How To Master Patient Education & Referrals

Introduction and Presentation Goals 0:00

Well. Hello everyone. I'm Doctor Ellen Weinstein and I want to thank a Bob and Dennis for allowing me to be one of the speakers here at the Practice Upgrade Summit. I asked Bob and Dennis, could I do something a little different than everybody else rather than be interviewed? I actually want to do a presentation because I have a lot of things to cover, and I felt you'd get more out of it if I had an opportunity to present these things sort of as a lecture, but in one that will give you tools and information that you can use right away.

So if that's okay with you, I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised about the power of the information I'm going to give you. Now, I do believe that it will change your practice going forward. So why don't we jump into the slides and let's get started. My job today is talk about communication competition and conversion. Conversion being getting patients to accept your care plan. If they accept your care plan to understand eventually what it is you do, why you do it, why they need it, why they should refer their friends and family, become lifelong patients.

That's what conversion really is. Now, I want to talk a little bit about, and I guess you could say today my job is to talk about patient education that works. And if you don't know me, you probably know all the people that I have been involved with in either teaching them marketing, doing their marketing, doing live streams, teaching them live streams. I've been very fortunate to have, some input to almost every chiropractor, a thought leader that, you know, I'm thankful for, that I've done over 2500 live events, but this is not about me.

It's really about you. So let's talk about, communication and really let's talk about motivation of why patients come to you. Patients come to you because they have a pain, a symptom or problem. Rarely, if we're honest with each other, they come to you for wellness or health. And they do come sometimes for goals. But that usually only happens if you're treating athletes or you have weight loss in your clinic, which I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't, but some patients will come to you with weight loss goals.

I want to lose 50 pounds, 75 pounds, whatever that might be. So most patients come to you with pain, symptoms or problems and realize, and I'll tell you a quick story of a doctor who called me up and said, I want to change what's on my website. Website.

How Patients Find You and Why Video Matters 2:27

I no longer want to be dealing with pain patients. I want to only have things on my website related to wellness. And let me tell you what I said to that person. The job of your website is not to educate people. That is a big mistake. There's only one job to your website and that is get people to pick up the phone and call you and come in. Once they're in, it's your job to educate them. It's not the website's job. Someone comes to your website and doesn't see a solution to their pain, their symptom, a problem.

They simply will go somewhere else and realize this you're not going to. In a five second website, visit, educate people on what you and I have spent many, many years learning, believing, seeing work. As people who are suffering, if they're suffering, you must meet them where they are and then get them in the door. That's the only goal of your website. So let's talk about how people come to you. You can see on your screen right now is a list of things. The number one reason, the number one thing that should bring people in your office is referral.

And the reason for that is, number one, the people that are in your office that refer somebody else already know, like and trust you. The good news is they refer people that know, like and trust you, so you're already pre-sold. You don't have to prove yourself. But I've listed for you all the other ways that you can get people into your office. You'll notice that I put video at the top. And if you look at some of those other points, you'll see the word video, video, video. And the reason is in today's day and age, nothing is more important in social media.

Your blog, search engines, YouTube and Google. Of course, Google owns YouTube. There's nothing more important than making video. Video is the preferred means of getting people in the door, building search engine optimization and showing people that you are an authority in health. Using video, the job today is not to talk about how to do videos, how to make videos, what a good videos. What are bad videos? That is a subject for another day. What I want to show you is the path that brings patients in the door.

The path that gets people to, accept your care plans, the things that you're doing wrong, the things that you need to do to change that. And that's what really this is all about. We're going to talk about your competition and why your competition is are doing things that are taking patients from your your office. And I'm going to show you how to change that almost immediately. So this is just a list. You could read that on your own, but realize video plays an integral part in all these ways. Social proof, of course, feeds, reviews.

Those are critically important. You need to get reviews, but, ultimately realize referral is number one. You need to learn how to make get people in your office via referral. So let's talk about what happens. So the person gets this nudge and you're looking at a slide. We've all been on slides just as children. And you know you the slide has gravity working for you a patient gets a climbs up the top of the slide. And if they do nothing, gravity will push them to the bottom of the slide. And what gets them to the top of that slide is the nudge.

