Planning is well advanced for our first ever Gala Open Day event next weekend on December 3rd. The event is designed to help recent delegates on our Botox courses or other cosmetic training courses. The event will include presentations to help you grow and develop your business in the Aesthetic industry and will include discussion of topics such as:

 Creating a Business Plan
 Extending your expertise
 Increasing your profits
 Prescribing – the legal context
 New products and procedures
 Future developments in the industry
 Making the most of your website
 High impact internet marketing

As well as recent delegates, anyone planning to attend any of our cosmetic courses in the near future will also find it useful.

This is also going to be a social occasion with wine and refreshments plus opportunities to network with colleagues. This is a FREE event – so if you haven’t confirmed your attendance yet please get in touch straight away to secure your place.

Hi. This is my first blog for Cosmetica Training so please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Gareth Williams and I have just started working for Tracy and Neil at Cosmetica as a Business Development Co-ordinator. I have been friends with Tracy and Neil for a long time and I have many years’ experience of managing a training and consultancy company in the University sector. When the opportunity came along, I was delighted to join Tracy and Neil at Cosmetica. Cosmetica is already the premier provider of cosmetic training courses in the North West. We plan to be No 1 nationwide.

I am new to the cosmetic training industry and I have a lot to learn about Botox training and the other services we offer. These are very exciting times for me and for everyone at Cosmetica and I look forward to getting to know all our customers. We have great ideas for the future so WATCH THIS SPACE

If you have developed and implemented the strategies suggested so far, you should have a number of clients stored on your database and will have successfully treated them.  Have you any thoughts on what to do from here?  Would you wait for them to contact you for another treatment or are you going to keep in contact with them?

If you wish to retain them as clients why not keep in contact with them, offer them further appointments and keep them updated with any new treatments that you offer?  Your clients know  you and the results you achieve so far, so it should be easy to sell them further services.  If you keep in contact with them and they do not get back in touch should you assume that you have lost them as a customer?  If so, what do you envisage your next steps should be?

The best thing you can do in this instance is write to them personally, thanking them for their custom and apologise for any action you have done which may have lost them as a customer following your training in cosmetic courses.  You can always add an incentive for them to return to you, maybe enclose a discount voucher that can be redeemed off their next treatment or something else that is seen as valuable. There is no real reason to lose clients forever, but you must develop a strategy to regain any temporary loss of clients that you experience.

Now that you have recorded those vital pieces of information from your callers have you developed a strategy on what you are going to do with that information?  If you are storing it on a database then you need to have a Data Protection Number, however, if the information is to be hand written onto a piece of paper then no DPN is reported to be required.  How often are you going to contact that new caller, will you just phone them once, twice maybe three or four times?  It has been suggested that sometimes people may not buy from you until you have contacted them at least 14 times so do not give up, equally do not bombard them daily with messages saying “Buy from me”.

You need to offer them an incentive to purchase and to ascertain what incentive is going to be most effective. If you are targeting botox liverpool, it may be that you do not advertise the price of botox (as this would also be against MHRA legislation) but that you offer a free skin peel or vitamin c serum with any anti-wrinkle injection or any purchase.  We have known one practitioner offer a free skin peel to the first 50 callers, they then tried to softly convert them into having a course of peels which covered the cost of the free peel that they gave away, or advised on a certain cream to use and the profit from that cream paid for the cost of the peel.  Whilst the latter may not have brought in any profit, they did get 50 new contacts in the process.

After a clarification in guidelines to NMC registrants about botox administration, it appears that the General Dental Council (GDC) are also following suit.  Are we now becoming a society where remote prescribing of botox will come to an end?

As of 6th October, the GDC issued a statement to say that no dentist is allowed to prescribe botox remotely, which means that if a dentist continues to remotely prescribe this POM for a non prescriber, whatever their qualification, they will face the fitness to practice panel and could face losing their registration.

An arguement for remote prescribing is that any patient regardless of their location can gain access to medicine especially in emergency situations.  It gives non prescribing injectors access to medicines when the prescriber is in another location.

However, professional guidelines mean nurses cannot administer botox from a remote prescription and may be forced into breaking legislation by not being directed to administer the required dose that the prescriber has assessed the patient as needing.

The General Medical Council (GMC) have strict guidelines on remote prescribing in general stating it should only be used from time to time, that the Doctor follows strict criteria on how and when they can remote prescribe and that it is not as a general means of prescribing medicine.

Now that the GDC have stated Dentists should not prescribe botox remotely, the GMC are clear on when remote prescribing is suitable and the NMC do not allow remote prescribing for botox, are we being faced with a future of every nurse doing their V300 course and a cessation to non healthcare professionals obtaining botox supplies?

You have figured out what works with regards to advertising for Botox Liverpool, you have stopped wasting money on marketing strategies that do not work and you happily answer your phone as soon as it rings.  Are you able to turn that enquiry into a sale? Do you answer their questions and allow them to get back to you?  If so, you may well be turning away business.

Medical professionals are told in the NHS that you must not accept gifts from patients, however, when you run a business you must ask for the sale.  When a potential new client calls you asking about treatments that you offer and asks for time to consider their options you should be thinking about when to contact them again.  It has been suggested that people do not buy from you from the first contact, it may take 10 – 15 contacts of some description to buy from you so how are you keeping a record of your callers.

From the start you should record as much information that they are willing to part with so that you can contact them in the future.  You have paid for an advert to gain new contacts and you must make the most of them. Attending a course on sales techniques is essential to learn how to close a deal without being pushy and alienating your client.

