If you are new to the membership type of business model, you may liken it to a gym or tanning membership in that customers are able to pay per visit at a higher fee or save money by signing up for a membership.
To ensure the cost for the services can be kept at a reasonable and lower fee schedule than most clinics, we set all membership customers up on an auto-debit system. This simply means that a customer’s credit card, debit card or checking account information is managed and processed monthly by a reputable 3rd party service.
By using an outside service the office does not require the extra man power associated with tracking and taking a payment from hundreds of patients monthly.
This saves the office money which is passed on to the customer as a lower fee for service and lower fee for monthly memberships.
However, that doesn’t answer the question of ‘WHY’ the membership model works so well.
Imagine that you have 10 patients join your membership, each paying a reasonable monthly fee for care. Let’s say $100 each for simplicity sake.
That is $1,000 cash.
The next month you add another 10 members. You now have 20 total and made $2,000 this month.
The 3rd month you get 10 more but perhaps 2 members drop off. You gained a net of 8 members and so you are up to 28 members at this point.
Now imagine this just continues month after month. And as long as you continue to get more members than you lose, you continue to grow. And this is happening all while your patient base of ‘pay as you go’ patients is also growing.
Over time your monthly income can become quite hefty.