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[Lessons from Snowmageddon] Hidden leaks are expensive.

As you may know, last week was Snowmageddon here in Texas. Now that we’re out of the sub-freezing temperatures, I’m sharing a few observations and notes from 3 days without power, water or heat.

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Hidden leaks are expensive.

Last week’s Texas Snowmageddon was one for the books, I tell ya. And before you think. “Troy, 0 degrees isn’t that cold. It gets down to -20 in [insert your frozen tundra state].”

I’ll just say the cold wasn’t the problem. Heck, I was outside in a t-shirt and shorts playing football with my boys at the beginning of this thing…

It was all fun and games until the power went out.

(The cold isn’t the issue. The inability to warm up is the issue.)

We had 3 days of no electricity, no central heat and no water, with temps dropping to -5 degrees. And I’m not complaining, because we still had a ton of firewood, plenty of food and cases of bottled water to tide us over. We managed just fine, and it’s good to go through times that build resiliency and show you your weak points.

We finally got power back Wednesday evening, but there was still a big question mark around the water.

Would we have damage to the water system? Did we have any frozen pipes burst?

Did we have hidden leaks?

It’s one of those questions that couldn’t be answered immediately, or by just looking at the surface.

We had to investigate. We had to put heat lamps on the water well, the purification system and all the pipes. We had to look for issues.

Sure enough, as soon as I was able to thaw the pipes in my garage, I discovered it. A giant crack in the PVC pipe, water pouring out.

I had to rebuild the whole connection, which cost me money and time (about 6 hours between the actual work and multiple trips to every hardware store in town. All of Parker County was scouring the PVC shelves…)

I had to find the leak and fix the leak if I wanted water to flow in my house. And thankfully I was able to do that quickly, without significant damage.

My neighbors weren’t so lucky. They didn’t discover their leak until half their ceiling collapsed. The leak was within the walls of the house. They couldn’t see it. And now they’re dealing with thousands of $$ of damage because of it.

Because hidden leaks are expensive. Not just within a home, but also within your Patient Journey.

Leaks in your Patient Journey are often hidden, and they also become expensive over time. A few leads “leak” here, a few non-converted consults “leak” there, and suddenly you have $50k – $100k (or more) “leaking” from your surgery schedule every single month.

When practices engage us because they want to do more refractive surgery, the first thing we do is “find the leaks.”

And there are always a few common leaks that cost a practice at least 10-30 new refractive patients each month.

Fix the leaks and the patients flow, just like water.

I didn’t have to dig a new water well, put in new equipment or retool my entire system. I just had to fix the leak, and the rest of the water system could do it’s job.

You don’t have to overhaul your entire practice, double your marketing budget or drop your prices. Just find the leaks and fix them.

If you wanna know how to solve the most common – and expensive – leak that I see in elective practices (refractive, plastics, etc), reply to this email. I’ll send you a private audio recording where I cover this specific leak in detail, and tell you how to correct it.

Fix this one leak and you’ll add 10+ refractive eyes next month.

– Troy “Leakless” Cole

DFY FAQs – Answers about done-for-you virtual consults

A couple of days ago, I shot you this email going over the #1 virtual consult “road block” all practices face.

In case you missed it, the road block is about logistics. Many practices understand the new need for a Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement (Virtual Consults + Traditional in-office Consults).

But they still have to answer the logistical challenge – “WHO is going to do these virtual consults and HOW do we fit them into our already hectic/busy schedule?”

One new solution we’ve introduced to overcome that road block – Done-For-You Virtual Consults. For practices who enroll in this beta program with us, we will actually do the virtual consultations for you.

We’re getting a number of questions about how this works, and I want to address some of those common questions today.

“Why would you offer done-for-you virtual consults?”

We’re seeing many practices who want to move forward with virtual consults, but they don’t have the bandwidth. This service meets a real need in the marketplace.

It also makes virtual consultation offering a much easier decision for the practice.

You don’t have to figure out who does them, how to schedule them, where they fit in your schedule, etc. You skip all that. We handle it. We conduct the virtual consults for you.

“Who is actually doing these virtual consults for us?”

If someone’s going to do virtual consults for your practice, you want to make sure they represent you well. That’s priority #1 for you and us.

The individuals who will be conducting these virtual consults all meet the following criteria:
– US- or Canada-based
– Actively (or previously) worked in a refractive practice, or in the refractive space (think pharma rep, BDMs)
– Strong communication skills
– Strong ability to sell premium services

We have visibility into many practices – either as direct clients of ours, through masterminds and networking, and through our own ninja research (secret shopping, etc).

