Articles

[VIDEO] – Refractive Growth Mindset, #1 Cost, Fishing Poles, Sporting Goods, Fast Lanes

Piping hot Thursday Thunder video for you today, my friend. The Michael King and I rap about:

The #1 biggest cost in your practice (the equivalent of taking stacks of $100 bills and throwing them in your fireplace)
The type of “Growth Mindset” that is required to increase refractive volume
How your practice is not like a sporting goods store, and the challenge that represents for you (and what to do about it)
The problem with relying too much on your “pretty website”
Limitations around the current opportunity in the refractive space
A few of the best “fishing poles” we use to hook more prospects from of our clients’ websites
The “smart cut” to get more patients now (the fast-lane roadmap)
And more…

AND if you aren’t doing the consistent surgery volume you want – you owe it to yourself to jump on the call with one of us and figure out why.

Stop beating your head against the wall and get some clarity. Now.

Talk soon,

Thunder Troy & Magic Mike

Case Study FAIL (can’t believe I missed this)

If you’re frustrated about not having the bandwidth to grow your refractive volume right now – because you’re still short-staffed or for any other reason – Read on to find out exactly how to do it… 👇

Last week, I sent you a case study of a client who used our Patient Prime System to generate an extra 7 figures in quarterly revenue, year over year.

And that’s awesome. More revenue is awesome. More surgeries are awesome.

Sitting in the refractive suite for an extra 3 hours on surgery day because you’re so darn booked up… awesome.

But there’s one other awesome thing I completely failed to mention when I sent this over to you.

And that is efficiency.

See, there are many practices out there who see the big opportunity right now. The “Refractive Wave” that is happening.

People have a renewed interest in LASIK. They don’t like the foggy glasses, they don’t like spreading germs to their eyes by touching their contacts. And they’re ready to make a change.

It really is a massive opportunity. And you want to take full advantage of it.

Heck, you deserve to take advantage of it, in my humble-but-accurate opinion. As hard as you work, as much as you’ve put on the line to open and grow a practice.

Not to mention the fact that you had your entire operation shut down last year, for goodness sakes. But you persisted, you pivoted, you survived. And now it’s your time to prosper.

(And let’s be real – patients need you to prosper. They need the solutions you have. Don’t get all “I feel bad making money during a Pandemic” on me. Making money is the only way you keep changing lives. Do it proudly.)

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Here’s the common challenge I’m hearing:

In talking with many practices over the last few weeks, the #1 reason they feel like they can’t go full-out and really capitalize on the Refractive Wave opportunity…

Is a lack of bandwidth. Many practices haven’t fully staffed back up from COVID. Team members are spread thinner than they were pre-shutdown.

They’re short-handed. Short-staffed. And sure, they’re moving in the direction of a full roster… but they aren’t there yet.

Unfortunately, opportunity waits for no one. It’s not gonna wait for you to staff up. It’s not gonna wait for you to feel comfortable pushing the gas pedal. It’s here now, and you have to take advantage of it now.

So how do you do it?

This was the thing I completely failed to point out in the case study I shared.

If you go back and watch the video, I want you to pay attention to these points. Read the rest of this message first, then check out the video again (I linked it at the bottom of this email).

Point 1 – The practice spent less time following up with leads.

Year over year, the practice in the case study generated about the same number of leads for the 3-month period in 2020 as they did in 2019.

On average, a lead takes X amount of time for your team to engage. (That’s not a typo. “X” is whatever that average is – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc.)

So if they generated the same number of leads, it would have taken about the same amount of time and effort to follow up with them, right?

Actually, no. The practice spent significantly less time on lead follow-up. Because about 25% of the leads were for virtual consults, which are self-scheduled appointments.

In fact, the practice didn’t have to spend any time or bandwidth on those particular leads prior to them showing up for the consult. We qualify, educate and do all the appointment reminders for them.

Math: Same # of leads + less time spent working the leads = More Efficient.

Point 2 – The practice booked more consults from the same number of leads.

