Articles

Why THIS is my go-to gas station…

When I need to fuel up on a road trip, I don’t look for any old gas station. I seek out a QuikTrip.

QuikTrip – affectionately known as QT – is a gas station chain primarily in the south. There’s a bunch in Arizona, and they stretch all the way across to Florida. If you’re on a main highway in Texas, there’s a good chance you can find one fairly close.

What’s so awesome about QT? Well they have pretty good coffee, and they typically have a nice selection of protein bars, which I appreciate.

But the thing I love about QT… the reason they’re my go-to… is their customer service.

“How great could customer service be at a gas station? Aren’t you just trying to get in and out?”

EXACTLY. And this is where QT lives up to their name. The customer service training is centered around the idea of getting people in and out of the store as fast as humanly possible.

Their training includes being timed on how fast you can check someone out, and they even teach their team how to run two registers at once so they can get through twice and many people.

(I remember one time I was checking out at QT and an older gentleman in front of me dumped a giant bag of change on the counter to pay for his Twinkies. The cashier did a pretty good job masking his surprise, while my jaw dropped as I switched lines. This ain’t the place for that, I thought.)

At QT, you can always expect the cashiers to be nice but not chatty, fast, and send you on your way with a kind, casual parting word.

The thing that strikes me most about the customer service at QT is that it is based around the context of the situation.

If I gave you no context or background on a company, and I told you good customer service might look like “NOT conversing with folks, NOT getting to know them, and trying to get them to leave as fast as you can…” that probably doesn’t sound great on the surface.

But in the CONTEXT of a gas station, it’s perfect. Speaking of context – you will NEVER hear a QT team member say “Have a nice day!” Its always some version of:

See you later
See you around
Catch you on the flip side
See you next time

Why? Because they know I’m coming back at some point. They want me to come back. Their choice of words reinforces the behavior, convincing me that I am indeed returning at some point in the near future.

Certainly, your practice is different than a gas station. But the context is crucial in both industries.

Let’s look at one contextual element that’s huge for you – the personality of the prospect sitting in front of you.

For example, does it make sense for you to get a patient in and out of a LASIK consult as fast as possible?

The first thought may be “No! That’s awful.”

BUT depending on their personality style, the answer is absolutely YES for some personality types.

Presenting someone with a ton of data and research… depending on their personality style… may be exactly what they need to book surgery. It’s music to their ears! For others, this kind of information is like nails on a chalkboard.

The big question is: how do you know the personality of the patient in front of you, so you can selectively present the most persuasive info to them?

That’s where we get into Personality-Based Selling using the DISC Model of Human Behavior. It’s quite fascinating and almost like a Magic Key when you understand it and apply it.

And if you’re in Miami next week for Outliers, this will be one of the areas Susan and I cover during our opening presentation Saturday morning.

(I’m sure they’re sold out, but if they DO have tickets left, it’ll be worth the trip.)

And if you won’t be there (or if you just want more info NOW), reply “DISC” and I’ll send you more details on this weapons-grade approach to patient persuasion.

– Troy “Context is King” Cole

PS – if you have a chance to stop by a QT, do it and experience what I’m talking about. In the context of a gas station, it’s perfect.

The benefit of being in the “right room”

Sometimes messages and better delivered vocally. This is one of those messages. So you can LISTEN to today’s email (with some extra commentary) here.

=============

Five years ago, I invested $48,000/year to join a high-level mastermind of other business owners and entrepreneurs.

A lot for me at that time in my business. When I joined, I thought I’d be learning a bunch of tactics to grow my business. And while I definitely did, that was NOT the most impactful part of the group.

The thing that had the most profound effect on me: being around other driven, winning, energetic business owners – some on the same journey as me, some AHEAD of me, others coaching me.

That ENVIRONMENT led to more breakthroughs, more progress, reaching more milestones, and helping me overcome mental blocks I didn’t even know I had. And ultimately massive increases in revenue.

The biggest benefits I received from my investment came from being in “the Right Room.”

It’s one of the reasons we’re so passionate about creating this “Right Room” environment in our coaching programs.

We have live group coaching calls with all our students, we role play together, share wins with each other, have competitions, do giveaways. Tons of opportunities for everyone to engage, learn and CELEBRATE one another.

