Articles

This Grandpa Destroyed Me in Racquetball

I was catching up with a TCU buddy last week, and somehow the convo turned to a racquetball tournament we played our sophomore year.

Nothing overly official – just a competition organized by the university rec center.

I consider myself a solid racquetball player. And sure enough, I handily defeated the first 3 guys I faced in the tournament. (All other students)

But then the semifinal round came about, and I faced a new foe – one of the professors.

This guy was 3x my age, slightly overweight, not the best physical specimen. I had definitely faced more athletic opponents.

Out of shape? Old? Lookin a little creaky? “Well, this should be easy,” I thought.

Negative, Ghost Rider. Dude wiped the floor with me.

How did he do it? – He controlled the angles.

The guy didn’t have to be fast… or athletic… or even in that great of shape… because he didn’t even have to move. He knew all the angles of the court, and he put them to work. He had me chasing the ball everywhere. Waiting for me to fall on my face so he could place his next shot just out of my reach.

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I learned several useful lessons in that match, all of which apply directly to the folks booking consults and surgeries in your office.

Working harder doesn’t necessarily win in terms of sheer effort. You can try as hard as you can (me running all over the court), but if you don’t have the knowledge to properly apply the effort, you risk getting run over.
Determine your strategic advantage. This dude was not gonna “out-athletic” me. He knew if it was a race of sheer agility and strength, I would win. So he didn’t play that game. He played his game – controlling the angles.
Controlling the Angles is a Key to Winning. This guy won because he knew how to use the angles of the court to position me where he needed me to be in order to accomplish his goal. Sometimes he hit it hard, sometimes soft. High, low. Left, right. But always with intention toward the end goal.

“Control the Angles” is a key concept if you want to increase your conversion rates.

Consider every prospect you engage, it’s like a volley in racquetball.

If I hit the ball as hard as I can, and he hits the ball as hard as he can, and we go back and forth like that until someone messes up, it’s not strategic. You win some, you lose some. It’s too random, not what you want.

But this happens every day on the phones in your office.

Prospect: “How much is LASIK?”

You: “It’s $5500.”

Prospect: “Do you offer financing?”

You: “We work with a company called Care Credit, and they have 2 years no interest.”

Prospect: “OK, thanks, I think that’s all I need to know for now.”

You: “Great, well just give us a call if you want to book a consult!”

/End Call, lost lead, someone who desperately needed our help didn’t get it.

Why? Because that’s just a straightforward volley back and forth. No angles. No strategy. No guidance. No leadership.

And will you book some consults playing a straight-up game? Of course you will.

But you will book more – you will WIN more – if you control the angles and put them to good use.

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What are some examples of controlling the angles? Here are 11.

I’m not gonna give detailed explanations of how to use all these – that’s too much for one email. (Though we dive into all that during our coaching programs). But this will give you enough to get started in controlling the conversation and moving the prospect in the direction you want.

Incubation Angle – “How long have you been thinking about it?” – Move them to act now (waited long enough)
Price Angle – “Great question! Mind if I ask a few quick questions so I can answer that accurately for you?” – Giving out price when asked isn’t useful. If you called the Ford dealership and said “How much is a car?” and they gave you a price, would that be helpful? No. Get more info, then you can answer more accurately (or skip past the question altogether).
Referral Angle – “How did you hear about us?” – Friend, Google review, etc. Then the referral source becomes an angle you can leverage.
Wear Angle – “What do you wear most often – glasses or contacts? And how long have you worn them?” – Get a pulse on how long they’ve had this problem.
Open-Ended Angle – “What made you reach out?” – Get them spilling their guts about why they have called you for help.
Urgency Angle – “Any big events coming up?” – Get this thing taken care of so you’re ready for that wedding, vaca, etc.
Urgency Angle 2 – “What do you have planned for spring break / summer / etc?” – Another take on urgency.
New Guest Angle – “Have you ever been in to see us before?” – Establish they are a first timer and that you’re rolling out the red carpet for them.
Spouse Angle – “What does your husband/wife think about this? Are they so excited for you?” – Spouse is gonna be involved, go ahead and get in front of it (proactive).
Future Pacing Angle 1 – “What’s the first thing you’re gonna do once you can see?” Get them thinking past the sale about the results they’ll experience.
Future Pacing Angle 2 – “What are you most looking forward to?” Another take on future pacing.

Angles. That old dude destroyed me on the racquetball court because he knew how to control the angles.

Cool thing about what you do – There doesn’t have to be a “loser” in your game. If you use your angles appropriately, and you help someone make the decision to move forward with the procedure they need and deserve – then you BOTH win.

