At Astanza, one of the award-winning services that we provide to our clients is Marketing Support. We offer this to our clients because we firmly believe that our clients’ success is, in turn, our success. We want to set clients up to succeed and continue to provide superior marketing support throughout our relationship. Our dedication to clients is why we sometimes offer information focused on clinic-building or running a clinic more smoothly. After all, a laser clinic, aesthetic practice, medspa, or physician’s office is a business.
One of the most challenging aspects of owning a medspa or any business for that matter is determining how frequently and what the most effective method should be for communicating information to your team and ensuring it’s a two-way communication stream. Sometimes, the most important function of a team meeting isn’t necessarily the information you give your team but the feedback they provide to you about how business is going or the latest client FaceBook reviews. Let’s face it: when you get a bad review on Google or Facebook, it’s probably not a good idea to wait a week or two to decide what you need to do about it. You need to address these issues daily, and it’s usually best to discuss face-to-face if possible versus firing off another email.
It may seem like a lot when you first read about what we recommend here, but there are four essential meetings that you need to optimize communication with your team. These are the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly huddles. This suggested meeting rhythm isn’t something that Astanza created all by ourselves to give to our clients. The meeting rhythm discussed here is from Verne Harnish and is outlined in his book, Scaling Up“. By implementing these four key meetings, you can ensure that your team is engaged, involved, and understands the key priorities that need focus.
As the huddles progress from daily to quarterly, the length of the huddle and the focus on longer-term planning, strategy, and training should increase while the number of people included in the huddle decreases. For instance, the daily huddle is more of a traditional huddle you’d see on a football field. The quarterback tells the team the play, the snap count, and listens for immediate feedback from the other players. These can be done in under 15 minutes and are best standing, possibly before opening or first thing before moving on to working with clients.
Quarterly huddles are longer and more like traditional planning sessions where you discuss strategy for the upcoming quarter, asses goals from the past month, and set priorities. There is a lot more drawing on whiteboards, discussion, and more of what you would see in a traditional meeting room setting. Each player doesn’t have to be in each quarterly meeting because those are more about strategy and less about day-to-day operations. The quarterly meetings usually have fewer team members and are focused on managers and other executive leaders.
Daily
- 10 – 15 minutes
- Best in the morning
- Can do standing up in a common area
- Can be led by different team members
- Discuss important metrics (daily appointments, wait times, revenue per treatment, etc.)
- Focus on the one priority that each team member has that day
- End on a positive note
Weekly
- 20 – 30 minutes
- Daily huddle not held this day
- Can do standing up in a common area
- Best in the morning and possibly on Mondays
- Can be led by different team members
- Discuss important metrics (daily appointments, reviews, wait times, revenue per treatment, etc.)
- Focus on the priorities that week
- End on a positive note
Monthly
- 45 – 60 minutes
- Daily/Weekly not held this day
- Day of the week doesn’t matter as much
- Best done in a meeting room setting
- Led by the team leader
- Discuss important metrics (daily appointments, wait times, reviews, revenue per treatment, etc.)
- Focus on the priorities that month
- Discuss strategy for coming month and key areas of emphasis
- End on a positive note
Quarterly
- 45 – 60 minutes
- Daily not held this day
- Day of the week doesn’t matter as much
- Best done in a meeting room setting
- Led by the team leader
- Fewer in attendance, primarily leadership
- Can be off-site if possible
- Discuss important metrics (cash flow, daily appointments, wait times, revenue per treatment, etc.)
- Focus on the priorities that quarter
- Discuss strategy for coming quarter and key areas of emphasis
- Have a quarterly goal (financial or priority) and a celebration/reward established
Suppose this all seems too much to handle for your practice right now. In that case, we suggest you start with the weekly huddle and begin to get into a regular pattern of discussing key performance indicators (KPIs), priorities for the week, and how you are doing versus your goals. After you get into a rhythm with the weekly huddles, you can add daily, then monthly, and quarterly.
Using this Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly strategy, you can be assured that everyone on your team knows what’s going on, what the priorities are, and what they should be doing to ensure the success of your clinic.
If your practice or company is struggling with some of the issues mentioned above regarding communication and lacks direction, take a few minutes to read our exclusive new ebook, “Successful Business Planning for Your Aesthetic Clinic,” featuring insight from Scaling Up Coach Mark Fenner and Astanza Vice President of Marketing Brian Hasenbauer. Within this ebook, you’ll learn about the secret to finding your proper meeting cadence and how to keep your team engaged. This ebook is free to download. Click here or below to access now!
