David Stowell

***Before you start reading, please understand that I don't mean to be harsh or cruel.

I even want to tell you that I don't want to scare you.  But that may not be true.  There are lots of people I talk to on a daily basis who don't yet understand what a uniquely difficult time we are in. 

This isn't just a usual "turning of the seasons."  This is a hurricane, ice storm, earthquake, and tidal wave all hitting at one time.

This is a very difficult time for practices like ours. Every day I hear from another professional who has been caught by the economic times...even those who have clients paid by insurance or other third party billing. And many are thinking about closing.

I will not do you any favors by pulling punches or softening what needs to be said. If you are offended - sorry. If you are scared...GOOD! You should be.

If you think you are immune, it just hasn't caught you yet. But I promise it will unless you do something different and start now.

This is not what private practice owners "signed up for" when they started a business.  But it is where we are right now.

Hang On! There are answers to surviving and even thriving!

2008 brings challenges and hurdles to private practice owners that we have not seen in the past 50 years. My agenda is to end the pain, frustration, and humiliation that students feel because of learning problems. Only with strong thriving practices can that help be available to students who so desperately need it.

In part 1 we talked about the 5 specific conditions that are making 2008 the "make or break" year for many, maybe even a majority, of private practice owners. If you didn't read the article, click here to read it now. It is pretty important stuff to understand before we go on.

Just to recap, here is what we are up against:

1. A Cyclical Economic Downturn
2. Political Uncertainty
3. Housing/mortgage crisis among our target demographic
4. Historic highs and uncertain future of oil/gas prices
5. More informed / less knowledgeable parents, with a "Burger King" mentality, who often let kids decide.

The key idea behind the first 4 factors is that markets HATE uncertainty, and that having 4 major uncertainties stacked on top of each other just moves the odds further against people spending money for our services. Since we don't have control over these 4 factors we must do something else, something new, in order to help people understand just how important our services are.

The very smartest thing all of us should assume is that it will NEVER get better! We must learn to prosper when the economic conditions are stacked "against" us.

What Can We Do?

The answer to surviving, and even thriving, lies in your ability to re-invest your time. In other words, you will have to spend some of your time and energy doing different activities than you are doing now.

It means you will have to learn new skills, develop new habits, approach your business in different ways.

The overall, general thing that all of us have to be able to do is this:

We must be able to help people
clearly see that the value of what we have to
offer is far greater than their fear.

Despite the shortness of the above sentence, it is not necessarily an easy thing to put into practice. You are going to have to get good at it. You will have to achieve a level of competence at "painting pictures" for people. If you want to survive, build, thrive, you must become a student again. You must pay attention. You must do your homework. You must practice all the time.

In other words, you will have to do what you ask your clients to do.

Specifically, the answer to overcoming the 4 uncertainties is that you have to market. You must market like never before. You must eat, drink, and sleep marketing.

In fact, if you want to survive, on a daily basis your first three priorities must be:

1. Marketing
2. Marketing
3. Marketing

And you will have to do it differently than you have in the past. To overcome a negative economy you must market to a combination of more and different people with a different message. You have to do it each and every day. It has to become core to what you do.

To most private practice owners, marketing is putting a Yellow Page ad in the telephone book and an "Open" sign on the front door. More advanced owners occasionally send out a newsletter and put up a web site.

But it just isn't enough anymore, not in this economy! Not in the times we are facing.

Most of us depend on just one or two sources of new clients. That is no longer enough.

Now you must do not just more, but different! You now must target, you must sequence, you must persist. You must make it strategic, not random.

It's all the things private practice professionals hate and so they avoid them.

Here's the answer to the parent condition -

You MUST improve your selling skills!

[DON'T run out of the room screaming just yet!
I don't mean to be harsh, but NOT telling
the truth isn't going to help you survive.]

You see, you have sooooo much to offer kids, and in turn, our entire society. If you aren't there to help them, who will? There is no one who can take your place in your community.

Improving your selling skills is really just helping people get a clearer picture of you and how you can help them get what they both want and need. And developing new skills and habits doesn't have to be that difficult to master.

Here is a quick list of 7 specific sets of skills and habits you will need to improve in order for you to survive:

1. Time management - For change to happen, you have to take different actions. That means changing how you invest your time and energy. You will have to make different choices. You will have to build better systems to deliver your services so that you can spend more of your time marketing and selling those services.
   
   You must make the acquiring of new clients something that you undertake. It isn't something that can be hired out or delegated effectively.
   
   You can't fill all of your time with the same activities you have been doing.  There just isn't enough time in the day to try to do it all.  But by setting up systems you can control it all.
   
   
2. Telling people what you do - This is about telling your story. Most owners feel that they do a good job at this...they don't. Most are really not good at it. And believing that they are good at telling their story is killing them.
   
