Articles

Stop making it so dang complicated

I watched a freakish 5’6″ ten-year-old smash a home run this week.

The same kid who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn just minutes before.

What changed?

His private hitting coach had given him 9 different adjustments to make. NINE! For a hyper kid with the attention span of a goldfish.

No wonder he was swinging like he’d never held a bat before.

So I pulled him aside after his terrible first round.

“Forget ALL that crap. Just do three things: load, step, and turn.”

That’s it.

His next three swings:

>> Swing 1 – hard grounder to third (progress)

>> Swing 2 – line drive to left center (nice)

>> Swing 3 – BOMB over the left field fence (wtf!)

Another one of my players was just as shocked when the same advice worked for him.

“Wait, so I can just do that in the tournament this weekend?!”

How could success be so simple? He genuinely thought baseball was SUPPOSED to be complicated. It’s not.

Neither is growing your practice.

When we start coaching practices, we see the same problem. Your team members are drowning in complexity.

They think they need to:

Memorize 47 different scripts
Have perfect answers to EVERY question
Anticipate every objection
Never make a mistake

It’s paralyzing them. And costing you money.

Your team doesn’t need to know EVERYTHING. They need to know the RIGHT things.

This is why our programs work so well:

Our E3 Conversion System Bootcamp teaches your team how to THINK, not memorize. Simple frameworks they can use on the daily, that actually work.

Our DISC for Doctors & Teams program breaks down every human into just 4 “communication style” categories. Suddenly your team “gets” every patient who walks in.

If someone on your team is struggling, they’re probably making things too complicated.

Simplify. That’s the name of the game.

And it’s a game we’ve mastered at LogiCole Consulting.

Wish me dingers at this weekend’s tournament. I’m wishing you home runs in your practice as we kick off Q2.

Talk soon,

Troy “simplify the heck out of it” Cole

Master the Art of “Active Listening” to Book More Surgeries

“Troy, do you have any good sales scripts for X?”

As a sales and communications coach for high-ticket elective surgery practices, I get this question on a semi-weekly basis. And while it makes sense, this inquiry fails to get at the heart of the issue.

You wanna book more consults and surgeries, right? And you may think the key to accomplishing this goal is having new scripts and better ways of saying things.

Well that’s certainly part of it, and we have those. But before we even get into what we SAY, it starts with what we OBSERVE.

I’m headed to the Outliers meeting in Nashville in 2 weeks (Mar 21-22) to give a Keynote on how our specific method of “Active Listening” has proven to be a cheat code for more booked surgeries.

This is an under-leveraged, often-overlooked tactical approach you can take to supercharge your conversions. It’s also something I’ve never shared publicly before. But we (Susan and I) will be opening the treasure chest and spilling all the gold doubloons on-stage in Nash-Vegas.

Today I wanted to give you 3 High Level concepts so you can start marinating on them prior to the meeting. (If you’re not going, this will still be beneficial to you)

Regardless of your specialty, my hope is these will serve you if you take these principles to heart and activate them in with your team.=

1. People will tell you what they need in order for them to book surgery.

How do you understand someone’s priorities, interests, personality style and what drives their decisions? The only way to know it is by listening.

If you’re creating enough space in the conversation, asking the right questions, and listening, people will tell you exactly what they need (and by extension, what you need to know) in order for them to buy.

You don’t have to guess. You don’t have to cover all your bases. You don’t have to blast a shotgun into the ether and hope you hit something.

Active Listening done properly gives you the sniper shot right through the heart of the roadblocks standing between your patient and an amazing surgical outcome with you.

If you know what to listen for, you can set your patient up for success (your success is a byproduct of this).

Your patients don’t need MORE info, they need the RIGHT info in the RIGHT sequence.

How do you know what the right info is? By listening.

2. We not only listen with our ears, but also our eyes.

Obviously we think about listening as something we do with our ears. But when we observe, we’re essentially “listening” with our eyes.

Their body posture, their facial expressions, their attire, their accessories.

Not only will they TELL you what they need to hear in order to buy, they’ll SHOW you whether they resonate with the storyline you’re laying out for them.

Patients will show you what their interests are. They’ll show you what stories they need to hear.

What logo is on their shirt? What does their hat say? What sticker is on their water bottle?

Something I’ve started saying more often:

“If someone’s wearing it on their body, they’re probably into it.”

Sports team logos, brand names, etc. Observe, ask about it, and listen to the valuable clues they are giving you.

3. When in doubt, listen vs. talk

This is super-tactical. When in doubt, fight your need to word-vomit.

It’s so easy to feel like we need to throw more and more information into the situation.

Instead, listen. Ask questions. Get more information for yourself.

“The person asking the questions is the one leading the convo.”

By asking and listening, it keeps you in the driver’s seat, and it often leads to the patient working things out on their own.

