Why is my income inconsistent?

Katie Bell: 0:02

You’re listening to treat your business with Katie Bell, the podcast for health and wellness business owners that want a need to give their business the treatment plan, it needs a treatment plan that will create more time back in your life, more income and more confidence when it comes to running your business. I’m here to share with you bite sized episodes full of tried and tested tips from my own real experience of growing a successful physiotherapy and wellness clinic. And from working with many businesses to do the same. The treat your business podcast is sponsored by hm DG. Marketing is always one of the top three issues for clinic owners that I speak to. It’s too expensive and complicated. They’ve had issues in the past, or they just don’t know where to find a trusted expert. It’s always said only recommend products or services you’re confident in using yourself. Well, when it comes to marketing, we use HMD G for our own clinic. They’ve proven to be exactly what you’d want from an agency. As a specialist, they understand the industry. They’re responsive and always deliver. We can’t recommend them highly enough. Head to HMD g.co.uk To find out more. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this week’s episode of the treat your business podcast. With me your host, Katie bell. And for all of the new followers and new listeners a huge welcome. And thank you for being here. And thank you for giving up some of your very valuable time to listen to me and some of my tips and tricks and advice on how you can get more clients make more money, and just streamline your clinic in your studio and just become a more confident business owner. This week’s episode we are going to be talking about inconsistent income. And why is it that quite often as business owners, we do feel we are on a roller coaster, when it comes to our income stream. Some months it’s good, we might be making345 1020 50k, whatever it level that you’re at. And then some months it seems to drop. And we can blame the seasons. And we can say, well, it’s summer and loads of our clients go away when it’s Christmas, and it’s bound to be quieter. These are all predictable things that we seasonally we can plan we know, within our industry, when I’m doing my financial forecast for the year ahead. I know that at Christmas, we have a way, you know, realistically we work three of the four weeks give or take okay. So therefore I predict what my income is going to be based on the fact that the clinic is not actually going to be open for a week of it. We know that in in for us in July and August, we don’t look to bring on new people into our business in terms of our Pilates members. Because it’s a very tricky time, it’s difficult to get for them to get consistency and see the results. We know that we can predict it, we plan for that big boom, then in September. What I’m talking about here is the things that you can control. And this is there are many reasons why your income might be inconsistent. But I’m going to focus on one thing today, I want you to imagine that you’ve brilliantly executed a new marketing campaign or a new system, and you should be ready for leads, you should be ready for those people that are inquiring about becoming a customer or a client in your business in your clinic, your studio. And what we often see is that you can have a beautiful marketing campaign, you can have your Google Ads working, you can have your social posts going out there, you might be going to a local event, and you might be having some way of people inquiring into your business, but them they come in the top of the funnel. And I want you to imagine that you pour loads of water in the top of a funnel. And on the way down the funnel, there are holes very quickly, like really high up in the funnel, which all of these new people are spitting out of those holes. Okay, and this is how I want you to have a very visual persons. Sure, you can probably imagine from what I’m saying here, we need to make sure that we’re plugging these holes, okay. And the things that that we what we’re going to talk about here is your, the process and the system that you should have in place when somebody inquires in your business. And I want you to just take a moment to think about what is the current process like? So for some of you, you will have a process that you don’t even know you’ve got one because it’s not written down anywhere. It’s not in an SOP, what’s a standard operating procedure? It is just in your brain. Your business needs to run. Firstly, through its numbers. That’s my big thing. But secondly, through systems and processes that can be repeatable. They can be, as I say, rinse and repeat when they work, and they can be adapted and moulded and changed and grown and developed as your business develops. Okay, processes are an ongoing thing that needs to Developed and, and actually improved over time. So you can start with the most basic of system. And then you can develop an add and add and add as you learn new things as you have more infrastructure as you have more people, and you have more capacity to do that. So when somebody inquires in your into your business at the moment, how what’s the process that that’s that you have set up? And I’m going to ask you some questions here. And if you can’t answer them, then these are the things that you can go away and think about straightaway. How quickly do you know that they have inquired? So what do you have that notifies you when you have an inquiry in your business? And does that rely on you having to daily check something? Does it mean you have to go into the emails every day? Does it mean you have to go into the voicemails