Acupuncture Technology News

Have you heard? April is has been proclaimed NATIONAL FINANCIAL CAPABILITY MONTH by Presidential Decree. The proclamation calls for helping people learn responsible budgeting, financial literacy and sound decision making. Sounds good…right?

Since this proclamation was made on April Fool’s Day, there was a certain amount of chuckling. Some were sure it was a joke.

But aside from the obvious irony of any branch of the Federal Government attempting to encourage responsible budgeting and sound decision making, especially on April 1st, I think this is a good thing. Certainly budgeting and investing are crucial to financial stability and success.

Investing isn’t Always Easy…

AcuGraph is an investment. It pays back in your patient relationships, your quality of care, and your bottom line. In fact, most of our users tell us AcuGraph pays off many, many times over. Statistics show AcuGraph users make 35% more money than practitioners who don’t use AcuGraph, which is great, but AcuGraph is still a substantial investment.

One of the real hurdles most practitioners face when purchasing an AcuGraph system isn’t quality, usability, or need. It’s price. Unfortunately, many practices are living “paycheck to paycheck” and simply can’t pay a couple thousand dollars or more in a single transaction. What’s worse, the practices that need AcuGraph the most are often least able to afford the investment.

Now, it’s Budget Friendly!

This is why I’m so pleased to announce our new, budget-friendly purchase options. How budget friendly? How about a manageable down payment and $179 per month? That works out to 3 or 4 patient visits to completely cover your monthly AcuGraph system payment. What’s even better? We’re not talking about 5 years of payments, either. This is a 12-month plan, and it’s done.

Here are the details: Put $995 down on ANY AcuGraph package and pay the rest off over 12 months. And since all packages are available, you save by getting the bundle you need at substantial bundle discounts, and a monthly payment you can afford. We’ve got all the details worked out for each of the packages; just click below for complete information.

It’s up to You

We’re giving this new financing plan a limited try to see how popular it is. If it proves popular, we’ll make it permanent. If not, we’ll stop offering it. Right now, the plan is ONLY available to purchasers in the United States. We hope to expand to other areas in the future, but for now, we’ll see how it goes here in the USA.

If you’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to invest in your practice with the power of AcuGraph, here’s your chance to lock in VERY favorable purchase terms that won’t bust your budget! So go check it out and we’ll look forward to welcoming you as a new AcuGraph practice! Meanwhile, happy National Financial Capability Month!

It’s Saturday morning…and most of us are relaxing after the long week. So WHY are we sending you this email?

In a nutshell…it’s because I want to give you something to ponder and consider before you get caught up in the activities of the work week.

We’ve been working with Practitioners for the past 10 years. We try hard to produce a quality product and deliver exceptional service. I think most of you would agree that we’ve successfully accomplished that goal.

We’ve also heard about your struggles and challenges. We’re not just “business people” that make equipment for the Acupuncture profession. We are a collection of Practitioners that HAVE been and still ARE right there in the trenches with you.

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Are you a planner/organizer? I’ve learned how to be “that girl” over the years out of pure necessity. Having 9 kids FORCED me to learn organization skills. Consequently, I am a list maker. I’ve even been known to file my holiday lists away in my computer so that I can bring them out the next year and use them again.

I’ve been doing some business planning for the new year–making lists of things that I want to implement in my clinic. While planning, I like to ask myself questions about my clinic in order to decide which new ideas to implement. Here are a few that I’ve asked myself recently.

• Where should I focus my spare time? Networking, health fairs, finding new patients, activating old patients? Was my networking effective last year?
• How many NEW patients did I have last year? How many of those patients came for a series of treatments and then disappeared? How many of the same patients actually became part of my CORE group of regulars?
• Who are my CORE patients? What can I do to show them how much I appreciate them?
• Do I have patients who I need to work on reactivating?

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Hello Friends,

I just got back yesterday from the Pacific Symposium in San Diego. If you haven’t been before, this is a tremendously good symposium and trade show for acupuncture, sponsored by Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM). I’ve been going every year for quite a few years now, and this year, like all others, was GREAT.

Of course, as a vendor, I mostly spend my time in the vendor area, with all the other booth dwellers. It’s great fun to meet all kinds of practitioners and talk about our products. Our booth is always one of the busiest at the show, as AcuGraph attracts a lot of attention.

