O CC U PAT I O N A L M E D I C I N E Protecting Your Position as Market Leader ■ FRANK H. LEONE, MBA, MPH T It’s great to be on top, but when a clinic is “fat and happy,” its focus on sales and marketing can lose its intensity. Con- sequently, your clinic may be in danger of losing its crown without realizing your leadership position is in jeopardy. This month’s column addresses this dilemma faced by ur- gent care clinics that are market leaders. Instead of assuming that the “best offense is a good defense,” in some cases the best defense becomes a good offense. The following suggestions can help all urgent care clinics that offer occupational health services—leaders and fol- lowers—guard against complacency and secure a more dominant position in the marketplace. Protect your base. Implement a plan to ensure that your market share remains intact. Too often, a clinic assumes that patients or employer clients are satisfied and fails to learn about dissatisfaction until the patient or client has moved their business elsewhere. Protecting your base means keeping your ear close to your customers. It is advisable for all players to continually assess consumer satisfaction through multiple modalities. Examples of consumer opinion-gathering mechanisms include annual employer surveys, quarterly telephone blitzes, and universal, (i.e., every patient, every day), albeit simple, patient satisfaction surveys. Many clinics gather such data but fail to: n ask the right questions. Remember to always ask con- sumers what your clinic can do to improve. n follow up. Always follow up on concerns or suggestions. n be relentless. Sustain the effort, month after month, Frank Leone is president and CEO of RYAN Associates and executive director of the National Association of Occupational Health Professionals. Mr. Leone is the author of numerous sales and marketing texts and periodicals, and has considerable experience training medical profes- sionals on sales and marketing techniques. E-mail him at fleone@naohp.com. w w w. j u c m . c o m year after year. n provide inordinate attention to employers who gener- ate an inordinate amount of business. Emphasize horizontal expansion. “Horizontal expansion” means increasing market share by developing relationships with new companies. As market leaders become fat and happy, there is in- evitably less impetus to extend into the prospect fringes to acquire business from less proximate or smaller companies. Begin expanding vertically. The greater your market share, the greater your need to think more in terms of vertical ex- pansion—selling new services to existing clients. The vertical/horizontal choice is really a continuum, and a prudent clinic should pursue both. For example, a clinic should tilt toward the vertical end of the spectrum as it at- tains a greater market share or if it operates in a smaller, less competitive market. Use market leadership as a competitive advantage. Pru- dent buyers are more comfortable with proven market lead- ers (i.e., “They must be doing something right.”). Yet mar- ket leaders seldom use market leadership as a competitive advantage. There are many ways to tout your market leadership in tasteful yet clear terms: n Create exhaustive reference lists. List virtually all of your employer relationships. n Use tag lines such as “The leading provider of occupa- tional health services in Crescent City.” n Mention your dominant position in both oral and writ- ten sales presentations. n Emphasize that your clinic has relationships with key companies in your market. Encourage growth through a viable incentive plan. Incentive pay should be built into sales professionals’ com- JUCM T h e J o u r n a l o f U r g e n t C a r e M e d i c i n e | M a rc h 2 0 0 9 35