What Are the 3 Chiropractic Screening Mistakes That Guarantee a No-Show?

Did any screening prospects ever ask you for your card instead of accepting your special offer for a consultation or tell you they are not ready to do anything right now?

Have you gone into your close and had a new patient lead ask, "Well, can I just call the office to schedule?" or tell you "I have to check my calendar?" even though he works regular shifts or is holding his iPhone right there in front of you?

Has someone asked you toward the end of your screening, "Is there anything I can do on my own?"

These are the most popular ways new patient screening prospects balk at offers made by the best of chiropractic screeners which as a result have become the focus of much discussion, speculation and frustration to the end of whole theories and scripts being developed just to handle them.

Have You Ever Used a Script To Handle an Objection At a Screening?

Do you have a way of "answering objections" which you use to get new patient prospects to book appointments? Even if you merely are searching for good scripting to be so able, chances are you are doing three things to guarantee a no-show in your office. In exact sequence, they are:

1. First, Rehearsing and Using Scripted "Objection Handlings"
2. Then, Challenging and "Handling" the Objection
3. Then, Pushing Prospect To Book Despite Original Objection

These are the three errors that cause all of the trouble and, yes, booking the appointment is actually a big mistake, ridiculous though it may seem.

While you may be trying desperately to learn "how to handle objections" or looking for the magic words to do so, you probably have yet to find something that really works despite the broadest of search efforts you have made or the best of advice you have been given by top consultants and coaches. Have you ever wondered why that is?

Why Don't Scripted Objection Handlings Seem to Work?

You are actually looking in vain for solutions to the prospect "objections" problem. There is a distinct reason these objections come up in the first place and it has nothing to do with schedules, desire to call you in the future or any other reason prospective patients can dream up and feed you to escape the dreaded close. Therefore, taking up objections is pointless.

That said, don't take objections personally. They are seldom personal. As a matter of fact, in many cases, the person is seeking to look out for your feelings. In some way they seem to think that refusing you outright would somehow ruin you or at least your day. Some have even gone as far as booking the appointment with you to avoid this and, of course, didn't show. This probably accounts for most of your no-shows for an initial visit.

This is beside the point. If a person is rejecting your offer it is because something else is wrong.

What Do Rejections and Objections Actually Indicate?

To fully understand this, you must have an understanding of basic screening philosophy. While this is adequately covered in our online coaching and training resources, suffice to say there are a few factors about screening prospects you need to understand before knowing what it means when "the close didn't work" and the prospect is trying diligently to escape the clutches of "another salesman" trying to convince him of having to do something he doesn't wish to do by throwing out random and silly objections.

What do the objections actually indicate? They actually prove up whether or not you got the new patient prospect to look at the right things in the right sequence, if you gave him certain information to think with and carefully withheld other factors. It is a game of checks and balances and is a precision activity. Therefore the objection indicates you did not get the person to make some key decisions anyone needs to make in order to be even remotely interested in your offer. You merely violated a process and that has to be fixed before you can get a good solid close. Handling objections is an ignorance of that one fact alone.

What Do Nearly All Screeners Lack?

Neither absence of purpose nor depleted enthusiasm can be at fault. These are never to blame, for most screeners doing this job have a very strong sense of purpose to help others find out the truth about their health and want them to control their wellness "destinies" so to speak.

What they lack is understanding of who they are screening. This is not a psychological thing. It is not an understanding so much of what someone thinks in general or even how they think. It means that there is a state of mind specific to people who first visit chiropractic clinics, created by a series of conclusion the person himself made, with or without the help of another. It is an understanding of a thought process that will let a screener automatically know what to do and say to convince a person to visit the office. All scripts become obsolete at that very moment and objections are no longer a problem. They are actually prevented.

How Do You PREVENT Objections From Even Coming Up?

The answer is simple. Know the mindset of the person in front of you. When he walks up to you, know what he knows and thinks and what he will respond to. What he will respond to is something very specific and it is not what most chiropractic screeners are offering.