– Troy “Angle Everything” Cole

PS – There doesn’t have to be a loser, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be. If your people don’t do their job… if they don’t control the angles… if the prospect calls and asks for help, and we didn’t help them at least come in for a consult… and the prospect hangs up the phone and “think about it” for another 3 years… then they’re the loser. And it’s our fault.

PPS – Related to today’s message – you know how it’s darn near impossible to find good hires right now? And it’s putting a strain on your ability to give the highest level of customer service for your premium-priced procedures?

Well… rather than trying to find a new hire (or at least in addition to it), what if you could significantly increase the capacity of your best patient counselor?

We’ve put together a service that does just that. It acts as an “extension” of your patient counselor – we text prospects immediately after they submit one of your web forms, we educate prospects on why to choose you, we continuously reach out to them if they don’t book, etc. Basically all the stuff your current team is too strained to do, but you know needs to be done if you want to increase conversions.

And it’s way more cost-effective than hiring someone anyway (if you can even find anyone awesome to hire). So if you’d like to know more, reply and I’ll send you more details.

The Dangers of “Being Competitive” with Your Pricing

I was advising a new client last week on pricing strategy.

Our philosophy at LogiCole Consulting: pricing is a positioning tool. We work with our clients to help them charge premium prices that are still significantly lower relative to the value they provide.

Another way to look at it – while they may be the highest priced in their markets, they are still the best deal.

There’s no advantage to being priced “in the middle of the pack” (a concept I first learned from Dan Kennedy). A few hundred more than this guy, a few hundred less than that one. Because now you’re just part of the noise.

To use price as a positioning tool, you must be on one end of the pricing spectrum.

You want to be priced at the high end – Ritz Carlton – or the low end – Wal-Mart. You can win in one of those two positions. Anything in the middle is fighting for scraps.

So why do so many practices feel the need to price themselves “in the middle” relative to other practices in town? The most common answer I get from prospective clients when I interview them: “Well, we want to be competitive.”

At first glance, this reasoning makes sense and even sounds admirable. But I would argue that “being competitive” doesn’t just limit your price, it can throttle the level of care you provide.

“Being competitive” is not the goal of your practice, and it’s a mindset is hurting you more than it’s helping you. Let’s address it…

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Competition happens among teams in the same league. For example, C.B. is my almost-8-year-old son, and I coach his baseball team. We will compete against my neighbor’s team that he coaches for his 8-year-old son.

Both teams are in the same league. Our athletes have comparable talent levels. When we play, it will be a fair competition.

But is that what you want for your practice?

“I want to be in the same league as other practices in town.”
“I want it to be a fair competition!”
“I want the levels of care and patient experience to be equal among me and other surgeons at other practices.”
“I’m more than happy to serve patients down at the same level as everyone else.”

I doubt those thoughts have crossed your mind. Why?

Because you wanna be in a league of your own. You want people to look at you… and look at other providers around town… and think “Man, there’s not even a comparison.”

You want this scenario: C.B.’s 8-year-old team vs. my 5-year-old’s tee ball team.

They’re NOT in the same league. It’s not even a competition. No one would let them play each other because it wouldn’t be fair or even safe.

The fact that both teams play baseball is where their similarities end. And the fact that someone else in town does vision correction or cosmetic procedures is where your similarities end too.

So if you’ve felt compelled to embrace this “Be competitive” narrative, this is permission to stop. Do not allow yourself to be lowered to everyone else’s level. Do not limit your team’s beliefs in the type of patient experience and outcomes you can provide.

No need to be competitive when you’re in a league of your own.

– Troy “Keep Slugging” Cole

PS – If this resonates with you, check out the book Positioning by Al Reis and Jack Trout. h/t to Dan Wilson for mentioning this recently. I haven’t re-read it yet this year, but I’m about to give it another go.

Sales trainer gets a taste of his own medicine

In case you missed my Instagram story yesterday (it’s linked as the first highlight called “Calls Blocked”, also be sure to give me a follow on IG if you haven’t), I talked about a super-common frustration among the engagement teams we coach:

Prospects who don’t answer their phones.

To recap the story:

I coach most of my kids’ sports teams. Unless I just know nothing about a sport (soccer), it’s important to me I’m out there coaching, spending the time with my kids and serving other families in our community. It’s a passion of mine.

Here in Aledo – where our football team has won 10 state championships (most of any school in the Texas, the country’s most hardcore high school football state) – sports are competitive.

Not just high school sports. Not just select teams. All sports of all ages.

Enter baseball season. We help the draft for our Competitive League on Weds night. Which means yesterday was “Call my new team parents” day.

