Why Do So Many Chiropractic Screening Prospects Refuse Your Offer?

Have you followed scripts exactly, to letter-perfect precision with no result? Did you conclude that people "just don't get it"?

Do you anticipate an easy close on prospects who circle a majority of symptoms on your Stress Survey only to have them walk away uninterested?

Have you observed that often times chiropractic just doesn’t seem to “sink in” or that prospective new patients must be too "below the level of intelligence" to understand?

These questions are asked in frustration by the most knowledgeable of chiropractors and screeners. Understandably, it’s difficult to comprehend how the basics of nerve interference are not obvious to everyone. If you can grasp it, why can’t everyone else?

Do closing failures indicate you possess more intelligence than everyone else?

Many screeners have considered that people are not intelligent enough to understand the subject. This would imply the absurdity that only the smartest people choose chiropractic and that aptitude tests could take the place of posture screenings. Chiropractic is very simple and easy to understand. So, defined as “capacity for understanding”, it provides neither valid explanation nor workable solution.

It is complete irony that the word “intelligence” is used to explain screening failure as, defined alternately as “knowledge or information itself, often secret,” it reveals a key problem to the screener getting his product of an interested qualified person who books and shows up for an appointment.

Though the next logical question would be "what knowledge or information?", one should be more concerned with how the information itself is relayed and when. For there are stages of revelation which when followed in sequence, actually effect a proper and successful close.

What is the key point that forms the make-break of screening success?

The make-break lies in what is being told to prospects. The information itself is not at fault so much as the un-timely relay of such information. Actually, many scripts can be blamed for premature relay of such information if certain aspects of a prospect mindset are not known. Information must be time-release in nature.

Government “intelligence” is granted in levels of “clearance”. Anyone attaining more ability and trust is given higher clearance. Think of a prospective new patient at different stages of "clearance". Information should therefore be given on a progressive “need-to-know” basis. You could similarly consider the methods most screeners follow to unknowingly provide an "intelligence leak" which analogously "ruins the entire operation".

Such "leaks" abound in the spoken words, written materials and displays of screeners everywhere.

What is the key attribute of a new patient prospect who actually shows up in your office?

Any prospective patient who ever arrived for an introductory visit in your clinic knew enough to arrive and no more. Obviously there were a few things he didn't know that he wanted to learn or he would never have contacted you in the first place. The key attribute is therefore a need to know. That is the factor that creates an arrival.

Why don't ALL screening prospects become new patient arrivals?

The main cause of closing failure is the screener's confusion of persons interested in getting a screening with those who would like an appointment or who actually arrives in-office for an introductory visit. These are two different mindsets which must never be confused.

The desire to visit your office is a mindset that has been created (by whatever means) and there is a specific thought process every arriving prospect goes through (regardless of referral source) before actually showing up.

The majority of people who walk up to you at a screening are not even at the beginning of that process. Therefore a person must be brought into contact with the subject matter and guided through it sequentially before any appointment-making or office-arriving can take place.

If you could know the exact anatomy of a new patient thought process, would you even need a script at all to guarantee results?

The problem is that most screeners, even if following the best-scripted procedures, don't really know or understand the thought process of new patient prospects. While, on occasion, you may encounter people at a screening who already are in the “new-patient-arrival” mindset, which probably accounts for many of the ones you close now, failures to close usually involve screening "the oblivious" and treating them as though they are in an an arrival state of mind. This actually repels them, deflating any interest in your offer.

This explains the person who checked off a majority of symptoms and surprisingly walked away without signing up. How can that happen?

It becomes obvious then that one needs to know what is on the mind of screening prospects to know what to say, what not to say and in what sequence if any appointments or arrivals are to result. No script anywhere can deliver that. You must develop expertise and instinct in this area.

That's about all you need know about screening technique.

How can you ensure a maximum of appointments and minimum of no-shows?

Successful screenings involve techniques for getting prospects interested by knowing what they are thinking and giving them the right information, at precisely the right moment, and no more. It is not a scripted thing. It is a specific process that produces a proper close. You can master it.

Most chiropractors and screeners already possess the base knowledge on the subject of chiropractic to become masters of this however all make similar key mistakes that, once corrected, enable a miraculous resurgence of ability and results.

The Screening Experts Online Coaching program reveals and immediately corrects the key screening errors, teaches prospect thought processes and provides an exact, simple sequence to follow to close qualified prospects and increase arrivals too.

Though there are many materials and unlimited coaching on the subject, just from watching less than 10 minutes of video, reading over the Screenings "Rulebook" and "Playbook" and spending your first hour of live coaching, a lasting change is made in most everyone.