The energy is sky high, plenty of encouragement but we also hold people accountable and teach them how to hold themselves accountable.

They’re in the “Right Room.”

So it’s no surprise to me when the folks who show up and engage in our coaching programs are also the ones sharing wins like “I went 100% on premium lens upgrades last week” or “we booked 7 out 8 LASIK consults for sx today” or “we booked more consults last week that we have any time in the past year!”

(And these are all actual results from practices in the past 2 weeks)

Being in the Right Room creates ideas, motivation, drive, new energy. Almost like magic.

And the underlying source, the driver, the fuel – is New Energy. You want to create, capture and leverage New Energy, and that’s what happens when you’re in the Right Room.

(This applies to many aspects of life btw – health, fitness, parenting, etc)

You don’t want to get stale, get tired, get worn, get robotic. The New Energy wards off ALL those conversion killers.

Now, there’s a “Right Room” opportunity coming up in a few weeks in Miami, and this is specifically for my CEOs, surgeons, ODs and admins. It’s the Outliers 2024 meeting.

You wanna get in a literal room with other Physician CEOs and Admins who are pushing to new levels? This is The Right Room to be in.

Speaking lineup is phenomenal. My wife Susan and I are on the roster – we’ll be dropping all the hyper-tactical pearls on what’s working right now to get more consults and surgeries on the books. Tactics you can take and plug-n-play in your office the following Monday.

But more than amazing speakers, the New Energy is gonna be flowing. And you need it. We all do.

You’re neck deep in the mix of your practice every single day, keeping everyone going forward, putting out fires, on the grind basically 24/7.

That demands a New Energy infusion from time to time. It’s what our clients love the most in our sales coaching communities, and it’s definitely gonna be happening at Outliers in Miami.

Do not miss out on this opportunity.

They have a handful of tickets left. At least they did a few days ago. So head over to the website, grab yours now. Then reply and let me know you’re going so I can make sure we connect over a Piña Colada or Old Fashioned (or whatever your flavor is)

Come get the New Energy.

– T-Cole

PS – already attending? Forward this to a colleague who isn’t.

PPS – On the fence? You already know what you need to do. Book your flight and I’ll see you there. 💪🏼

PPPS – Don’t forget you can LISTEN to this message as well. In fact I recommend it. Hits different. Here’s the proof.

This price sheet caught my eye at the rodeo…

FYI I’m zipping over to Tampa tomorrow to drop marketing knowledge at the “Telling It Like It Is” Conference. If you’re around, come find me and say hey! (or text me if you have my # and we can meet up).

—-

Saw something interesting last week, made me think of you.

Every January, the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo kicks off at Will Rogers Coliseum, just West of downtown Fort Worth. It’s an amazing mix of rodeo, carnival rides, shopping, great food and all the farm creatures my animal-loving children could hope to see.

A Cole family fave is climbing on all the tractors on display in the vendor areas. Companies like John Deere and Kubota will bring all their latest model backhoes, mowers and tractors, and the kids can climb all over them.

While the kids were enjoying the farm equipment playground, I got curious about the pricing around one of these things cost. Upon closer inspection of a mini-excavator, here’s what I saw:

If that image isn’t loading for you (or if it’s too hard to read), the pricing is as follows “$460/mo at 2.99% for 60 months,” with “10% down with approved credit” in tiny print.

The total cash price wasn’t listed anywhere on the device. (which provided a good opportunity to test the mental math skills of my 11-year-old, having him calculate the total investment. He passed with flying colors.)

They weren’t the only ones doing this. I saw other tractor dealers, hot tub dealers, massage chair salespeople and more, all showcasing their price in “monthly payment” type language.

A few notes on why this is an effective pricing strategy:

1. Most people budget and live in a “monthly expenditures” kind of manner. People get paid weekly / biweekly, and they have monthly bills – mortgage/rent, cell phone bill, car payment, electric, water, gas, etc. So sharing a price in terms of monthly payment is a natural, familiar frame people are used to.

2. If you can create a plausible positive-ROI scenario, any purchase is more of a no-brainer. For example, let’s say I clear land for a living. If I can buy a new stump grinder for $350/mo, and it’ll let me clear an acre 25% faster than what I’m using now, I can take on 1-2 extra jobs per week, at several thousand dollars per job.

So that investment would ROI for me the first couple days I use it, and the rest of the month is gravy. Makes it a no-brainer decision.