Here’s the thing – Most of these parents knew when the draft would be. And since only 90 out of 220 kids are chosen for the “competitive league” (the rest play in the recreational league), parents are interested to find out which team their kids made.

They also know coaches call the day after the draft.

I say all this to say these parents had several reasons to be on the lookout for a phone call yesterday.

How’d it pan out for me…?

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We teach booking teams how to fill their practices’ consult schedules. A big part of that is first GETTING A HOLD OF your leads.

I know how tough it can be to get someone on the phone when they don’t know your number (or sometimes even when they do!). So going into this, I made a prediction:

Even though many of these parents are eager to hear the news and know they should be expecting a phone call…

I predicted the majority of the people I dialed would NOT answer the phone. My prediction – while correct – was also an understatement.

Out of 9 people I called, only 2 of them answered.

4 of them sent me directly to voicemail (most phones now have a setting where you can send unknown numbers to voicemail, so I’m guessing that was some of it). And the other 3 rang a few times and went to voicemail.

I share this example because it’s a challenge your phone team faces on a daily basis. Now let’s go through a short list of ways to address it…

It’s Tactics Time! 👇

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7 tactics I used yesterday with these parents, which are exactly what we coach our clients to do in these same situations…

1. Don’t get discouraged. Ignoring unknown numbers is the most natural thing in the world to do. You do it, I do it. Don’t get mad your prospects do it too.

2. Don’t give up. “Well, they didn’t answer, so I guess they aren’t interested.” I hear this way too often. It’s an assumption, and it’s a lie. People are interested. They’re just busy OR they don’t know you and don’t answer OR both. Practices leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table every day by giving up on leads too quickly.

3. Leverage voicemail. Leave a voicemail with a purpose. What do you want the prospect to think when they hear your VM? I want those parents checking the voicemail and thinking, “This Coach Troy guy sure is excited to have my son on the team!” And I left a message conveying precisely that (through my words AND my tone).

4. Take responsibility for action. Don’t just say “Call us back if you’d like to set up a consult.” It’s what 95% of practices do, and it’s a waste of time and energy. Take responsibility for the next action. “I’ll try you again later this afternoon,” “I’ll shoot you a text and follow up tomorrow”, etc. (For my baseball parents, I told them in the Voicemail that I would add them to our GroupMe messaging app, and to be on the lookout for the invite.)

5. Use multiple channels for contact. Don’t just call. Don’t just text. Don’t just email. Use them all. (I used phone calls, then GroupMe, and for the 1-2 who didn’t immediately respond to the GroupMe invite, I texted).

6. Call back quickly. This is one thing working against me in my situation – I was calling all these parents several days after the tryouts. But when you can contact your leads in under 5 minutes, you have a 5x higher chance of connecting than when you wait 10 minutes or longer.

7. Practice managing your biology and your mind. Your team needs to know how to keep their energy up and positive, even on days that are extra busy or multiple ignored call-backs.

These calls did not affect my mood, my energy or my resolve. I had a plan, I executed the plan, and now we’re all in the GroupMe chat and everyone’s excited for the season.

Was talking to the admin for a prospective client this week about energy and mindset. He has a team member who is frustrated, having trouble connecting with leads. I shared the importance of managing feelings/energy around this situation.

This admin said, “We’re fine in that area, it’s not something we need to work on.” Obviously you do need to work on it, because your people are feeling about their leads. No need to feel about them.

Feelings are choices. Mindsets can be trained. And energy can be managed. (Which is why we have entire modules dedicated to this in our Bootcamps…)

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In summary, help your team get their heads right about leads in 2022. Don’t get discouraged; DO get assertive and purposeful in your outreach.

And if you’re hearing defeatist comments like “These leads are bad” or “These people just don’t want help,” then nip that attitude in the bud.

It’s the job of the Marketing Department to bring in the leads, and it’s Sales Dept job to convert them. Both depts should work daily to improve their performance, which means generating better leads (marketing) and being more clever and tenacious with booking processes (sales).

Everyone work. Everyone get better. Everyone benefit.

Team on 3…

1… 2…. 3…. TEAM.

– Coach Troy

PS – We had the option to choose from a selection of minor league team names this year, so I chose the Mighty Mussels. I had never heard of it before (team outta Fort Myers FL), but between the TCU purple and the steroid-stacked mollusk logo, I was sold from the moment I saw it. (Check it out here)

PPS – “Troy – Do practices ever hire you just to pump up their sales teams?” Yes, they just don’t realize it. Most admins think their sales folks need a bunch of tactics (which they do, and we make sure they have them). But an even bigger benefit comes when we teach their teams how to think and feel about what they do. Imagine a team of people who are as excited and confident about your practice as you are? Unstoppable.

