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you to tailor your message to their personal requirements. You need to make sure you have permission to use the email address in compliance with GDPR (if it’s for marketing purposes) and you need to make sure that they can opt-in or opt-out at anytime. You can also ask if you can have their permission to send them something via email and/or hard copy as an added-value tool, such as a guide you’ve prepared about your treatments.
What tactics can you use post-sale?
Getting Patients to Love Your Clinic Business coach and author Alan S. Adams discusses the importance of maximising opportunities to retain patients after a sale has been completed When it comes to completing a sale, many clinic owners wrongly assume that it’s simply just a waiting game until the patient needs, and wants, to return for more treatments. However, they’re missing a huge trick here because it’s a part of the overarching selling journey which provides ample opportunity for clinic owners to encourage customers to return more often, and therefore spend more. We’re of course ethical people in this business, so I’m talking about growing potential customer spend in appropriate areas such as facials, skincare treatments and other non-invasive services, rather than encouraging additional spend on services they don’t need like invasive or injectable treatments. Note that I will use the term ‘customer’ throughout this article as I am discussing the commercial aspects of patient management, rather than their clinical journey.
What is a customer journey? The customer journey concept is one of three areas of sales that I cover to help clinics sell more, and sell more often. The Sale Warmup and The Sale are the other two areas, but The After Sale is the biggest because there really is no limit to what someone can do to help customers feel the most valued and recognised. It also provides a huge variety of tools to completely transform the customer journey from one that is basic and ticking itself along (or not at all in many cases), to
one that absolutely considers every potential opportunity to nurture customers. The customer journey is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s everything that a customer can experience from the very first time they come into contact with your clinic, to the very last point in their buying journey and beyond. Within this journey, there are several touchpoints – the opportunities that you, as a clinic owner, have to contact your customers; existing or potential. For those that actually invest the time in understanding their own customer journey, there still may only be a few obvious times in which the customer is contactable – when they enquire, when they attend an appointment, and when they pay and leave. However, there are so many more to this than you would initially expect. For example, when someone calls with an enquiry, you need to be capturing all you can about that would-be customer – including their name, where or how they found you, what they’re looking for, and their contact details such as phone number and email address. This will allow
So, once you’ve been able to plan your own customers’ journey, considering every possible instance that your potential and existing customers are in contact with you and the clinic, it’s time to think about what happens once a sale has taken place. How exactly can you influence how often a customer comes back to you once they have bought, and ensure that they spend more than they have in the past? There are essentially two keys ways in which you can improve your spend and your frequency of visits from customers: data and communication. Data is the quality of information and knowledge you have about existing and potential customers, while communication is the methods and tools you have available to market smartly to them. If you have both of these in place, you’re in a great position to start boosting your customer journey and post-sale opportunities. I will now discuss two of the most valuable tools that clinic owners can adopt using the data you have, alongside strong communication. VIP memberships Once a sale has taken place, you’re in the unique position to offer something else – something that has a high perceived value for customers, will help generate increased brand loyalty, and help you to reduce cashflow worries. The launch of a VIP membership ‘club’ is a tactic I’ve talked about before and something so many clinics can start offering straight away. It involves the launch of a club, especially reserved for your top patients – the big spenders, and the ones who you rely
There really is no limit to what someone can do to help customers feel the most valued and recognised
Reproduced from Aesthetics | Volume 7/Issue 5 - April 2020
