Have you tried telemarketing in a desperate attempt to get new patients?
Were you were quite unsatisfied with the result? Could you even call them results?
Let's start with what you know happened. You spent $2,000 to $3000 on telemarketing that was guaranteed to get you ten arrivals. Ten showed up and told you "I don't know why I'm here". You concluded you wasted over $2,000. Sound about right?
What really happened?
What's Wrong With New Patient Telemarketing?
There is really nothing wrong with it. Telemarketing is no different a concept than patient referral, chiropractic screenings or any other new-patient-generating activity. In fact, all practice promotion is just a way to contact the public, a channel on which to deliver a message. The message is up to you.
Just because telemarketers provide such a communication channel doesn't discount that they are not usually communicating the right things at all. Even when a doctor provides the company with insight on what to say to prospects, if he himself doesn't understand what motivates new patient prospects, there can yet be little result. Doctors who haven't honed screening skills to abide certain screening rules have little advice to help telemarketers get any better qualified prospects and telemarketing fails again.
So what's wrong with telemarketing is lack of good direction, even when apparent "direction" is actually provided by the chiropractor himself.
What Makes Qualified Prospective New Patients Show Up To Your Office?
It is difficult to look at a situation and decide what went wrong when you don't know the anatomy of what "going right" looks like. Without defining the ideal scenario and methods, all work toward better-qualified leads is at best random.
Take the most qualified new patient who ever arrived to your clinic for an introductory consult. What made him take action? The answer to that question opens the door to how to handle your local telemarketer on what to say.
How Can Screening Technology Improve Telemarketers' Quality and Quantity?
Telemarketing is a mere unsolicited contact of a public individual via a "cold call" in attempt to enlighten him on an offer you would like him to inspect and, hopefully, take you up on.
How that is any different than what your screeners do. Chiropractic screening teams make unsolicited contact of public people and get them interested in an offer. That's all they do.
It follows therefore that these practice marketing methods follow the same basic principles and a simple application of screening principles can be applied to success in this other communication medium if you know the key factors of screening technique that effect a desire to accept your offer.
Can Telemarketing Actually Succeed? There Is Hope...
The secret to make telemarketing succeed is insight into the patient prospect himself. Just as it is at a screening, the job is to get new patient leads onto the subject, get him to talk about himself and get him to want something you can provide. Don't you think this would change your net result?
If you can warm up a screening prospect, you can totally warm up a cold-call.
How Can You Best Utilize Your Telemarketers?
Telemarketers specialize in enticing prospects to act now and take up an offer, and that's the extent of their skill. There is nothing wrong with that except for a poorly planned offer on the part of the chiropractor being the main reason for someone who shows up for an introductory visit and says "I don't know why I'm here".
Indeed it is a screening approach that is missing from this process however it involves more than just a caller, a script and even a brief indoctrination from you. This is not to say it is complex. It is more precise than anything else though quite simple and easily accomplished without having to train telemarketers on the entirety of the chiropractic playbook.
So, How Can You Successfully Telemarket Chiropractic To Your Community?
You don't need to revamp your telemarketing group's entire process. It is useful. It is just not being utilized properly. Just as you utilize different screening staff to work different functions and get good solid appointments which result in arrivals, so can you utilize your telemarketing team. You can turn their efforts into a flood of new patients if you apply a few simple steps based on the most successful chiropractic screening methods.
They way to do it is with good solid screening principles implemented which don't violate what we call the Screening Rules of Engagement and follow the basic process of getting someone in the proper state of mind to be interested. Screening Experts coaching and training accomplishes this.
Your success in telemarketing is through proper screening knowledge. Call Screening Experts at (845) 787-3349 to find out how or visit www.screeningexperts.com for more information.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Chiropractic Marketing That Fuels Your Bank Account
by Frank Sardella
In starting a practice, there are numerous expenses for you to consider. From adjusting tables to staffing, start-up costs can soar well beyond estimation, dwindling budget capital faster than you can sensibly predict. Such budgeting requires keen foresight of practice-building essentials.
But what about a RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT?
With so much emphasis getting placed on practice "basics", a factor of foremost importance is commonly omitted from calculation: a viable volume of patients. It is this omission that is the first error of chiropractic marketing. A new practice therefore begins just as it appears in the architect's rendering - beautiful spaces with empty tables.
