Articles

Less is More – How “The Curse of Expertise” May Be Killing Your Conversions

When we onboard a new client into our coaching programs, we meet with admins/managers to go over the “roster.” Meaning everyone who will be going through the program, so we can talk about their history, strengths, growth areas.

Then we jump on a 1-on-1 call with each team member to get them excited about the program and start them through specific resources to improve their skillsets.

While onboarding a client last week, they mentioned a particular team member dealing with a common challenge we see from experienced team members:

This individual has been with the practice a while, and they know a ton about vision correction. As a result, this person tends to overload prospective patients with too much information.

Why is this an issue? Because their calls are taking way longer than they should, and this person has a mediocre close rate because prospective patients are overwhelmed and can tend to shut down.

So what’s the solution? First let’s understand what we’re dealing with…

The “Curse of Expertise” is a common cognitive bias. It happens when person A is talking to person B, and assumes person B has the background knowledge necessary to make sense of what person A is telling them.

(This happens to all of us in all kinds of scenarios btw. It’s not rare. My electrician did this to me just the other day when he had to replace a breaker. Dude just going on and on in all his technical terms I wasn’t familiar with…)

It makes sense why we do this, right? You’re an expert about what you do. If you’ve been doing it for years, you’re probably passionate about it. You could talk about it all day. (I feel you – I’m the same way about my work.)

These are all good things. The challenge arises when we let it spill onto our prospects by way of over-informing.

Keep this in mind – if we’re heaping information onto prospective patients, they have no framework to organize it all. It’s like we’re throwing an entire wardrobe into their arms, and they don’t have any coat hangers to organize the clothes or a closet to arrange them in. “Here, hold all this, figure it out!”

Heck, they don’t even know what questions to ask you in order to get the information they need (which is why the pricing question comes up so often).

We have a saying in our coaching programs that MORE isn’t BETTER when it comes to information.

But you can’t just “cut to the chase” all the time, right? So what’s the “information sweet spot”?

Here’s an easy way to think about it…

The info you provide needs to be centered on the goal of the specific interaction. What are you trying to do? Book a consult? Book surgery? Recommend a specific procedure? Address a certain concern?

Once you know that, it’s much easier to provide the right info in the right context at the right time. And leave out the rest.

You’ll find yourself having more efficient interactions, more fruitful interactions and ultimately more bookings on your consult and surgery schedule.

Your expertise is AWESOME. And when you apply it in the appropriate way, it can be an amazing asset for you. 💪🏻

Best,

Coach Troy

The second best time to plant a tree is…

We work with a lot of refractive surgeons, and this baffling topic comes up rather frequently:

“WHY don’t more young people have LASIK?”

Because the earlier you have it (once your vision is stable), the more value you’ll get.

For example, let’s say you have LASIK at 20. You’ve got at least 25 years before you need to start messing with reading glasses. Which is a lot MORE time than if you get LASIK at 35.

(It’s a great value either way, but obviously the 15+ extra years of saved $$ on glasses/contact lenses and add’l awesome adventures is massive).

But most younger folks won’t do it. They delay.

Another take on this – people who come in for a consult, find out they’re a perfect candidate, but then just want to go “think about it.”

And then they just end up putting it off… and off… and then they come back 3 years later to go through the same cycle with you again (you know you’ve seen it…)

It’s like the Chinese proverb you’ve probably heard – “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Of course it makes perfect sense to have LASIK when you’re younger and make the most of your TIME here on earth.

But for a number of reasons, many younger people either refuse to do it or don’t give it a strong consideration.

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Today’s message is not about when to make a LASIK decision.

This message is about the fact that most people don’t treat time like the insanely precious resource it is. Time is the one resource that cannot be replenished… but we often don’t act like it.

Yes, it’s silly for patients to wait years to have a procedure that would be so beneficial to them now.

But we need to turn that mirror on ourselves. What income-producing activities are we putting off in our practices and businesses?

Hiring that additional phone team member so you can stop outsourcing your calls, bring your scheduling team in-house and provide a better patient experience?
Deploying the SMS/Email technology and automations to help your schedulers be more efficient?
Getting your team the coaching and resources they need to fill your consult schedule with high-ticket patients?

I periodically audit myself and our agency to see where we’re indirectly wasting time and/or opportunity (and I recommend you do the same for you/your practice). And then fill those gaps.