No scripts – just steps to get a maximum of appointments, a method based on nearly 2 decades of on-the-ground, "in-the-trenches" screening experience and observation which has gotten thousands under chiropractic care.

Increase your volume and quality of qualified new patient appointments now. To learn more about this process call the Screening Experts at (845) 787-3349 or visit www.chiropracticscreeningexperts.com .

What Do Chiropractic Screenings Have to Do With Telemarketing Failure?

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.

Chiropractic Marketing Lesson to Be Learned From Chiros Declaring Bankruptcy

by Frank Sardella

A recent conversation with a Bankruptcy attorney shockingly revealed a trend of chiropractors recently filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. How is this possible?

On another occasion, while I was grocery shopping late one night, I saw a doc I knew stocking shelves! It turns out he had closed his doors, given up altogether and was considering studying to become a physical therapist. How could this be?

Yet another chiropractor recently mentioned that he took a part-time job to "make ends meet" while "things were slow". Why were they so slow?

As bizarre and random as these things seem to be, there is a pattern and a definite valuable lesson to be learned from all this - a lesson that may save a practice or a life: chiropractic marketing savvy.

What Did The Bankrupt and Moonlighting Chiropractors Have In Common?

While it is known that chiropractic does not generate the highest income of all healthcare professions, it is not this fact that causes such financial problems. It is a lack of chiropractic marketing know-how, with the basics of the subject unknown and random campaigns leading to no return on the investment.

The tragedy is that, through no fault of their own, docs were missing the most fundamental components that govern successful campaigns, basics which are apparent but often overlooked.

The TYPE of Marketing Chosen Is Never to Blame.

Name any type of marketing you ever tried and failed at and I will show you a hundred chiropractors who used it successfully. You could show me a hundred more failures, and I'll find another hundred successes. We would go on and on.

In point of fact, it is not the choice of promotion type that causes failure.

So, What IS to Blame for Failed Promotional Efforts and Financial Crashes?

It seems odd that the type of promotion chosen cannot possibly be to blame, assuming a decent type was used. But nonetheless it works out true. So if not that, what then? It must be something in the planning or administration of the marketing - and it is.

It is the administration and coordination of chiropractic marketing that drives it and makes it effective. Though it is not complex when done right, it can be very touchy if not done in the correct order or sequence and with just the right frequency and regularity. This reveals why two practices can use the same marketing types and get drastically different results.

Why Didn't They Teach This Stuff In Chiropractic School?

Through no fault of your own, you missed this one. In all your years of college, you didn't once learn about any of it, even if you minored in marketing as an undergrad. Colleges teach "branding" and other confused concepts rather than the things that really count to keep a business afloat and alive.

You learn patient communication skills and are expected to put these to use with "potential patients" (which is what we call every member of your community who is not under your care). The problem is these are two COMPLETELY different contexts and require near opposite approaches.

How Do You Get a Practice Off the Ground And Keep It From Splattering On the Pavement?

While it would be impossible to give you a crash course in one short article, chiropractic marketing can be mastered by finding good, solid chiropractic marketing ideas, planning a campaign and a schedule of frequent, regular promotional steps using the most cost effective channels that can be found and driving it, pushing it all the way - persisting through even times when it seems not to be working. Trusting that it will you will prevail.

The greatest weapon you have is the ability to realize when you don't totally know what you're doing and ask someone for help who does indeed know. That is your failsafe.

What Can You Learn From a Bunch of Bankrupt Chiros?

As evidenced by bankrupt and moonlighting docs, chiropractic marketing is not something you mess with if you do not know exactly what to do. And it is certainly not something you do randomly.

What can you learn from failing predecessors? Don't attempt something you don't know enough about and know enough to know you don't know all about it. And then you can start winning.

I hope this helps.

Best of luck in practice.

Frank Sardella
www.screeningexperts.com
Questions? info@screeningexperts.com
(845) 219-1101

Chiropractic Marketing by Your Competition

by Frank Sardella

How Do You Compete, With the Chiro Up the Street?

There appears to be a bit of confusion on the subject of competitive chiropractic marketing. Many of the docs I met over the years have been especially concerned about the activities of the chiropractor on the next block, particularly the ones who are "doing tons of marketing" and are very busy.

A Basic Confusion On the Word "Compete"

Compete -  v. to strive to outdo another for acknowledgment, a prize, supremacy, profit, etc.; engage in a contest; vie (dictionary.com)

The basic confusion? It is not the definition of the word "compete" so much as the confusion on who is involved in the competition. Who, after all, is competing with whom? Now we're getting somewhere.

Who Is Competing With Whom?

It just so happens that when you look at another chiropractor as competition, you are chipping away at your profession, an actual, if not visible, group of which you are a member. As a profession, you are all working for the same purpose.