This year, as I looked around at all the other vendors, I noticed something interesting. Nearly every vendor there sold what I would consider “Practice Supplies.” This means herbs and needles, mostly, with a few other items mixed in. Of course there were vendors selling various supplements, nutritional products, tools, etc., but again these are all items you either use or sell in the normal course of practice. You use them to treat patients.

What was missing?
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How is your practice doing? Summertime is slow for many practitioners, which makes it the perfect time to reflect on the past six months and evaluate what’s been working…or not!

Your vision certainly includes financial success for your practice. Let’s work together to calculate your patient Attrition/Retention rate and improve your bottom line!

What do the numbers tell us?

How many patients do you have listed in your database? How many do you see regularly? How many do you see once or twice, and then never again? Your answer to these questions will help us know where to begin. 

Unless your new-patient flow is greater than your attrition rate (patients leaving the practice), your practice cannot grow. No doctor knows her exact attrition rate because most patients change practitioners without letting you know. Patients also move and some pass away.

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I want your speaking engagement to be a huge success! What makes an event productive? The single most important measure is – how many new patients did the event generate? Today we’ll focus on how to create that BUZZ!

Find it, Schedule it and Make it Memorable

In prior blogs, I listed a number of organizations that will be happy to have you spend an hour educating and entertaining their members. (http://www.miridiatech.com/news/author/alang/) Now let’s focus on the structure of that event.

Sugar Ray Leonard is regarded as one of the legendary boxers of all time.  He is credited with saying “the key to winning a boxing match is to win the beginning and the end of each round since that’s what the judges and audience remember.”  When it comes to capturing an audience, the same thing is true.

Control your Environment
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Almost a dozen times a night we see advertisements on TV for online dating sites! What do the relationship experts say is the key to finding your perfect mate?  Knowing yourself!

You see, if you know what YOU want, what YOU like, what YOU want to do or not do, then it’s easier to find someone similar. An online dating profile includes pictures of course, but it also includes a written profile that is supposed to explain a little about who you are, and who you’re looking for. How does this apply to your practice? I’ve made a short list of questions for you to consider that will help you determine the kind of patients you and your practice naturally attract.

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Last week I jumped into the details of a quick “Expert Marketing” plan.  As I re-read the blog I realized I may have given you too much to digest. I’m afraid I was motivated by the urgency of your comments in the business survey I posted. Here it is in case you missed it: http://contact.miridiatech.com/surveys.php?id=14.

Tell me what marketing challenges you’re facing and need help with! Let’s spend a little more time talking about Marketing before we get into this week’s “Meat & Potatoes.”

Relationship Marketing

This marketing approach seeks to cultivate loyal, repeat customers. Jay Conrad Levinson, author of “Guerrilla Marketing” states, “Marketing is EVERYTHING you do to promote your business, from the moment you conceive it to the point at which customers buy your product or service and begin to patronize your business on a regular basis. The key words to remember here are everything and regular basis.” This approach seeks to grow a business by cultivating customer loyalty and by word-of-mouth advertising to help recruit new customers. Relationship marketing provides a low-cost, sustainable approach to marketing for small to mid-size businesses.

Relationship marketing is appealing because it conveys what a service business is about—building a loyal customer base.  It implies that EVERYTHING you do and say from the time you finalize your idea to the time you have repeat customers IS marketing. These would include:

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In business management school, they taught us that most Entrepreneurs practice a unique method of starting businesses. It’s called “Ready, Fire, Aim.” In other words, once the schooling and certifications are over they take an idea, invest all of their savings, max out their credit cards and open up a shop. Is it any wonder why 71% of all small businesses close their doors before reaching their 10th birthday? This data is accurate across all industries and professions – healthcare is not immune.

WHY DO SO MANY BUSINESSES FAIL? BECAUSE THEY FAIL TO PLAN!

Now, before we jump into the details of planning, let’s talk about the importance of creating a Vision for your practice, a Mission for your staff and Goals to guide your daily actions.

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Alan Gifford, Practice Consultant

As I sat down to write my introductory contribution to our blog, I realized that most people outside of the “Corporate” world may not know what a consultant is or does! This sounded like a good place to start.

Merriam-Webster defines a consultant as:

1. one who consults another
2. one who gives professional advice or services

If we put those together we come up with: A professional who gives advice and services to another. We can focus that definition a little further: A professional who gives business advice and services to Alternative Health Care Practitioners.

As a consultant my first job is to get to know your needs and your practice. It all begins with some basic questions. In fact, I recently conducted a survey of over 30 Acupuncture practitioners and found some interesting information. For example, did you know that of the practitioners surveyed:

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