Diagnosing the business illness

“I’m interested in telephone training for my receptionists. How much does it cost?” asked Mr. Darnay.

Mr. Darnay already appreciated that increasing telephone conversion rates could increase his income and potentially improve his net earnings.

If training his telephone people could get him more appointments, then it followed that he needed to choose a healthcare telephone sales trainer to help make it happen. So, he asked LiveseySolar the first question that most people ask when they’re evaluating an investment: how much does it cost?

A long time ago, we realised that how much something costs is only important if you already know that you actually need or want it. For example, if you have never considered traveling to Antarctica, you wouldn’t really care how much it costs, would you?

So, the first thing we asked Mr. Darnay was: “Why do want to train your telephone staff?” to which he replied “to increase their conversion rates”.

We then asked…

Are you sure that training is the solution you need?

One sign of a healthy business is income exceeding costs. A sign of a thriving business increasing net earnings. A sign that a business is in ill health is decreasing net earnings. As in the human body, diagnosing the cause of these positive or negative signs can be considerably complex.

As with any illness, medical or business, one needs to conduct an examination before recommending a treatment:

The first step is to identify the symptoms. Of the following, which is your primary complaint?

• not enough enquiries?
• not enough appointments converting from enquiries?
• not enough patients converting from appointments?
• not enough referrals converting from patients?

Any business symptom, we reminded him, may be the manifestation of one or more business illnesses. Some symptoms occur in a wide range of illness processes, whereas other symptoms are fairly specific for a narrow range of illnesses. For example, “not enough patients converting from appointments” has a significantly smaller number of possible causes, than “not enough enquiries” does.

Training therefore, like any attempted treatment or remediation of a health problem, is only recommended following the diagnosis of a specific business illness that training can treat. Often, a diagnosis can only be ascertained after an examination. We call this examination: the 6 ways to grow your business.

Mr. Darnay felt that this was a prudent way to proceed and scheduled a call to conduct this business examination in a few days time.