Are You Playing Craps With Your Marketing?

26-03-2025
"Discover expert strategies to grow your clinic with effective marketing, sales, and business systems. Learn how to attract more clients, streamline operations, and achieve long-term success with proven techniques from industry expert Alan Adams."

Introduction

In today’s fast-paced business world, success isn’t just about offering great services—it’s about having the right systems in place to attract clients, streamline operations, and drive growth. Whether you’re running a clinic or any other business, a lack of strategic marketing and sales processes can leave you struggling to stand out. In this collection of insights, Alan Adams, The Clinic Coach, shares proven strategies to help you take control of your business, build a solid foundation, and achieve lasting success. From optimizing your website to winning awards, these articles provide practical steps to elevate your brand and maximize your potential.

Author

Alan Adams

An award-winning profit coach and author, Alan S. Adams, most recent book, The Beautiful Business, focuses on supporting medical, cosmetic, and aesthetic company owners with their very own bespoke challenges, helping them to sculpt their beautiful business. Alan has been named three times as one of the UKs Top 50 Advisors by Enterprise Nation in the Sales category, was recently recognised by Global 100 as Best Business Consulting and Services Firm of 2023, and was a Finalist in the Aesthetic Awards Best Service & Solution Provider 2024

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Are You Playing Craps With Your Marketing?

I recently interviewed Peter Done from Peninsula (if you don’t know of Peninsula, they’re an HR company with over 1,000 staff in the UK), and he actually said to me that he didn’t have to come into work anymore but that he chooses to come because he really enjoys it. You may not have heard of Peter, but he and his brother Fred started the Bet Fred chain of bookies.

Peter shared with me a hugely interesting story of how he and Fred got started. During the early 1970s they were each managing bookies for somebody else, but felt that they could do better themselves. The two brothers managed to scrape together £2,000 but they still needed another £2,500 to buy a shop.

Luckily, the businessman selling the shop believed that Peter and his brother could make a real go of it and decided to loan them the remaining £2,500, to be paid back over two years. It was a great stroke of luck but was led, no doubt, by their own belief, and the businessman’s faith was paid back when they repaid his loan within just six months.

They bought another shop, so each brother had their own to run, and bought a third which they got their sister to run. He said that unfortunately they started to hit problems at this point, as they’d run out of family members to run the bookies they wanted to acquire.

So, they had to develop a system where the bookies could, with minimal input, run themselves. Peter and his brother continued to buy bookies, just repeating the business model each time, putting the systems in place to make each one run smoothly. Peter and Fred were still working seven days a week but their business was starting to compound massively with the effort they had put in developing systems, and by the early 80s they owned about 70 bookies. At this point, in one of the shops they took over, an employee didn’t want to work for them and took them to court.

Fred and Peter took advice from a solicitor and even though they followed it to the letter, the solicitor ultimately told them due to a technicality they’d probably lose the case and should settle out of court, which they did for about £4,500 (which in the 1980s was a considerable sum of money). Then, to Peter’s surprise, even though they’d lost the case and a substantial amount of money, he received a bill for over £4,000 from the solicitor.

A week later, Peter was approached by an HR company that offered to look after all of their HR needs and policies in the future to keep them compliant, plus reduce the chances of them being taken to court again. And, if they did, as long as they followed the advice, there was an insurance policy that would pay out for any court costs. Fred and Pete were so impressed by the setup of the HR company that they told the owner to give them a call if ever he needed investment. Six months later he did, and they invested.

Fred and Peter took advice from a solicitor and even though they followed it to the letter, the solicitor ultimately told them due to a technicality they’d probably lose the case and should settle out of court, which they did for about £4,500 (which in the 1980s was a considerable sum of money). Then, to Peter’s surprise, even though they’d lost the case and a substantial amount of money, he received a bill for over £4,000 from the solicitor.

A week later, Peter was approached by an HR company that offered to look after all of their HR needs and policies in the future to keep them compliant, plus reduce the chances of them being taken to court again. And, if they did, as long as they followed the advice, there was an insurance policy that would pay out for any court costs. Fred and Pete were so impressed by the setup of the HR company that they told the owner to give them a call if ever he needed investment. Six months later he did, and they invested.

Moving forward three and a half years, Peninsula was losing money hand over fist, and Peter and Fred’s accountant told them to pull out and not to invest any more money. Peter spoke to his brother and said that he’d go into the company for six months and see if there was anything there they could salvage or do to push the business forward. When Peter examined what was going on he saw that there was a great team, but very little in the way of a systemised marketing and sales process. He rolled his sleeves up and went to work selling Peninsula products on the road for 7-8 months before he came in-house, set up a team with a marketing and sales process, (including tracking their ratios so they knew what numbers they needed to hit their targets) and the rest is history.

What I see when I go into businesses is exactly what Peter saw when he first went to Peninsula. Great people, but a lack of systems and processes, especially around the marketing and sales sides of the business. So, if this sounds familiar, start focusing on putting processes in place, as this will lead to your ultimate business success.

Without them, you’re just taking a chance that you’ll be successful, which is a bit like playing craps, it’s all down to the roll of the dice