every day? Does it mean you have to go into your DMS every day? What? How quickly? Do you know that somebody’s inquired? That’s the first thing that I want you to think about? And if you don’t know where people have inquired, What can you put in there that notifies you or your team? Ideally, because it shouldn’t be you but notifies your team that you’ve got an inquiry in your business. The next thing is how quickly do we respond to that inquiry? Do you have a standardised expectation within your clinical within your studio of inquiries needs to be responded one of the key performance indicators in my businesses that they have to be responded to, in an absolute maximum is 24 hours, like no longer than that. So are you setting an expectation all inquiries will be dealt with in an efficient way within 24hours. And then what’s the process of following that inquiry through so this will vary it in terms of how they have come into your business. So whether they have come in through a DM, whether they have rang you most still in our in our clinics, we are still seeing a big volume of calls coming through? Whether they have inquired by email, whether they have asked a question on your Facebook, whatever it is, okay, these are all different inquiry sources. But the process that you’re going to follow generally is the same. And what is that? What currently do you do? And how effective is that? So we track on a weekly basis on a monthly basis, how many inquiries we have, where they come from, and how many of those inquiries we convert? And of the ones we don’t convert? What are the reasons and we track all of those elements? Because this allows me to very quickly say, is the problem. The marketing, are the type of clients were getting in the business, the wrong type of people? Is it that the reasons were not converting is, you know, they, they were inquiring about a service, we don’t run like we realise, we want to have those inquiries for yoga, we didn’t even do yoga. But we had some outdated blogs that were driving people to our website, which was meaning people were then inquiring about yoga. Okay, we could do something about that we can remove the stuff that means that we’re not getting we’re not wasting money on leads that are not appropriate for the business. So it allows you to check that box that are you getting the ideal clients inquiring. The next thing it allows you to see is where what are the holes in the conversion. So sometimes it can show up training needs within your team that they might say to you, I just, they were all based on these women’s health inquiries, and I just didn’t really know what service that they needed. And I lost them because of that. Okay, that’s a training need, we can deal with that we can then run a training session on plugging that hole in that funnel. So thinking about how do you know when they’ve inquired how quickly you are responding to that inquiry? And if you are somebody in your business that says to me one case, it’s alright for you because you’ve got a client care team and you’ve got people that are going to be on the end of the phone? Yes, we absolutely have. But there are also times that people are not on the end of the phone because people don’t work 24hours a day, seven days a week. But how is your voicemail setup? How is your out of office responder setup, managing client expectations is really important because people want instant gratification they want it now or in my case yesterday. So if I know that I am inquiring or ringing my dentist and they are in treatment, and they’re not going to get back to me before four o’clock and then not going to keep bringing them because I’m a pissed off customer. I just know that they’re going to ring me after four o’clock. Right now if I was a new person, that does leave a lot of time for me to go on. Find somebody else that does answer the phone. So if you are on your own in your business, and you say, Well, I don’t have anybody, then I would encourage you to track how many inquiries you are getting in a week. And I would then look at what your average client value is, on on previous episodes. We’ve talked a lot about this. So dive into some of those. But average client value is if somebody comes to your door comes for an initial assessment, or they come for a free Pilates taster class, what then on average do they spend with you in that one year, so let’s just assume that an average client value is 500pounds, okay. Now, for me, there is, if I had one inquiry that converted to a lead it converted into a paying client that on average are going to spend 500pounds with me, and I could pay somebody X amount of money, anything less than 500 pounds, actually, to be responding to my inquiries and be answering the phone, then that’s what you should be doing. Because you’re leaving money on the table, you’re losing all of those opportunities, which means your income will be inconsistent, because you have an inconsistent way of responding to inquiries. So track it. But ultimately, if you’re getting people ringing you and emailing you and you are not able to respond to them in a timely fashion. And you’re losing a proportion of your inquiries because of that. Then look at what the game would be if you were to put somebody in like an amazing VA, or a call handling system, how many would they then convert that would pay for themselves? straightaway? If you are somebody like me, who has a team? Are you setting performance indicators on? How many what is the percentage of inquiries that we convert into paying clients, we have an incentive scheme that is over 12months, it is a growing number, because we want improvement of our systems and processes. And if they hit that the three of them every