Once you strip away the key errors and then reveal the actual thought process to the screener so as to create the ability to "think on his feet", he can succeed without robotic scripting. In other words, teach him to know what his prospect is thinking, what he knows, what he needs to know and what he shouldn't come to know at the screening and you have arrived. Objections start to disappear and no-shows become less frequent.

The Screening Experts Online Coaching - Module A Training

Module A Training is an online learning program that features training manuals, videos, webinars and live personalized coaching all in the name of handling the exact process and enabling the screener to atract maximum participation in a screening with the result of an abundance of appointments and a much better arrival rate on booked appointments. Though the materials are abundant, most trainees achieve a major change in skill within the first 1-2 short coaching sessions and a very brief review of a fraction of the materials.

Call today to get a free Start-Up Analysis which will assess where you are in terms of practice goals and as well, effectiveness of your current marketing, return on investment and a correction of any miscalculations in budget or returns. This will reveal any potential income you may be losing. For sure, if you don't know these key principles, you are losing income every time you go out and perform a screening. That can end today and you can start treating those people you may have otherwise never treated for want of this understanding.

Call the Screening Experts today. (845) 787-3349 or visit www.chiropracticscreeningexperts.com

What Is Wrong With Your New Patient Consultation Offer?

What should my offer be?...

Why is this one of the most common questions chiropractors ask about screenings?

Is it the offer itself that makes a person sign up for or turn down a new patient consultation offer?

Does What You Are Offering Influence the Close At All?

It is a matter of basic arithmetic that the majority of people contacted at a screening do not become patients. This has become an acceptable norm to most screeners. Does this, however, have anything to do with what you are offering?

While many arguments could be forwarded to answer this question it is actually the wrong question to ask. It really has little or nothing to do with what you offer. In fact this problem exists even in spite of the greatest of offers ever made.

How Do People Who Accept Your Offer Differ From Those Who Do Not?

There has to be good reason for this person to take you up on anything you are offering. Further, it has to be his reason, not yours. Those who have accepted your offer and followed up found use for it. Those who turned you don found little or no use.

Everyone clearly needs chiropractic so it can seem odd why everyone wouldn't want a consultation with the doctor.

Have You Ever Turned Down Something Free?... Why?

Sure you have, even if you say you haven't. Undoubtedly you have ignored an offer that simply "doesn't apply to you" or that you have no use for. Ignoring an offer is indeed a refusal to accept it.

Have you ever seen an attorney advertisement that offered you a free consultation for a legal problem? If you have no legal problem, you have no use for the offer and ignore it, whereas someone in desperate need of legal advice responds.

It is therefore dependant on need. If you feel you need the service, you're interested in the offer. If you don't, you're not. Simple.

Do You Only Close The Ones Who 'Know They Need It'?

That would be a near complete waste of your time if it were true. Wouldn't it? You apparently do not need a coach or consultant to tell you that there are a minority of people who know what they need and would, at first glance, take you up on your offer. It is absurd to think that your only goal is to find them. Yes, they are valuable to find but the strategy of screenings has little to do with them.

The correct strategy has more to do with creating a need. It is not to interest the person in your offer. This is so true that your offer could be for something quite undesirable and the person would accept it if they were to suddenly become aware of a specific need they had and they knew your offer would somehow handle it for them. If a person is in need of something that your offer will apparently provide, they will accept it form you. If they know it is the next logical step, they will take it.

How Can You Get Prospects to Want Your Offer?

Screening skill is about getting a person to discover things about himself that a) he didn't know before or hadn't noticed, b) he is now wondering or concerned about and, c) he would now like to know more about. This is the simplicity of the process. There is little more to know.

The rest of what you need to know if how to achieve a, b and c above. There are precise steps you can take to effect that at your screenings and make more and more people interested in your offer.

It is truly easy to master.

Call Screening Experts today to find out how at (845) 787-3349 or visit www.chiropracticscreeningexperts.com for more information.

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 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
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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