And what that nudge is, is they have a pain, a symptom or a problem. Then the things that we talked about on the previous slide is how they find you now. They find you. And through your ability to communicate through all those tools, they think potentially you are the person that could help them with their pain, their symptom, or their problem. So they're already have motivation to come into your office. And the angle and gravity is what will drive them to your office. But now we have a problem.

And the problem is, you know, we're going to call it friction. And there is a great presentation by, Doctor Dennis. If you haven't seen that one, I'm not sure if he's before mine or after mine or when he's coming on, but don't miss that one, because Doctor Dennis talks about friction in great detail. And the problem with trying to build a practice when there's a lot of friction. And just talk a little bit about that.

Understanding Friction in Patient Conversion 6:58

But Doctor Dennis's, presentation is, is really gold and you don't want to miss that. So if there was no friction, then what would happen is they would find out about you from the things you do. They're motivated by their pain, and they literally slip into your door. And they would go ahead and be able to do anything that you tell them. And the end result is that they would know who you are, what you do, why you do it, why they need it, and why they should refer their friends and family. That is how new patients work.

People think the game is all new patients. It's not. It's literally new patients. But what you do with those patients to get them from their nudge, their motivation to be in your office and be able to get them to slide down the slide into your office and follow your care plan. That's the conversion. But communication is key here. Let's talk about your competition. That's one of the things. And of course I'm going to tell you about the joint. And one of the challenges with the joint is besides, they are probably by the end of this year or somewhere in the middle of next year, they will have over 1000 clinics.

They just raised a lot of money from an investment, house and ultimately they are hugely successful. And if they're not already in your neighborhood, they will be, not to worry. But they have the power to be able to go ahead and do things like here, I think, what month was this? I'm not sure what month this was. It might have been June. In June, they went ahead and launched a campaign saying that they will donate $1 million worth of free care to get people in the door. Now, let's face it, they're getting people in the door and they know it's almost like a loss leader.

If they get people in the door at in June, those patients are going to continue coming. If they remove some of the friction that we talked about that you see over here, we're going to talk about that friction. Now, the problem, is, is that their ability to attract patients and their ability to keep patients is direct competition with you know, I'm not making a judgment because some of you might be, the joint doctors. What I want you to understand is why they've been so successful. There's a lesson here that you need to learn about their success.

Let's talk about that. So here's what the joint did that made them such a powerful force in the chiropractic profession. They simply looked at what are all the things that chiropractors do that cause friction, that stop patients from coming in? You'll notice in our slide now all these little points, those are friction points. And realize we know that the patient gets up to the top of the slide by the motivation, the information that you provide through social media and all the things I listed gives them the nudge to call you gravity wants to drive them down, and now all of a sudden they want to be in your office.

All these things they are looking to accomplish, to get out of pain, to end their suffering. All of a sudden they run into a roadblock called friction. And what the joint simply did was they made a list, and I made that list for you on the right of every thing that chiropractors do to stop patients that already want to come into your office from coming in and accepting your care programs. They're these are the things that stop you from converting patients to be lifelong patients, to refer all their friends and family.

And I'm going to tell you that the more friction you have, and don't miss Dennis's lecture on presentation, the more friction you have, the less likely they will stay with you. And if they get out of pain, you know they will leave. If they don't get out of pain, they will leave. And the thing that makes them leave, and most of you have more dead files than actually active patients is the friction that you've created. The joint has eliminated that friction. Now, let me give you an example of the first one called Office Hours.

And I'm going to share with you something right now that will literally has the potential to double the number of new patients that walked through the door. So let me tell you what it is most of you and look at your own website. Look at your social media pages, Facebook and Google, most of you, and even your answering machine list your hours as we're open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 to 1. And they were 3 to 6, let's say. And Tuesday we only have morning hours. And maybe you have all the hours also.

And you usually work at half a day on Friday, some of you more, but usually you're off Saturday and Sunday. Now if someone works for a living and let's face it, most people do. People come to your office, your website, and they see your office hours and you break it down in mornings and afternoons and they say, I can't see this, doctor. They're inconvenient. They only work when I'm working. So what happens? They leave to find some buddy who works hours that are convenient for them. The joint knew that. And so what?

The joints say we can have hours that were open when people are working. Let's open real early in the morning. We'll work late every night and all of a sudden will even be available on weekends. So early morning tonight, available on weekends. Boom. The office hour inconvenience of you listing your hours on your website and on your phone message have now be have been eliminated by the joint. They come to you, they see your office hours on your website and you go not convenient. Now here's something that's even worse.