⚾️ The Big League Hitter’s Guide to Booking More Consults

My oldest son Cannon is 9, which means he’s playing in his first season of “real baseball.”

What do I mean by that? He’s played ball for 4 years, but until this point, it’s been in a highly controlled environment. Especially when it comes to batting.

Started with tee ball. You literally place a ball on a tee, whatever height you want. Set up perfectly, take as much time as you need, then give it your best swing. Easy.

Once he got a little older, it was on to coach pitch. A little more difficult than tee ball, but still essentially a cake walk. The coach pitches it nice and slow, to the spot over the plate where each boy has the best success of hitting the ball hard and far. Simple.

But now… NOW these boys are playing “real baseball” – meaning another kid is pitching to them. The batter is no longer in control of the speed, the timing or the placement of the ball being pitched. And even though they’re too young to safely throw curve balls, some kid pitchers do have change ups and other “off-speed” pitches to confuse the batter.

This whole transition is frustrating for many of the boys as they start at this level. Last season they were hand-delivered big juicy meat balls, and now they must figure out how to handle this broad range of pitches they’re up against.

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“Real baseball” and “Real practice marketing” share several similarities.

Imagine an elective practice who does very little (if any) marketing. Their patients come primarily from referrals – other doctors and happy patients.

Many referrals of that nature are like the nice, easy Coach Pitch balls. Right down the middle of the plate, not too fast, perfect pitch, easy to smack out of the park.

And then a practice starts to market… expands their reach… courts new audiences that may not have heard of them…

YES, this results in a higher volume of new leads aka more opportunities… but some of them are more like the not-so-easy-to-hit kid pitches. Some are in the dirt. Some are off-speed. Some are frustrating.

It’s a different game when you start to market, or even if you’re already marketing and you test a new channel, a new hook or a new promo.

Is that bad? No, it’s reality. And you have a few options for how to deal with it…

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A practice in this position faces the same decision our players face:

You can hope for fewer curve balls, OR
You can learn how to hit the curve ball.

Do #1 long enough and you’ll get frustrated and retreat to dependence on those referrals. No shame in that. Plenty of people run respectable practices that way.

But if you want to be the dominant player in your market… If you want to help more patients… If you want to put the discount chains out of business…

Do what the big leaguers do – Learn to hit the curve balls.

– Troy “Put me in, Coach” Cole

PS – Doesn’t matter to me which side of the fence you’re on with this. We have clients who do a lot of marketing, and we have certain strategies and workflows in place to deal with the curve balls. We partner with others who do very little marketing, so we work to maximize those referrals. It’s your business, run it however you want.

The BIG thing to remember is that YOU gotta figure out what you wanna be, and act accordingly. We’ve worked with practices who SAID they wanted to play big league ball, SAID they wanted to dial up the volume, SAID they wanted to dominate their markets… but they didn’t want to put in the work or face the harsh truths necessary to play big league ball.

Again, totally fine if that’s you. Just do some soul-searching and figure out who you are and who you wanna be. (And “I thought I wanted this, but I don’t” is a perfectly viable position to take…)

PPS – You will get into situations where you’re seeing way too many ridiculous curve balls. You realize you don’t even want to face a certain “pitcher” (i.e. a certain media platform or a certain type of promo that’s costing you too much time and frustration). So I’m not saying you should think of your entire marketing plan as “Suck it up and deal with whatever you get.” Sometimes it makes more sense walk away.

But in my experience: 95% of the time your team is naturally inclined to look for coach-pitched meatballs. And they bail (often without even knowing it) at the first hint of a curve ball coming across the plate.

So before you say, “This promo / lead source / marketing channel / whatever is trash,” make sure you are SEEING the pitch… SEEING those leads come in… and treating them like the curve balls they are. ⚾️

No, Your Patients Do Not Need Options

I placed an Amazon order for 5,000 sheets of printer paper yesterday. (I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat already…)

As you can imagine, Amazon has hundreds of different printer paper “products” on their site.

Rather than clicking through each one, I did what I normally do when I’m looking for non-brand-specific items on Amazon – I started with Amazon’s Choice.

Anyone who shops Amazon Prime has likely seen the Amazon’s Choice sticker on products. Sometimes it’s on an Amazon product they produce themselves, sometimes it’s from a 3rd party.

Do I always buy Amazon’s Choice? No. But many times I do. Why?

