Top Ten Excuses for Not Promoting Your Practice

            1. "I already have too many patients." If the only way you increase your market share is to sign more managed care plans, you might have this excuse. If so, you are probably overworked, underpaid and unable to give the quality care you want to give. Your real problem is the lack of full-fee new patients.

            2. "I tried to promote my practice a few times and it didn't work." Persistence is essential to solving any problem. If you test enough proven marketing ideas, at least one will work for you. Persist long enough and you'll discover several ways to bring in the type of new patient you want.

            3. "It's unprofessional." If you believe your services are not worth enough to become broadly known, this excuse may be valid.

            Also, keep in mind that failure is really unprofessional.

            4. "I don't want my patients to think I need more patients." Patients don't lower their opinion of you if you ask them for a referral or if they see an ad for your practice. They only lower their opinion of you if you provide poor service.

            As a side note, patients won't refer new patients to you if you seem too busy. Patients believe you are too busy if appointments are hard to get, if you make them wait for more than five minutes or if you act rushed.

            5. "My overhead would go up." This usually means your overhead is already too high. While overspending occurs with a minority of practices, the real problem is usually in the collections department: your fees are either too low or not collected properly.

            6. "I already work too many hours." In this case, the real problem is one of three things: poor time management, inability to delegate or insufficient funds.

            Delegation weaknesses are also easy to correct with some coaching.

            Insufficient funds make it difficult to hire top talent. Work with your consultant to fix your profit margin so you can hire the best associates available.

            7. "My practice/area/specialty/style/personality is different than others." Put your unique differences in a positive light to attract more new patients. A little promotional creativity can go a long way.

            8. "I'd have to hire more employees." If you don't like adding staff, your practice will hit a glass ceiling. If you want more from your practice than just a job, you have to move from a sole practitioner practice (doing all you can on your own with some helpers), to a group leader who gets others to do most of the work.

            9. "I don't always get the results my patients want, so I don't want to promise anything." The best cure for poor patient outcomes is education. Your patients need more education from you and you need more continuing education hours. There is nothing wrong with a thirst for knowledge. There is everything wrong with a doctor who thinks he or she knows it all.

            10. "I paid a practice promotion company $20,000 to do it for me and it made no difference." Every time you hire someone to do a vital job in your practice because you can't do it yourself, you're asking for trouble.

            Fortunately, the best practice promotion systems cost you little or nothing. You and your staff are your best advertisements. In most cases, you simply change how you interact with your patients, your colleagues, other practices and your community, to take command of your new patient quality and volume.