Today is the last day of a Small Business and Marketing class I am teaching in Adelaide. Most students are about to graduate from the Adelaide College of Complementary Medicine with a degree in either Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine or Massage.

My goal was to bring clarity, certainty and confidence - clarity in what they will do now, certainty in how they can achieve that and confidence that they will achieve it.

Have I achieved that? I guess we’ll find out when they present their business plans. But what has blown me away already are the amazing things they share each morning. We do a quick review of what they learnt the day before. Not the facts but the realisations for their own practice, for their life as natural health practitioners.

The hardest lesson?

Committing to something specific. I kept asking them to commit to a specific course of action, to a specific specialty, to a specific date and a specific amount in the financial calculations. Most of them realised the value of committing to something, thinking it through to the end and seeing whether it makes sense.

That is probably the biggest difference to many natural health practitioners I have been working with who are practicing already (and struggling to attract clients). The willingness to let go of some of the unlimited possibilities and commit to a certain course of action.

The Irresistible Offer

One of the people that has taught me the most about clarity and focus is Mark Joyner. His best book: The Irresistible Offer is available as a free download.

Not only does it help to focus on and commit to one specific target market, it also sharpens your writing skills in formulating exactly what it is that you are offering. And it is not about special offers, even though Mark talks about them as well - as one marketing tool that supplements The Irresistible Offer.

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How can a therapist overcome the resistance to wanting to promote themselves and the mindset that suggests that actively promoting themselves is somehow a bad thing?

You can find a bit about that in ‘I am no good at selling myself‘.

However, it is worth thinking about some more, because it is a huge issue with many natural health practitioners.

Where does the resistance come from?

Its source might be found in the fact that many practitioners start out because they develop a love for a particular treatment as a client. That prompts them to learn the skills to administer that.

When they finish many feel that they are not experienced enough. This is communicated through potential clients who react with uncertainty or worse. (I think this communication happens on an unconscious or energetic level.)

And therapists pick that up (unconsciously) thus heightening their insecurity.

To stop getting rejections, they avoid promoting themselves.

So I don’t think many practitioners think it a bad thing to promote themselves. The reluctance comes from protecting their emotional balance.

Focus on the Benefits

That is the single most important suggestion I have. Stop thinking about promoting yourself. Forget selling your services. Keep one thing in mind: How can you benefit the people around you best?

The first thing this does is to help you to listen better. Understanding other people, asking for more details to get the full picture, delving into their beliefs.

If appropriate or asked, think of whether you can help them.

Helping them does not even have to mean with your services. It could be giving them another contact. It could mean suggesting a product or doing a specific thing.

Solving a problem for your target market

It also means offering your services, promoting yourself.

This is where target market comes into play. The more clearly you have defined who your clients are and what problem you are solving for them, the better you will become at exactly that. That increases your certainty and the easier it will be to promote your services in that area.

Practice management software? Any ideas on what to choose? A replacement for MYOB, appointment book, tracking clients writing letters, emails birthday records etc.

I know Health quest has been recommended to me and smart soft front desk has been as well , just wondering before I spend thousands if you have had any good ones or anyone has any comments on software programs?

I am sorry Jodie, I do not have a good answer for you.

When I started out with Passionate Management, we offered a remote receptionist service for natural health practitioners. Their phone diverted to us, we booked clients in and looked after the invoicing and payments.

We used a system called Ealth. We mainly chose it because of its online capabilities, practitioners could access it from their homes. Its biggest downside was how slow it was, so I would not really recommend it.

Decide what you need

What I would do is write a list of your needs. Do not even look at all the features that are available in the different programs, just think about your business processes and what you need.

Here are the steps:

1. Look at all the different places you keep data (e.g. patient addresses, treatment records). Write them all down.
2. Write down what you do with that data (after you have recorded it). How do you use it (e.g. sending birthday cards, using addresses for invoices.
3. Add what you are not currently doing but would like to do (and what data you need to capture to be able to do that).
4. Think about each item, deciding whether the current system is working well (a lot of patient management software can keep treatment notes, but very few practitioners are faster putting them in than writing them on paper). Do not go for things that you do not really need, just because they are possible.
5. There might be some items that are not clear cut. Mark them as your optional functions.
6. Send your list with the features you need (the essential ones and the optional ones) to a sales rep from the practice management software companies and let them get back to you with what their program can do.
7. Do not get too excited about additional features. They often make the program more complicated. Simplicity makes it quicker to learn and quicker to work with.

I know that it is always different to actually use such a system, so if anyone has a suggestion for Jodie, please leave a comment.