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Want more consults? Do this on the phones

Something to keep in mind as you continue growing your practice in 2023:

What can you do on the phones to stand apart in the mind of your prospective patients?

Stand apart from competing practices, from the humdrum of daily life, from everything that might distract your target prospect from walking the Patient Journey with you.

If you can simply stand apart on the initial call, you put your competitors at a major disadvantage.

Let’s look at an example… 👇

Quick thought experiment – We call this the 5-Practice Sheet. (This is a dead-simple and super helpful concept, and this is one of several ways we coach our students to use it…)

Imagine you’re a potential patient, and you call 5 practices and ask why they’re awesome.

Most practices will say some version of…

>>> “Our doctors have a ton of experience.”

>>> “We have great technology.”

>>> “We’re totally focused on our patients.”

Etc etc you’ve heard it. And you’ve heard competitors make these claims too (and perhaps laughed to yourself, depending on their actual quality of care).

Now, for you and perhaps even multiple practices in your area, these statements can actually be TRUE.

BUT…. (And this is a major badonkadonk of a BUT….)

Is the prospective patient any closer to making a smart decision about their healthcare having this info from 5 practices? No.

Because on paper… with those answers… all 5 practices sound the same. This info is not enough to make any single practice stand out and shine.

What’s the solution? Our responsibility goes beyond simply answering the questions of our prospective patients.

Why? Because the person asking the questions is the one in charge. And when someone calls your office with a problem, they want someone to take charge and help them.

Back to the 5-Practice Sheet…

Prospective patient calls and inquires at 5 practices. In most cases, all 5 of them are gonna simply answer questions. In most cases, they won’t take the lead, they won’t help the prospect create a plan… heck, they won’t even recognize it as an opportunity to book a surgery.

If you can just NOT make these mistakes, you’re at a huge advantage.

Soooo many practices are leaving tons of $$ on the table in unbooked consults (gotta book the consult if you wanna book the surgery), simply by playing the same dumb game every other practice is playing. When what they need to do is establish their own game and bring prospective patients into it.

“What’s the script for this, Troy?” Scripts are a small part of it, sure. Attitude, tone, energy, insight, conviction, clarity 👈 these all play a bigger role than the script when it comes to your team being successful booking consults. (we zoom in on each of these in our coaching programs)

And no, that doesn’t mean you need a bunch of folks on your scheduling team who have masters degrees in psychology, or people who have been Sales Kings for a decade. In fact, it’s much easier than that.

All you need are people who:

Are excited and willing to learn.
Understand the value in being more efficient and effective with their time.
Realize if they can help the practice win, then they win too.

If you have folks with those qualities, then it’s time to coach em up to lead your prospective patients through the scheduling process.

To put it on a bumper sticker: “It’s not about how we answer questions, but how we respond to questions.”

Two very different approaches. Use the latter, stand apart, and profit.

– Coach Troy

We teach our kids how to think. Why not our patients?

I have 4 kids age 10 and under, and they do a ton of activities – baseball, golf, gymnastics, basketball, football, soccer.

Not all the things at the same time mind you, but there’s certainly some overlap from season to season.

(And I absolutely love it. I coach the majority of their teams, and I even convinced Susan to co-coach a softball team with me this year – our 6 y/o and 4.5 y/o will be playing together. I can’t wait to see what kinda excitement and marital growth opportunities this entails…)

With so many activities, sometimes two of them conflict with each other. And that’s exactly what happened recently when one of my sons had a basketball game at the same time as a Golf tournament.

We discussed pros and cons, commitments, what his options were, etc. We talked about it a few times over several days, and it led to a number of healthy conversations as he weighed his options.

At some point, this thought struck me:

It’s the most normal thing in the world to teach our children how to think – choose which activities to do, make healthy food choices, how to spend their money.

Yet as adults, there are times when we need to be taught how to think as well.

Think about the patients coming into your office today. Many of them have never stepped foot in a practice like yours. They’ve never had a consult. Never had to consider the implications – health, financial, lifestyle – of having one of your procedures.

They simply don’t have a strong framework for this particular decision. Why would they? They’ve never needed to.

And as educators and advocates for your patients, your job goes beyond simply giving them information and hoping they can arrange it properly for themselves. Your role is to teach your prospective patients how to think.