It’s easier and faster than to try to decipher all the different product descriptions myself
If it’s their choice, it must be pretty good
If it’s their choice, that means a bunch of other people are buying it too, so it’s popular = good

Today’s message is not about Amazon.

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In so much of what we do, we look for recommendations. Recommendations keep us going in the right direction, they save us time, and they increase our perceived likelihood of success.

“Which of these signature cocktails is the most popular?”

“Does it make more sense for us to get the family zoo pass, or buy the individual tickets?”

“Which is better here, the steak or the fish?”

And that’s when you want the waiter to step in and say, “The Bone-In Ribeye is our specialty, you can’t go wrong with that…”

We want the recommendation.

And these examples are small decisions in the grand scheme of life. Much smaller than the body-altering elective treatments you offer.

As much as we look for recommendations on small decisions… we definitely want them on the big ones too.

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The Double-Edged Sword of being a practice that offers an abundance of lens options for cataract surgery… or an armory of advanced laser- and lens-based refractive procedures… or a plethora of cosmetic treatments…

You’re a little like Amazon. (gosh wouldn’t you love to have their level of market domination?)

You have multiple great solutions, right? Awesome. And because of this, you meet patients daily who may be good candidates for more than one procedure.

What do those folks want to know? They want to know Amazon’s Choice.

Just because you have multiple procedures in your arsenal, doesn’t mean they should all be immediately optional to the patient.

Your patients don’t want or need a menu of options. They want a recommendation from someone in the know. i.e. you, Dr. Expert.

“Here’s the procedure I’m recommending for you and why…”

Make sure the other doctors in your practice who do your consultations actually make a recommendation. With conviction. Explain your reasoning. Tie it to the results they want and the concerns they have.

Make it clear that you have thoughtfully considered their situation, and you are telling them the way to get on the other side of it.

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You might have people on your team who say, “Well, patients should be in charge of these decisions. They should have a choice.”

Here’s the deal: They do. And they’ve made it.

They chose to reach out to you. They chose to seek help for their chronic condition. They chose to miss work and get dressed and drive across town and come in to see you.

And… AND! The patient already chose their result. They told you their pain points. They told you their ideal destination. It’s your job to recommend the path to get there.

The patient has made their choices. The only choice they have left: NOW or LATER.

If you’re the authority, the expert, the one recommending a certain procedure, explaining the benefits, talking about how popular it is, reassuring the patient it’s the ideal procedure for them…

This instills confidence. Excitement. Momentum. A vision for what the future can be. And as a result, NOW is a much more likely final choice.

On the flip side… if you have people in your practice position themselves as order-takers…

As attendants at the full-service car wash asking me which detail package I would like to purchase…

As baristas at Starbucks who wants to know what they can get started for me…

Well, guess who’s now responsible for “making the right choice”…. The patient is.

And as you already know from your own experiences, that patient is gonna wanna think about it. And do more research. And think about it some more. And weigh the pros and cons. And all that other stuff that gets in the way of your patients getting the results they want and deserve right now.

Worst part of all this is? That patient has no frame of reference for any of this research and decision-making you’re forcing them to do.

We’ve all ordered dinner before. Yesterday wasn’t my first rodeo buying office supplies. I can figure out a meal or printer paper or Zoo tickets fairly easily, even without assistance.

But picking a surgery? Yeah, that’s a new one for 99.99% of your patients. They don’t know how to do it, they don’t know how to research it, they don’t know how to think about it, they don’t know how to be confident in it.

“Here’s a brochure on our procedures, and you give us a call when you decide!” We might as well have said, “Hey just hike through that jungle right there to get to the beach. Just choose your own path, you’ll figure it out. Go get em, Tiger!”

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So if your doctors are like our awesome clients, the ones who make strong recommendations for your patients’ procedures, keep it up. You’re stealing patients from every other practice in town just by establishing yourself as the authority.

And if they’re not… if you have doctors telling your patients, “Well, you qualify for X, Y and Z. Which one do you want to do?” I encourage you to end that immediately.

Not only is it hurting their conversions, but it’s a major disservice to your patients.

And to be super candid, they’re f$%#ing better than that.

Make sure they know:

We’re here to help patients. And that means leading them. You’re in charge. Act like it. The patient made their choice. Now we do our job.

Recommend a procedure and prosper. 💪🏻

– Troy “Not Optional” Cole

PS – We have a specific way we coach our clients to make the procedure recommendation – the certain word track, when to do it, how to do it, who to do it in front of, and what needs to happen right after, all of which increase their closing percentages.

If you’d like our cheatsheet on this simple, paint-by-numbers “Recommendation Rx” process, reply “Rec Me!” to this message, and I’ll get it over to you.