If they go to Facebook and Google, Facebook says, would you like to put down your hours? And you do, and you write Monday, Wednesday and Friday or Thursday, 9 to 1 and 3 to 6. And guess what Facebook and Google does during your lunch hour. They list you as close. So when a potential patient goes online to find out if there's a chiropractor near them, and that's the number one search term, chiropractic near me, they say you're closed. I can't recall them. They're closed. Here's my lunch hour. It's the only time.

And when they get out of work or before they go to work, your phone is closed and Facebook and Google and on your website. So here's a tip that I want you to change immediately. I want you to put for hours on your website, hours on Facebook, hours on your phone answering machine.

Removing Office Friction and Competing with The Joint 13:55

All I want you to say is two hours convenient office hours. Give us a call and let's find out what we could do to make your time in our office. As convenient for you as possible. Bam! Now I come to your website. I look for your hours. They go, oh well, they're going to be convenient for me. I call the phone, you get me in the office. Now, I'm not saying that you change your hours, saying get them to call and figure out a time that works for them. That alone will add so much revenue monthly to your practice.

Now, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go down this list, and I want you to find everything in your office that creates friction for your patients to come in, become lifelong patients, and refer their friends and family. This is a list that you need to go through one on one. Now realize, and I still want you to listen to Doctor Dennis's, presentation. He talks about that. And I always say, if you're going to build a successful practice, the number one thing that you need to do is remove friction.

Doctor Bob and Doctor Dennis, who put together this, summit for you, are experts in friction removal. If you have friction in your office and a lot of you won't even realize what the friction is, or you'll go through the list and not even believe that you have a friction, they will help you find and remove that friction. That's the beauty of what they do. And one of the reasons that I happen to be here is because they do that so well. I want them to be part of this. So go down the list, because each one of those bumps on that slide are stopping patients from going, literally converting to your care plan.

It's also the number one thing that allows your competition to eat your lunch. Never, ever give away your services to match your company like the joint, because they can beat your brains in by giving free care. They already lowered their feets to nothing. Do you want to work for nothing? No. But if you go ahead and eliminate friction, guess what? You never have to discount your fees. Go through the list and make sure you know everything in your office that creates friction. Some of these you don't even realize your staff doesn't realize.

And as I said, the reason I'm here is because Bob and tennis are the best friction fighters in the business. And if you don't, if you need to want to build, excuse me, a successful practice that's you need, to be touching base with. So let's talk about the things in communication that you're told to do that I am going to tell you do not work. So this is really the part of my presentation about communication. Why is communication so important? Because it tells people who you are, what you do, why you do it, why they need it, and why they should refer their friends and family.

But there's lots of bad information. I said earlier that patients, we don't do a good job of educating our patients for a number of reasons. But number one, realize this everyone pushes you to present the chiropractic research, but facts and figures. You can read it here, don't change people's minds. You could show them a million research papers on the value of exercise and diet. And yet most people don't eat well and they don't exercise. What's strong evidence then? Diet and exercise. They don't follow that.

Why do you think they would follow your recommendation about health when they're in pain and they're suffering, you must meet them where they are. Number two, lots of times when you present what you think is a great fact, they'll find an example of the opposite of what you're saying. Have you ever had a friend? I had a friend always said this. It's known that seatbelts saved lives. My friend would always tell the story why? He didn't wear his seatbelt. He plugged it in to stop it buzzing behind him and he tells the story.

My mom was in a car accident 40 years ago, and it turns out that if she was was wearing a seatbelt, she would have died. Well, that might be true, but it's one in a zillion chances. So any time you present research people always have another story or another fact that they believe discredits what you're telling them. So unbelievable. How about the person this person smoked and lived to 100. This person drank and lived. Everyone's got another story. Research is not the quality of value that you think it is, and convincing people they need you care.

And remember that the more you try to convince someone that what you do and why you do it, the more you try to convince them, the more they're going to balk at that. And usually that God goes up. Remember, one person's truth in this day and age, more than any other time, is what we call another person's fake news. You all know that term right now in communication, you do. You want to make big changes to the person or small changes? Well, what do you think people are more likely to agree to to. And that's small changes.

