Happy Valentine: Romancing Your Client

Nothing feels quite as good as falling in love. Nothing has been the subject of more novels and films and poems. Perhaps nothing is missed more, as we age, than the rush of romance. What does this have to do with marketing and operating a pet hospital?

In a word, clients that feel good are happy clients and happy clients make for happy and successful veterinary hospitals. How do we use the power of romance?

Thanks to Darwin, we can understand that the undeniable attraction between lovers is designed by nature to guarantee the preservation of the species. People will fall in love and make babies. There is no doubt about it, because nature has built in such a compelling reward system for preservation behavior. People don't fall in love for the consequences of becoming parents for the rest of their lives––that's a lot of work! We fall in love because it just feels so good?

Nature's reward is quite literally addictive opiates, the most powerful drugs in the world. No poppies required! The body makes its own opiates in the form of dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin and other neurotransmitters and floods the limbic system in the brain with them during courtship and sexual mating. Drug users become addicts because of that big rush of good feeling. People fall in love because of the same rush. It just feels darn good.

I am not suggesting that you turn your hospitals into a mating service. There are other things beside courtship that cause the brain to release these feel-good neurotransmitters in small doses: being treated really well, experiencing a wonderful smile or a compliment, eating chocolate or even smelling warm chocolate, petting an animal. There are lots of ways of becoming your client's valentine. They all boil down to making her feel good. Think of all the attention her lover pays to her during courtship: flowers, chocolates, phone calls, nice words. Shower her with the same kind of attention in the name of client service and nature will help you prevail in the survival of the fittest that reigns in the world of retail business.

A belated happy Valentine's Day to all of you.

Donald Erceg 

Happy Birthday Abe and Charlie

Today the world celebrates the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Both were born 200 years ago–a banner year! Both are important to the world of marketing.

Communication lies at the heart of marketing and Lincoln is its benchmark. He could have invented the law of advertising called K.I.S.S.––Keep It Simple Stupid! Look at his introduction to the Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." In only one brilliant sentence he framed his entire presidency and gave meaning to the civil war and the loss of lives at Gettysburg.

Can you write one sentence that frames your entire reason for being a veterinarian and gives meaning to the daily activities at your hospital? It should be a lot easier task than Lincoln's––right? Sure. Just try it.

Arguably, Charle's Darwin's "Origin of Species" equals or exceeds the bible as the most influential book ever written. As a marketer, I am keenly interested in human behavior and what motivates us, what makes us feel good and bad. How we came to be what we are teaches us a lot about why we act the way we do.

For example, thanks to Darwin, we can track the development of the human brain from the simple Crocodile brain, a lump at the end of the spinal column, to the mammalian Dingo brain that grew around the Crocodile brain, and finally the human brain with its deeply convoluted cerebral cortex. The crocodile brain is not a thinking machine, it is a simpler machine totally dedicated to survival, killing, eating and mating. The dingo brain adds the limbic system with its ability to store and act on memories and its ability to have feeling. The human brain with its 100 billion neurons and thousands of billions of synaptic connections adds a massive computer for logical thought and reflection as well as the crown jewels of music, mathematics, speech, literature.

As  magical the human brain is, it must be remembered that each of us still possesses the crocodile and dingo brain hiding underneath all that in-folded gray matter. And thanks to the corpus collosum and other parts of the brain, all three brains spend a lot of time talking to each other without our even knowing it. Why is this important to me as a marketer?

Even though we are very good at justifying our behaviors with highly rational explanations, the truth is that most of our decision making is driven by a crocodilian compulsion to survive and mate (to "win") as well as the dingo's compulsion to pursue that which makes it feel good. As a marketer, I am more interested in why humans actually make purchasing decisions than why they "think" they are making the decisions.

If you think that clients are going to choose you because of the highly rational reason that you are a great doctor, you are sadly mistaken. They are going to choose you or another because of the way they perceive you and how that perception "feels." In other words, the crocodile and the dingo hiding within each of us governs our purchasing decisions a lot more than all of those millions of logical thoughts busily zipping around our cerebral cortex. Imagine how long every simple decision would take if we had to first consider every logical choice available to our human brains!

Charles Darwin was the first to open the door to understanding the origin of this species we know as human.

