docs reading this site. Some comment, most do not. It's a statistical fact that only about 1% of any interaction you have (including blogging) elicits a response from the people you're interacting with. I'll guess that many come and scan the list of recent comments along the left side of the page rather than read what I'm writing about. That's good, fine, and by design. Decentralized but organized systems win every time.

Seth is used to talking about markets and retail. This site is for physicians in retail medicine (It say's so right at the top.) so I'm going to use some of Seth's words and some of my own. I think they're good ones.

Doctors in retail medicine have been operating at a disadvantage. Due to certain idiosyncrasies of the medical marketplace they've not had access to the resources that other retailers take for granted. The medical spa franchises are a first studdering step to bring systems to the marketplace. My own feelings are that the current crop are doomed to fail because they don't fulfill what is needed to succeed. Scarcity? Remarkability? Best in the world? No. If you've sat through any of the medspa franchise discovery days what you hear is this: Turn key operations. Low hanging fruit. Uniformity. Those are not the words that build successful businesses. These are the words that build commiditzed, mediocre, average, and struggling businesses.

The good news? There's also a scarcity of superstars. There's room at the top. Medicore's where the crowd is.

Jeff Barson | in

: How to build a Medspa,

Advertising & PR,

Retail Medicine | |

Tuesday

15May

Physician Consultations: The paradox of unlimited choices.

While not the best dressed presentation, Barry Schwartz's presentation on choice is worth watching for anyone designing an offering or performing consultations.

Via Presentation Zen:

Happiness, decisions, & the paradox of unlimited choices

If some choice is better than no choice, and more choice is even better than that, then how can still even more choice — a seemingly unlimited array of choices in fact — not be a kind of decision-making nirvana where people make both better decisions and are happier about those decisions? Do not more choices and a greater number of options lead to better decisions? And if so, why then are people unhappy with their decisions even when a decision is a good one? Why do people feel regret even when they choose well?...
Learning to love constraints
At the end of the book Schwartz ends with 11 ways we can end the crippling effect of too much choice or “the tyranny of small decisions.” The last one in the list is simply this: “Learn to love constraints.” I recommend the book, but you can save your money and get a pretty good feel for the book’s content by watching this 2005 presentation by Barry Schwartz at TED (below). This is a good presentation, though you will surely have some tips to offer him on both slide design and on the issue of making appropriate fashion choices on the day of your presentation.

“Imagine finding yourself lost on the open road. You finally see a lone gas station up ahead, you’re hungry to discover the route back to the freeway. You ask the attendant for directions, and he begins to offer plan A and plan B and plan C, each with varying degrees of specific detail. Rather than finding the clear, simple, and concise directions you were seeking, your brain is now swimming in a sea of even greater confusion. Clear, simple, and concise directions are all that you want.”
We've all had a similar feeling while using a poorly-designed website, application, or even a cell phone that did everything under the sun except make calls that didn't drop halfway through a conversation.

Simple, clear, concise
As daily life becomes even more complex, and the options and choices continue to mount, making designs which are clear, simple, and concise becomes all the more important. Clarity and simplicity — often this is all people want or need, yet it’s increasingly rare (and all the more appreciated when it’s discovered). You want to surprise people? You want to exceed their expectations? Then consider making it beautiful, simple, clear…and great. The “greatness” may just be found in what was left out, not in what was left in.

1 Comment |

Jeff Barson | in