42% more consults booked, to be exact. In 2019, 40% of their leads converted to consults. In 2020, 57% of their leads converted to consults for the same time period.

Again, this is due in large part to the way we have set up the self-scheduler/qualifier/reminder flow of our virtual consult funnel.

Math: Same # of leads + Higher conversion rate to consult = More Efficient.

Point 3 (The Big Takeaway) – When you’re running lean and mean, the only way to grow your volume is to become more efficient.

For anyone whose team is stretched thin, who doesn’t feel like they have the bandwidth to take full advantage of the Refractive Wave… this is how you do it.

You increase efficiency. Less time chasing down leads. More time focused on prospects who show up to consults and are ready, willing and able to book treatment.

Math: Reduced team + massively increased efficiency with new patient opportunities = net positive practice growth.

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The best way we’ve found to increase efficiency is through our virtual consult system that’s been tried, tested, tweaked and perfected by multiple practices and thousands of prospective patients.

You don’t have to write anything, build anything or figure anything out. We have the whole process packaged up, and we plug it right into your practice. It’s that simple.

So if you don’t want the Refractive Wave to pass you by, reply to this email ASAP and let’s talk.

– Troy “Ride the Wave (Efficiently) Cole”

PS – Almost forgot the video link to the case study. Check it out here.

LEAKED VIDEO: 2 Refractive Marketing Mavericks Talk Shop

Something a little different for you today.

I’m sharing a short video from a private, internal planning call that you’re gonna find highly useful.

So I was on a strategy call with Michael King earlier this week. We were talking about the excitement and momentum we’re seeing around our Patient Prime System.

We also discussed some of the questions and challenges that come up when we’re talking to practices about virtual consults and why/how to leverage them.

He had the bright idea that we should document and share this convo. So we hit “record” and captured this portion of our meeting for your viewing pleasure.

(NOTE: This is from a Zoom meeting that we recorded on the fly. So it’s raw, audio quality could be better, but the content is gold).

In the private video, you’ll see us discuss:

– The refractive surgery “wave” and why it’s vital to ride it now

– Exact data from a practice that added an extra 42 consults through the Patient Prime funnel last week

– The ‘home-centric’ shift and how COVID accelerated consumer behavior 5 years into the future (and why that’s important)

– The “Fishing Line” analogy for bringing an additional stream of patients into the practice

– What to do when you get asked The Pricing Question on a virtual consult

– Taking advantage of “the new way” to get surgery patients into your practice

You can check out the video here.

Enjoy your Thursday!

Troy “Clarity” Cole

[VIDEO] How 5 Practices “Developed” New Patients, Real Estate Mogul-Style

There’s a big piece of property on the highway exit to my house. Previously, it was a giant, overgrown field without much value.

But a couple years ago, developers bought it and put in a nice outdoor shopping and dining center.

They took an asset that was worth little, and developed it into something worth much more.

Which leads me to today’s Case Study… 👇

Much like Real Estate investors, you can find an “opportunity” for new patients and “develop” them.

Unlike Real Estate, it doesn’t require years of work, huge budgets, and loads of risk.

In fact, we have a process that allows you to “develop” a windfall of new surgery patients for $0 cash outlay…

And it can be done in a matter of weeks, not years.

Tap here to watch the video and discover how 5 practices did just that.

– Troy “Developing Patients” Cole

PS – After you watch the video, email me (troy at troy cole dot com) for details on how to do this for your practice.

I wanna commend you on this (wrapping 2020)

You did it, my friend.

Yeah, this year was weird as heck. Yeah it was tough.

But you did it. You made it. You survived.

Your practice is still alive.

Back in March, you were faced with the unthinkable situation. Of all the different challenges you could anticipate…

Closing your practice was probably not on the list.

But you did it. You adjusted. You made the hard decisions. You got creative. You figured it out. You made it through.

And you learned a few things.

You learned about your weaknesses. You learned about your gaps. You learned about your inefficiencies.

