The sooner you accept the ugly

fact that you have to be a

salesperson, 

the healthier your

practice will be. 

     Sorry, Doc (or Counselor), but your profession is a business.  The sooner you accept the ugly fact that you have to be a salesperson, the healthier your practice will be.  This revelation need not pull the rug out from under your sense of healthcare or legal integrity.  I am not suggesting that you now have to be a used car dealer. 

     Thinking and acting more businesslike simply means that you need to come down from your ivory tower, get your head out of the clouds, turn off your superiority complex channel, and start realizing that quality of care must strike a balance with patient and client volume in order for you to survive in these uncertain economic times.  

     And this message isn’t just for rookies.  I’ve worked closely with over 1,000 professional practice principals — doctors and therapists of every description, and lawyers — and can assure you that there are as many if not more professionals in established practices with this distaste for what they think is business intrusion into their puritanical minds as there are newcomers. 

     The key part of that last sentence is “distaste for what they think is business intrusion.”  It’s just that “business” subjects like management and marketing are rarely if ever addressed as part of medical or healthcare or legal studies curricula, and are avoided as much as scrapple in New York City.

     I know this can be difficult for those who have devotedly knocked themselves silly to get their medical and allied medical science and law degrees and who have given up huge chunks of their lives to earn the rights to hang out their shingles, but reality is that these bright stars cannot continue to shine without keeping their wires and outlets in good repair and paying the electric bills.  This requires help. 

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     Dear Doctor, Therapist, Lawyer: You need to screen and hire and trust the managers you put into play around you to keep developing the business parts of your practice, but –until you’ve had years of demonstrated reliable performance from your managers– you need to continually step back into the captains role to make sure your trust doesn’t end up costing you control.  More on this direction of thinking anytime.  Just call me 302.933.0116.                     halalpiar        

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