• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
Troy Cole

Troy Cole

Sales Coaching for Refractive & Cataract Surgery Teams

  • About
    • Client Wins
  • Free Gift
  • Products
  • Sales Coaching
  • Podcast
    • Most Recent
    • View All Episodes
  • Articles
    • Most Recent
    • Best Of
  • Contact

Articles

My favorite room in Fort Worth (and why)

This city has a lot of great restaurants. You’ve got a slew of em down in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards, ample options in the upscale Clear Fork shopping center, a few hotspots around TCU and a variety of choices on West 7th.

But my favorite spot isn’t just a restaurant, it’s a room within a restaurant.

And I’m talking specifically about the bar at Eddie V’s, which is where I took Susan for a Christmas date on Wednesday night.

Eddie V’s isn’t a local spot. They have restaurants in 14 states. And I can’t vouch for their other places. But ours is phenomenal.

You walk in the main doors, and the vibe of the bar is palpable. You turn left and enter the room, where a long horseshoe bar is the centerpiece. Surrounded by bar top tables and booths, a jazz band plays in the corner at just the right volume and tempo. Mirrors along the back wall add the illusion of space to the relatively small area.

And the room buzzes with energy. You look around and see business men and women, couples on dates, cowboy hats. The sounds of laughs, commentary, clinking glasses, silverware on plates all combine to create a symphonic ambiance that signals “things are happening.”

Drinks being delivered from the bar, dinners being brought in, cleared plates being bussed out. The movement. The energy. The sounds. It all pulls you in. It attracts.

This fantastic room is a place of activity. It has a lively pulse that takes you over as you take a seat and take a sip.

Nothing is throwing it off. The waitress beside us knocks over a bottle of wine and spills a bit on the table. A quick apology, a joking comment from the table, and the vibe keeps going.

A fork falls on the floor. Who cares? The energy of the room blows right past it. Another fork arrives, along with a reloaded basket of bread and a fresh Manhattan. Everything keeps going.

The default of the Eddie V’s bar is movement, anticipation and excitement. It engulfs you.

When you think about the patient experience in your practice, this is exactly how it should be.

It should have a vibe, an energy. We’re here doing amazing things, and we’re glad you’re able to be a part of it, dear patient.

Slight hiccups, little challenges – not a problem at all. Of course it happens, when you’re moving and shaking like we are, it’s bound to.

But nothing is thrown off track, the momentum continues to build, the good energy persists, and the needle stays on the record.

Conversions become easier, the patient experience becomes better, sales conversations become second nature, the surgery schedule fills.

Going into 2025, the Fort Worth Eddie V’s bar should be your vibe. If it’s not, ask yourself (or me) why. How do you create it? How do you make it consistent? How do you create this atmosphere of movement day in and day out?

Freight Train Energy. We’re on the tracks, chugging along, headed to Clear Vision Town. We’d love to have you join us and take you where you need to go, dear patient.

But we aren’t leaving the tracks. We’re not slowing down. We’re not changing destinations. We already know where you need to go, and everything we do is to take you there.

This is one of the more understated yet insanely powerful concepts you can use to set yourself apart from other practices and every other business trying to distract your patients and take their hard-earned money.

And it’s the core underlying theme of everything we do in our coaching program.

So go forth and create the “room” your patients want to be in.

​

Cheers,

Troy “In the Right Room” Cole

Sales magic lives in the process

You know what’s funny? A lot of folks think a good sales process and great customer service are somehow at odds.

Like oil and water. Superman and kryptonite. Me and clean eating during the holidays.

As if you have to one takes away from the other. “Well we DO want to book more patients, but if we do too much on the sales side, then that’ll take away from the customer experience and we don’t want that…”

But here’s the truth – you don’t have to pick one or the other.

Ruthless sales vs. benevolent customer care? NOPE.

The best sales experiences follow a proven process AND embody like amazing customer service.

Think about your favorite restaurant. The staff doesn’t wing it. They follow steps that create magic every time.

Your server greets you warmly. They time your courses perfectly. They check on you just enough.

It feels natural because they’ve mastered their process.

When we talk about having a strong sales process in your practice, your favorite restaurant is exactly what we’re talking about.

Now I learned this lesson hard way. I used to think processes killed authenticity and felt too mechanical. Boy was I wrong.

The right sales process actually lets you focus more on caring. It’s like having a map for your patient conversations.

You’re not stuck thinking “what do I say next?” You can truly listen and connect.

This is exactly what we dig into on Day 4 of the E3 Conversion System Bootcamp.

We show your team how to blend genuine care with proven process we call the CARE framework.

