Acara Partners has worked with hundreds of spas, medical spas and aesthetic medical practices over the years, and most of them experienced (or are experiencing) great success and growth. What creates success? How can you insure success at your business? Below are the top 10 Best Practices that drive success, as identified by the Acara Partners team. The first five are in order of importance, and then the last five are all equally important:
1 Location
2 Capital
3 Passion & Drive
4 Experience
5 Sales & Marketing Program
6 Concept
7 Differentiation
8 Quality
9 Staying on Trend
10 Fair Business Practices
Below is a brief discussion on the first five Best Practices for an aesthetic medical practice (the second five are discussed in the next blog!).
1) Location
This is the number one most important decision you will make as a Business Owner. Once you have selected your location and built it, there is no opportunity to change your mind. There are so many critical factors to insuring a successful location that include: proximity to your market, accessibility to your location by your customers, visibility to increase marketability and the competitiveness of your market. And once you are up and running it is essential to understand how all of these factors impact your business year over year. Especially since the competitive landscape is in constant flux. Successful aesthetic medical businesses understand how their position in the market impacts their top line.
2) Capital
This is the second most important reason why an Aesthetic Medical business succeeds and the number one reason why they fail. It is critical to have sufficient capital (money) to support your business as it makes its way to profitability. This includes fully funding your marketing program, having a fully staffed operation and of course paying all overhead expenses. Successful Aesthetic Medical businesses are not bootstrapping their openings, especially not in the first 6 months of operations. In addition, successful Aesthetic Medical businesses make ongoing investment decisions to grow and expand their company over time.
3) Passion and Drive
Opening an Aesthetic Medical business is hard work; you must have a passion for the business and a drive to succeed. Startup businesses take long hours of intense work to make them successful. Without passion or drive those long hours will be grueling but with it they can be memorable.
4) Experience
Medical Spas and Aesthetic Medical Practices are complicated businesses combining the practice of medicine with a sophisticated service business. You, your management team or consultants need to bring to the table the experience and knowledge to successfully execute your business plan and then consistently operate day-to-day. Once you have a location and the capital, you need to then have the people that will bring it to life with the experience to do so. Successful locations understand how to keep the balance. If you are an owner with clinical experience, you must hire great management talent. If you are an owner with management experience you must hire amazing clinicians.
5) Sales & Marketing Program
Successful locations don’t open their doors and automatically have clients walk in wanting to buy. Successful Aesthetic Medical businesses have savvy sales and marketing programs that are implemented consistently. The marketing program should be generating the leads and the sales program should be capturing the leads converting them to consultations and then to clients.
Be sure to check out the next five best practices for aesthetic medical practices. Questions? Contact the experts at Acara Partners.