How to weigh the benefits of your procedure vs. the risks of staying where they are…

How to consider the investment and why it’s worth so much more than the few dollars they will pay…

How to prioritize different factors when choosing a surgeon (hint: Price isn’t even on the Top 10 list)…

And it’s easy to think the best way to do this is by giving people more information. But this can and often does backfire.

In our coaching programs, we rail against the idea that “more = better” when it comes to education. Piling information onto someone is like giving them stacks and stacks of tools and saying, “Here! Now figure out which ones you need to assemble this Ikea bookshelf.”

When they’re much better off if you tell them, “Hey, you see this hex key and adjustable wrench? This is what you need. You can do the whole assembly with these 2 tools.”

People don’t need more information. They need the right information – presented in the proper context – which provides clarity.

If we want our children to think properly, it’s our responsibility to teach them how to do it. Same goes for your patients.

Teach your prospects how to think today, and reap the rewards as you fill your surgery schedule.

– Coach Troy

Use this simple retention hack to keep great team members

Was visiting with a surgeon yesterday re: staffing issues they’re having.

While it does seem like there are more good candidates in the workforce than there were a year ago, finding (and keeping) good talent can still be a challenge.

Over the summer, the team over at CSRToday asked me to share my thoughts and recommendations on this.

You can find my Cover Story linked here in case you haven’t seen it – “How to Cope With Capacity Crunch”

Let’s add one more retention strategy to the list…

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During one of our E3 Conversions System Coaching calls last week, we were looking at one team’s consult booking numbers.

The main goal of our E3 Bootcamp: teach practices to book more consults. Why? Because more consults = more surgeries/treatments.

This particular practice came into the bootcamp averaging 65 booked consults per week. Their goal was to eventually break through to 80/week.

By week 2 of the bootcamp, this incredible team was booking 90+ consults per week, and they’ve maintained that volume ever since.

Huge win, right? Game-changing, in fact. I mean, what would you do with an extra 20-25 consults next week?

Anyway, that’s not the retention tip…

During this meeting, I asked one of the scheduling team members how she was feeling about everything so far. And her response was:

“Now that you’ve shown me how to use my personality and voice in my role, I feel free. I’ve been here for several years, and it’s a great place. But honestly, I wasn’t always excited about my job. But now I get up in the morning, and I’m pumped to come in! I get here, grab my coffee, sit down and start booking consults.”

What amazing feedback.

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When we launched the E3 Conversion System 2 years ago, we set out to teach amazing practices to book more consults without resorting to mass discounting, price matching or slimy sales tactics. And we’ve built a killer coaching program that delivers on this goal.

But I never imagined we would be helping people fall in love with their work, and coaching them how to be passionate about their mission and the patients they serve.

Yet here we are. We’ve seen/heard this type of feedback from multiple boot campers over the last 24 months.

So we’ve intentionally added more “how to love your job and practice” coaching elements to our programs, in addition to the conversion training we do.

An uber-powerful 1-2 punch for your team and for your consult schedule…

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SO the final retention tip – If you can show your team how to use their unique personality and skillsets in their job role, there’s a high likelihood they’ll enjoy their job more. And people who love their jobs tend to stay in them longer.

That’s all I have for you today. I hope you have an amazing Thanksgiving weekend with the family. We all have so much to be thankful for!

Talk soon,

T-Cole “Turkey Boi”

PS – We’re launching the latest iteration of our E3 Bootcamps in January, and we’re looking for 2 more practices that want to empower their teams to max out their consult schedules.

If you’re super-interested, or mildly interested, or love the idea but not sure if it’s right for your practice… book a quick intro call and let’s see if you’re a good fit – e3.troycole.com

[Screenshot] 5 Simple Benefits of SMS

A big “a ha” type moment I want you to pay attention to in life:

Anytime you have a business interaction and think to yourself, “Wow, that was way easier / faster / more efficient / more enjoyable than it used to be,” try to figure out WHY and also what you can learn from that interaction and apply to your practice.

I had one of these last week that made me think, “Wow, that was WAY easier than normal.” And it was an interaction with a new sunglasses brand…

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Confession: my head is huge. Not in an ego way (at least not usually), but in the literal sense. When you see an adjustable hat that says, “One size fits most”… I’m never most.

Big head, big brains, whatever. Point is, I have trouble finding sunglasses that look like they belong on my massive melon.