Flat out, the counselors we’re using for this program are better salespeople than most practices have in their offices. Frankly even if a practice has the bandwidth to do virtual consults, it probably makes more sense for us to handle them.

“You’ve used the S-word – Sales – several times, Troy. Tell me more about that.”

Priority #2 on virtual consults – whoever is doing them needs to be able to direct the conversation and convert virtual consults into pre-ops. In short, they need to have sales skills.

Some folks reading this are nodding their heads in agreement right now. They understand that sales is the lifeblood of any business, including your practice.

Others read this with hesitation, thinking along the lines of, “Well we don’t like the word ‘sell.’ We don’t want to ‘sell’ our services.”

If you fall into the latter category, all I can tell you is that if you aren’t selling surgeries, you aren’t growing your practice. If you aren’t selling your surgeries, your prospects will go to the chain LASIK center down the street that is selling theirs.

If you wait for your prospects to make hard decisions for themselves – if you don’t take the leadership role and help them make the right decision for them – well, you’ll be waiting a while. And honestly, you aren’t serving your prospects the way they deserve if you let them wait and stew in their own indecision.

The modern sales process isn’t like the old school, hard-sell tactics of the past. People don’t go for that anymore. Modern sales is built around leadership and authority.

The #1 rule of modern sales – help your prospect make the decision that’s right for them.

And on the virtual consultation, the decision we’re helping them make is “Does it make sense for you to move forward with a pre-op exam?” As long as the prospect meets all the qualifications, that’s what’s “for sale” on the virtual consultations.

“How do you know our qualifications, about our doctors, our treatments, etc?”

Of course we need some specific information about your practice. We do this simply through an onboarding form and launch call with your team.

We get the pertinent info we need about you and your treatments, and we figure out a mechanism we can use to book these folks into your system for a pre-op appointment (as long as they meet the criteria we establish on the virtual consult).

”What does the actual process look like?”

Let’s walk through this:

Step 1 – Click – Prospect Sally clicks on one of our posts, ads or prompts on your website to book a virtual consult.
Step 2 – Book – Sally schedules her virtual consult using the scheduling tool we build for you.
Step 3 – Reminders – We remind Sally when to show up for her virtual consult, and provide her the instructions for how to log on.
Step 4 – Actual Consult – On the day and time she selected, Sally jumps on the virtual consult with our counselor. We take her through the consultation, build rapport, determine if she is a good fit, and book her for a pre-operative appointment in your office.

“If you guys are doing the virtual consults, what do we have to do?”

Let’s start with what you do NOT have to do:

✅ You DON’T have to reach out to these people and try to get them on the phone.

✅ You DON’T have to book anything with them.

✅ You DON’T have to worry about any of the tech necessary to do the virtual consult.

✅ You DON’T have to rearrange your schedule to accommodate virtual consultations.

✅ You DON’T have to hire anyone, or stretch your team too thin, to add virtual consults to the mix.

So what DO you have to do? Greet these patients with a smile when they come in for their pre-ops, book them for surgery and take their money. That’s it.

“How do we get started?”

You reply to this email and ask for more details. We jump on a quick call to make sure you’re a good fit (we have specific criteria practices need to meet. This isn’t for everyone).

And if you’re a good fit, we walk you through the process and you can decide if you want to do it or not. Simple, straightforward and easy.

Got any questions I didn’t address here? Reply with those too.

– Troy “FAQ Yes” Cole

PS – Quick reminder – This beta program is only open to 3 practices, and we already have one spot filled.

If you’re interested, don’t wait until next week. Hit the ‘reply’ button now to hold your spot in line.

PPS – Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we help refractive surgeons book more surgeries…

One. Leverage Virtual Consultations.
For all the bad that came from COVID, one arguably good thing is that it accelerated the adaption of home-centric consumer lifestyle.

Why is that good? Because people are now comfortable “doing life” from home – including booking virtual consultations with refractive surgeons! Practices who have properly introduced the Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement (Virtual Consults + Traditional In-Office Consults) are growing their surgery volume faster than ever.

With our Patient Prime System, we build your entire Virtual Consultation process for you. Reply “Virtual” if you want more info on Patient Prime.

Two. Sell More Surgery.
The highest leverage opportunity within any practice lies within their sales team, particularly on the phones. You’d be amazed at how much revenue leaks out of your phones by way of prospects who contact you, but never book a consult. We’re talking 6- to 7-figures a year.

