27 Jan 2015  •  Marketing and Design, Practice Management  •  2min read By  • Chris Barrow

Nurture Your Database

This week Chris Barrow explains why you need to nurture your database – including prospects and clients.

‘Drawing on my own experience and those that I have worked with, I’ve learned how crucial it is to nurture prospect databases, not just in the short term, but for long term gain too.

Why? Well, patients will buy from you when they are ready, not when you are ready to sell.

Very often that ‘buying trigger’ will be a personal change in circumstances, for instance, a family wedding, an inheritance, a sale of business and so on.

You have no idea when that ‘trigger’ might occur, so it’s important to nurture your relationship, even with people who may have visited your website (but not the practice) or had a treatment plan that they didn’t act upon first time.

‘No’ doesn’t always mean ‘no never’ – it can more often mean ‘no, not just yet’. So, how do you keep in touch with those people over the longer term?

Over 20 years ago I was a fee-based financial planner. I once called a prospect once a year for seven years (after he attended one of my seminars). In the seventh year, he asked me to prepare a financial plan for him and said:

‘If that’s how you look after your prospects, I cannot wait to become a client.’

Not only did he ‘buy’ my services, but he went on and referred me to the rest of his family too.

A patient will become a patient for life if you look after them in the first place.

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