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Here it is your weekly
Chiropractic Marketing Newsletter (week 24)
-Revealing all of the “SECRETS” free of charge
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The Sky Is Falling-Part 3 But I Can’t Afford To Market’ - Do The Math
Do you how often I hear doctors say they can’t afford to market. The real question is how can you afford NOT to market? Most docs want some kind of guarantee that their marketing will work, well I’m here to tell you that some will and some won’t. They want to justify or project the amount of money they should spend and this is reasonable, however most docs don’t know how to do this.
You cannot justify any advertising expense until you know one important number: What is the lifetime value of a patient?
Now this brings me to my second beef; most chiropractors have awful, if any, data or real statistics to speak of. There are few docs who can truly calculate the lifetime value of a patient because they don’t have the capability of pulling those numbers out of their current software and doing it manually takes a very long time. However, it can be done. Once you know the lifetime value of a patient, you can make an informed decision about how much you are willing to pay to acquire a marketing expense plan. We have talked about this in some detail in previous newsletters as well as on the first conference call. Educating yourself in marketing and sales is probably the best investment you could make in your practice. Just think what kind of marketing could be done with the $100,000 spent on one piece of equipment. The real mistake is not spending the money on a piece of equipment; its not budgeting or planning a marketing strategy to generate revenue from the new equipment in order to make a return on that investment.
The Multispecialty Practice Question.
Many docs contact me and ask: ” should I create a multispecialty practice?” According to the Chiropractic Economics Salary Survey of 2007, DC’s earn a higher salary in a multispecialty practice. The salary of a DC in multispecialty practice (MD or DO and/or PT) is $145,676 compared to a solo practitioner salary of $91,952.
But that’s not the whole story, the real question is; can you do it? And is it worth it? Operating a multispecialty practice is not an easy thing to do. Multispecialty clinics offer a whole new complexity to your business. If you have not done a good job managing your current practice, multispecialty has the potential to KILL your practice. Do not consider doing this as a way to save your practice. Another argument against this type of practice is that it used to be the big thing, but you actually sell yourself to the devil because you can become too dependent on the 3rd party payments. The complexities of a multispecialty practice are so voluminous that it’s not for the weak or weary. Few chiropractors have the skills to do this. In addition there is the increased scrutiny from regulatory bodies.
Mistake Number 3:
The Ostrich Syndrome: Burying Your Head and Making Excuses Can you guess what the real reason is for the DEATH of a practice? I call it The Ostrich Syndrome. Doctors bury their heads when it comes to their business because facing reality is just too painful. Inevitably they continue doing the same thing over and over and continue to be disappointed when they don’t get their desired results. While they have their heads in the proverbial sand, many doctors hope that a “practice fairy” like Lenny will come in and fix their problems overnight.
Another thing docs will do is BS themselves into thinking that certain changes will fix everything. For instance, it could be that new staff member. A doctor says, “Once Susie starts, everything will get better!” What we discover is that Susie can only do so much if her boss has his or her head in the sand. Or, a doctor says, “Once I get these back taxes and debts paid off, I can get a paycheck!” Oops, this year’s taxes are due and the interest rate just went up on your credit cards. Or, a doctor says, “When I finish this marketing plan, it will all get better!” Oops, we never implemented it because it was too hard. Or, a doctor says, “When I get this new piece of equipment I can start collecting more!” Oops, I can’t seem to sell it. Or, a doctor says, “I am going to join this practice management company and surely they will have the advice I need” Well we know that this doesn’t really work since all of my January class has been to, on average, 3 of the “big guys” and are still signed with me.
Oops, you are not willing to be honest with your coach because you are embarrassed about how you are currently running your practice? Well, I tell my clients right up front; what I tell them might not be pretty, but it will always be the truth and I expect the same from them. The next thing I always hear is a laundry list of excuses. There are the classic excuses: “It’s my town. Nobody here has any money.” “Insurance companies won’t pay!” “My patients just won’t follow through with care!” “My staff is always whining and complaining and wanting more and more from me!” “I can’t get my staff to do what I ask them to do!” “I am working very hard and I am not making money, my overhead keeps escalating in proportion with the increase in services and collections. I don’t understand” “My associates make more money than I do!” “There is too much competition” “My wife/husband/kids don’t understand how hard this business is.” Or, the final KILLER: “I don’t know what to do it anymore, I have tried everything and nothing works!”
