As a private practice owner looking to grow your business, you’ll likely have three questions (among many others) for the person who’s been there, grown it, and bought the “I’ve built a $5m business” T-shirt…
The questions being:
- What makes an audiology business successful?
- How do you sustain the growth? And…
- How important is marketing?
In the supporting podcast of the same name, Dr. Sunni McBride talks candidly about what it is really like to take on an existing audiology practice. Her successes, the downsides, her work with Audigy, and how she made her business into a multimillion-dollar empire.
She provides some fascinating insights into how she balanced family and work life, while finally sharing her key ideas on what she thinks made her business thrive in the industry and the effect that covid has had on patient in-take and revenue.
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, click HERE.
But for this article, we’re focusing on those three big questions…
#1 – What Makes An Audiology Business Successful?
“By far, the most important success factor is patient experience.”
Dr. Sunni is a firm believer that the experience of the patient is paramount to the practice’s success.
“I wanted the patient experience to be remarkable from the moment they saw our advertising to the moment they picked up the phone and then walked into our practice.”
She ensured that her staff got to know every patient by their first name and even encouraged her staff to share their nicknames with the patients so they felt even more like a family.
In addition to this, Sunni ensured all the technology was up to date and that every patient left with a smile on their face.
#2 – How Do You Sustain Growth?
“It helps to standardize your presentation.”
As the business grows, so does the number of things needing to be done, including repetition of tasks. Sunni believes that the other secret to her success is the introduction of Audigy, which helped her standardize their systems and processes.
“It’s very difficult to clone yourself and to multiply your efforts if everybody’s winging it and doing their own thing. So, Audigy has a process that helps people move through the emotional stages of the selling process. And I think that was key to having a high level of uniformity.”
Audigy is a one-stop-shop operations system designed to take the hassle out of running a private practice, and for Sunni, it has been instrumental in their growth.
“It means I don’t have to wear all the hats,” says Sunni, something that the busy business owner is all too familiar with!
#3 – How Important Is Marketing?
It’s true that when a business is faced with hardship, one of the first things to be cut is the marketing spend, which ironically is usually the reason behind the ultimate fall.
Dr. Sunni attributes her dedication to marketing as one of the biggest factors to her business’s success.
“Marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing. It’s all about marketing.”
Dr. Sunni tells us that when she was a single practice owner, she wasn’t naïve to the fact that people didn’t know who she was or that her practice even existed, so she devoted a huge chunk of her initial outlay on marketing, which, due to her commitment, provided her with an ROI beyond even her initial forecasts.
Through a marketing mix of email, direct mail, pay-per-click, and a sound referral system (not to mention her membership of the Inner Circle), Dr. Sunni has been able to capitalize on all the avenues available to her and execute them brilliantly.
For Dr. Sunni McBride’s full interview, and to learn more from this inspirational private practice owner, click HERE.