   Yes, I get lots of nasty looks when I say things like this. But I have worked with dozens of people on this one skill.  We start with a 4 minute interview.  When it is done, even they can't beleive how bad they are at telling their own story.
   
   That happens because we are too close to our own business. We know way too much to condense it down to where normal every day people can understand it.
   
   I'm not saying that we can't "sell" our business. Clearly we have all sold clients on our services. But I would bet I can sell your services better than you can (and you can sell mine better than I can) because I don't know as much as you do about what you do.
   
   I know it sounds backwards, but I have seen the results.
   
   It really shows up when it comes to attracting new potential clients or to selling a greater percentage of prospects...we just aren't that good. And we never know because those people who aren't convinced just don't call us, or they blame an external factor in why they aren't signing up.
   
   You must get better at telling your story. This one skill carries over into ALL your marketing and selling.
   
   
3. Writing - Again, most people with a college degree believe they write well. And they do write well as long as it is academic writing. But when it comes to persuasive writing, writing in a way that is interesting so that people want to read what is written, most do it very poorly.
   
   I often say that it took me 25 years to develop a much better than average vocabulary, and it has taken more than 25 years to try and get rid of it.
   
   We've got to learn to be, not just right, but interesting, easy to read, and persuasive. That's a whole new skill set.
   
   Once you learn to write persuasively it greatly increases the response you get from every single thing you mail out, including flyers, brochures, and progam information.
   
   
4. Public Speaking - Almost every teacher I've ever met knows that they are comfortable speaking to a room full of people. But very few of them are really effective. Audiences are polite, but that doesn't mean we were good. There are essential elements that go into a presentation as well as specific skills that must be practiced in order for you to have a real impact on an audience.
   
   Changing just 3 skills/habits that most of us don't even think about will add exponential power and impact to every presentation you give.
   
   And we have to develop content that truly touches our audience...content they can connect to and identify with.
   
   
5. A consistent sales sequence - Selling is a system that starts when prospects contact you, usually on the phone. There are steps you can take to get more of those qualified prospects to become clients.
   
   Has anybody else noticed how more and more initial inquiry calls are "shopping?" You are one in a long list of people they are calling.
   
   Please understand, I'm not advocating "high pressure" tactics, but most of us are so passive that only the most desperate, pre-qualified kinds of prospects sign up. Once you learn a system for selling and start to master the skills, your ability to convert qualified prospects, from the phone call all the way to becoming clients, can go way up.
   
   
6. Using new and traditional marketing channels - The old marketing channels are going away. The rules are changing. You've got to use all the marketing channels that work if you want to succeed. Web sites are no longer an option.  And not just any web site will do. 
   
   There are some very effective marketing things you can do in as little as 15 minutes a day if you do them right!
   
   
7. Build and follow a plan to develop your business -  Many make plans, few actually follow them.
   
   You can make yourself do lots and lots of uncomfortable tasks each and every day if you are working for someone else.  But when we have to make ourselves do things that are unknown or uncomfortable, it is much harder.  Ask me...I'm the EXPERT PROCRASTINATOR.
   
   It is easy to get caught up in the routine, comfortable tasks. Spending all your time on those routine tasks may very well put you out of business within the next 12 months.

There is an old joke told by dentists. They say that you do NOT need to floss ALL your teeth...only the ones that you want to keep!

Here is what I can do to help you succeed -
Because we are in such an extraordinary time, and because I want you around to keep helping students, I have developed a sequence of free and low cost steps you can take to move you forward.

I KNOW I don't have all the answers, but I can get you going in the right direction.

Step 1 -
is a FREE e-course called "The 7 Biggest Marketing Mistakes That Are Killing Private Practices." It will come to you in email over 7 days so that you can "digest" it all in small amounts. Each day should take you less than 10 minutes to read it. You can then really think about the lesson and it's importance for the rest of the day.

Why start with the mistakes? Because I want you to get a clear picture of all the ways to screw this up before we start talking about what to do. Business owners are an independent group. They always feel as if they have a better idea. That's why they started their own business. Before you get "creative" on me, I want you to understand what you shouldn't be doing and why.

I know it sounds negative, but I guarantee going in this order will save you time, energy, and money in the long term.

Click Here to enroll.  I'd love to share these ideas with you.

Step 2 -
is a very low cost e-course called "5 Proven Marketing Ideas for Private Practice Professionals." But you get NO details on this unless you sign up for and complete the first course on marketing mistakes.

After that there are a number of options you can pursue. We have done the very most we can to discount all of the products and services we offer.

If you want to survive over the next 12 months,

• Getting more programs won't do it for you.
• Reading professional journals and publications won't do it for you.
• Reading books won't get it done either.

It will take becoming really good at managing your time and developing your marketing and sales skills.

And you can do it without giving up
your professionalism or your integrity.

Click here to sign up for the free e-course to get you started in helping your practice grow and thrive despite these almost impossible times.