month that there is a bonus scheme that kicks in a monetary amount. Okay, so we monitor the performance all the time. And it allows me to ask the necessary questions and give the necessary feedback, support and training when they’re not hitting where they want to be. We also need to make sure we’ve got a system and a process. So when your inquiries come through on a phone, on email, on whatever, we always would encourage that if they are on email or via DM, you have a system that tries to get their phone number, you are a face to face business people need to like you know you and trust you to work with you. And part of that is having good conversations. Now, yes, there will be some people that just want to do every amount. Yes, there’ll be some people that just want to do it every day. But most people, if they are with high intent, and they are the right type of clients are going to want to get booked in quick. So we very much encourage them and encourage my team to follow the process of thank you so much for your inquiry, we want to make sure that you we are going to put you with the right practitioner that can get you out of pain as quickly as possible, or can help you x whatever they’re looking for, as quickly as we can, was most effectively to do this, it would be fun, if I could just spend a couple of minutes and have a quick call with you and we can make sure that we get a time that’s suitable for you. And with the practitioner that is going to help you the most something to those words to that effect. Because that means then you’ve got the ability to follow them up and WhatsApp them, text them phone them. Those are the three things that people are responding to more than emails. And we actually find most people that DM us are never our ideal clients. Very few, okay, because if people are genuinely needing to book an appointment, and you have ways on your Instagram and your Facebook profiles or your bios, your the links in your bio that shows them the ways that they can book appointments which are not send us a DM I hope they’re not anyway, you know, they are booked now on this online booking system or ring this number, whatever it is that you’re asking them to do. Generally, we find that people who were inquire via that source are never ever the type of clients that we are working with, Okay, well we want to work with so have a consistent way people can work with you and and enquire with you. And then think about all of those touch points. So if they come in via email, okay, we have a response. We have a script we have something that we can add Very quickly, that goes back to get that phone number and then we kick into, we call them. And then we have a script that we follow a loose script, but we have a way of taking that patient from an inquiry to a conversion. And this is called consultative selling. This is about getting people in their emotional brain. So people buy emotionally, and they justify logically, which is the very reason apples and bananas are not at the counter at petrol station. Okay, it says why Snickers and bounties and Mars bars are all there. People buy emotionally. So if you lead with price, if you are in their logic brain, and if they don’t associate the value of what you’re going to deliver for the price that you tell them, you’re instantly going to get a disconnect. So we have to lead with that emotion, we have to lead with getting them into their pain, getting them there. So if somebody rings and says, Hi, I’m just wondering the price of a physio initial assessment, my team are trained to say, thank you so much for inquiring, we have loads of different ways that that we work with you, which obviously has lots of different pricing. So before I give you the price, can I do you mind if I just ask a few quick questions, so I can make sure a we are the right people that can help you and be I can put you with the right person that’s going to get you out of pain or help with your injury or whatever it is as quickly as possible. Okay, most people are going to say, oh, yeah,absolutely. Fabulous. So tell me a little bit more about what it is that you’re struggling with.Struggling we’re using emotional words that get oh, well, I’ve had this back problem that came on yesterday. Oh, it sounds awful. Have you know, did it affect you? And it’s affecting your sleep? Yeah, it does have not slept till night? Oh, gosh,I can Yeah, I totally understand it must be must be absolutely exhausted. How’s it gonna be going on for? Have you had it before any questions that you want to ask that brings them into building that rapport and into their emotional brain?They’re now sitting with that pain? And then you can say,okay, based on what you’ve said,Thank you so much for answering those questions, I’m really confident that we can help you,the best option is going to be with Charlie, I’m just making names up, who’s our clinical specialists, he’s really experienced in treating back problems, particularly for those people like yourself, who just said it’s come on really quickly, but you have had it before. So what he will do is he will have it do an initial assessment. And we’ll really get to the bottom of where this has come from. So we weren’t,weren’t as focused on treating the symptoms, we want to get to that root cause, he is going to make sure we’ve got loads of time to do hands on treatment.So we’ll start the treatment, if it’s appropriate there. And then we’ll make sure you leave with a very clear plan of what you need to do what you don’t need to do.And if there is anything else that we feel like we need, like you might need to see a GP or you might need a referral for a scan, we will manage all of that for you. How does that sound?Yeah, look at