Having worked with hundreds of practices over the last 17 years, almost every patient conversion challenge can be traced back to one thing – confusion.
Confusion about:
- Price
- Value
- Different procedures
- Their best course of action
- Safety
- When to have a procedure
- Why to have a procedure
You can think of dozens of others. Behind every objection or road block, there is some level of confusion.
What can we do about it?
It’s easy to jump to the assumption that if someone’s confused, it’s because they lack information. So the solution would be to give them more information, right?
Problem is this rarely works to clear the fog of confusion. More information over-complicates. It adds more variables into the situation. It gives them more to think about. It adds clutter to their already jam-packed mind.
Think about it – if you drop 10 new pieces of information on the prospect in an effort to give them “more information”… well, maybe one of those pieces of info actually applies to their root concerns. The other 9 are just extra information that creates more questions and more confusion.
So how do we determine the one piece of information or education that they need right now?
Rather than taking the lead and throwing a bunch of information on them, we take the lead when we ask questions. Like…
👉 Which of our payment plans best fits your budget?
👉 What did you friend say about his experience with us?
👉 What did your doctor say when he referred you to us?
👉 How long have you been thinking about doing this?
👉 What did your husband say when you told him you were coming in for a consultation? Was he so excited for you?!
👉 What made you come see us now?
👉 What’s most important to you when choosing a surgeon?
Obviously there are different questions you could ask, depending on the situation. But your goal is to pinpoint the underlying causes of the confusion, and then specifically addressed those.
(One of the three Es in our E3 Conversion System program is Education. And we talk about this concept in depth.)
Here’s the added bonus when you go this route:
At first, many of our students automatically think they need to go into “information overload” on their prospects. They think they need to have memorized an encyclopedia worth of medical information, so they can answer every question.
Not only is this wrong, but it also creates anxiety in your staff, and hurts your conversions.
When we teach this “Ask Questions First” concept and the simple tactics that go along with it, there’s always a collective sigh of relief. “You mean I don’t have to answer every single random question I get on the phone or in a consult?!”
You sure don’t. In fact, don’t even try. There’s a much better way to serve your prospects than the “20 Questions” game.
IN CONCLUSION – Ask questions to identify the specific underlying concerns. Those are creating the confusion. Then educate your prospects on those specific issues, and clarity shall arrive.
– Troy “Clarity” Cole
PS – Our E3 Summer Camps are rocking. Already having teams experience breakthroughs and get a new-found confidence in their conversion skills. And unlike a lot of training programs, it’s actually a ton of fun for the teams that go through it. We have all the gifs, all the memes, sports analogies, Star Wars analogies, music videos, pop psychology experiments, movie quotes, and more.
“Should I care about all that, Troy?” YES because when you can tie into pop culture and your teams’ own personal experiences, knowledge transfer becomes much easier. And activities that are enjoyable improve the learning experience.
Everything we have built is centered around getting your team to REMEMBER and APPLY what they learn. 👍🏻
So if you want to fill your consultation schedule, or want to train up new team members on your phones, or want to give your team a refresher on how to communicate your 5-star patient experience, or if you just wanna get out of the massive discounting game (because you’re better than that), shoot me a message.