This post has been shared by the APHA Mentor’s Blog. It was written to help you start and grow an advocacy practice.
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I hate doing sales, so how do I market my services?
This post was contributed by Cindi Gatton, Pathfinder Patient Advocacy Group a mentor for those who are building an advocacy practice. Find Cindi’s Mentor Listing. This really is the $64,000 question. Patient advocacy as a professional discipline is certainly better understood now than it was even 5 years ago. But it’s still not a household word. Even in professions where a license conveys a skill set and “hanging out a shingle” means potential customers might come looking for the service, newly minted lawyers and therapists will tell you that they have to make an investment in marketing their practices to be successful. This requires creating a marketing plan that clearly articulates your unique value message and lists all the resources you’ll utilize to share information about your services with audiences that can generate qualified clients. A qualified client is someone whose needs align with the scope of your practice, and they have the means and desire to pay you for your work. Theoretically, everyone in our society is a prospective client for us – Americans will average 9 encounters with the health care system in a lifetime, and each one of those is a potential opportunity for us to…