Unfortunately, there are many chiropractic practice sale mistakes to avoid when the time comes for you to sell or transition your business. These preventable errors can cost you thousands in value of your chiropractic business – or perhaps dash your chances of selling at all. Today, we’re going to discuss the first of a series of chiropractic practice sale mistakes that are related to marketing or promoting your practice and that can have disastrous consequences on your chiropractic practice sale or transition.
The first chiropractic practice sale mistake that too many chiropractors make is attempting to sell the practice themselves. For die-hard do it yourselfers, these may seem like an attempt to “scare” you into using the services of a chiropractic practice broker such as myself. Rather than focus on why you should consider our services, let’s focus on what typically goes wrong in for sale by owner practices — and most specifically in one area; MARKETING.
Why Marketing Can Be Your Biggest Chiropractic Practice Sale Mistake to Avoid
in selling their practice is to marketing is to Under-Promote (if that’s a word) their chiropractic practice for sale. Put simply, too many DC’s don’t do enough when it comes to promoting their practice sale and as a result, they suffer the consequences of crickets (no one responds), creatures (attracting the wrong kind of prospects) or worst of all, the “curtailed sale” (as in cut short, shut down, no sale because there are no buyers).
If the problem is that we don’t go far enough, let’s look at why:
What Masquerades as Marketing the Chiropractic Practice for Sale
Typically, most of what DC’s do in the name of promoting the sale of their chiropractic business is a weak attempt at marketing. The average DC puts an ad in their state association classified and/or in their chiropractic school alma mater.
And they wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
For Lightning to strike.
Finding the Right Fish in the Pool of Prospects
The lightning analogy is sadly fitting because that’s about the chances that this type of promotion will work.
After all, you’ve got a state association (1 of 50) that typically doesn’t even have half of the DC’s in the state as members. And those that are, will not necessarily see the ad or be looking for a practice for sale at all. Then you’ve got to find the doc who is looking and in your town, your timeframe AND (importantly) someone who has the ability to purchase.
And to top it all off – they’ve got to have a great personality that fits…yours!
The NEXT Wrong Marketing Move
If the practice isn’t attracting attention or any interested prospects, the chiropractic practice sale marketing mistake chiropractors will usually make is to lower the price.
Certainly, it is important to price the practice accurately. Unfortunately, many owners guess at what their practice is worth or set their practice based on some sort of ballpark formula they heard through the rumor mill or a chiropractic colleague.
But here’s the interesting thing about this why price isn’t necessarily the problem.
Many chiropractors advertise their practice WITHOUT even including the asking price in their ad. Therefore, the asking price isn’t likely the problem, as the prospect doesn’t even know what it is!
So by lowering the price, the DC has not fixed their chiropractic practice sale marketing mistake – they have just decreased the amount they will get for their business before a buyer ever arrives.
Better Moves & Bigger Nets
Over the last decade of working with chiropractors trying to sell or transition their practice, I’ve seen this chiropractic practice sale marketing mistake happen dozens of times.
The root source of the problem is not always the price; although the diehard “do-it-yourself-ers” (who do not get their practice value appraised by a professional with experience in performing a proper chiropractic practice valuation to value a chiropractic practice) are usually the ones who think their practice is worth way more than it really is.
Rather, the true problem is found in the size of the net that is used to find the right prospect. A small net that advertises in only a couple areas and a limited fashion is not likely to attract enough buyers to find the right one.
The Simple Solution That Isn’t…
The solution is rather simple in theory but difficult to implement: you must advertise your chiropractic practice for sale in a wide variety of areas: beyond your state association, beyond your alma mater and certainly beyond your network of DC colleagues (and in many situations, this may not even be a good choice).
So while the principle of where to advertise may be easy to understand, the practice is difficult because this takes a great deal of time.
The reality is that it takes many hours to create and place the ads in all the proper venues that will get your chiropractic practice sold and then more hours to keep getting those ads in front of as many interested buyers as possible. The average DC just doesn’t have time to take on a job of this magnitude AND run their practice. So either the doc becomes good at the marketing and their practice suffers (which is bad for value) OR they spend their time taking care of their patients (and don’t market properly for prospects).
In other words, the simple solution just isn’t so simple for you do to it alone.
But Wait, There’s More…
At the risk of sounding like a bad infomercial, there is more mistakes that are awaiting you.
But that’s another post for another day – stay tuned for Part 2 of MORE chiropractic practice sale mistakes to avoid.
NEXT STEPS
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