At the risk of seeming cold, I must say “Waa, waa, waa!” Poor, poor pitiful you! Now It’s Time To Take Control And Be Accountable. OK, now I’ll lighten up a bit. But you must realize that these issues, as real as they are to you, are just excuses. If you continue to let these reasons determine your success, you will surely fail. Most of the time, doctors who get to this point, really have worked very hard and can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the lack of vision and the loss of passion that drives the practice right into the ground. So, how do you get it back before the final blow of DEATH? How can you come back from such a frustrated, disappointed state and turn it all around?
The very first thing you must do is get control of the financial aspects of your business. If you have someone else making your financial decisions, DON’T! STOP NOW! No one will take care of your money like you will. Prepare a financial turnaround plan by gathering accurate numbers from your practice and make decisions based on the facts, not your emotions or what you think might be happening.
Make smart changes, such as:
A. If you are in debt, find a way to consolidate and create a debt repayment plan.
B. Determine how you can collect your money and generate cash.
C. If your staff is holding you back, FIRE THEM!
D. If the insurance companies don’t pay, find other cash income streams.
E. If you are having a tough time getting new patients, create a consistent marketing plan, implement it and don’t stop. There really is no problem in a business that can’t be fixed. You just have to be willing to remove yourself and look objectively at what’s really happening in your business.
Will this be a touchy time for you? Probably. But, it’s the not knowing, not having a plan to recover and build your business that causes the stress and, possibly, the DEATH of your practice. Once you face the truth and make a plan, you will finally feel like you are back in control. You will sleep better at night. Now, perhaps you can start working on that vision of where you want to go and regain that passion you once had.
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| Hiring Chiropractic Staff That Will Save You Money & Headaches Having just one great staff member can not only make your practice run smoothly, but also make it grow and be more fun to work in. On the flip side, just one bad staff member can not only give you grief but can actually cost your practice tens of thousands of dollars year after year, in billing errors, patient problems, and staff conflicts. If you miss out on possible new patients, referrals or even current patients (due to lack of follow-up) you have some BIG issues!
Although there is no way to guarantee that the people you hire will be the dream staff we all want there are however some techniques I have found that you can use which will increase your odds of hiring great staff.
The first thing that you can do is to write up a description of your dream staff member. This sounds and looks too simple, but stay with me and you will feel its value.
A very simple concept: you must know what you are looking for if you are going to find it. I have found that when I made a list of all of the great attributes that I liked about previous or current staff members and added other attributes that I dreamed about, it was much easier to do the hiring process.
The process only takes about 15 to 30 minutes to do. Just jot down five things that you really like about each staff member. Compile all of the attributes into a list. Then think of any other attributes that you would like your staff members to have that are not already included.
For example, let’s say your receptionist is friendly, remembers every patients name, gets a 90% show rate, never misses a day and always has a great attitude. That would go in your Perfect Staff Member List A. Then you might want to add some other attributes such as, gets five new referrals every week from talking to patients, volunteers to do spinal screenings. You would then add these attributes to your final list called Perfect Staff Member List B.
Now that you know what you want in a staff member it will be much easier for you to look for and find that person when you do interviews. Think about questions you can ask to see if your interviewee is a possible Perfect Staff Member.
We all know (and it may have happened to several of us) some docs who have hired staff who they thought were incredible, to have them turn into the staff member from hell. I have had several of them myself. I spent over an hour interviewing each of them, had someone from my management company interview them and asked them every possible question under the sun. But what went wrong?
The one simple and quick step that I wish I did (that in some cases would have saved me $$$ in errors by the staff member I hired) was to run a background check.
More and more businesses are dong them, why not you? Now, I don’t mean that you are looking for a criminal background.
What I did find were the following red flags that you should look for:
Multiple jobs over the last few years or year usually means they couldn’t get along with their employers or didn’t want to do the job.
Bad credit report. Means they are not responsible and can’t manage their own money. Do you trust them to manage any aspect of your office?
Late payments on bills or in rent. Once again, if they can’t manage their own finances I don’t want them anywhere near mine.
Evictions or late pays on mortgages or rents. Same reasons as #2 and #3.
Unemployment. Do they really want to work?
Work injuries. Can they do the job duties that you require if they have gotten some form of permanent disability? Or, are they looking for a government handout instead of doing meaningful work?
Criminal history. This is pretty obvious.
Late or missing child support payments. Once again this may show a lack of responsibility.
If you want to hire someone to do background checks you can go to a payroll service.
