If you want patients you must SELL THEM on your practice

I always knew chiropractors don't consider themselves the same as everyone else. Now I'm sure of this. A few days ago, a chiropractor told me: "I'm not selling anything."

Really?! What is the best way to get patients - to SELL THEM on the concept of chiropractic and how you can help them by providing chiropractic care to them.

What is selling? The Free Dictionary (online) says (with my edits) :

1. To exchange or deliver for money or its equivalent.

2. To offer for sale, as for one's business or livelihood: The partners sell chiropractic care

5.

a. To bring about or encourage sales of; promote: Good publicity sold the person on chiropractic.

b. To cause to be accepted; advocate successfully: We sold our services to the prospective patient.

6. To persuade (another) to recognize the worth or desirability of something: They sold me on the idea.

v.intr.

3. To attract prospective buyers; be popular on the market: an item that sells well (like chiropractic care)

4. To be approved of; gain acceptance, as in "chiropractic is selling...."

You are selling two things:
1. chiropractic in general
2. your practice as the choice for chiropractic care

Don't be afraid to get out there and sell.

Customer Service is Marketing

I always say that marketing is "Everything you do to GET and KEEP patients." Jay Conrad Levinson said it best in his classic book: Guerrilla Marketing; I just said it more succinctly. So, following that idea, it just makes sense that customer service must be considered as part of your marketing effort. If you spend lots of great money on ads so that people will call and ask for your service, you must then follow through to be certain that the experience people have with your service is EXCEPTIONAL. EVERY TIME. (Sorry, I get carried away with the caps sometimes, but I want you to visualize how important this concept is.) If you have a great ad and you don't follow through when people call or when they come into your office for a first appointment, you not only have wasted your advertising dollars, you have cost your practice much more, because people tell others about their experiences.

Case in point: Our cat was having problems and we were going out of town last weekend. We needed him looked at by a veterinarian right away. My husband called the vet that someone had recommended. After "hello," he heard, "Please hold." And he waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, he pressed the "end" button and said, "I don't care how good Diane said they were; we won't be going there." We called another vet, got a friendly, helpful person on the phone, and we were able to bring the cat in immediately and be on our way.

See what I mean? Most professionals live on recommendations. That's the way it works. But if your front office people don't get it, you have a problem.

Marketers understand the psychology of the buying process. After someone makes a decision to "buy," they begin what's called "post-purchase behavior." That is, they begin to evaluate whether they made the right decision. So when they call the office to make that first appointment, and when they come in for that first visit, they are evaluating. This is especially true for chiropractic services, if they are unfamiliar with chiropractic.

Maximize your marketing dollars by creating a fantastic customer service system in your office:
1. Make sure each one of your staff members understands the importance of EXCEPTIONAL customer service.
2. Put in place specific protocols for phone service and first visit (and every other visit, for that matter), to be sure prospects and new patients are treated with courtesy.

Eternal vigilance.

The Secret for Entrepreneurs

I subscribe to way too many blogs, newslettes, and e-zines, but I always get great stuff from them.
Here is a post from the Solo Entrepreneur which discusses concepts from The Secret:

http://www.workingsolo.com/biztools/articles/secretforsoloists.html

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Re-Invent Yourself

A dentist friend told me some time ago: You must re-invent yourself every six months or so.

This sounds like pretty short time frame, and it doesn't mean an "extreme make-over," but it should mean that every six months you sit back and ask, "What's working? What isn't?" and consider your marketing options.

Here are some examples :

Take a look at your web page. Does it need refreshed? Do you need to add new material?

What have you done lately to tell your patients that you appreciate them? Should you get a focus group together to get input from patients?

What have you done for your staff? Have they lost the excitement of working there? If you want them to stay, you might consider a fun day to plan some new activities or events or a new marketing look.

Do you run ads in a local "shopper" or the high school newspaper? If they have been running more than six months, they probably need re-freshed, since people stop looking after a while.

While you may still get new patients from referrals, if you don't do a "re-invention" every so often, I'll bet your patient numbers will gradually diminish as people lose interest. Think about it this way: If you don't care enough about your practice to keep things interesting, why should they keep coming back?

Find new advertising venues, find new places to present yourself to the public, new ways to excite your staff and your patients. Don't sit on the old; look toward the new.

Re-invent yourself!

For more ideas, check out this blog, and a great new marketing book: Beyond Niche Marketing
The author, Kathy Hendershot-Hurd, has many years of experience in marketing, and her book makes it easy to get energized.