Do you own a car, or drive one?
Would you say it works pretty well to get you from your house to the grocery store and back?
Now, what would you say if someone gave you a wrench or two and asked you to take it apart and build a new model that would get you to the movies or to your relatives’ house faster and for less money?
Think it’d be a good idea or not to start taking a fully functional car and build a new one on your own?
Probably be a disaster right? Even if you got an A in shop in high school…
The same is true for unbundling hearing aid services. We do know practices that are making it work for them… but we also know a handful of others who have seen their sales drop by over $25,000 to $50,000 per month. Yikes!
To start with, what’s the idea, what is unbundling?
If you are like most audiology practices, you sell hearing aids as a bundled or pre-packaged service that includes evaluation, selection the hearing aids themselves, fitting, and follow-up care. Historically, this has been a great way to help patients and profit too.
Why shift away from this successful bundle model?
- To move away from looking like someone selling a device to a focus on professional services. (Most doctors don’t bundle their services around the prescription of the pills they prescribe.)
- To shift the focus away from the device to improving patient’s hearing and to the range of services practices provide to help patients.
- To create a larger marketing funnel for your practice, one that makes it easier for first time buyers to discover the benefits of lower cost hearing devices so they eventually buy the better ones you sell.
- To get in front of health care reform that is shifting away from bundled solutions.
- When patients buy online as they are, to leverage it to make money by offering the services they need to get the most from their purchase.
- To avoid becoming irrelevant as technology improves and makes remote testing, programming, and fitting possible.
How can you do this, unbundle your services and avoid losing money?
The biggest change is a shift to focusing on patient relationships, not transactions. Which means changing a lot in your practice including:
- How you market your services
- How you bill for services
- How you stay in touch with patients
- How you keep patients coming back
And much more.
Achieve more. Talk to us