Similar example is how we have our coaching programs set up. Once your surgery scheduler uses our coaching to book just 1 extra procedure for you, that’s a 10x (or more) return on their investment in the program right off the bat. Again, no-brainer.

So structuring the pricing in a “this is what you will pay per month” makes it much easier to understand a positive ROI.

For you, not all of your patients are investing in surgery to achieve a positive ROI money-wise (some are, since they can save tens of thousands of dollars on things like glasses and contacts over decades). But this is where you can expand the definition of “investment” – certainly it includes money, but also time, effort, attention.

It’s distracting to do computer work when your contacts are burning your eyes. Hate going to the gym because your glasses always get sweaty? That’s a problem.

What’s the return you’ll receive on having a procedure like vision correction to solve those problems? Well it’s like the old MasterCard commercials. Some activities have dollar values. Others are priceless.

3. Monthly payments make the inaccessible affordable. A lot of folks don’t have an extra $60,000 sitting around for a new truck, $75,000 for a new tractor or $600,000 for a new house. Or $6,000-$15,000 for vision correction. Thankfully, they don’t need it. Because with affordable payment plans, the new purchase is affordable for their budgets.

So when you’re presenting price to patients in the office (or even on the phone if someone is adamant about getting pricing info), you are more helpful to your prospect when you describe the investment in terms that are familiar, helpful and applicable to their budget. And you can do that by talking about your pricing in terms of monthly payment plans.

– Troy “Tractor” Cole

PS – Remember to reply or text me if you’ll be at the TILII meeting in Tampa!

”Booked surgeries are down. Who’s responsible?”

I met with a surgeon last week, and she was telling me how her surgery numbers were lighter than normal, and she was trying to determine the issue.

She’s not alone. A lot of practices are feeling this on some level, so I wanted to pass along some of the insights I shared with her.

There are a number of possible reasons why numbers are down, so let’s talk about ways you can figure out the issue and how to fix it.

1. Follow the Patient Journey

If you’re like most of our high-performing clients, you have some kind of CRM with a bunch of dashboards and reports.

So if you’re having volume issues, best place to start is by following the Patient Journey. Look at the reports in order of the steps a patient takes with your practice – leads, conversion to consult, no-show / cancel, conversion to SX, kept sx, reasons for NOT scheduling, etc

And you can dig further into those – days btw lead and consult, conversion to consult within 7 days of becoming a lead, conv rates per doctor / scheduler and more.

But by looking at your reports in parallel with your patient journey, you can start to see (in a practical way) where the leaks are happening.

We do this by running our Conversion Diagnostic. And for this particular practice, we pinpointed 4 specific challenges standing in her way of more volume.

2. Do a Touchpoint Analysis

Two terms you’re probably familiar with if we’ve worked together or you’ve been reading my emails for a while – Decision Points and Incubation Periods.

Decision Points represent each decision a patient faces with you – deciding to contact you, schedule a consult, show up for the consult, schedule surgery, show up for surgery, and become a raving evangelist after surgery.

And then you have the Incubation Periods a patient goes through – these are the time periods between decision points. For example, if someone calls on a Thursday and books a consult for the following Wednesday, the 6 days in between is an Incubation Period.

In the “Follow the Patient Journey” exercise, you honed in on the Decision Points to see what the data was telling you.

Now do a Touchpoint Analysis, which is a dive into the Incubation Periods. Then you’ll see opportunities to move patients from Decision Point to Decision Point. (i.e. down the Patient Journey pathway)

For example, what are the touchpoints between lead and consult? Literally WHAT are you sending / doing / saying, WHEN is it happening, WHO is doing it, etc.

And to be clear, the ultimate goal for your touchpoints is to get your prospect to show up excited and ready to consider the next step.

Hint: It takes more than reminders in 2024.

We used to talk about having enough reminder notifications. “Make sure people don’t forget!”

Now reminders are the price of admission. You can’t even get in the game without reminders. No reminders = no seat at the table.

But if you want WIN to game… if you want to dominate the high roller table… it takes more than just telling people when and where to be there.

Think about it – you know the difference between someone who comes in excited, comfortable and ready to have a convo, vs someone who comes in anxious and unsure. Night and day contrast, and you convert a lot more of the former than the latter.