These tips are based around medical professionals who have undertaken cosmetic courses with us however, they can be applied to any business to ensure you make the most out of  your earning potential.

If you are a new business you need to carry out marketing strategies to allow your future customers to be aware of your services.  As a business that wants to grow you need to gain new customers as well as retaining current customers.  This can be done by effectively using proven marketing strategies where expenditure will lead to added revenue.

Most people will place adverts in papers and keep their fingers crossed,  hoping that the phone will ring, they will sometimes place the same adverts in many of the local papers or create a free website waiting for potential clients to visit it.  When you receive a phone call, do you ask the most important question; “How did you hear about us?” You need confirmation of where they have seen your advertisement, a simple I saw your ad is not enough.  You need to ascertain which paper or magazine they saw it in.  If you placed 5 adverts in 5 papers you may only be getting enquiries from 1 advert.

So ask the question, which paper was it?  If every caller states the same answer then you know that the other 4 adverts aren’t working and you should STOP advertising in those 4 newspapers.  Alternatively, put a unique code to quote so you can trace the original source.  When you know what works continue with that method.

The content of the advert is important also, what is more effective?:

1. Botox Liverpool now available at £150 per area
2. Free consultations to a younger looking you

The first strap line is not only illegal, as you cannot advertise a POM to the general public but what is the incentive for someone to pick up the phone and call you? Many injectors in Liverpool offer botox for £150 so you need to give them a reason to call you.  The second strap line uses a very powerful word, free, it is eye catching, it has that x factor, people like getting things for free, I certainly do! It is also talking to the person, now I wouldn’t recommend using that particular strap line, there are better phrases you can use to catch people’s attention.  Adverts need to talk to the reader, you need to give them a compelling reason to pick up the phone and book an appointment to come and see you.

Two of Cosmetica’s staff were fortunate to be able to attend a mastery training weekend on business management and leadership.  The speakers thrilled the guests with their knowledge and experience of business, including how to raise the profile of your brand, developing strategic level thinking and implementing firm leadership skills using a proven framework.

On the final day we were able to produce a business plan in 18 minutes giving us 3 things that we had to do the following week.  By Monday we had achieved 1 item on the list and had a written strategy for the second, whilst the third is being implemented over the next few days.

We will write a further blog on how to write a business plan that will be realistic to achieve and grow your business.

An after dinner speach was given by Ben Hunt Davies, olympic gold medal winner and author of Will it make the boat go faster?  The strategy he and his team had to win the boat race was to only do things that would make the boat go faster.  They watched the opening ceremony from their hotel room as attending it and spending hours away from training would not make their boat go faster.  He produced firm evidence of showing that if the context was right the content would be managable and obvious.

The action plan that we came away with was a clear strategy on how to excel further in our botox training and cosmetic courses to ensure we continue to improve the level of service that we provide to our delegates.

Medical professionals are highly qualified to undertake a wide range of foundation and advanced cosmetic courses, whilst training can be easily sought, setting up a business may not always be as easy to some.  The cost of training initially can be expensive and this is recognised by Cosmetica Training.  We have therefore produced a variety of business in  a box offers that will help you recoup the cost of your training fee meaning you could receive Botox training free of charge.

When undertaking our chemical peel course at a cost of £450 + VAT , you will receive a 4 peel TCA kit free of charge that will enable you to earn £600 undertaking 1 peel on 4 patients or 1 course of 4 peels on 1 patient that you will charge £550 for.

Booking our dermaroller course for just £415 + VAT, will give you 2 dermarollers for which you can earn a total of £500. For delegates who wish to book both chemical peel and dermaroller training, a multiple course booking discount of 10% will be applied, allowing you to train in both procedures for just £778 + VAT.  You will still be eligible to receive both business in a box kits allowing you to earn up to £1100.

The same benefits can be achieved from booking onto our botox and dermal filler training course.  The business in a box for this course consists of all the consumables you would need to undertake your first few dermal filler and Botox treatments, as well as a syringe of Juvederm Ultra, a vial of Azzalure and a vial of Botox * The products in this business in a box can earn you up to £1050.

*terms and conditions apply

We were asked on the telephone recently “Why should I train with you?”  We had never been asked this question before so we told the caller the benefits of our cosmetic courses and what makes us different.  Cosmetica staff had previously avoided comparing our courses to the Botox training sessions provided by other companies as we believe in promoting the benefits of our training such as our pioneering e-learning approach to training.

In view of the number of mentorship sessions we are running following medical professionals undertaking training with other training providers, we decided to compare our cosmetic courses to some of the most popular training courses in the UK.  We compared our Botox training courses and Combined Botox and Dermal Filler training course in the following areas:

• Duration of course
• Combined or individual days
• Number of delegates on each course
• Number of models we could inject
• Cost

Things that we identified included one company who were willing to offer advanced training the day after undertaking their foundation course and that all of the other training providers that offer cosmetic courses, only allow their delegates to inject one model.

Would you be competent after treating only one person during the day of your training session and would you be happy paying an average of £671 for this?

Cosmetica allow you a full day of injection experience where you inject more than one model and you can attend our Combined Botox and Dermal Filler course for just £834.  As we have a maximum of eight delegates per course and book in over 25 models we guarantee to offer the most amount of injection experience with training given by experienced, knowledgeable tutors.

There is only one other company we found that sometimes allowed their delegates to inject more than one person on their Botox course, however, our courses are not like for like as their practical experience only takes place in the afternoon rather than over the full day as it does with Cosmetica.

So next time we are asked “Why should I train with you?” we can categorically say we are the best training company in the UK as we provide more practical experience than any other aesthetic training provider.