As one can not "buy" patients, there tends to be no budget allocation accounting for them. Patients are procured through the use of promotion which is, incidentally, the most neglected expense despite its primary importance.
Whereas lack of promotion is the source of rapid practice failure, elevating its priority is therefore a requirement for practice growth and prosperity. And, here, we come to the point of the story:
PRACTICE MARKETING AND PROMOTION ARE MATTERS OF TOP PRIORITY AND, ON THIS FACT ALONE, A PRACTICE IS MADE OR BROKEN.
Consider carefully that, although necessary to treatment delivery, none of the other items in your budget plan will mean anything if no one ever connects with them. Therefore, there are a few factors you need to know that influence the outcome of what you do now, and whether those actions will make you or break you in the future.
Does Your Budget Deflate Your Motivation?
With a depleted budget suppressing promotion of a newly-built practice, your feelings of satisfaction and enthusiasm begin to deflate as you realize that no patients are on-hand for you to help - the whole point of your venture in practice.
This planning failure is a breakdown in understanding of the basic facts of promotion. Practice-building merely starts with the build-out. It continues from there to include a measurable quantity of patients receiving care, a factor which requires accurate estimation and use of promotion. For until patients arrive, a new office is merely an empty space occupied by a doctor and staff with empty pockets.
A Key Chiropractic Marketing Confusion
One of the key difficulties in this zone is found to be a confusion that new practice starters have on the subjects of marketing and promotion.
The look and feel of the space, types and quality of patient treatment, various services, staff, etc., all are considered "marketing", on a par with what marketing professionals call "branding". Whatever the jargon, this is marketing in its purest form; taking a product to "market". Once so placed, it must be promoted.
Promotion is how you draw attention to a marketed product to elicit response with an ultimate intent to effect actual sales. Promotion is of paramount importance as its neglect in budgets roadblocks your efforts in creating a booming, on-purpose practice.
Rule of Thumb in Practice Promotion
Promotion is the answer to any of your financial difficulties. This is so much the case that funds allocated for your rent or electric bill could be used instead for promotion, as the resultant new patient influx will pay borrowed funds back with profit. Pay your rent or electric bill and it buys you a month. Invest in effective promotion and it can pay your rent and electric bills for months to come.
Here is a good rule of thumb to note down:
EXPENSES DRAIN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. INVESTMENTS FUEL IT. CHIROPRACTIC MARKETING IS AN INVESTMENT.
Here is the difference between an expense and an investment. Your rent is an expense. Supplies are an expense. Promotion is an investment. Never forget this.
When Money Is Tight, What Do You Do?
When income is low, business is "slow" or budgets become "tight", promotion is the sole solution. It is the only expenditure that has anything to do with income. New customers equal new business, which equals income and ability to pay your bills. No other expenditure on your list does this.
So, your entire budget got spent on marketing with little or none left for promotion. So what? Does this make you a failure? Should you pack it in and go home? No. Not yet anyway.
Marketing With Little or No Budget
It is not difficult to find cost effective ways to promote. There are so many channels such as screenings, talks and all kinds efforts that can be made at little or no cost.
There are many more chiropractic marketing ideas than you probably realize and, with cleverness and ingenuity, you can greatly influence your practice growth planning on very little investment.
What Can You Do About It?
Certainly you would never omit something as basic and neccessary as a telephone from a practice budget. Cut of adjusting tables from such a budget because they "cost too much" would be a laughable absurdity. Only sheer stupidity would account for excluding something so vital. Why, then, would anyone not estimate and allocate funds for patient procurement?
For those starting a practice that have not calculated a budget, especially if borrowing to so start, allocate plenty of finance for promotion and resist spending it on anything but promotional actions.
If you are in practice, feeling financial walls closing in, go for the lowest cost or free things, and put your promotional costs above your rent in priority. Paying the rent will keep the doors open for a month. Promoting will keep them open for life!
I hope this helps.
Best of luck in practice.
Frank Sardella
Email me questions
Chiropractic Screening Experts
More Free Chiropractic Marketing Advice
Will Work 4 Patients Free Chiropractic Marketing Ideas Podcast by Frank Sardella
In starting a practice, there are numerous expenses for you to consider. From adjusting tables to staffing, start-up costs can soar well beyond estimation, dwindling budget capital faster than you can sensibly predict. Such budgeting requires keen foresight of practice-building essentials.
But what about a RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT?