that sounds amazing. Great. Charlie can see tomorrow, what how’s that fat book in price now becomes irrelevant. So consultative selling is about relationships,it’s about building rapport, you can’t do that on email, not effectively. Okay, you can’t do that on a deal. And you can automate lots of these things and still have that building that trust and that rapport up.But you want to think about what is the going to be the most effective way of moving these people into paying clients. And consultative selling and learning and understanding consultative selling as a leader is very important. But if you’ve got them people working on for you, and with you, that are going to be managing this process, they need to understand that as well. Okay, it’s really,really, really important for making sure that you have consistency in your business.Then thinking about clients will be green, orange, and red. Green clients are what I call Vaseline clients. They are clients that almost know what treatment they need before they ring up, and they’re ringing saying I need to book in for x. Okay, it’s our job to make sure we’re funnelling them into the most appropriate place. So they might think they need a sports massage. But what they actually need is a physio therapy,initial assessment. So good questioning, again, not just taking what they say. But managing their expectations really well. You’ve then got the orange clients. Now this will make up the biggest proportion of the people that were in your clinic, probably 50 or 60% of them. And these are the people that I I kind of save in the slow lane edging towards the fast lane, where they are vetting potential solutions,they’re looking for problem solutions to their problem.They’re not really sure what it is that they need, and they need to be then in they need to be communicated to in a confident but assertive confident way of great, let me ask you some questions. And let’s make sure we are we are the right people to work with you. And if we are,I’ll tell you all the options that we’ve got. And I will guide you as to which one I think is best for you. That’s where your team have got to work the hardest, okay, green, or red.Red are the people that rink and I’m never ever going to blow in book, if you offer them the world for free. Okay, and we have to just take that, as part of running a business, there’s going to be lots of people,relatively that that you want to work with. And there are going to be some people that you don’t want to work with. And the power of now is just as powerful as the word yes. If not more powerful, because you are, when you have consistency like this in your leads and your inquiries and your conversion, you are then confident and bold to say,You know what, we’re not the right people. If you don’t vibe with somebody, you don’t want to work with them, I’d rather work with less people, but have my ideal clients that work with hundreds, and that I’m unfulfilled working with because they’re not the right fit, I’ve just chased the money. So we have green, orange and red, you want to make sure you’re working hard in the orange though, okay.And that’s following scripts,processes and training your team on how to consultative consultatively Sell will help if I could say it effectively. Make sure we take people into their emotional brain, not in their logic brain, we never leave with price, we always lead with the emotion. And then think about businesses that are going to survive and thrive over the next five years are those that invest heavily in automation, and processes. Because we have a major labour supply shortage, we have a major problem with our supply in terms of labour. So you can use technology and use systems to automate a lot of this stuff. And you can still put your personality and your business values throughout it.So in summary, I want you to go away and really think about are Have I got a really leaky funnel, I’m getting all of these people in. And then I’m not leveraging that in the best possible way. I don’t have follow up things in place. I don’t know what what happens when they inquire and they say no. Do you do anything with them in the future? Do you take them into cold leads? And you never market to them again? Because actually they were the wrong person? Great. Are you taking them into a tag, which is warm leads because well, they they were the right person, but for whatever reason, they just didn’t say yes, at the time,these people cost you money. And so we need to leverage every element of that customer journey, every touch point where it possible. Start simple and build as you have the infrastructure, the capacity,the time, the money, the team around you to start making that better and better and better. I hope you have enjoyed this really short episode this week.But I wanted to make sure we were kind of really focused on a specific element of why your income might be inconsistent.There is lots of things that you can control and conversion from inquiry to clients is one of them. Join me again next week, I look forward to bringing you lots more value. And thank you again for tuning in. Thank you for listening to treat your business with Katie Bell, the podcast that tells you what you really need to hear. And now when it comes to running a successful business in the health and wellness industry that gives you the time, money and freedom that you are wanting for access to our free workshops on how to get more clients in your business, how to make more income in the next 30 days. And to get more time back in your business and life. Head to our free Facebook group today. Treat your business or head over to thrive dash business coaching.com All of the links are available in the show notes.