But my buddy turned me on to the Big Kahunas by Detour Sunglasses, which are actually made for big-brained people like myself. Not to mention the price is right, especially for someone dealing with young kids grabbing and trying on my shades.

So I ordered a pair! And they were working out great. But at some point during the summer, I got some kind of substance (sunscreen? oil?) on my Big Kahuna lenses that I couldn’t get off. And so I started wearing them less.

And several times, I meant to go to their website and submit a customer service form about it, but forgot.

Here’s where it gets interesting…

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Detour Sunglasses sends me text messages when they release new frames, have sales or want feedback on product ideas. Just the other day, they sent me one of these messages.

And I grabbed my sunglasses, took a pic of the lenses and replied to the that message.

Here’s an image of that exchange:

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Other than getting new lenses for my shades, why is this such an excellent exchange? And what are the takeaways you can use when texting your prospects?

1. Right place, right time. They message me once a week-ish. But this particular time, I had been thinking about the sunglasses recently, then their message popped up. Coincidence? You could call it that. But in reality, they’re simply staying top of mind with me so when the time is right, they’re top of mind.

2. Convenience – What’s the normal process to reach customer service at a place like this? Something like go to the website, find a specific contact form, fill it out, take a picture, upload it to their site, pick “all the images that contain a school bus” in a captcha to prove you’re a human, then hope the message got to the right place. Total pain.

SMS removes 95% of that friction and makes it totally convenient.

3. Speed – They got back to me quickly (within a few minutes). I didn’t have to check my email or go dig through my spam folder. Text right to my phone.

4. Humans – Obviously a person wrote this. You can see the personality in their reply text. This in and of itself provides a little dopamine hit, just having a fun interaction with someone at a brand.

My youngest brother is the marketing director for the largest craft brewery in Fort Worth, and he spends time each day replying to every comment on social and every SMS they get back on their text channel. Why? Because those small interactions create an affinity and loyalty for the brand.

Facilitating even small personality-rich human interactions via text can set your practice apart from every other provider.

5. Easy – This was easy for me. It was easy for them. They didn’t need to have some massive tech stack with a ton of integrations and layers of complexity. “We have an SMS system, we text people, if they text back, we can help them.” So simple! Don’t overcomplicate it.

And these are all takeaways you can apply to your practice and the way you communicate with prospects and patients via SMS.

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To wrap it up….

Be aware of business transactions that make you say, “Hmmm, that was easier / faster / more enjoyable than normal.” And then figure out what you can learn from it.

AND if you aren’t using SMS right now, start. It’s a simple channel to leverage for more consults, and to convert more prospective patients on followup.

SMS is easy if you have the right system. All you need is an SMS program that:

Allows you to send SMS to multiple people at once (batch-sending to segments of your audience)
Allows you to automate SMS (so you can text people who fill out your contact form automatically)
Allows 2-way texting (so people can text back and you can converse with them)
Allows you to schedule ON times and OFF times (so messages don’t get sent at 2 a.m. for example)
Has a simple web interface so anyone on your booking team can message with prospects
BONUS: Can tie in your Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messenger conversations, so all these live in the same spot.

If you have a system that does this, AND your team knows how to use it… you’re equipped to book more consults, delight more prospects and make your team more efficient.

And if you don’t have this type of system, hit reply and say “Win with SMS!” and I’ll show you a system that checks all these boxes.

– T-Cole Texting

PS – I showed my buddy (the one who told me about Detour) this SMS thread, and he thought it was great too. I marketed Detour back to him, reminding him how great they are. Yet another way word-of-mouth works…

🎾 3 “sales takeaways” from my first tennis lesson

Ya know what’s fun? Tennis. I never thought much about it until we decided to have our boys try it this summer.

Not long after, Susan decided she was gonna give it a spin. And now she’s hooked.

She has several different classes/lessons each week, and her skills are improving.

Confession: I don’t like to be left out. So yesterday, I told her I wanted to come to her tennis lesson and give it a spin…

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So it’s me, Su and her friend Jennifer, all being instructed by Coach John.

Coach John is amazing. You can tell this dude’s been coaching tennis for decades. And he works with a lot of junior high kids, so his explanations and analogies are super simple to understand.

Now, even though I’ve never done the tennis thing, I used to play a ton of racquetball in high school and college. (One of my all-time most popular essays is about how some grandpa destroyed me in a racquetball tournament if you’ve never read it.)

