Implementation of New Technology

Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Business of Aesthetics podcast show. Today, we're going to be talking about implementation of new technology. This is Naren, your co-host. Again, I'm joined by my dear friend, Jeff, Jeff Richmond, who is the other co-host. And this is a continuation of what Jeff started talking about in the last podcast, which is buying smart, buying safe. So for those who haven't listened to the last podcast, just a quick recap. The things we covered is, don't let the tail wag the dog. You decide what you need to buy based on where your business is at and what your goals are, what technology you need to buy. Then you decide how to buy it, whether you want to finance it, whether you want to pay cash, really think it through and look at the pros and cons.

The things you may want to consider are things like tax savings. Also, when you're considering your investment, look at the total cost, the total cost in terms of, you know, marketing expenses, in terms of, you know, training, your team, you know, space, everything. Jeff also shared with all of us some tips to negotiate. He talked about win-win. How do you, you know, you know, in addition to being, you know, in addition to being told or sold, how do you sell the, sell the manufacturer as to what you can do for them? And so today's episode, we're going to jump into implementation. Jeff, how are you this afternoon? So today's episode, we're going to jump into implementations. Jeff, how are you this afternoon? Good. Thank you, Niran. Let's start by talking about, you know, aligning your team. Aligning, meaning team, both your internal team as well as your manufacturing partner. So you bought the technology. Now you are really, you know, getting the team ready. Let's talk about that. you and I spend a lot of time thinking and considering execution.

And it's hard to implement this stuff. We can't do it all ourselves. So we need to get our team members in place to support us. If we have a small team aligning these resources, getting these what I like to call champions put in place, we may have the same person fulfilling multiple roles or in larger offices, we may have different leads. But certainly clinically, we need to have a champion. usually that's the provider or one of the decision makers that brought in the technology that hopefully now is really excited about the technology and sharing it with their patients we need that clinical lead will also be responsible for sharing new protocols any new clinical information that comes out, if there's new studies or new approvals, or even if the office brings in a Pronox type unit to help address pain, and the protocol changes that implementation of that.

So across the board, everyone knows exactly what's going on. And then there's a champion there in case I have any questions as another provider in the office that I can go to that's a lead and say, hey, I need help with this protocol information. Another piece that needs a champion is your phone person. This can be your patient care coordinator that's going to be working with your patients moving forward. It may be the person that meets face-to-face with that, or it may just be that you train your receptionist well to be able to answer frequently asked questions, understand the competitive landscape, like how that product may compare to other products in the marketplace, being able to address pain and downtime and some of the things we talked about in our telephone consultation podcast, but really becoming a champion of that process. And then the last one is the consult. Who's going to do the consultations?

Again, understand the competitive landscape. Hopefully they can be ambassador to the procedure, have done it themselves, or know a lot about it so they can have a shared experience. In many cases too, we can create ambassadors out of happy patients as well. So we can give access to their stories, given proper releases and stuff, of course, as well. So all different ways, but super important to pick those resources and those champions. The last champion for you or stakeholder in this process should be your representative, the manufacturer representative or the product, the manufacturer. Because all those things that were promised to you during the sales process, sample consent form, frequently asked questions, telephone notes or notes for the therapist, on-site training, follow-up training tools, all of these things that were offered to you need to be accounted for and make sure they're delivered.

And that's the responsibility of the manufacturer. So it's important to hold them accountable as well and make sure that all those resources are aligned. So just to summarize, you're saying you start by, you know, creating the right plan around your people, right? So clinical champion, at least have two providers, have someone who's coached on how to do the consults properly and make sure that person knows that's his or her responsibility. And then, of course, really thinking through and making sure all the promises the manufacturer made are being followed up on, connected and being fulfilled. Now let's jump into the second, next part of this, Jeff. Now that you have thought through the team, of course, I know you spend, you know, many, many, many, many hours, if not, you know, days, you know, working these things through in your own business. Thrive Portland, anytime you buy technology or purchased 17 different technology, if I'm not mistaken, the last time I talked to you.

So you spend a lot of time on this. Correct, Jeff? Right. Once we figured out the who part, we still need to execute. So that's when we bring in a trainer, you want to take full advantage of that training. So that means not abstractly treating patients, but really treating patients. If that's mom or friends and family, that's okay. But I like to have some other patients as well, not necessarily paying patients, but certainly patients that are going to give you real feedback. Sometimes, you know, sometimes mom or a friend of the practice can be either harshly critical or the other side of things too, and maybe cherry coat something that shouldn't have been. But implementing all of those, taking those champions and then giving them all the tools that they need to be successful and knowing that they're responsible and those tools are at their fingertips. Right. That includes a telephone script, I assume, frequently asked questions, even like having role-playing sessions. Can you expand on that, Jeff?

Absolutely. So the tools that are given, when that trainer comes in, I'd like to have those given in advance so we can role play with each other. We can look at competitive websites, understand how we fit in and the offering that we have to patients, and just experience talking about it with each other, trying to either sell or educate each other about the process of the procedure and how that best works. So that when the trainer shows up or I'm able to continue with additional training, I'm really able to feel comfortable with my words and the procedure, understand how it feels, what happens, and put this all to use so that we can make decisions on how we're going to do this and then stay consistent with those decisions until maybe the champion comes and says, hey, there's been a change in protocol or we have a new development or we're going to try it this way this time. Right. So we talked about two things, aligning the team, the resources, and laying the foundation. Now let's talk about, you know, for success, you need champions, not just within your team, but even among your patient base.

Let's talk about how you go about building that, Jeff. We, you know, we speak about our existing patients as MVPs and ambassadors. Actually, define what you mean by MVP. MVP, you know, most valuable patient, but we like to kind of secretly call that most vocal patient. These are patients that are social sharers. They're usually extroverted type people. They love to share on the internet anyway. They love to promote things that they enjoy. They write reviews. They're typically outgoing people. These are the people, though, you don't always know them. So when they come back to the reception desk at the end of a treatment and they're sitting at that desk and come up and say to your receptionist, oh, my gosh, I just love Dr. Maddox so much and he's such a terrific provider and that kind of stuff that we've trained that front desk person to say, oh my gosh, that's so great. Would you be willing to do a review for us? Or would you be willing to, so we, when, when people are sharing a positive experience with us, we ask them straight, you know, straight up, will, would you be willing to share that experience with your friends and family? It's just a great time to ask for someone's support.

Yeah, so with MVPs, MVPs, these most vocal patients, those patients, they're ambassadors that we've identified as really social sharers. They're influential. They're in the industry. Maybe they're a hairdresser or a yoga instructor, and they love our practice. These are people that have come to us for years. We know them when we have new procedures, they're some of the first ones in line to try it out because they love everything we bring on. These are people we really wanna partner with. And I'll give you a couple examples of ways we've used MVPs in the past. But it's always a discussion with those patients where we're willing to give up something in the beginning and treat them in a really special and very important person type way in exchange for them helping us. And it's an okay conversation to have with patients. I think that we too often get away from asking for referrals. I know when my father was in a family practice 40 years ago, that was the only way they got business. There was no advertising then. There was, I remember the first physicians that started putting things in the yellow pages, and even that was poo-pooed on in the, you know, late 70s, early 80s. Physicians doing billboards and things like that, absolutely unheard of. So the word of mouth became the only way to do that.