All is well! That’s what my doctor usually says to me when I visit him. It is nothing related to medicine or my illness but he is rather releasing positive vibes so that I feel less worried.
But I’m not going to talk about positivity today, positivity and manifestation is completely different subject and maybe for next time. Today, I’m still going to talk about doctors but going to discuss some valuable business lessons that we can learn from them.
Business is all about systematic process and practice because at the end of the day any business is founded on the key principles and the right system.
So, to create a right system for your business the key principles are customer research, product positioning and product pricing.
You might be wondering what does it have to do with doctors and what business lessons you can learn from them.
Ask why?
So here’s the deal. I’m going to break down each of the valuable business lessons that we can learn from doctors and then correlate each lesson with the same stages that doctors follow in their medical practice.
Without any further ado, let’s get started.
3 Valuable Business Lessons You Need To Learn From Doctors
Lesson 1: Customer research vs Patient diagnosis
Doctors THOROUGHLY diagnose the patient before coming to any decision. They will check the heart beats, veins, eyes, blood sugar level, stool, urine etc. This is the first step of examination and this process is much related to customer research in business.
Customer research is the first step before you create your product, position your product and finally price your product. Understanding your customer/audience thoroughly will make your life, business and further process or stages much easier.
Customer research is all about knowing your audience, identifying your audience needs, finding out your audience pain points, your audience current requirements and so on.
Thus, before you start selling any product, do your front loading work just like doctor’s initial thorough diagnosis. If the real life savers on the planet – doctors do the frontloading work to successfully cure or save the patient’s life, then why can’t we as a business owners or founders or entrepreneurs learn this valuable business lesson and do the same for setting up a successful business?
See also: 13 Ways To Raise Funds For Your Startup
Moving on to the second valuable business lesson.
Lesson 2: Product positioning vs Surgery or General medicines
After a thorough diagnosis, doctor comes to conclusion whether the patient needs a surgery or will be cured with general medicines. This step is much related to the product positioning in business.
Doctors don’t make a decision from a thin air, they make a decision based on examination report or diagnosis report which comes from their initial patient diagnosis. They don’t say to their patients as soon as they enter their practice/clinic for the first time:
“come on lie down, I’ll bring the scissors and knife, let’s cut that out”
Thus, proper customer research helps you make a right decision leading to a strong product positioning strategy.
If you analyse your customer/audience properly you would have the right data to make a right decision on which product to position when and in front of which customer.
Because it is all about positioning the right product, in front of the right customer and at the right time.
For example, it doesn’t make any sense to position your meat product in front of vegan or a female sanitary pads in front of male customers. Your product positioning strategy completely depends upon your customer research.
So, if doctors use the patient diagnosis report to make a critical decision to determine whether surgery or general medicine is required, then why can’t we as business owners or founders or entrepreneurs learn this valuable business lesson from doctors and make a product positioning decision based on customer research data rather than positioning any random product in front of random customers?
Lesson 3: Product pricing vs Prescription or Medical bill
Once the patient has either been operated or cured with some kind of general medicine, he or she is presented with either medical prescription or medical bill for surgery accordingly. This is much related to product pricing in business.
After prescribing some kind of general medicine, doctors are unlikely to say ‘$12,000 please, I gave you a life-saving capsules, please take them 3 times a day’. They’ll take money based only on medical service provided.
Relating this situation to the product pricing in business, pricing needs to be strategic and it is only going to be if you have a base of right product positioning strategy.
For example, if we label the Louis Vuitton price on some ordinary bag and position them in front of some wealthy rich person, do you think they will buy? Of course not. Just because they can afford it, it doesn’t mean that they will buy it.
Another scenario – you have a small studio apartment in the city center which you plan to list on Airbnb for renting at a rate of $1,000 per night. Why would someone rent that studio room for $1,000 per night if they have an access to Marriot or Hilton five-star hotel room in the city centre at a rate of $800 per night?
The conclusion here is that the right pricing strategy is required to price your product. You pricing doesn’t need to be HIGH OR LOW, it just needs to be a right one.
The valuable business lesson to be learned here is that to imply a strategic pricing to your product without you getting ripped off or ripping off your customers. It is absolutely possible to imply strategic product pricing if you have done a proper customer research and have developed the product positioning strategy based on that customer research data.
Conclusion
One thing is clear, whether it is a business or a medical profession, it is all about understanding your audience, positioning the right product and labeling the right price.
The terms may vary in these two professions but the meanings are the same.
The mission of a doctor is to save a patient’s life while the mission of any business owner or an entrepreneur is to make life better for customer/audience and themselves.
So whether you are an entrepreneur or planning to become one, make sure that you take these three valuable business lessons from doctors, absorb them into your blood and then start selling your product.
It’s your turn now. Tell us what else you think you can learn from doctors that is valuable and can relate and be implemented in our business. I genuinely look forward to your comments.
Photo credit: Pixabay.com