That experienced helped some, but it was clear early on I had a lot to learn about tennis. And thanks to Coach John, I learned a ton in just one lesson.

Let’s look at three “sales takeaways” from my first tennis lesson.

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1. There’s a rhythm and cadence to everything you do.

One of the first moves Coach John showed me, he called the Tennis Waltz. A 1-2-3 step to get in rhythm to return the ball.

1 – Approach the ball and plant your back foot, while separating the hands.

2 – Plant your front foot while maintaining balance.

3 – Turn your hips and hit through the ball.

1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3… Slow, steady, WHIP….. Slow, steady, WHIP….

A rhythm, a cadence, a tempo. A dance.

Almost all sports have something like this “dance” cadence. The golf swing (when I caddy for my sons, the most common cue I give them is ‘tempo.’). The baseball swing and the pitch. The layup in basketball.

Sales conversations also have a rhythm. They’re a dance. Some prospects’ dance style is different than others.

But that’s why we coach on how to read the person, how to ask questions, how to gauge where their heads are. Because now you know how to fall into the right rhythm and actually lead them properly.

We do NOT coach teams to “memorize all these scripts and use these magic words to hypnotize patients into following your orders.” That’s no fun and it doesn’t work.

The conversion process is a dance. Dancing is FUN. And it DOES work. On the tennis court, on the phone and in the consult room.

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2. There’s more than one way to be successful.

I didn’t realize how many different kinds of shots you can learn in tennis. I figured you just go up and hit the ball, right? WRONG.

We learned footwork and approaches for half a dozen shots just last night. Heck, he taught us 3 different grips to use depending on what shot we were taking.

And it reminded me of a coaching call we had Wednesday with one of our E3 Bootcamp clients. We discussed the popular “I need to talk to my spouse” objection, and I gave them 5 different ways to handle that objection.

Why? Because depending on the situation… depending on where you are on the court… you need the ability to make different shots.

There’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution, but having several easy ways to address common objections makes for a much more confident team who can work through more challenges.

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3. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Last thing we worked on was the serve. The serve in racquetball is NOTHING like the serve in tennis, so I didn’t have much to go on.

And the serve in tennis is difficult in general because you’re trying to smash the ball into a tiny square on the other side of the court.

So I got up there and just tried to do what I’ve seen the guys on TV do. And it worked to my surprise, I put about 50% of my serves into the opposite square with solid speed.

In reality, I’m sure I looked nothing like Andre Agassi. And Coach John conveyed as much when he started tweaking my swing.

“I want you to do this and this,” and he showed me. So I tried it a few times. And I was sailing balls all over the place.

After my 5th attempt, he said: “You know what? Go back to what you were doing.”

So I did, and I ripped 3 out of the next 4 balls into the little square.

“Yeah, we aren’t gonna change anything on your swing for now. You’re doing great with it. No need to fix what isn’t really broken.”

Could Coach John have tried to mold me into his perfect version of a swing? Yes. And I would probably be really frustrated.

But he knows the ultimate goal is the result – to make good serves.

With every practice we coach, several team members come into the program who are concerned we’re going to try to turn them into used car salesmen. And they are pleasantly surprised when they find out that’s NOT the case.

We take their experiences, their background, their personality, and help them adopt the principles of conversion in a way that makes sense for them.

And the result is a group of happier, more confident schedulers who can leverage their natural talents to get the result we all want – more patients on the books.

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So keep these concepts in mind when you’re working with your sales teams next week. Help them find their rhythm, remember there are multiple ways to be successful, and don’t fix what isn’t broken (nurture it instead).

And yeah, tennis is rad. Give it a spin if you haven’t. And if you have, hit reply and tell me what you love about tennis! Obviously I have a ton to learn, so send me your tips and I would much appreciate it. 🙏

My goal: to do a mixed doubles tournament with Susan at some point in 2023. Wish us luck…

– Troy “Tennis” Cole

PS – If I hadn’t taken action to hire a coach and try tennis, I wouldn’t have found this awesome new sport and hobby.

I’m looking for 2 Action Takers who know want to empower their scheduling teams to fill their schedules. I’ve got a special “Coach John” bonus for you to help you hit the ground SPRINTING toward growth in 2023. Book a call and I’ll explain – https://e3.troycole.com/