At the very least, it gives you more insight into their thought process, so you can meet them where they are and ask more questions and lead them where they want to go.

Remember, when a patient tells YOU something, they also tell it to themselves. Which is uber-influential.

The most powerful stories are the ones we tell ourselves.

OK, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you want a full outline of tactics, how to incorporate this with Personality Profiling to put Active Listening on Steroids, and how to deploy “Active Listening” among your entire team, get your Outliers ticket now if there are any left and let’s party (and LEARN) in Nashville.

Lmk if you’re going.

Enjoy your weekend,

PS – Outliers is not my conference, and I don’t get anything whether you choose to go or not. But I do believe it’s the best meeting you can attend if you want to grow your cash-pay procedures, you’re into new technology, and most importantly:

You understand the massive benefit of being “in the room” with like-minded surgeons, admins, marketers and practice owners who are all on their own versions of the same monumental practice growth mission.

I’ve had a few folks reach out and ask me if I thought they should attend. And in full transparency, it’s NOT a conference for everyone. (Hence the name)

So if you’re like “Man, I kinda think I wanna do this but I’m not sure.” Hit me back and ask. Happy to help you figure it out.

In case you missed our “Internet Cookies” call…

Happy Friday and welcome to the almost-weekend.

In case you couldn’t make the call on Wednesday where I “interviewed” Loryn Lyle (SILVR Agency Founder) on how to safely use “Internet Cookies” on your website…

I am sending you the recording.

I figure for this topic, it’s in everyone’s best interest – yours, ours, the industry’s – if you have this information and know how to keep your site safe from prying ambulance chaser eyes that may wish you monetary harm.

So here’s the link to the replay – https://vimeo.com/1058751139/49d327d06c?share=copy

Go watch that if you like to geek out on all these details. A number of audience members asked solid questions as well, and we address all of those.

To summarize Loryn’s recommendation: she talked about the need for each practice’s legal counsel to review their Terms of Service and Privacy Policies in light of new privacy laws, as well as the need to have a Cookie Consent tool properly set up for your website.

While all of this sounds boring, cumbersome and expensive, here’s the cool part:

Come to find out, SILVR has actually developed templates in conjunction with a privacy lawyer for the state of California (which has some of the strictest privacy laws in the country).

She agreed to offer this as an a la carte service for any practice that needs it. SILVR will provide the templates (your counsel can review them and approve them for your use, which is way more affordable than having lawyers draft something from scratch).

And SILVR will set up their robust yet elegant Cookie Consent solution for your website (the one they use is way more cost-effective than most solutions, and only moderately annoying).

So if you don’t want to jack with all this stuff and just want it handled right the first time, reach out to her directly on it – loryn@silvrsocial.com.

And if you like these calls where I pick an expert’s brain on your behalf, reply let me know. I may do more of these in the coming months. They’re fun and a good way for everyone to learn.

Enjoy your weekend,

Troy Cookie-Cole

PS – We’ll be OFF cookies and back ON to our regularly scheduled gold nuggies next week. As I’ve been putting the finishing touches on our keynote presentation for Outliers next month, I have a couple important strategies around how to “Listen you way to the sale” I want to share with you.

PPS – A number of folks replied to let me know they were already going to Outliers or bought tickets based upon my suggestion. If you have NOT yet, here’s the link – https://reg.eventnook.com/event/u75988

Lawsuit Lesson from Dad (for you)

Fun Fact: My Dad looks like he’s in a biker gang.

Tattoos all over his arms, free flowing hair and Duck Commander-esque beard. I’m not sure he owns a shirt that has sleeves on it.

But perhaps an even MORE fun fact – he’s a recently retired general and vascular surgeon who was Head of Trauma Services for the hospital system in my home town.

An enigma wrapped in an anomaly for sure. Sound like a bad ass? He is.

And I have plenty of stories from my surgeon-dad upbringing that were highly formative for me.

I remember a convo when I was in high school. At one point in time, I had the half-baked idea to be a lawyer, and we were discussing medicine and law. He told me, “Son, in America, anyone can sue anybody for anything. Sometimes that’s helpful, and sometimes it’s a problem. But don’t ever forget it.”

And I haven’t forgotten. Which has served me well in my 20-year career working in marketing and sales coaching for elective surgeons.

Which leads me to my topic today – legal stuff (gross).

Remember in the medical marketing space – marketing technology is always a few years ahead of rules / laws. Which means there’s always this “Marketing Wild West” that must be carefully navigated to keep your practice out of the kind of trouble my Dad warned me about.

In some areas, lawyers are now starting to go after practices for the “cookies” (tracking tools) on their websites. That’s no bueno because there’s a 98% chance you’re using cookies on your site, whether you know it or not.

You actually want to use cookies to be able to track and optimize your marketing campaigns. But you also wanna steer clear of litigious leeches in search of garbage cases against your practice.

