[QUOTE: Lee Corso, American sports broadcaster] "Business is nothing more than relationships. It's the secret."
Relationships are everything, whether in your personal life, your veterinary clinic team, or your relationship with clients, according to Cindy Trice, DVM, founder of Relief Rover (now part of Hound). And it is no different when it comes to relief veterinarians.
Relief vets are not just warm bodies with veterinary degrees who babysit the practice. They are business-to-business service providers who work to support your practice through a maternity or paternity leave, vacation, continuing education, illness, associate search, or increase in service demand. Building strong relationships with several relief practitioners before you need them will increase your chances of filling those shifts when necessary.
Here are some tips on meeting and building lasting business relationships with relief practitioners.
Post a Job Before You Need One
Post a job on Relief Rover, even if you do not have specific dates. This is a great way to feature your practice and let relief vets know why they should want to form a relationship with your business. Think of it like a dating site. Relief Rover's simple-to-use template gives you an opportunity to describe your amazing team, diagnostic tools, welcoming culture, and even feature a video walk-through of your practice.
Interview Relief Vets Early
Interview relief vets, once again, even if you do not have specific dates. It will be well worth the time. Ideally, invite them to take a tour of your practice and meet your team. If this is not possible due to schedules, protocols, or geography, arrange a video interview. You can learn so much about each other via a video call, and there are many platforms that make this simple to accomplish. If a video call is not possible, a phone call is better than nothing.
Maintain the Relationship
Maintain these relationships once they are in place. Ideas for strengthening your bond with relief professionals include inviting them to team parties, offering employee discounts on product purchases for their own pets, giving end-of-year gift card bonuses, or giving them a heads-up on local continuing education opportunities they may not hear about any other way.
With the supply of relief vets being far less than the demand for their services, relief professionals have choice about where they work. Just as you put effort into bonding pet parents to your practice, knowing they have many options for veterinary care, building and maintaining relationships with multiple relief veterinarians will be well worth the effort. So do not wait. Reach out and meet a relief vet today.