There are dozens of creative ways to enhance your Incubation Periods and build rapport / excitement with prospective patients. A few of the fun approaches we’re testing now:

Custom AI videos (where we say the name of each patient)
Supercharger Confirmation Pages (a totally underutilized yet possibly POTENT space on all practices websites)
Personalized SMS messaging around age / demo / desires of each lead (stop sounding like a robot)

And yes we’re automating as much of this as we can (so for the 10% that needs to be done manually, our clients will have the time / bandwidth to do it right!)

3. As you look through all this data and figure it out, you also want to address the question:

“Who is responsible for getting more patients to surgery?”

Depending on the roadblocks you uncover as you go through step 1 and step 2, there will be certain tasks that need to get done. Marketing, technicians, sales, phones (probably a mix) will have some adjustments to make.

But I ask this question on a philosophical level.

“Who is responsible for getting more patients to surgery?”

There is only 1 right answer for every person on your team. And the answer is “I am.”

Every team member in your practice is responsible in some way or another.

Every team member in your practice has some level of control and some area of influence on the patient journey.

Every team member in your practice can contribute to a patient-focused culture and positive vibes in the office.

Every team member in your practice can gather and share feedback in an effort to improve the patient journey for everyone.

Every team member in your practice is responsible for getting more patients to surgery.

And they need to remember WHY that’s important:

Because the more patients you get to surgery, the more lives you have changed.

The more time you’ve saved people. The more money you’ve saved people. The more you’ve helped them do their jobs better. The more memories you’ve helped people create. The SAFER they are. The more FULFILLED they are.

THIS is the win, and it’s a WIN for the patient. The revenue coming into your practice is a byproduct of doing all this right.

And the only way you can do it: you have to work together.

What if you have folks who don’t see it as their responsibility?

Not uncommon for that to happen. Fingers pointing. Complaining about others. Combativeness between teams with the practice.

The lower the surgery numbers drop, the higher the tensions in the office become. I get it, but that’s a recipe for failure.

You didn’t bicker / in-fight / dramatize your way to where you were when your numbers were optimal. And that’s not gonna how you’re gonna get BACK there (and beyond).

So if you have this happening in your practice… CUT it out, sing a little Kumbaya and get refocused on the mission.

Every week in our live coaching meetings, I spend at least a few minutes on the topic of unification and team work. I want clients leaving those meetings excited, educated and empowered to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY to make things happen.

And if you have someone on your team who can’t get on board with that, then you might not be a good fit for each other. Which is totally fine.

Alright, that’s enough for now. I need to go finish out the “DISC for Doctors” presentation I’m sharing in our Green Room Coaching Community today. (DISC is a phenomenal communication tool btw, especially how we teach it as applied to sales)

I hope this is useful, and if you have questions, hit me back.

Best,

PS – On the marketing side, we currently have ZERO openings for new marketing clients. But if you’d like to dive deeper on any of this, our private community for practice marketers is a good place to get more insights, coaching, templates and brainstorming with like-minded practices. Reply for the details…

Story-based marketing examples (avoid this 1 misstep)

I was on a coaching call with a client a couple days ago, and we were discussing the story-based email style I shared with you last week.

Now, our stories should NOT be limited to email. You can run story threads throughout your entire marketing campaign.

Today I wanna share a couple of examples of great story based ad campaigns you’ve probably seen. And beyond that, why they do so well.

We’re also gonna address the #1 most common mistake businesses make with their story-based marketing. (And how you can avoid it).

Let’s rock…

A couple of recent, popular story-based marketing campaigns:

1. Chick-Fil-A’s “Little Things” campaign. They’ve been running this campaign since 2018, and they describe it as having “kindness as the crux.”

These are the ads where it shows a customer and a Chick-fil-a employee sitting on a couch, telling a story. Here’s one of many examples on YouTube. (This 30-second spot literally makes me tear up, so apologies in advance for any feels that might occur.)

(BTW they come across these stories through a “Little Things” page on their website, where you can submit yours)

As you can see, the stories center around some aspect of the customer. A woman who loves the little notes of encouragement they write on her styrofoam cup. The lady whose dog was cured from cancer and the CFA folks celebrated it. A mother trying to wrangle her 3 rambunctious kids, who appreciated the extra help a CFA team member gave her.

