Do you find yourself dealing with messy client record files? How about re-writing over and over the same kind of data for patients? Do you feel in control of your workflow?
If you own a nutrition business you probably know what I am talking about. It’s often challenging to manage the wide array of responsibilities that come with the job.
Today I will show you how you can implement a framework to make the business side of your practice less stressful and more efficient.
Want other strategies for growing your nutrition business? Check out our marketing for nutritionists guide.
Learning from other successful businesses
Having efficient processes and a framework is essential for any business, and nutrition practices are no exception. This is because a business is more than just specialistic skill.
If you are a nutritionist, this means that using your nutrition expertise will be only part of the job. Then there is accounting, marketing, paperwork, and a host of behind-the-scene time consuming and stressful tasks.
These extra tasks other than nutrition may be stressful and time-consuming. However, it does not have to be this way.
Although it’s evident every business and sector is different, there are a host of common areas every company needs to deal with. Some of them are:
- Paperwork, keeping files and writing documents
- Marketing / Sales
- Repeating a certain sales process efficiently with each client
The great thing is that there are many stablished businesses out there (e.g. manufacturing, banking, etc) where professionals and scholars alike have been developing efficient processes over the years.
This means, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. You can try successful techniques sales organisations use to acquire clients, and you can also borrow how to manage your data online from software developers.
For example, a sale process for your nutrition practice may look like this:
- A few people show interest in your services
- You enrol them into an email marketing campaign
- Someone from the campaign decides to book a consultation with you
- You arrange an appointment date
- You send your client a health questionnaire and food diary to complete prior to the consultation
- You have a consultation in person and take notes
- You produce some recommendations based on all the date you’ve gathered so far
- You write a report and a meal plan personalised for your client
- You setup follow-up consultations with your patient where you will repeat this process from step 4 onwards
Only some of the steps require your technical knowledge about nutrition. The rest require marketing and efficient paperwork management.
How can we make the steps on the list above more efficient borrowing techniques and strategies from other industries?
How can you be a billionaire before 30
Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, became the youngest billionaire ever, in just a few short years. How is this possible?
Moreover, financial reports show that a few decades ago, 80% of the wealthy in America inherited their fortunes, whilst 20% were self-made millionaires. Nowadays it’s the other way around. 80% of millionaires have made their fortunes in their lifetime.
One of the major causes for the emergence of enormous fortunes under the hands of few people is computing: software, the internet, and information technology.
In a traditional business, where you sell a physical product (e.g. cars, or hamburgers) there is a cost in producing more of your product. However, duplicating software is virtually free.
Microsoft, Facebook, and Google can create copies of their software products and sell them to new users almost for free. This enables software companies to grow so fast.
The great news is that you can use software and the processes and techniques from the industry to grow your nutrition business in a similar fashion.
Automation and zero-cost replication
Unfortunately, you cannot duplicate yourself to do double the work in the same time. However, there are many parts of your workflow that can be automated or made more efficient.
In the 9 steps above, the main bottleneck is your own time with patients on consultations. This cannot be automated, outsourced, or replaced.
But if you think about it, how much time do you spend with clients on a daily basis, and how much time do you spend with paperwork or marketing?
The majority of the nutritionists I work with confess spending more time with reports, meal plans, and admin than with actual clients. How can this be tackled?
Basically, you need to introduce the following into your practice:
- Efficient sale process with your clients
- Automation of repetitive tasks via software
- Free duplication with software
If you manage to import all the techniques and tools from other industries into your own sales process, you can cut down by half the amount of time you spend with admin, and double the time you spend with clients (hence doubling your revenue).
Let’s see specific examples.
Marketing automation
There are many aspects of your marketing process you can improve to get more clients with less effort.
Using IFTTT
IF This Then That is a free service that allows you to setup automatic rules between many of the web apps you already use. E.g. when you post something in 1 social network, it can share it across all your accounts.
Using Mailchimp
Mailchimp allows you to send email marketing campaigns to your prospects efficiently. You can segment your audience by their individual characteristics
Using Google Adwords
Google Adwords can bring extra people to your workshops, events, classes, or consultations in exchange for a fee. If you setup a profitable campaign, this will basically translate in X amount of revenue each month in exchange for less than X cost.
Customer.io
customer.io allows you to setup sequences of emails to send to your potential customers based on intelligent rules. I.e which of your services is more appropriate. Drip is another attractive option for the same goal.
Different software tools exist to help you automate your marketing efforts. If you are able to configure them so that they cost less than the extra value added with the time they will save you, then it’s a great deal!
Paperwork Automation with NutriAdmin
We have developed NutriAdmin to automate and make more efficient all of the paperwork-related components of the sales workflow for a nutritionist.
NutriAdmin allows you to send questionnaires, appointments, reminders to your clients, organise your client records, etc in a very efficient way. Writing reports and meal plans, as well as managing recipes is possible too.
Conclusion
By introducing some of the tools mentioned, you can automate or make more efficient your workflow as a nutrition practitioner.
The 9 steps mentioned above can be done all by hand, consuming around 8 hours per client. Using NutriAdmin and some other tools you can do it in half the time.
This is possible because every step in the workflow is well-defined, and either automated, or carried out very efficiently.
Imagine getting a new client, and just click a few buttons in your computer to move them directly from prospect to the in-person consultation (the only step of the process you cannot automate). This is possible with NutriAdmin.
We developed this software leveraging all the best practices from other industries we found could be applied to nutrition as well. E.g. never writing the same content twice, automating emails, etc.
Your time is your most precious asset as a business owner, and an efficient framework will save you time, make you more money, and enable you to grow your business so that you can help more people achieve their goals.
Thanks for reading.
