Income tip: A major contributor to your veterinary income is your individual turnover.
I have worked in many practices and once I learned that my turnover contributed to my income, I become aware of what I was charging. I also began to notice what I was forgetting, not charging for, when I become uncomfortable about fees and what my top price ceiling was.
Be mindful in every veterinary consult of what you have done.
Have you charged for it?
Common missed charges in consultations may be:
- the bandage,
- ear smear,
- FNA,
- a fluorescein stain,
- injections and
- your time.
You may think a missed charge in a consult isn’t much.
But this occurs more than once a day in practice. It occurs in the consultation room, the hospital, the laboratory and the surgery. The cumulative effect over a year is many tens of thousands of dollars in missed turnover for each veterinarian. This is a significant loss in potential income for you.
By increasing your turnover, you are in a better position to negotiate a salary increase.
It is much easier to negotiate a salary increase when your turnover exceeds the cost of employing you.
A veterinarian’s biggest frustration…
Years ago when I asked veterinarians worldwide what their biggest frustration was, income was one of the top three.
Once I realised how many charges were being missed in practice every year, I knew that if I could help veterinarians reverse this, I could help them easily increase their turnover and income. This doesn’t just impact the individual veterinarian. It will impact the practice, the practice owner and all the team. It’s a win/win for everyone.
However, you can’t just tell vets to charge more.
You have to address why it is occurring and help them to overcome these challenges.
- Is it because they don’t know how to discuss fees with clients?
- Are they uncomfortable with the charges in practice?
- Are they lacking confidence or clients keeping saying no?
- Do they get overwhelmed and run out of time so they forget?
- Are they just too busy?
Or..if you have a question for Natasha about how you can go about increasing your salary, why not ask her in the Comments section below?
