Robert Sanchez

About

Robert Sanchez is the founder and CEO of Digital Empathy, a renowned veterinary marketing agency. He is a frequent lecturer at conferences, where he is known for thought-inspiring talks on leadership, culture, marketing, and communication which are informed by a deep understanding of human behavior and psychology. Robert is an avid reader who is interested in philosophy, cognitive science, behavior science, and trauma.

Topic: Marketing/Building Client Relationship

Certified Veterinary Practice Managers (CVPM) CE Requirement
CVPMs must accumulate 48 continuing education hours and submit documentation along with the current recertification fee every two years to the Veterinary Hospital Managers Association (VHMA). 22 hours of continuing education credits for recertification are offered at the 2023 Pacific Veterinary Conference.

Marketing 101

To many veterinary professionals, marketing can seem nebulous, difficult to measure, and even vaguely threatening. We need a first principles-based approach in order to empower your practice to make good decisions, measure results, and attract more of the right kind of clientele to become long-term clients. We will start from the ground up: explaining the modern customer journey, the principles behind lead funnels, and the major KPIs to measure. We will also cover the fundamentals of how to build your strategy, measure it, and refine based on the data.

3:30 PM-4:20 PM

How to Build Better Relationships

Humans behave differently in social relationships compared to economic (or “transactional”) relationships. Our danger, in the veterinary profession, is continuing to push the needle towards transactional relationships with clients. This causes an erosion of trust, loyalty, warmth, and goodwill in client relationships, and affects staff morale, compliance rates, client satisfaction, and financial performance. In this talk, you will learn how to build social relationships instead of transactional relationships. You will learn strategy, tactics, and execution that will create a sustainable roadmap to have higher quality client relationships that will create more productive and satisfying interactions.

4:30 PM-5:20 PM

Marketing to Millennials and Gen-Z

Millennials and Gen-Z has quickly disrupted entire industries and are now the largest pet-owning demographic in the United States. We think differently. We shop differently. We feel differently about our pets. And we have new expectations for our veterinary practices. It pays to understand us. In this talk, you will get a crash-course in Millennial and Gen-Z thinking as it relates to pets and veterinary care—from how we choose you, to why we stay, to how we’ll spend, and everything in between.

Monday, June 12, 2023

8:30 AM-9:20 AM

How to Do ‘Demand Generation’

Social media has fundamentally changed the way people connect, talk, and share. But it’s a mistake to try to reach everyone on social media. Really, the imperative is to reach a particular kind of person—the kind of person who loves their pets like family, who believes in the value of veterinary medicine, and who will brag about you to your friends. This talk is all about how to reach them. And when you do, you thrive.

9:30 AM-10:20 AM

Doubling Your Website’s Traffic

Your website’s primary job is to build as many great relationships with well-fitting prospective clients as possible. The rate-limiting step is usually the amount of traffic that your website gets. There are common and simple mistakes and errors of omission that many veterinary practices make, and this leads to stifled traffic performance. In this talk, we will go over a gold-standard traffic strategy, including how to leverage SEO, your Google Business Profile, and targeted ads to double your traffic and attract more well-fitting clients.

10:30 AM-11:20 AM

Defining Your Brand and the Power of Story

We use story to deepen our understanding of who we are as human beings, who our tribe is, and the kind of world we live in. We love stories—we are born for them. A surprising discovery was made in the 1950s: in literature, we tell the same story over and over. The archetype is called “The Hero’s Journey.” Apple and Nike use it to speak differently to their customers, to tell a story about their hopes and dreams, and ultimately, their transformation. And it has challenged everything we know about marketing, culture, and even the story we tell ourselves. Travel with me, and let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

11:50 AM-12:40 PM

Fixing the Front Desk

The primary job of your front desk is to build and nurture great relationships with your client base. But CSRs are often undertrained or are too busy being busy in order to fulfill this vital function. In this talk, you will learn how to train your team to be more effective at building relationships and booking appointments over the phone, creating lasting, meaningful impressions and becoming one of the most valuable roles at your practice.

12:50 PM-1:40 PM

Why Clients Leave

It hurts to lose a client. It can feel like failure. It’s also a threat to our businesses’ viability and growth. Typically, when we study why clients leave, we investigate the specific instances that cause churn among our clientele. But this is to treat the symptom, not the disease. Churn is the end result of a long chain of events that we must trace to its origin. The root cause is almost always related to leadership and culture. These words are thrown around so much that they feel uncomfortably close to platitudes. In this talk, we’ll approach the subject from a different angle—one rooted in biology and psychology, and one that can provide clear guidance and actionable advice.