If it’s work that needs to get done (production gap), we’ll hire or bring in a strategic partner.

In instances where we have a knowledge gap, I’m typically hiring a coach. I’ve worked with multiple coaches over the years, and I just added another to help me with one specific aspect of my business. Rather than continuing to try to figure it out myself (delays, wasted time), I invest in the shortcut.

So in conclusion – we can’t get every member of Gen-Z in for a consult. But we can take actions to make our teams as effective as possible for the individuals who do come in to see us…

As long as we take action and waste no time. Because the second best time to plant a tree? It’s right now.

– Coach Troy

Reminder to Ritz-ify your patient experience

Free upgrade to a corner suite. Assortment of complimentary snacks. Handwritten thank-you note from the manager.

At what exotic locale did we receive such Ritz-Carlton treatment last night?

Drumroll please… This happened at…

The Courtyard Marriott in the mid-sized cattle town of Amarillo, TX, on a Tuesday.

(Amarillo is our pitstop between our home in Fort Worth and our ski destination in Colorado. We’re taking all 4 kids for the first time. I’ll be in touch on how that goes…).

The Ritz-Carlton customer service training programs are often touted as the best in the business, and for good reason. I’ve been through several Ritz-Carlton courses, and I can confirm they are legit.

And last night’s little surprise package serves as a good reminder that no matter where we are or what our situation is, we can Ritz-ify our practices.

Big city or small town.

Brand new, spacious office… or sitting like sardines in an older space, while you build out a new one.

Whether you’ve been in practice for 40 years, or you just opened up last week.

No excuses. No delays. No what-ifs.

The qualities that matter most to your prospective patients – you’re listening, you care, you appreciate their business and you can give them great results. And you can convey these (like Courtyard Marriott did) no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

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Ritz-ifying your experience is one way you can stand apart. Not just from other practices, but from all the other distractions in your prospective patients’ lives.

Practices that want to be premium MUST stand apart. And it starts with that first engagement with your phone team.

If you want to book more consultations for your high-ticket procedures, you need to Ritz-ify your phone team.

Now, it’s easy to mess this up and go down a rabbit hole of “customer service” that actually turns people OFF to your practice. BUT there is a specific way to provide a Ritz-like engagement with prospective patients on the phone, to wow them and endear them to you. (This is one of the many conversion strategies we teach our coaching clients.)

No matter where you are, or what phase of practice growth you’re in, you can accelerate it by taking a note from the Courtyard Marriott in little old Amarillo, TX.

Get Ritzy today.

– Coach Troy

No, THIS is the most wonderful time of the year

We’re heading into my favorite time of year – Spring.

For a number of reasons.

1. Youth baseball is getting into full swing (I coach both of my sons’ teams, the Rockies and the Bearcats). Meeting new families, coaching young players, seeing them develop. Spending evenings with my kids at practice, traveling around for games as a family, making memories.

2. And then you have the longer days. Weather starts to warm up, evenings are spent playing in the backyard, which is already starting to get just a hint greener each day.

3. It’s a super-busy season – with all the sports, travel, adventures and business. (This may sound weird, but one thing I’ve learned about myself – the more I have going on, the better I perform. I do better when I’m loaded down…)

It’s the season of NEW, my friend. Personally and professionally. New life, new opportunity, new initiatives.

We have clients launching ASCs, new laser suites, expanding their sales departments with new hires. It’s a blast partnering with A-players all over the country. So much WINNING and NEW GROWTH.

I was visiting with a client about this yesterday: fresh Spring season + new practice goals/initiatives = the perfect time to introduce new development opportunities to your team.

If you want to turn the tide in any area of your practice – whether that’s raising prices, increasing elective procedure numbers or even adding stacking more consults each week – cast the vision and give your team the jolt they need to make it happen.

Sometimes you can create that jolt internally. Sometimes it needs to come from the outside. (Typically it’s a mix of both).

Either way, it’s time to shed that exoskeleton. Wipe the sleep from those eyes after winter hibernation. “The new season is here, team!”

At LogiCole Consulting, we’re Jolt Pros. It’s no surprise this is the time of year when our sales coaching programs get booked up. Because they are the perfect way to reinvigorate your team coming into the new season.

Now that we’re through the holidays, through the January / New Year flash-in-the-pan resolution stuff… and a glorious spring is on the horizon… it’s time to inject freshness and vitality into your team.

