Article

Set smart goals for your veterinary practice

Smiling vet holding and looking at a small yellow dog

Discover how training can help you deliver the best for your patients and your practice.

Why goal setting is vital to your practice

Whether you’re a new practice or have been around for decades, it’s good to set goals that help you achieve year after year. Goal-setting helps keep your practice efficient, productive and profitable and can help provide the best standards of care for your patients.

So, what are some of these goals that you should look to set at the beginning of each new year? Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based) goals backed by sound training will help you maintain a high-performing practice.

Inventory control

Well-managed inventory is a key factor for helping meet your practice’s profitability goals. Good inventory control will help you identify slow- or fast-moving retail items as well as the turnover of medication and consumable items used regularly by your veterinarians and technicians. With proper inventory control, you’ll always have enough of the items on hand to meet staff and patient needs, but never so much that there’s wastage when an item passes its use-by-date.

Client retention

Client retention is another vital component of practice growth. While it’s important to keep a steady flow of new customers, keeping your current clients and their pets is a good way to keep your appointment book full and improve the lifetime value of your customers. Offering a variety of services such as wellness plans, home delivery and virtual visits is a great way to meet customers’ evolving needs.

Employee Engagement

Just as much as you want to keep your clients happy and coming back, you also want to keep your staff happy and eager to turn up to work every day. Training and tools are an important aspect of staff engagement; 7 in 10 people say that learning improves their sense of connection to their organization.1 Providing valuable tools can empower your team to perform their best together. Additionally, putting an emphasis on resources to support mental health and wellbeing can alleviate stress and help your teams to feel encouraged and supported by the community they have at work.

Training

This goal goes hand-in-hand with staff engagement. Having your staff professionally trained by experts ensures that they’re not only properly skilled, but are also able to make the most of their practice software. This, in turn, will help improve the overall effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability of your veterinary practice.

Wellness

Consider the business advantages of wellness plans. These days, nurturing client loyalty is vital to the success of practices amid growing competition. At the same time, Morgan Stanley suggests average annual household spending per pet could reach $1,733 by 2030.² Wellness plans cultivate strong bonds with clients while providing a reliable stream of revenue to support operating costs and fund growth opportunities.³

Profitability

It’s vital that your practice remains profitable. Without sufficient cash flow, you’re not able to invest in the equipment, inventory, or staff resources your practice needs to provide the best of standards of care for your patients.

Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based) goals backed by sound training will help you maintain a high-performing practice.