All the spots are cute, heartwarming and endearing. All good emotions that you want people to feel about your business when you tell a story.

2. FedEx – “Tall Tales of True Deliveries”

I just saw this one the other day (not sure if it’s new or not), but this is another strong example of the story-based marketing you want to do.

The concept of the spot is that it’s an animated retelling of an actual request made by a FedEx customer (in this case, to bring the wedding rings from the delivery down to the beach). You can see it at this link (the first video on that page is the commercial).

First, the design is cool. But more importantly, this is EXACTLY what can happen with each of your patients when you’re the one helping them write the story.

So who is the story about?

With our coaching clients, we dive into how and why to adopt specific roles in the patient journey. Not just the job roles in your practice (tech, scheduler, etc) – but what role does your team play, and what role does the patient play?

In a nutshell – who is the star of the story? Is it us and our lasers and our experience and nice office? Actually no (even though all those things are awesome of course!)

The star of the story is the patient.

With the FedEx example – the relationship, the wedding, the rush to get the rings, that’s a story. It’s literally someone else’s wedding story that the FedEx driver got thrust into.

Same with the Chick-fil-A spots. They’re not about Chick-fil-A. They’re about somebody who enjoys Chick-fil-A and a relationship they have with the people who work there. And how that affects and impacts both of them in their daily lives.

You with me? Your practice / procedures / surgeon skill is the pathway to get them to the outcome they want. It’s not the destination. It’s not the story. Your Patient Journey is the Yellow Brick Road. The patient is the star, and they pick the destination, and you get them there.

The beauty of all this is that you are in the story business. You are creating patient stories and writing yourself into patient stories every day. That’s literally what you do. You are the inflection point for a patient to create a better story for themselves.

The Common Mistake – Making the Story About Ourselves

Probably obvious at this point, but the most common mistake is putting the practice in the starring role instead of the patient.

Let me stress: most practices are not doing this on purpose! For example, it’s common to go watch a surgeon’s testimonial videos and hear things like:

“This place made me so comfortable… They were so nice to me… They really made it a good experience… I love my vision now…”

Are any of those things bad? NO.

But they’re also (in and of themselves) not a story, not relatable and not infotaining.

Have you ever heard 2 different people tell the same story? Maybe you have 2 friends who were at the same event, and separately, they each give you a recap afterward.

And one friend is a GOOD storyteller, and the other isn’t that great. Big difference in how the story is communicated, right?

We want to be good storytellers and story-creators within the practice.

So what’s a story?

I’ll give you one basic example today – the Hero’s Journey that you see in countless novels, TV shows and movies. This is one of the most popular “formulas” for entertainment there is. I’ll show you how to apply it with your patients:

When patients answer the following questions in an interview, you’ve drawn out their “hero’s journey” story (which I’ve notated in parenthesis):

What do you do? (1. Show the Hero in their Ordinary World)
What made you decide to look into vision correction? (2. Hero is Called to Adventure)
Why now? How did you make the decision? (3. Hero Confronts the Challenge)
NOTE: This is when you can get into why it was a good decision – comfort, kindness, great results…
And finally, what are you doing now with your new eyes (4. Hero Returns to life a Victorious, a Changed Person)

That is THE hero story arc. The one that made Star Wars a $65 billion franchise. Use it.

And when you share that story (which is 90% about the interesting patient and 10% about your practice), people will be INFOtained, and they can relate and identify with that person. That’s what you want.

This goes back to an element of marketing we call “signaling.” We don’t have to tell you how awesome we are if we can signal how awesome we are. If I tell you, you’re skeptical. If you see my signal, then you’re open to accepting it because it’s rooted in your own opinion.

But that’s a topic for another day. This has already gone too long (even though we’re just scratching the surface on the use of Story). If you wanna go deeper on story-based marketing, hit reply and let me know.

And if you found this helpful / fascinating / infotaining / annoying, reply and let me know that too. I appreciate your feedback, good or bad.

Enjoy your weekend!

T-Cole

PS – For 2024, we’re also shifting even more focus to story-based SELLING in our E3 Coaching Community for consult / surgery schedulers. This includes: Writing yourself into the patient’s story, understanding the story TYPES that different personality styles prefer (because it varies!), telling patient stories back to them, crafting the story arc on their behalf, etc. It’s highly effective…