Do your techs practice what you preach? Do you?

Part of creating a preventive care message for your clients is creating one for your staff, after all, they deliver much of it (or should). But, how well is that message really getting through? Your staff may be parroting what you say, "Yep, twice yearly exams for seniors, yep, got it." But have they really 'got it'?

When was the last time you saw your staff's pets? If you were to do an audit of your staff's pets and compare them to your ideal client, would they be compliant? Are they practicing what they preach?

If they are not, you have an issue.

If you cannot convince the very people you interact with every day of the importance of preventive care, then how are you going to convince your clients in the space of an office visit? The only way the staff can move towards the same goal is if they believe it. Imagine a football team where only the coach thought that they should go for the championship, what are the odds that they'll actually go?

Now, don't get me wrong, the players still might love to play the game. They'll show up for practice and put on a good show, and maybe even win a few games, but when it comes time to put in that extra effort they simply won't, because they care, but not enough.

Think of the championship as your attempt to reach 100% compliance with your clients. You're coaching your heart out and the team says, "yep, we're on board", but if the staff doesn't even do it for their own pets, what makes you think they'll fight the good fight to bring it to other people's pets?

Lets use a real world example with dental prophies (or dentals, or COHATS, or whatever word du jour you wish to call them). Let's say for the sake of argument that you believe that every grade 2 pet should have a prophy. Now, I'm going to go on a limb and say your compliance is exceptionally low on this because clients don't clean dirty cars, and they're certainly unlikely to clean white teeth.

Here's a compliance issue that is a hard "sell". Every one needs to be fully on board with this, so look at your numbers. What percentage of your staff's pets have had a prophy in recent months (years, decades)? Look at staff compliance, and it will tell you where the holes are in your client compliance.

Your team needs to believe what you believe, not just say what you say, and if that isn't the case, then you have work to do.