So chunking into small digestible requirements. If we go back up to this list of frictions, some of these are huge frictions. Usually everyone in the house works, the wife works, the husband works, or however that is what the spouse relationship is they have. If they have kids, they got to drive kids here, they're now they're locked down, the kids are home. Whatever it is, realize that if you're going to say to somebody right off the bat, well, I need you here three times a week, or every day or whatever it is.

And then I need you doing A, B, C, and D or and and a lot of times it's going to be difficult for them to make those changes. You've got to chunk it, give them, make small gains first.

Communication That Actually Changes Behavior 20:18

Get them going in the right direction. Ask for less. Don't push for more. Slow and steady. Give them you know Dennis talks about and Bob talks about the value of Re exams. Why? Because that gives them goals and they can see the progress. So you see slow and steady shifts with many stages. You literally use your Re exams to build stepping stones that very powerful. You want to reach an agreement with your patients. You want to present what the arguments to convince them to make these changes based on where they live, not where you live.

Stop talking and start listening. As my friend doctor Randy, who's also one of the presenters here, says, there's a reason God gave you two years and only one mouth you need to live. Find out where they live, approach them, where they live with what they can identify with. Find the common ground that you can relate to that's critically important. And again, stop trying to convince them so hard it causes them to react and counter argue with them. You want to give them options they could choose from, show them the difference between what they are doing and what they could be doing, and highlight what they're missing by doing nothing.

That's critically important. Now let's talk about your ideal patients, because I want to wrap this up. Who is your ideal patient? Well, that really depends on who you like to work with, who you have the best relationship with, who you could relate to, who could relate to you. Remember, most people make their health decisions on emotions and literally if they can identify with you, they're not going to be able to reach the kind of conclusion that you want them to, if you can't identify with them, you're going to hate doing what you do.

So find those people that, you like to work with that are already somewhere in your line of thinking, you can't work with everyone. You can't be the doctor to everyone. I remember a story of a doctor that wanted to, that had a practice that saw no kids whatsoever. He decided to do an in-office lecture on the value of chiropractic for children. He called me up and said, I didn't run off his lecture. No one showed up. I said, what was the lecture on? He said, well, it was on. Dealing with why kids need chiropractic care.

I said, did you ever have an office of, dealing with families? No, no, I'm not into families. What about is your office phone? No, I don't treat a lot of kids. I don't even like treating kids. Well, why would you do a lecture on treating kids to an audience that doesn't have children? Who doesn't really know the value, doesn't need to be there because they're not a family oriented patient? Of course they didn't show up, so find out you like to work with athletes. When I practice, I work with lots of athletes, rowers, national rowing team, some Olympic team members.

I trained a lot of athletes, you know, long distance ultra marathoners. I was very athletic and like working with those people. We identified really, really well. I didn't treat children. It wasn't my thing. But I treated athletes because I could relate to them and they could relate to me. So it was a perfect relationship. So find who is your ideal patient. You'll have a much greater likelihood of them following your care plan, because you'll both be able to relate. And if you could relate, guess what?

I mentioned this before. They will know, like and trust you and the game is know, like and trust. And if they know, like and trust you guess the kind of patients they refer. And what did I say was the number way number one way you should be getting patients referral 70% of all your patients should come from referrals. So only work or try to work with people who are already in line with your basic thinking. That is the key. So let me just say, one last thing. I'm going to just sort of sum up here.

I'm going to go back up in my slides because I think these are important things to know. Patients come to you because they have a problem or a symptom or a pain they want to get rid of. That's their motivation. The things that you do, the things that you do, whether it be social media, your blog, your lectures, whatever it might be, is the Google AdWords mostly video. You got to do video is what gets them to know that potentially you're the person who could help them with their suffering. So they get that little nudge they get on the phone, they go to your website.

Hopefully you're going to remove all the friction from your website, and if you do, they'll call you and they already are motivated to come in and follow your care plan. It's already going in your favor. They already. If you don't have any friction, going to slide right into your office and convert to your care plan, find out who you are, what you do, why you do it, why they need it, and why they should refer their friends and family. Ultimately, the thing that stops them with the thing. Yes, I here's the list right here.