You can’t afford stagnation. Hit the gas pedal. Crank up the volume. Build excitement. Create momentum. Get everyone pumped (and equipped) for your practice’s mission.

It’s Go Time.

– Coach Troy

3 Communication Lessons from the World’s Most Popular YouTuber

I just spent some time diving into the Mr. Beast “1,000 Blind People See for the First Time” video.

If you’re not familiar with Mr. Beast, he’s one of YouTube’s most prolific content creators with more than 130 Million subscribers. His videos routinely receive hundreds of millions of views, and those videos typically consist of people doing crazy challenges for obscene amounts of money.

This video is different than his normal schtick, as he has partnered with SEE international to fund what appears to be 1,000 cataract surgeries in the US and around the world.

It’s a fun watch, and certainly relevant for any refractive surgeons to share on their social media channels.

I’d like to take a minute and point out 3 aspects of this video that you can learn from to improve your videos, your marketing and even your sales processes for your elective services.

Lesson 1 – He talks on a 5th grade level.

Did you notice how he described cataract surgery in literally 12 seconds using ZERO medical terms?

It’s beautiful.

Here’s the transcript:

“If you’re wondering how the surgery allows people to see again, it’s because the lens in their eye got so cloudy that they can’t see through it. So the surgeon uses the tiny vacuum to suck up the clouded lens, and replace it with an artificial lens. The surgery is that simple. They can see again.”

Again, this goes back to Mr. Beast meticulously scripting his videos with language that will keep his audience tuned in.

As experts, it’s so easy for your team to get into the weeds, into technical terms, when talking about everything you do. And certainly there are times this is appropriate, like when you have an engineer sitting in your chair. They may want all that extra detail, so give it to them.

But for the most part, in your marketing and in your sales presentations, clear, concise, easy-to-understand words will allow you to better connect with the patient.

There are other examples of him using 5th grade language all throughout the video.

A good reminder for your team when they’re speaking with prospects – our goal is to educate our patients, not to impress them with our depth of knowledge.

Lesson 2 – This is a masterclass in editing.

It’s no accident Mr. Beast is the best in the game when it comes to creating viral video content. He’s shared in interviews about how much time he’s spent hacking the YouTube algorithms (thousands of hours), and how meticulous his team is with the way they edit their videos.

Think about it – they have videos that are 5 – 20 minutes long, and they want people to watch the whole thing. So the proper editing, timing, etc is vital.

His manager even revealed they scrapped an entire multi-million dollar production because Mr. Beast was not able to get the YouTube Video Thumbnail just right. CRAZY!

SO when you watch this video, take note of the edits. There’s never more than 3-4 seconds before there’s a cut to a different frame, a different angle, or an overlay of graphics. It’s fast-paced. It keeps moving. It’s not boring. Yet it doesn’t feel rushed.

If you’re creating long- or short-form videos for your practice, this is a good style to mimic. Cut out long pauses, use different angles, zoom in / zoom out, overlay images / videos. This is what keeps people tuned in vs. scrolling to the next thing.

Lesson 3 – It’s all story-driven.

Mr. Beast packs a number of patient stories into the video. It’s story after story, talking about different people’s goals and desires for their lives after surgery.

Humans are hard-wired to tune in to stories. Confession: I can remember times I’ve been in church, perhaps a little drowsy, and the preacher gets into “Ima tell you a quick story….” and I perk right up. Am I the only one?

People love stories. And the most popular YouTuber on the planet knows this, and leverages it for great results.

You have many ways to incorporate story into the different steps of a patient journey. It goes way beyond producing a fancy YouTube interview video. A few off the top of my head:

When you caption a patient in a video or a picture, don’t just write “John Smith, LASIK Patient” say “John Smith, Cyclist and Father of 3”. Now we have context about his story.
If you personally have had a procedure, you have a story. Share it. “I remember being nervous too, and this is what helped me….”
You are constantly around stories. Literally every patient you interact with has a life story within which you play a major role via vision correction. Tell those stories in your consults. “Just the other day I had a young lady in here, similar situation to you – 2 young kids, and she just wanted to be able to read them bedtime stories….”

Hope that’s helpful! Any other big takeaways you noticed? Hit reply and tell me what they are…

Gracias,

Coach Troy