Vickie Byard, CVT, VTS (Dentistry)
I was asked to co-present in a workshop called Rock’em Sock’em Dentals with Bash Halow, LVT, CVPM, his Halow Tassava Consulting partner Brenda Tassava, CVPM, CVJ and Howard Gittleman, DVM. The focus of this workshop was to give practices the opportunity to look at their dentistry profit centers from a “holistic” point of view (in this case, holistic meaning; from a whole hospital perspective) to increase client compliance. The workshop was divided into practice departments; veterinarians, veterinary technicians, management and client service representatives. Each presenter had the opportunity to discuss and “tweak” the roles each member has on dentistry activities.
Brenda Tassava spoke about the importance of using social media to connect with your clients. As I listened, I was blown away by her breadth of knowledge on this subject. I was pretty satisfied with my efforts with PetED’s social media campaign. I had created a website on my own. I had a Pet ED Facebook account where I frequently posted educational cases. I had a Twitter account and I created a blog. But, was I getting the desired effects from all that work? And the answer was “no”. For me, it was a “no-brainer”. I had to hire an expert.
Once Brenda had a chance to look over all of my efforts, she sweetly and gently told me…”Vickie, you are doing everything right. You’re just doing it all wrong.” Despite the time I had invested, because there was much I had not been taught, nor had the opportunity to learn, I had not been making the contact with my audience as I had hoped.
That’s the power behind asking someone that has chosen to concentrate all of their efforts into a specific discipline. While consulting and training, I have often witnessed frustration by staff members with skills they weren’t necessarily taught in school. But, when a trainer comes in to see where the problems lie, they look at the same situation through the lens of their extensive experience. What a joy it is to watch someone move from a place of frustration to comfort and ease just with some gentle guidance. Personally, I don’t mind sharing that, as a trainer, I know what doesn’t work only because I have already made all of the mistakes myself.
So, with Brenda’s expert guidance, PetED is in the throws of changing from an old website to a new and more powerful site. We are developing this website as a source of education and services. One of the cool functions of the site will be for our trainers to generate blogs such as this to connect with you and to update you with the growth of PetED and as a source of education related to many aspects of veterinary medicine.