WARNING!!!! Some of the information that you find in a background check cannot be used or must be used in a certain context for the hiring process. There are federal and state work discrimination laws. As always, I am not a attorney (thank god) and I recommend that you talk to your local labor attorney to make sure you follow your local, state and federal guidelines and laws.
Even if you don’t do a background check at least follow up on references they can supply to you. People that have done business with them in the past and are willing to do it in the future. See how long they lasted at these jobs. Look for gaps of unemployment or just not listing jobs that didn’t work out.
Sometimes former employers are very limited in what they can tell you over the phone but you can pick up the tone of their experience.
Interview the future staff member several times before you hire. Remember - slow to hire, quick to fire rule.
Hiring staff is like new patients in your office, a good one is gold, a bad one can ruin your practice. Weed out the bad and find the good, they can help you build your practice of your dreams!
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The Patient Satisfaction Survey; Both a Source of information and a Marketing Tool
Have you ever stayed at a hotel and then 2-3 days later received an e-mail asking you to rate your stay? Or perhaps you are at a restaurant and squeezed in between the salt and pepper is a customer satisfaction card. Some places even ask you to rate the cleanliness of their restrooms. But here we are, depending on our patients for our livelihoods ever asked, (I don’t mean openly, but anonymously) your patients to complete a practice satisfaction and yet have you survey? For most of you the answer is probably not. Some of you have underground problems that will never come to the surface mainly because most people including your patients don’t want to offend you. But we all know that the hardest problems to fix are the ones we don’t know about.
One of the ways that this can be overcome is through the use of a practice survey. And the best way to do this usually after their third or forth visit, is to hand the survey to the patient and ask them to please complete it. Tell them that you want them to be honest and that they should mail it back in. (Either do it as a self mailer postcard or supply them with a self addressed stamped envelope) Assure the patient that their response will be completely anonymous and that there is no hidden number system or other identifiable marks.
What are you trying to accomplish with a survey? Well the main objective is to improve the quality of your office and the service s you provide. You’re asking a series of questions designed to elicit valuable feedback for ongoing improvements of your practice. I’m not going to design the questionnaire for you, but you know the general complaints that people have. Does the patient feel they have to wait to long? Is the front desk person pleasant and helpful or nasty? Does the doctor answer all of his/her questions? Is the office clean? Etc. You should always include a comments section on your survey.
Now, can your survey be used as a marketing tool? You bet ya! I love marketing guru Seth Godin and have read all of his books , (so should you) in one of his blogs he recently discussed the various ways a survey-and their results-can be used for much more including using it as a marketing tool.One option is to use the survey question as a marketing tactic:
- “You can TEACH people with a survey,” writes Godin, “simply by asking them questions that help them notice things they never noticed before.” For instance, you might ask, “Do your prefer option A or option B?” when the real purpose of the question is to let the participant know that they have an option B.
Another twist uses survey results to influence behavior:
- Godin cites the marketing campaign for Trident, which claimed four out of five dentists recommended the sugarless gum to their patients. “Hardly scientific,” he says, “but publishing the results made dentists feel better about recommending the gum and made people with teeth happier about chewing it.”
So remember: A survey’s usefulness is not limited to gathering data-you might also find that it can be a useful marketing tool.
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| Brain Scans Reveal Emotions Involved When Spending Money
Every article I have written for this newsletter on the topic of marketing has always stressed what all of the great marketing experts like Dan Kennedy have always taught. People buy on emotion not on common sense. If you are going to be good at marketing, you need to understand what makes people tick. And one of the great things about practicing chiropractic is, you are constantly learning about what makes people tick.From a marketing perspective, you want to understand the EMOTIONS behind their decisions to buy one thing instead of another. Why they chose a weekly care plan versus a yearly care plan. Remember even the most logical and intelligent of us still make buying decisions based on emotions. Note, you should still include logical reasoning in your advertising copy because people will justify their decision to others with logic.So for all of you, who think this emotion stuff is a bunch of BS, along comes science to prove us right. Yes research has discovered what we as marketers have known all along and that defies commonly accepted economic principles.