The actual competition, then is between groups, not individuals. So, rather than Chiropractor A vs. Chiropractor B, the groups are chiropractors and whoever the designated enemy of chiropractors would be that particular week. Pick one. There are several. How about pharmaceutical salesman. They do more sales in a day than you do all month. Now, there is a true competitor!

How About Medical Doctors?

Is it medical doctors who should worry you? According to Julianna, my MD Referrals coach, who has had much successful experience in generating MD referrals in her former practice, the majority of medical doctors actually got into medicine to help and still desire to help their patients. It is for this reason medical doctors will begin to refer to you after being given proper enlightenment on chiropractic.

Additionally understand that those pharma salesmen are blasting the MD's in your community as well and are winning in competition to get their attention. And, THERE is competition worth fighting!

Indeed, you do not pose a threat to medical doctors in their estimation, hence you can work together. They are not your competition.

Rogue CA's: A Hidden Source of Wrong Impressions

As may have been experienced by many doctors, disgruntled former CA’s or patients tend to talk negatively about their former employer or doctor to their new one. The combination of stories heard can slant one’s opinion of the target doctor without ever having known him personally.

In defense of so-targeted docs, consider what you would want other doctors in your profession to believe from those who have left you. You may have a new look at this instantly.

 

Do the Math: There Are More Patients Than Your Clinic Can Handle

Google how many chiropractors are within a radius of your office. Then research the population of your area. Divide the population by the number of docs and you will have the number of people for whom you are responsible in your community. If the number is a quantity you can handle at your existing practice size, you have my blessing to go into competition with another of your own.

Are You Strong Enough to Singlehandedly Compete?

What is the cost of being a lone ranger? Thousands more on medication. Banding together with your fellow area professionals creates a juggernaut of on-purpose activity, with chiropractic marketing power beyond your wildest dreams. What is the harm in finding out for sure? At least, cut the doc up the street a break. You would expect the same in return.

Become a true competitor. Educate your community on the dangers of modern medicine and the miracles of innate healing. And never compete with a fellow chiropractor as your real enemies would win and then everyone loses.

I hope this helps.

Best of luck in practice.

Frank Sardella
Questions? info@screeningexperts.com
www.chiropracticscreeningexperts.com

Avoid Chiropractic Marketing Mistakes: Prerequisites to Screenings

by Frank Sardella

Are you tired of doing screenings or have no more time for them? Do you find them demeaning or degrading? Are you simply not effective at them? Do you simply lack an abundance of places to go?

These are symptoms of a violation unknowingly made of one or more of 3 key chiropractic screening "prerequisites" that are essential for chiropractic marketing success.

What Are The 3 Prerequisites To Screening Success?

Overall, one-on-one interaction with prospective new patients has proven to be the utmost in chiropractic marketing. Why, then, have so many docs reported dismal failures from screenings?

A triad of interrelated components reveals quite a margin for error in patient recruitment. Viloating them explains failure while heeding them makes success inevitable. In fact these may very well be the ONLY factors hindering practice expansion.

1: Chiropractic Purpose

Without getting into a heavy dissertation on chiropractic purpose, relevent and pertinent as it may be, screening failures are ultimately traceable to some weakened drive or purpose in doctor and staff.

One of the interesting observations about this is that past failures in screenings tend to deter future ones and the apparent remedy, proven by actual experiment, is to get the screener to do more, not less screenings. This remedy is infallible in reviving the screening result. The purpose returns and all is right again.

2: Frequency of Events

Screening scheduling is the most underemphasized importance and gets dismissed to "simple admin" or a waste of time. Yet it turns out that there is a direct correlation between the frequency and volume of events in relation to the results gotten. There is a wealth of information to be known and used on this. Setting specific intervals has a set and predictable result on volume and ultimately new patients and practice income and expansion.


3: Choice of Venue

The least important of these three aspects, this one is listed simply because it is the most assigned reason to failed screenings. In their efforts to beter explain and feel a little better about a bad day of promotion, screeners tend to blame venue or event traffic when, most often it is the lackof purpose and event frequency that is key.

 Without purpose and strategic scheduling choice of venue is both circumstantial and irrelevant. .

The Best Direct Chiropractic Marketing Strategy

For best results, secure three things before scheduling or attending your next screening event.

1. Light a fire under your purpose any way you can.
2. Learn a proper scheduling method for running an optimum screening calendar.
3. Find out how to get into the best-producing screening locations.

There is your simple, winning combination for successful chiropractic screenings.

I hope this helps.

Best of luck in practice.

Frank Sardella
Questions: info@screeningexperts.com
(845) 219-1101 or visit www.chiropracticmarketingadvice.com