Identifying, Contacting, and Cultivating the ‘Best’ Contact Person
Identifying the right contact person at a prospective client company begins with a sound, well-conceptualized, and up to date mailing list. Central to the list is the name of the individual responsible for the health and safety of the workforce. This information needs to be verified or updated regularly, something that could be accomplished by having a clerical staff member or high school student call every employer in your database each summer.
Read MoreEvaluating Your Clinic’s Competitive Strengths
Effective Occupational Health Sales Through Personality Profiling
A Rationale for Making Your Practice More Child-friendly
Adjust Your Strategy for a Down Economy
There is a broad consensus that our country’s current recession will advance to become the harshest economic crisis we have faced since the Great Depression. On the surface, spiraling unemployment and broad-based financial pressures portend trouble for most urgent care clinics. Yet, crisis inevitably breeds opportunity if clinic owners avoid being caught like a deer in the headlights and proactively move forward. This month’s column addresses economic realities and what clinics can do now—not just …
Read MoreWhat, When, Who, and How to Offer ‘Freebies’
Historically, marketing occupational health services has often meant producing various commodities with your clinic’s name on it: pens, hats, mini-flashlights, refrigerator magnets, note pads, even t-shirts. Cute, perhaps—but these trinkets cost money, took time to distribute, and quickly faded from the recipient’s mind, if not their possession. Should your clinic’s outreach strategy include “freebies?” If so, what should they be, how should they be distributed, and who should receive them?
Read MoreThe Herd Mentality and Occupational Health Sales
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines herd as “a group of individuals usually having a common bond” or “a number of animals kept under some type of human control.” So let us think bulls (to some, a fitting metaphor for a piece on sales). For every early adaptor or contrarian, there seem to be 10 other people who prefer to follow the leader. For every buyer of urgent care occupational health services who buys offensively out of …
Read MoreHedging Your Bets: The Art of Market Segmentation
If you have more than one child or grew up with at least one sibling, you have probably experienced “segmentation.” That is, you have most likely used different tactics and strategies in dealing with each of your children or you were treated somewhat differently than your siblings. Segmentation within the urgent care occupational health market follows the same principle; a communication technique that is effective with one audience may not work as well with another. …
Read MoreOccupational Health Sales and Marketing as a Team Sport
A thinly veiled secret in most urgent care clinics is the marginal role that sales and marketing plays in the mores of these organizations. Indeed, healthcare sales professionals tend to be like your Uncle Fred: it’s always nice to see him, but he’s not really woven into the inner fabric of your family. Why? To a large extent, urgent care owners have a hard time merging the healthcare side of their clinic(s) with the business …
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