In this post, we explain the 5 steps to grow your laser eye surgery businesses. You’ll definitely want to bookmark it.

First, we’ll share an extended version of the presentation we first gave at Carl Zeiss Meditec User Group Meeting at London Vision Clinic in 2016 in London and again at ERLS in Paris in May 2017. Second, we’ll share some questions and answers that will get you thinking about this material and actually apply it to your practice. (so that you can benefit!)

The Presentation: The five steps to grow laser eye surgery businesses

Here is a recording of the full version of the talk below.

Questions and answers: The five steps to grow laser eye surgery businesses

We asked the participants these questions at the event. Below we share our answers (open the toggles to reveal the answers under the questions).

What are the 5 steps?

The five steps to grow are:

• Market
• Call
• Meet
• Price
• Serve

Learn more about each step by following the links above.

How do the 5 steps grow your sales?

This chart shows how implementing the 5 steps leads to greater and greater growth in your business. The purple cells represent the changes we make in the system. Grey cells show how those changes persist to add up to larger totals.

This is a graphical representation of the growth you see above. Remember, you don’t need to do this over 5 years. The amount of time you take to go through the five steps is up to you. You can continually return to any of the five steps whenever the need arises.

Which of the 5 steps should you employ first?

Where is your biggest problem? Just because the steps are numbered 1 through 5 doesn’t mean you need to take them sequentially.

Let’s say you have enough leads, but want to convert more of them into appointments – you need to take Step 2 – Call. Let’s say you are converting well. But feel your services are worth more than you currently charge for them – you need to take Step 4 – Price.

There is no preset order of steps; however, most businesses that are starting out will typically need to generate leads (Step 1 – Market) before they can convert them on the phone (Step 2 – Call). The other steps follow a probable order as well. Use this chart to determine where your problem is so you can take clear action:

What are positive feedback loops?

From Wikipedia:

Positive feedback is a process that occurs in a feedback loop in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. That is, A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A. In contrast, a system in which the results of a change act to reduce or counteract it has negative feedback. Both concepts play an important role in science and engineering, including biology, chemistry, and cybernetics.

A good example of a simple positive feedback loop is the Laser Eye Surgery Patient Flow, where patients in (A) influences customers (B) which influences patients out (C) which can generate referrals (D) which stimulates more patients in (E).

What are negative feedback loops?

From Wikipedia:

Negative feedback occurs when some function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by changes in the input or by other disturbances.
Whereas positive feedback tends to lead to instability via exponential growth, oscillation or chaotic behavior, negative feedback generally promotes stability. Negative feedback tends to promote a settling to equilibrium, and reduces the effects of perturbations. Negative feedback loops in which just the right amount of correction is applied with optimum timing can be very stable, accurate, and responsive.

Negative feedback is widely used in mechanical and electronic engineering, but it also occurs naturally within living organisms, and can be seen in many other fields from chemistry and economics to physical systems such as the climate. General negative feedback systems are studied in control systems engineering.

What is an example of an external input into a feedback loop?

One example of an external input into a feedback loop we examined is the effect of new technology. When a new laser comes onto the market it will affect those who have access to the technology positively and it will affect those who do not have access to the technology negatively.

If the effect is positive, organisations that are in positive feedback loops with regards to their marketing and sales will be able to leverage the new technology to a greater extent than organisations that are in negative feedback loops.

If the effect is negative, organisations that are in positive feedback loops with regards to their marketing and sales will be better able to withstand the threat from competitors who have the technology than those organisations that are in negative feedback loops.