The things that stop them are all the friction that you create. And ultimately, I gave you one of the samples on your office hours and why you need to change that. That in itself is huge. Other things waiting time in your office, some of your office policies. There's so many things. It could be a bad staff member. You want to go through the list that I made, but more importantly, you want to make sure that if you can't figure out where all the friction is, you want to work with friction fighters and no one's better than in the friction fighting business than Bob and Dennis.

When it comes to we talked about communication. I'm going to go back a little bit. We talked about competition. The reason that the joint is so successful is very, very simple.

Choosing Ideal Patients and Building Trust 26:38

They looked at every bit of friction that every chiropractic office, has. And they removed it to the best of their ability. For you to compete in today's marketplace, you need to remove friction, not try to win the price war you can't win in who wants to give away your service. So going back to the beginning and then I'm going to wrap up here is we talked about communication. I gave you a list of the importance in your communication. I gave you a number of things about why research in its in and of itself doesn't work.

You can't make a good argument for, people if they don't believe what you're saying. And if you push too hard, they will literally go in the opposite direction. We talked about competition and how to eliminate it, and we talked about really conversion and communication. So I hope that you found this of great value and I'm going to finish up by telling you a quick story. And then I'll, I'll let you go. Years ago I invented an exercise device. And some of you might know that and might have even seen my television commercial.

I had an infomercial on TV for many years. I was it was very successful. And what happened? It was an exercise device. And of course, as you know, in the exercise world, especially in TV, how do you get people to want to buy your exercise device? Is you literally get a bunch of people together. You do the before shots. You know how much weight you know they have, how well shape they were, what they look like in their bathing suit, you know? And then you let them work out for three months, and then you take the same person and you show after this person lost 70 pounds, this person lost ten inches whatever it might be, because it's the pre and post what that attracts people on an emotional level.

And so what happened was we needed people to use my exercise device for the television commercial. So we ran an ad in a newspaper in California and that ad said, if you'd like to participate, in a new invention, a new exercise device, call so-and-so. So and so it was actually go to the so-and-so gym where we were going to then, look at do the pre, take the pictures, ask them questions, and we put is the kicker in the ad was with the potential to be on TV now realized, the motivation for people was not the exercise because we already know I could show people all sorts of research on the value of exercise, but most people don't do it.

And so but it was television, so 150 people showed up. What a beautiful thing. And we had a questionnaire because of the liability and what we found out of 150, the average person was taking four medications. So could have been cholesterol medication. It could have been, a blood sugar medications. It could have been anxiety, panic, bipolar. You know what, blood pressure medications. You know all the things that people take all the time. The average person was taking four. And I would say the average person was unhealthy, overweight, the typical patient that walks through your door.

And we asked them all these questions about, you know, what they're doing, what they take, what they do for a living and try to really get the liability to a minimum. The last question we asked, 150 AD a shape people that were basically couch potatoes that didn't do anything, they were taking four medications was do you consider yourself healthy?

Closing Story: Motivation, Health Beliefs, and Final Takeaways 30:18

150 out of 150 people said, yes. And here's the reason why. And this is what I want you to know. They are convinced by big form is billions of dollars in marketing that if they take a drug for blood pressure, they are healthy. They can maintain the same habits they've always had, but they no longer have high blood pressure. If they eat poorly and they have high cholesterol, they then take Lipitor or whatever drugs are popular now, they believe they could still eat the way they eat because now they're healthy.

They take a drug. So they've been convinced that they don't need health because they already have it. They don't change their lifestyle, which we know how important it is. They don't change any of the bad habits they have because they believe that medication keeps them healthy. How are you in your communication going to either on your website or your first visit, or within a short period of time, convince them they're not healthy. They already believe they are. You can't sell somebody something they don't need.

They already have it. So when you communicate with patients, realize who you're dealing with, realize that it has to be a slow progression from them going down that slide coming into your office, meet them where they live, and once they're in your office and they see the miracle of what you do in chiropractic so they know who you are, what you do, why you do it, why they need it, they will refer their friends and family. Doctor Allen, I hope that you enjoyed and got some value out of this. The other 40 speakers I could tell you I already myself.

I have a list of all those that I'm going to, watch. Doctor Dennis's was great. There are some other great ones that I've already watched on the first couple of days. Don't miss any of them. This summit is really a great way for you to change. Who you are, how you practice and really go into the future of really setting your goals so that you can take advantage of the power of who you are and what we do. Doctor Allen, and have a great day.