High – Medium – Low
By Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI
If your company is like most rehabilitation businesses, you as the owner and manager spend the majority of your time talking about your low performers. It is human nature, because these people tend to cause problems, and you need to solve problems, so you end up spending hours managing around these low performers. In reality, the focus should be on your high performers, as these are individuals who are performing so well in their positions that you could see them in leadership positions someday within the company. Let us suggest a strategy to get you focusing on your high performers and stimulating internal and external growth by creating this focus.
Focus Up
Get your high level owners/leaders together and create a list of all staff. Create a column next to each staff member and rate each staff person either 1 (low performer), 2 (medium performer), or 3 (high performer). Once you have gone through this exercise, go back to each high performer and talk about what role they could play in the company to better utilize their talents and how to implement such a program, or new clinic, or new group within your organization. And finally, schedule time to talk to these high performers one-on-one to discuss their future objectives and where they could see themselves in the future with the company. After all that work, you won’t have time to be talking about the low performers anymore!
Paul Martin, PT, MPT, CBI, M&AMI president of Martin Healthcare Advisors, is a nationally recognized expert on health care business development and succession planning. As a consultant, mentor, and speaker, Paul assists business owners with building value in their companies. He has authored “The Ultimate Success Guide,” numerous industry articles and weekly Friday Morning Moments. He can be reached at pmartin@martinhealthcareadvisors.com.
Get Creative
By Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA, ATC, CSCS
Appeal to your client’s imagination when it comes to your practice.
Any marketing professional will tell you that the imagination is key to the success of a product or service within the market. Imagination allows consumers to understand and place a product or service within their own storyline. They envision themselves as somehow improved by the use of the product or service being sold.
When we purchase laundry detergent, for instance, are we buying a chemical product used to clean our clothes, or are we buying freshness and cleanliness, something that will lead us to a more fruitful and pleasant existence? When we choose a soft drink, is it because this particular liquid substance will keep us hydrated, or are we identifying with a product that represents who we are or, even more, who we want to be?
Physical therapists provide services that change lives through movement, and while this exists in the real world (and not just in the imagination), we are wise to leverage the power of the imagination in order make simple to the client what can be a very complex and confusing service offering.
Think about it this way: Do your customers come to you for exercise or to improve their quality of life? Do you provide balance training or do you help prevent falls, broken bones, and hospitalizations? Do you specialize in athletes, or do you specialize in keeping athletes on the playing field?
Answers to these questions and others may be just the tweak needed to engage your clients’ imaginations—the realm where we all want to be.
Tannus Quatre, PT, MBA, ATC, CSCS, lives at the intersection of physical therapy and entrepreneurship, spending his time helping physical therapists build and operate successful practices through his company, Vantage Clinical Solutions. He specializes in marketing, finance, and business planning, and authors and speaks regularly for the APTA and PPS. He can be reached at tannus@vantageclinicalsolutions.com.
By Scott Spradling
The best friend a private practice owner can have is information about the health and wellbeing of his or her clinic. Whether you are a one practitioner office that keeps a paper copy of daily statistics, or a large group with multiple offices or regions that has to compile monthly data from multiple reports, the newly redesigned Roambi Analytics 7 is the application for you.
Get a leg up on the competition and show off your foot skills!
By Don Levine, PT, DPT, FAFS
The marketing and PR committee would like to challenge you to show off your feet! Okay, maybe not your feet, but how about your clients’ happy feet? April is Foot Awareness Month, making this a great time to spread the news about our profession’s expertise in improving mobility and decreasing foot pain. Whether you work with athletes, baby boomers, or geriatric clients, physical therapists (PTs) have much to offer. Revisiting a subject from last year, the committee will also give you some ideas for hitting a home run with your community’s baseball and softball programs. So, let us swing for the fences and get those feet moving!
