The team at Zeiss ask me to do an interview on their podcast (the episode is 🔥🔥 by the way. I’ll shoot you a message once it’s live). The topic of virtual consultations came up.
While we’re seeing many practices jumping on board with our Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement (a combination of in-person consults and virtual consults)…
We also talk to a lot of practices who want to do it… but they’re hesitant. They don’t see how the virtual consultations fit into their workflow. Or they have concerns about the efficacy and longevity of virtual consults.
Why? It’s often due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how virtual consultations should work.
During this podcast interview with Zeiss, I shared the 4 common myths that are holding many practices back from reaping the benefits of virtual consults.
I thought you (or someone you know) could benefit from those, so here they are…
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MYTH 1. Virtual Consults have to be long/drawn out/complex
Many people have this idea that the virtual consult needs to be comparable to the in-person consult process. Obviously you can’t do scans on a virtual consult. But they feel like the VC should still be long, highly detailed, with lots of information presented.
We’ve even talked to practices who have tried virtual consults, and they tell me they typically spend an hour with a patient on Zoom.
Not only is this not necessary, it can actually hurt your conversion numbers. Long virtual consults lead to boredom and information overload. This is deadly combination when you’re trying to get someone excited to take the next step of coming in for a pre-op.
THE TRUTH – Virtual consults only need to be about 15 minutes long. They should only cover brief medical history, rapport building, the prospect’s pain points, and have a strong call to action.
Structure your VC the proper way and hit the right notes, and you can get in, get out, and get the prospect on your pre-op schedule… all in short order.
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MYTH 2 – A doctor needs to be involved in virtual consults.
We prefer our surgeons focusing their time on their highest ROI activities – doing surgery, leading their teams, working on their business.
Which is why the virtual consultation process we have developed does not require a doctor to be present.
We have practices converting the majority of their virtual consults (50-60%, sometimes more) into surgeries with our virtual consult format, and no doctor engages with the patient until they are in the practice to pre-op for surgery.
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MYTH 3 – “Now that our city is opening back up from lockdowns, and patients are coming into the office, we don’t need a virtual option.”
I’ve heard this several times, and it makes sense at first glance. If you’re open for in-person, why do you need the remote option?
You need it if you want to engage more people. Just like Chipotle offers in-person dining and home delivery (we did a video on this), you benefit when you have multiple ways a prospect can engage you.
Sure there are plenty of people who will come into the practice now. But others – either due to fear, convenience, or other random reasons – aren’t coming in for an initial consult.
By offering only in-person consults, you’re only catering to a portion of the market.
So you either leave the rest of the market for your competitors to scoop up, or you offer a virtual option and capture those too.
You don’t care how new patients get to you. What matters is that they get to you. Give them more than one avenue to do that.
One final note on this: our home-centric, convenience-focused consumer lifestyle isn’t going away. People are used to Zoom meetings, at-home workouts and grocery delivery. Get on board with virtual consults now and lead the way in your market… or play catch-up a year from now when one of your competitors is eating your lunch.
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MYTH 4 – “We tried virtual consults, and we didn’t get much from them, so they probably don’t work for us.”
When practices tell us this, our first question is to have them describe how they have done virtual consults. When we dig a little deeper, we find out that the practice didn’t actually market and promote virtual consultations as an exciting option for prospects. They just kinda… offered em.
They treated virtual consults like this extra little thing they could facilitate if someone asked. Or the virtual consult was an option on their website somewhere, but not actively promoted as a great way to engage with the practice.
Imagine if LASIK was this “Extra little service you offer, and if someone asks about it, you tell them.” Would you be doing much volume? Of course not.
And it’s not because LASIK isn’t great, or because it doesn’t work. It’s just because you didn’t frame it and market it in the appropriate way.
Virtual consults are a great way to grow your surgical volume in a highly efficient manner, as you’ve seen in some of our case study videos. BUT they have to be marketed in the proper manner. Don’t expect people to discover them and see the value on their own. We have to show them the value.
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BIG TAKEAWAY – There’s a right way (and many wrong ways) to market and conduct Virtual Consults.
And if you’ve been hesitant to shift to the Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement, or if you haven’t seen much success with virtual consults, it’s probably due to one or more of they myths I’ve dispelled above.
Fortunately you don’t have to figure this out on your own. We have an entire system built to launch this Hybrid Model for you. I’ve worked with the LASIK Marketing King – Michael King – to package all this up for you.
Everything we’ve learned about how to do virtual consults that convert to surgeries…
All of the ads, landing pages, schedulers, communication tools, reminder messages and sales training… everything that works to get you more refractive surgery patients…
It’s all packed into our Patient Prime System, ready to deploy for practices who are a good fit for the program.
If you want to achieve (or maintain) your status as the go-to practice for vision correction in your market, the Hybrid Model is the path.
The question then becomes…
Do you want to build the car, build the road, and try to navigate this path yourself?
Or would you rather get in the back of our limo and let us take you to your destination?
I’d love to hear your answer…
– Troy “Limo Driver” Cole
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PS – Maybe you’re already doing virtual consults and killing it. Great! But you have a colleague somewhere who isn’t. They need to read this message. Do them – and me – a favor and forward this to them.
We’re on a mission to help local, independent surgeons dominate their markets and crush the chain LASIK centers that are commoditizing the industry. I appreciate your help in reaching more amazing surgeons like you to join us on this mission…