Pleasure of Purchase vs. Pain of Spending Money
A study was conducted with results that challenge the conventional economic wisdom surrounding consumer purchases, which views consumers as deciding between the immediate pleasure of making a purchase and the delayed pleasures of alternative things for which the same money could be used. The results of this paper supports the perspective that views consumers as trading off the immediate pleasure of making a purchase against the immediate pain of forking out the money for the item. The study results can also be used to explain the growing tendency of consumers to overspend when purchasing items with credit cards instead of cash, because consumers do not immediately pay for items charged to credit cards (another major reason you MUST accept credit cards in your office) the “pain” of the potential loss is minimized.All buying decisions are based on emotions. If your advertising copy doesn’t speak to emotions you are wasting your money. You want to be sure you are focusing on the PLEASURE part of the equation in your marketing efforts. That means really making the benefits of chiropractic obvious to your prospective patients. The higher your prices, the more your marketing will need to address the pleasure the BENEFITS from using chiropractic services so that it outweighs any perceived ‘pain’ from paying your fees. People will spend any amount of money to get what they really want. It’s up to you to make your hypnosis services highly desirable through your marketing efforts.
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| Why should you listen to me?
I worked hard and not smart for over 25 years. I now have a thriving practice having with more fun and profit than ever. I always wanted better ways of dealing effectively with challenges, without sacrificing a rich private life. Like you, the last thing I want is more weekends away from my family and fun. That’s why I spent the last five years developing and testing my coaching program.”Why would you pay another consultant thousands of dollars, plus travel expenses, for you and your staff, lose income being out of your office or quality time with your family (weekends, vacations, etc) when you can have all the Practice Building and Marketing information you need at an affordable rate with? There are no hidden expenses, no upsells or $3000.00 boot camps to push, because I give it all to you for one very low monthly price of just $100 and you get 100% of my support. My January 2008 class is sold out. In order for me to give you the personalized attention that most of you need I only accept 10-12 people a session, so please if you are interested in joining me for the April 1st class, let me know now, it will fill up very quickly. If your situation is truly desperate and you truly (don’t BS me) can’t afford the money right now but would like to be part of the April program, contact me and I will defer you monthly payements until you start making some money. But please, don’t take advantage of me, if you can afford it don’t tell me you can’t.
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| Tips on Overcoming Patients Who Want to Drop OutPatients often feel better after the first few treatments, and although this may seem advantageous, the opposite can sometimes be true as well. Patients often mistake this feeling for a total cure of their condition. Patients simply don’t realize that relief of their symptoms DOES NOT indicate that a correction of their condition has occurred. These patients want to discontinue treatment before their complaint has been corrected, and if they are allowed to do so, further complications are bound to develop. To avoid these complications, a detailed explanation of treatment procedures is often the best course to follow. Listed below are some suggested patient responses for you or your CA to use to explain to the patient why he/she should not stop care:
1. Do you remember that in the beginning the doctor said if you’re only interested in relieving pain, it would be cheaper and wiser to take pain pills? You said you wanted your condition corrected. We are just beginning to correct this problem, and if you want this relief to last, the problem must be corrected or it will simply return.
2. Even though that seems to be your decision, Mr. _______, the doctor would like to talk to you about it, and, if necessary, tell you what you can continue to do to improve your condition.
3. The doctor must feel you need more treatments or he wouldn’t have had you make this/these appointments. Why don’t you wait and talk to him about this matter?
4. Mrs. _______, you are just starting the corrective phase of treatment. Now we are ready to correct the basic problem. To stop now would be like stopping to rest in the middle of the river when you are too tired to swim any more.
5. Since you haven’t been released from the doctor’s care, he must not think your condition is stable. If you want to function under normal routine conditions without care, you need to continue treatment.
6. If we don’t go ahead and completely take care of your condition, your symptoms will come back. Then we’ll have to start treatment all over again, and the work we’ve done so far will be lost.
7. Your condition is similar to a decayed tooth. You may not feel any pain whatsoever when you have a decayed tooth, but the tooth has a deep cavity and unless it’s filled it will eventually deaden the whole tooth. That’s the same as your absence of pain. Just because it’s gone doesn’t mean the condition is corrected.
8. I’m glad to hear that the pain is gone, but I doubt that the underlying condition is totally corrected. At least keep your appointment today and discuss the matter with the doctor.
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PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS TED KOREN CONFIRMED
I have spoken to my friend Ted Koren, DC, he has agreed to do a conference call on MONDAY JANUARY 17TH AT 9 PM (EST). Ted will be discussing how to successfully market your practice using printed materials. For those of you who think this will be a sales pitch for Ted’s products, you’re dead wrong. There will be no sales pitch; Ted will discuss the issues of vaccination, government regulation, cash practices, and much more. People pay a great deal of money to hear Ted; he is a featured speaker at the Masters Circle and other state and national meetings. I guarantee that you will leave the call with at least 2 great ideas that will make you money the next day.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 am and is filed under Weekly Newsletter Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.
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