Want to fortify your practice against this massive leak? Reply to this email with “Sales” and I’ll get you more details on how to identify your weak points on the phone (and how to solve them).

THREE. Mastermind with the Best in the Business.
Want to hear what’s working for world-class refractive surgeons across the country? Want expert marketers to review your ads, website and marketing materials and show your marketing team how to make them perform even better?

If so, our Refractive Mavericks Mastermind may be the right environment for you. Reply “Mastermind” and I’ll get you more details.

[VIDEO] Solving the one virtual consult “road block” all practices face

Last week, I emailed you about the 4 myths surrounding virtual consults.

In case you missed that one, you can check it out here. (Be sure to read it if you didn’t. It’s worth 5 minutes of your time)

Now, there is one very real road block that all practices must face if they want to see all the benefits of virtual consults:

“WHO is going to do them and HOW do we fit them into our already hectic/busy schedule?”

These are real concerns. And if you don’t plan it out properly, you’re setting yourself up for a struggle.

We have 2 different ways we address this through our Patient Prime System.

Way 1. We connect you with someone in your shoes to build your logistics plan with you.

Remember Liam Neeson’s famous line in the movie Taken?

“What I do have are a particular set of skills.”

We have people with “particular sets of skills” on the Patient Prime team. Including the person who runs one of the most successful Virtual Consultation programs in the country, with a 70% conversion rate from Virtual Consult to surgery.

As part of the onboarding process for Patient Prime, you have the opportunity to meet with her. She will work with you to plan out the personnel, scheduling and management of your Virtual Consultation program based on your specific needs and team availability.

Who better to help you than someone who’s in the trenches and runs this program successfully on a daily basis?

Now, up until this point, that was your only option for Virtual Consult logistics planning. And it’s an amazing option, don’t get me wrong.

But here’s what we’ve heard from a number of practices:

“Troy, we love the virtual consult concept. We see the need and know we need to move on this quickly. But when it comes to logistics… we just don’t have the manpower to do them. Period.”

We don’t want those practices to be left out in the cold (and it’s like 15 degrees here in Texas as I write this, so I know how lame ‘the cold’ can be…).

So here’s what we’re doing… 👇

Way 2. We’ll do your virtual consults for you.

Rather than you having to figure out who is going to do the virtual consults, how to schedule them in, and how to handle bandwidth issues…

We take all that off your plate. Our team will conduct the virtual consults for you, and book these patients directly into pre-op for your practice.

To summarize what we do with the Virtual Consult portion of our Patient Prime System, by adding this done-for-you virtual consult:

👉 We help you market virtual consults
👉 We book them
👉 We confirm them
👉 We remind prospects to show up
✅ AND we conduct the Virtual Consults

And you’re only interacting with these people once they come in for a pre-op.

Limited on bandwidth? Then this is the perfect way for you to grow your surgical volume.

If that sounds interesting to you, here’s the thing:

This opportunity is limited. Because this is a beta program, we can’t/won’t open it up to everyone.

We’re looking for 3 practices that want more refractive surgeries ASAP. And we’ll handle everything up until the point they walk in your door.

So if you’re interested, reply to this email so we can jump on a quick call to make sure you’re a good fit.

– Done-For-You Troy

PS – Michael and I recorded a video going through the Done-For-You virtual consults in more detail. We also show you the actual year-over-year data of a practice before-vs-after virtual consults. You can see that video here.

PPS – If you know someone who might benefit from this, pass it along. I always send these opportunities to my private email list first, and then open them up to others. So it’s fine if you share this with another practice you know personally.

The 4 Virtual Consult myths holding practices back

The team at Zeiss ask me to do an interview on their podcast (the episode is 🔥🔥 by the way. I’ll shoot you a message once it’s live). The topic of virtual consultations came up.

While we’re seeing many practices jumping on board with our Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement (a combination of in-person consults and virtual consults)…

We also talk to a lot of practices who want to do it… but they’re hesitant. They don’t see how the virtual consultations fit into their workflow. Or they have concerns about the efficacy and longevity of virtual consults.

Why? It’s often due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how virtual consultations should work.

During this podcast interview with Zeiss, I shared the 4 common myths that are holding many practices back from reaping the benefits of virtual consults.

I thought you (or someone you know) could benefit from those, so here they are…

MYTH 1. Virtual Consults have to be long/drawn out/complex

Many people have this idea that the virtual consult needs to be comparable to the in-person consult process. Obviously you can’t do scans on a virtual consult. But they feel like the VC should still be long, highly detailed, with lots of information presented.

