Goal setting and accountability
go hand-in-hand in
achieving practice growth.
By Steven Austin Stovall, PhD
THE
Power
OF
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SLOTH
and gluttony lies unaccountability in the
deadly sins of management— not only
for you, but for your employees as well.
Tink about how many great meetings
you've had—in groups and one-on-one—
where wonderful ideas were bandied
about and plans were meticulously laid
out. But what happened next? Did those
ideas actually get executed? Or are you
still just talking about them?
It's easy to say to your team, "We need
to attract new patients and cut costs."
56 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 | MedEsthetics
But for the average employee, that's very
difficult to fully grasp. You will obtain far
more by providing your staff members
with specific goals, teaching them how
to achieve those goals and then holding
them accountable for achieving set goals.
Perhaps one month you set a target of
a 4% increase in retail product sales. Engage them in quick role-play that emphasizes suggestive selling. Show them how
to pair one product with another. Ten,
invite your manufacturers reps to come in
and highlight the features and benefits of
their products to your employees.
Specific, attainable goals set expectations and remind employees that you are
monitoring their performance. If you
have provided a target that is realistic,
they can put together personal game
plans to get the job done. And this works
for not only increasing sales, but keeping
an eye on costs (i.e., reduce office supply
costs by 5% during the fourth quarter),
building a patient marketing database
(i.e., collect 25 new emails per month),
and so forth.
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Accountability