Good news is, solutions are available to track what you need to track, but in a compliant way.

And while “cookie tech” is not my area of expertise, I asked one of my friends to give me the low-down on all this.

Loryn Lyle, founder of SILVR Digital Marketing, has been digging into this with her crackerjack team for many months. And they have a solution that she agreed to tell me all about (I’ve heard the Cliff’s Notes from her, and it sounds great).

And since I’m always looking out for YOU, I thought it would be helpful (and entertaining) to let you eavesdrop on our convo.

So here’s the deal:

This Wednesday 2/19 at 1p Central, I have a Zoom call scheduled with Loryn to get into all this. I have a list of questions re: what the cookie issues are, where they are seeing these lawsuits pop up, what research they’ve done to find a solution, what they’re recommending to clients and what steps practices need to take to keep themselves clear of the law.

Basically everything you’d want to know if you have your gas pedal down for digital marketing, but you don’t want to constantly be looking over your shoulder.

So if you want to join the call and listen in, you can. Simply tap the link below to register, which will add you to the invite for our convo.

GRAB A SPOT HERE

Always looking out for you,

– Troy “Tat-less Son” Cole

PS – This is not your standard, fancy, produced webinar. It’s literally a call between she and I so I can get all the info I need, and I decided “let’s broadcast it.” We have it set up through Zoom somehow, and I don’t know how many people our account can accommodate at one time. So if you want to join, RSVP now and get on early.

PPS – Feel free to forward this to someone in your practice who needs to be on this. Or even a colleague as long as they’re cool.

PPPS – If you have questions, I’m fine with you sending those in via chat during the call and I’ll ask them if we have time.

The “Luka Effect” and its impact on your surgery numbers

For anyone who doesn’t follow the NBA, we’ve had quite the stir up here in Dallas.

The Dallas Mavericks best player – and one of the best in the NBA – was a dude named Luka Doncic. And news broke Saturday night that we traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers.

This was as surprising as it was frustrating. In fact, I went down to Dallas for my daughter’s gymnastics meet on Sunday, and there were protesters in front of the arena where the Mavs play. It’s a big deal.

But I’m not here to gripe about losing Luka (but if you feel the need to reply and rub it in, feel free).

In the aftermath of this, plenty of hot takes have come out about why it happened. Amidst all the rumors, I saw an interesting infographic on something I call the Luka Effect.

In the two images below, you’ll see the number of shots the Mavericks have made during games the last 3 seasons.

Both graphics exclude Luka’s shots, but the first graphic shows shots made while he was on the court, and the second graphic shows shots made while he was NOT playing.

Notice the big difference in how much higher shot percentage the Mavs were taking in the lane (the middle part of the floor, around the rim) when Luka was on the floor vs off. A significant increase.

Why? Partly because Luka can drain 3-pointers from 10 feet behind the arc with ease. So other teams have to play defense on him more aggressively. This opens up opportunities for other players to get near the rim and take shots.

“Troy, can you explain it in plain English?”

Besides all the buckets Luka makes, simply having someone of his skillset on the floor improves production for the rest of the team as well.

How does the Luka Effect tie into your practice?

We have an analogy we teach our coaching clients called the Patient Journey Relay. (Yes, I’m shifting from basketball to track, stick with me).

In a relay, 4 runners each run a leg of a race, passing a baton to one another in an attempt to be the fastest relay team.

One feature of a relay is the baton hand-off does NOT occur at a stand-still. Rather the person running with the baton cues the next runner, who takes off and the baton exchange happens at sprint-speed.

This preserves the momentum generated and increases a team’s chance of winning.

Your patient journey is like a relay. Not in the sense of a sprint (you aren’t trying to go as fast as possible), but you are creating and preserving momentum as you go. When each person does their job properly – phones / front desk, techs, docs, surgery schedulers – they’re each setting the next person up for success.

And on the flip side, if someone is just going through the motions, it negatively affects the rest of the team and the patient as well.

Luka being on the floor benefits the Mavs directly and indirectly by creating more opportunities for other players. Your team needs to do the same as they lead patients through the journey in your office.

Which is why in our bootcamp we coach not only schedulers, but every patient-facing department you have. Because everyone needs to know their role and how it affects everyone else on the court or in the relay.

So as you observe your team today, keep this in mind. What area(s) is your “weakest link” in the relay? What do you need to do to get them up to speed and create the Luka Effect for your patients?

If you don’t know the answer to those questions, hit reply and let’s have a brief chat to get you some clarity.

Who knows what the overall anti-Luka Effect (him leaving) will be on the Mavs. But most of us are hoping for the best…

– Troy “Mavs Fan For Life” Cole

PS – While Luka is heading west to LA, I’m heading east to speak on Marketing Systems at the “Telling It Like It Is” meeting in Orlando next week. If you or someone from your practice will be there, let me know so we can meet up 💪🏼