We’ve even talked to practices who have tried virtual consults, and they tell me they typically spend an hour with a patient on Zoom.

Not only is this not necessary, it can actually hurt your conversion numbers. Long virtual consults lead to boredom and information overload. This is deadly combination when you’re trying to get someone excited to take the next step of coming in for a pre-op.

THE TRUTH – Virtual consults only need to be about 15 minutes long. They should only cover brief medical history, rapport building, the prospect’s pain points, and have a strong call to action.

Structure your VC the proper way and hit the right notes, and you can get in, get out, and get the prospect on your pre-op schedule… all in short order.

MYTH 2 – A doctor needs to be involved in virtual consults.

We prefer our surgeons focusing their time on their highest ROI activities – doing surgery, leading their teams, working on their business.

Which is why the virtual consultation process we have developed does not require a doctor to be present.

We have practices converting the majority of their virtual consults (50-60%, sometimes more) into surgeries with our virtual consult format, and no doctor engages with the patient until they are in the practice to pre-op for surgery.

MYTH 3 – “Now that our city is opening back up from lockdowns, and patients are coming into the office, we don’t need a virtual option.”

I’ve heard this several times, and it makes sense at first glance. If you’re open for in-person, why do you need the remote option?

You need it if you want to engage more people. Just like Chipotle offers in-person dining and home delivery (we did a video on this), you benefit when you have multiple ways a prospect can engage you.

Sure there are plenty of people who will come into the practice now. But others – either due to fear, convenience, or other random reasons – aren’t coming in for an initial consult.

By offering only in-person consults, you’re only catering to a portion of the market.

So you either leave the rest of the market for your competitors to scoop up, or you offer a virtual option and capture those too.

You don’t care how new patients get to you. What matters is that they get to you. Give them more than one avenue to do that.

One final note on this: our home-centric, convenience-focused consumer lifestyle isn’t going away. People are used to Zoom meetings, at-home workouts and grocery delivery. Get on board with virtual consults now and lead the way in your market… or play catch-up a year from now when one of your competitors is eating your lunch.

MYTH 4 – “We tried virtual consults, and we didn’t get much from them, so they probably don’t work for us.”

When practices tell us this, our first question is to have them describe how they have done virtual consults. When we dig a little deeper, we find out that the practice didn’t actually market and promote virtual consultations as an exciting option for prospects. They just kinda… offered em.

They treated virtual consults like this extra little thing they could facilitate if someone asked. Or the virtual consult was an option on their website somewhere, but not actively promoted as a great way to engage with the practice.

Imagine if LASIK was this “Extra little service you offer, and if someone asks about it, you tell them.” Would you be doing much volume? Of course not.

And it’s not because LASIK isn’t great, or because it doesn’t work. It’s just because you didn’t frame it and market it in the appropriate way.

Virtual consults are a great way to grow your surgical volume in a highly efficient manner, as you’ve seen in some of our case study videos. BUT they have to be marketed in the proper manner. Don’t expect people to discover them and see the value on their own. We have to show them the value.

BIG TAKEAWAY – There’s a right way (and many wrong ways) to market and conduct Virtual Consults.

And if you’ve been hesitant to shift to the Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement, or if you haven’t seen much success with virtual consults, it’s probably due to one or more of they myths I’ve dispelled above.

Fortunately you don’t have to figure this out on your own. We have an entire system built to launch this Hybrid Model for you. I’ve worked with the LASIK Marketing King – Michael King – to package all this up for you.

Everything we’ve learned about how to do virtual consults that convert to surgeries…

All of the ads, landing pages, schedulers, communication tools, reminder messages and sales training… everything that works to get you more refractive surgery patients…

It’s all packed into our Patient Prime System, ready to deploy for practices who are a good fit for the program.

If you want to achieve (or maintain) your status as the go-to practice for vision correction in your market, the Hybrid Model is the path.

The question then becomes…

Do you want to build the car, build the road, and try to navigate this path yourself?

Or would you rather get in the back of our limo and let us take you to your destination?

I’d love to hear your answer…

– Troy “Limo Driver” Cole

PS – Maybe you’re already doing virtual consults and killing it. Great! But you have a colleague somewhere who isn’t. They need to read this message. Do them – and me – a favor and forward this to them.

We’re on a mission to help local, independent surgeons dominate their markets and crush the chain LASIK centers that are commoditizing the industry. I appreciate your help in reaching more amazing surgeons like you to join us on this mission…

How Getting More Patients is Like Baking a Cake

Refractive surgeons reach out to me when they decide they want to do more surgeries.