With so much emphasis getting placed on practice "basics", a factor of foremost importance is commonly omitted from calculation: a viable volume of patients. It is this omission that is the first error of chiropractic marketing. A new practice therefore begins just as it appears in the architect's rendering - beautiful spaces with empty tables.
As one can not "buy" patients, there tends to be no budget allocation accounting for them. Patients are procured through the use of promotion which is, incidentally, the most neglected expense despite its primary importance.
Whereas lack of promotion is the source of rapid practice failure, elevating its priority is therefore a requirement for practice growth and prosperity. And, here, we come to the point of the story:
PRACTICE MARKETING AND PROMOTION ARE MATTERS OF TOP PRIORITY AND, ON THIS FACT ALONE, A PRACTICE IS MADE OR BROKEN.
Consider carefully that, although necessary to treatment delivery, none of the other items in your budget plan will mean anything if no one ever connects with them. Therefore, there are a few factors you need to know that influence the outcome of what you do now, and whether those actions will make you or break you in the future.
Does Your Budget Deflate Your Motivation?
With a depleted budget suppressing promotion of a newly-built practice, your feelings of satisfaction and enthusiasm begin to deflate as you realize that no patients are on-hand for you to help - the whole point of your venture in practice.
This planning failure is a breakdown in understanding of the basic facts of promotion. Practice-building merely starts with the build-out. It continues from there to include a measurable quantity of patients receiving care, a factor which requires accurate estimation and use of promotion. For until patients arrive, a new office is merely an empty space occupied by a doctor and staff with empty pockets.
A Key Chiropractic Marketing Confusion
One of the key difficulties in this zone is found to be a confusion that new practice starters have on the subjects of marketing and promotion.
The look and feel of the space, types and quality of patient treatment, various services, staff, etc., all are considered "marketing", on a par with what marketing professionals call "branding". Whatever the jargon, this is marketing in its purest form; taking a product to "market". Once so placed, it must be promoted.
Promotion is how you draw attention to a marketed product to elicit response with an ultimate intent to effect actual sales. Promotion is of paramount importance as its neglect in budgets roadblocks your efforts in creating a booming, on-purpose practice.
Rule of Thumb in Practice Promotion
Promotion is the answer to any of your financial difficulties. This is so much the case that funds allocated for your rent or electric bill could be used instead for promotion, as the resultant new patient influx will pay borrowed funds back with profit. Pay your rent or electric bill and it buys you a month. Invest in effective promotion and it can pay your rent and electric bills for months to come.
Here is a good rule of thumb to note down:
EXPENSES DRAIN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. INVESTMENTS FUEL IT. CHIROPRACTIC MARKETING IS AN INVESTMENT.
Here is the difference between an expense and an investment. Your rent is an expense. Supplies are an expense. Promotion is an investment. Never forget this.
When Money Is Tight, What Do You Do?
When income is low, business is "slow" or budgets become "tight", promotion is the sole solution. It is the only expenditure that has anything to do with income. New customers equal new business, which equals income and ability to pay your bills. No other expenditure on your list does this.
So, your entire budget got spent on marketing with little or none left for promotion. So what? Does this make you a failure? Should you pack it in and go home? No. Not yet anyway.
Marketing With Little or No Budget
It is not difficult to find cost effective ways to promote. There are so many channels such as screenings, talks and all kinds efforts that can be made at little or no cost.
There are many more chiropractic marketing ideas than you probably realize and, with cleverness and ingenuity, you can greatly influence your practice growth planning on very little investment.
What Can You Do About It?
Certainly you would never omit something as basic and neccessary as a telephone from a practice budget. Cut of adjusting tables from such a budget because they "cost too much" would be a laughable absurdity. Only sheer stupidity would account for excluding something so vital. Why, then, would anyone not estimate and allocate funds for patient procurement?
For those starting a practice that have not calculated a budget, especially if borrowing to so start, allocate plenty of finance for promotion and resist spending it on anything but promotional actions.
If you are in practice, feeling financial walls closing in, go for the lowest cost or free things, and put your promotional costs above your rent in priority. Paying the rent will keep the doors open for a month. Promoting will keep them open for life!
I hope this helps.
Best of luck in practice.
Frank Sardella
Email me questions
Chiropractic Screening Experts
More Free Chiropractic Marketing Advice
Will Work 4 Patients Free Chiropractic Marketing Ideas Podcast by Frank Sardella
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