And you corrected them. Pivoted. Improved.

Your practice looks different today than it did in January.

Fewer team members. More masks. But fact of the matter is, you made it through.

This pandemic thing isn’t over. It may not be over for a long time. (It may never be over, if we’re looking at it honestly.)

But you proved to yourself you can do it.

And as much as people wanna hate on 2020 (which is totally understandable), this reason alone is worth a short but important celebration.

As for 2021…

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Fun Fact: 21 is the winning score in Blackjack.

And as you’ve seen from the growing number of patients selecting vision correction and other elective surgeries, there are many chips to be won.

21 is the year you play to win.

Because while the lockdowns and public fear certainly ravaged your practice (and many businesses) for a moment…

It also created opportunities. And you see creative companies that have pivoted and taken advantage of those opportunities.

12 months ago, Zoom was a niche tool used by a small section of B2B businesses. Now, “Let’s do a Zoom” is in the public lexicon.

Amazon Prime, UberEats, Peloton and more. They’ve all taken advantage of the New Normal.

Are you Jeff Bezos? No. But you can look at what people like him and all these companies are doing, and see that opportunity is fresh and ripe for the taking.

You adjusted, pivoted, innovated to make it through the lockdowns. My advice to you?

Don’t Stop.

Your entire industry is built around innovation. Your research, the treatments and surgeries you perform, the results you get for your patients.

They’re all centered around innovation and development of new technologies and techniques.

You are an innovator. Don’t forget that.

It’s easy to coast when times are good. But as we saw in March, times can go from great to god-awful in a matter of hours.

Hopefully that doesn’t happen again. But recent history tells us we need to be ready for anything.

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This whole “New Normal” thing – as much as I hate the term – is real.

Hopefully some aspects of the New Normal – like mask mandates – will go away. (I’m not holding my breath)

But other parts – like the new home-centric lifestyle that the pandemic has brought on – won’t change.

Why? Because this lifestyle is convenient. And people like convenient. Convenience always wins.

Your takeaway from the companies I mentioned?

How can you craft your Patient Journey to hit the same notes they’ve successfully hit in their customer experiences?

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What does that look like?

Convenient Access. You can order groceries or Amazon packages or log into online workouts with the push of a button. It’s dead simple = convenient.

Convenient Interfaces. The user interfaces of all these apps and products are intuitive. Easy to use. Mobile-centric.

Convenient Communication. Phone, email, chat, text. These companies make it easy to communicate with them. They don’t try to reinvent the communication wheel. They look at the wheels we are already using and model them.

Convenient Adaptability. These companies leverage what you’re already doing. You’re already online. You’re already sending DMs and Text messages. You’re already on Zoom and FaceTiming. You’re already on social media.

These companies don’t try to force us down a completely different track. They build their customer experiences around what we’re already doing.

If my Instacart shopper needs to substitute an item I ordered, she sends a DM right within the app. It’s easy. It’s fast.

Simple. Fast. Convenient. Enjoyable. Magic.

That’s what all these companies have in common.

Note what I did NOT include? Cheap. Most of them aren’t the cheapest option.

Hasn’t kept them from making money hand over fist and growing their user base.

It’s proof you can have a premium price and grow your volume…

As long as your patient experience is dialed in.

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The practices who get this right will be the ones who dominate 2021 and beyond.

And for many reading this, that means fundamentally overhauling the Patient Journey.

Better communication. More personality. More education. Streamlined processes. More convenience. Mobile-centric.

For most practices out there, their Patient Journey looks and feels more like a Nokia 5160. It’s time to upgrade to an iPhone 12 Max.

It’s better for your team. It’s better for your patients. And it’s better for your bottom line.

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Questions? Comments? Challenges? Reply. Engage.

But don’t just sit there thinking or wondering or frustrating about what to do.

Figure it out and make it happen. And if you need help, ping me.

Happy New Year, and here’s to winning 21.

– Troy “Blackjack!” Cole