And usually, they tell me something like:

“We need more marketing.”
“We need better marketing.”
“We need more leads.”

(I had calls with 3 practices last week that started exactly like this.)

Now, all of these things are most likely true. And all of them are important to filling your surgery schedule.

And most marketers, agencies and ad folks will say, “We can help with that! Sign here please.” We used to do the same thing.

But is that really the best idea? In my experience, no. It’s actually irresponsible. And more often than not, it’s a waste of money.

Why?

It comes down to Sequence, a vital yet often overlooked aspect of practice growth.

Better marketing is an important step to take. But it’s rarely the first step to take. And this is where sequencing comes in.

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Consider your favorite dessert. I’m a Lemon Cake guy.

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse has an amazing layered lemon cake. It’s the perfect recipe, and when followed to a T, produces an unbelievable treat that hits the spot after a nice 16-oz medium-cooked ribeye with sautéed spinach.

But let’s say they take the recipe… and decide to shake things up a bit. For example, they take the baking soda, and rather than mixing it into the cake batter, they leave it to the end and sprinkle it on top of the icing.

Is it going to be as tasty? No. It might actually be disgusting.

But why? Baking soda is part of the recipe, after all.

It’s because this key ingredient was added out of sequence.

The same thing happens in your practice. The first ingredient – the first step – is not to pour all of your hard-earned money into paid marketing or lead gen efforts.

Because if you don’t have your sales / consultation / fulfillment / conversion processes nailed down, more marketing will do you little good. In fact, it can actually hurt you – drain your funds, result in a poor patient experience, and lead to net-negative word-of-mouth.

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So if you want to grow your practice, make sure you’re following the 3 Practice Growth Steps in sequence.

Step 1 – Make sure you have a weapons-grade sales team and process. If you don’t, train your people or hire better ones (or both).

This is your biggest point of leverage within the practice. A sales team with excellent skills will convert more surgery patients, and they can do it at a premium price point.

Many practices have “good people” in their organization, but they haven’t been trained in the specific processes and mindset of moving a person from Lead to Prospect to Consult to Patient. This needs to be priority #1. You’ll make more money just doing this.

(And for anyone reading this who thinks “sales” is a dirty word – that’s a whole other essay. I’ll just say that if you’re the best surgeon in town, and you truly believe you can help people, then you have a moral obligation to do just that. Which means having an excellent sales team that can communicate clearly and help prospects make the hard decisions they need to make to better themselves.)

Step 2 – Make sure you’re optimized to convert as many patients as you can from those who are already interested in your services.

There are people out there who are actively researching you and/or your procedures.

Without getting too far into the weeds here, you want to:

– Add multiple “engagement assets” to your website.
– Make sure you’re ranking on page 1 in search engines for your specific key terms.
– Put a plan in place to get 5-star reviews from every happy patient.
– Optimize your paid search (AdWords) campaigns.

These are all avenues where people are actively looking for your solution, and you want to give yourself the best opportunity of engaging and converting them.

Step 3. Then you can move out into lead generation – advertising to cold audiences via social media ads, radio and whatever other avenues you deem appropriate.

At this point, your foundation is in place, and you can start to reach new audiences through marketing.

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There are obviously sub-steps to each of these, but this big-picture overview gives you the lay of the land. You should be able to better navigate your surgery volume challenges with this sequencing framework.

Even knowing the sequence, some practices aren’t clear on whether they’re ready to move from step 1 to 2 to 3. This is another reason they call me. So we can assess and steer them in the right direction.

If you’re stuck in your practice growth, it’s likely you’re out of sequence. Just like a Lemon Cake with a baking soda topping, you’re not nearly as amazing as you could be if you were in sequence.

If you want help with this, give me a shout. We can take a look at where you are, your challenges, your bottlenecks, and where you need to focus right now.

Maybe you need a robust communications/sales training for your team. Maybe it’s time for you to plug in a bunch of battle-tested lead generation campaigns.

We don’t know until we dig in (just like you don’t know if a patient is a candidate for sx until you deep dive into their scans and find out what’s going on with their eyes).

Don’t waste time, energy and budget fighting an uphill battle out of sequence.

Reply to this email, and we’ll help you figure our your sequencing plan. We’ll also share what’s working right now to get more patients in each of the steps I outlined above.

Talk soon,

Troy “Sequence is the Shortcut” Cole