When it  comes to your marketing, remember Lincoln and Darwin: feed the crocodile, pet the dingo and Keep It Simple Stupid!

Peanuts get a bad rap

Salmonella poisoning from a single factory has given peanuts and peanut butter a bad rap. In fact, it is incredibly good for you and makes a great special treat for dogs (virtually all dogs love bacon, cheese and peanut butter).

The Iowa Women's Health Study showed that death rates dropped 11 percent among those who ate peanuts or peanut butter once week and fell 19 percent among those who ate it more than once a week!

There is a good reason it is the favorite snack during the cocktail hour. The resveratrol found in peanuts (and in red wine) can prevent fatty liver disease associated with alcohol consumption! Resveratrol also protects against cancer and improves blood flow to the brain, reducing the risk of stroke.

Roasted peanuts are even better for you than fresh or raw peanuts. Roasting increases the level of anti-oxidants by up to 22 percent.

This humble legume can delay the widespread effects of aging on the brain and body and can boost the immune functions.

What to do with this information? Let your clients know! Let them know by email or create handouts for hospital distribution.

Your female clients indefatigable seekers when it comes to finding advice and practical tips on how to live healthier, how to make her life better or make her life easier (like wrapping dog pills in peanut butter).

Australian Veterinary Conference

In May, I will be presenting 8 lectures and one all day workshop at the Australian Veterinary Conference in Darwin. For Australian veterinarians and practice managers, I want to express my deep concern for the terrible fires and suffering now taking place in the Southwest. My prayers and thoughts are with all of you.

For those of you attending the conference, I hope I get the chance to meet many of you in person. I am adding a lot of new research material to my powerpoint lectures and I am very excited about the new material. The information on marketing, brand marketing, experience marketing etc is all more tightly focused and useful than ever. I think participants will find it very exciting and intellectually stimulating.

For those thinking about attending my lectures and workshop, I am happy to address any questions you may have in this blog site.

Ciao,

Donald Erceg

Managing the roosters and hens

In both marketing and practice management for your veterinary practice, it is essential to remember the differences between men and women. Our brains are physically different, they are wired differently, they are driven by different hormones (see "The Female Brain" Brizendine). According to Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" we are driven by biological impulse to propagate our genes. Women do this by protecting her eggs at all cost. The female's does this by staying alive and forging strong social ties. For a man, it means "may the best sperm win" and winning means ruling the roost.

In the chicken coop, it means that while the men are busy establishing a pecking order, the hens are busy protecting their eggs and offspring and creating social harmony. The men in your practice will want to "cut to the chase" and accomplish the goals. The women will want, as a social group, to examine the problem and get the big picture–the process, in other words, is equally as important as the goal.

In team building it is vitally important to understand and respond to the innate differences between male and female members of the team.

How does your hospital rank?

Looking at a veterinary hospital, there are four stages of growth or maturation.

1.  The veterinarian is simply filling a market need: the need for someone to provide medical care for pets. The focus is on providing medical services and on the desires of the doctor/owner.

2.  The wants and needs of the pet owner become more important: issues like location of the hospital, operating hours, waiting times become very important. The clients' needs become more important than the hospital staff needs. The practice becomes client-centered.

3.  The goal of the hospital is no longer to just meet the needs of the client but to surprise and delight her with great architecture and interior design, music, food and drink, great personal service. Many practices have caught on to the architecture part but still grade as mediocre to OK on the client service side.

4.  Top retail companies today have gone beyond great client service to providing through their companies  chance for connectivity between their clients, providing fun and meaningful experiences for their customers, opportunities for public service. Marketing that provides fun and enriching experiences and on-location experiences that have meaning for the client represent the cutting edge of modern retail businesses.

Where does your veterinary hospital rank on this 4-step path of development?

Options make us miserable.

Psychology Today, Feb 2009.

"We're constantly making decisions, ranging from what to eat for dinner each night to whom we should marry, not to mention all those flavors of ice cream. We base many of our decisions on whether we think a particular preference will increase our well-being. Intuitively, we seem convinced that the more choices we have, the better off we'll ultimately be. But our world of unlimited opportunity imprisons us more than it makes us happy."

If you want happy clients, don't present them with a smorgasbord of treatment options. Give them your best treatment recommendation. They will be happier and you will be blessed with greater compliance.