And when implemented correctly, it creates a better customer experience while also improving sales conversions.

Your patients feel truly cared for. Your team feels confident. And your numbers? They’ll make you smile too.

Want to see how this could work in your practice for 2025? Let’s talk about it.

Just hit reply or book a call at e3.troycole.com and let’s map out your path to conversion magic.

​

Cheers,

Troy “Process Makes Perfect” Cole

Getting your 2025 game plan together (include these)

Hard to believe 2024 is wrapping up already. The whole “time flies as you get older” thing is real.

No doubt you’re planning your 2025 marketing budgets right now. A few items to ensure are included, along with input I’ve received from some of my expert friends in these areas of focus:

Google Ads

The beauty of Google ads is they’re unique in that they target people already looking for your services.

They are “intent-based” advertising, not “interruption-based” like pretty much every other marketing channel.

You’re probably already doing Google ads, so keep it up. Keep in mind (at least in my experience) Google will appear tell you to add more budget, and sometimes that’s not always the best move.

That said, as long as you know your numbers, and if Google ads are profitable for you, don’t be afraid to scale that budget up to the point of diminishing returns. When done right, Google ads can be like an ATM.

Now what if you’re wanting to target different procedures or demos, like LASIK vs. RLE? Or LASIK vs. RLE vs. Cat? Allocating your budget between accounts, assessing performance, what should the creative say, where should you send people who click, etc. << all these need to be taken into consideration.

I was on with a client and one of our amazing partner agencies yesterday getting into these very topics. We have a set of new strategic approaches we’ve been testing, and they’re showing great results early on. So make sure someone is on top of this, Google ads are not a set-it-and-forget-it media.

​

Meta Ads

When I say meta ads, I’m taking about Facebook and Instagram ads. Over the last 12 months, this platform has greatly improved their targeting capabilities to get in front of action takers in your target demographic.

They have a number of options for lead generation, including driving traffic to your self test, a pricing guide or even running their native “lead ads” on their platform.

“But social media leads are typically low quality, Troy.”

Imagine when you met your spouse. Did you propose marriage on your first date? (geez, hope not). Because that would be weird, right? It would be out of sequence.

To a lesser extent, social media leads are the same way. They aren’t “bad leads” per se, many of them just aren’t ready to take the leap.

Solution? Don’t make them leap. Give them stepping stones instead. Free guides, FAQs, videos, etc. And then have a strategic delivery mechanism (SMS + Email) to share those resources with these leads.

Other thing to remember on ANY lead channel – conversion rate doesn’t matter. “HERESY!” Nah, listen:

The only thing that matters is the ratio of leads to kept consults. If you’re converting 10% of social media leads into consults, that sounds like trash on the surface. BUT if every one of those leads cost you $15, do the math. That’s a $150 consult walking through the door. Even if you only convert at 50% to surgery (which is low), that’s $300 for a $6k LASIK or $12k RLE. You’ll take that all day long.

On a related note, ad CONTENT is a whole other topic that we can’t discuss today, but obviously that has a huge affect on the campaign performance.

Alright moving on….

​

TikTok Ads?

Supposedly they’re about to get banned. Pretty sure that’s NOT gonna happen, but it could.

But let’s say they don’t. TT is a solid ad platform, and I know some practices having success with ads there, either running the ads themselves or through an agency.

​

Test Budget

This is a big one. Back in the day – when social / google ads weren’t even a thing – we used to have a budget line item called “remnant ads.” These were earmarked dollars we could use for print, radio or TV to buy any last-minute, unsold inventory at a reduced rate. (This still works for those channels btw).

Sometimes we used it, sometimes we would not. But every month, it was available. It was baked into the budget.

With the shift to digital, you should still have this type of earmark, but it should be for running tests.

The beauty of digital is you can cook up a campaign, spend a couple hundred dollars driving traffic to it, and figure out if it’s a potential winner.

Sometimes it’s not, and that’s fine. You learned something, and it didn’t cost you much money or time. On the other hand, we had several test campaigns this past year that turned out to be home runs. We’re talking sub-$15 leads and decent conversion to consult. All thanks to the extra “Test Budget” we had available to us.

You can run these tests as new campaigns in your current channels, or use them to test new channels like TikTok ads or Twitter ads.

Not a lot of $$ btw, $500 – $1000 per month. And if you don’t use it, no problem. But try to use it.

​

CRM

If you have some version of a CRM, awesome. If not, now is the time.

You simply can’t be maximally effective in your conversion process if you aren’t tracking your leads with pen and paper or a basic spreadsheet. You need a tracking system, which is a CRM.

And you need to USE the CRM. Make sure your team is trained on it and have standardized processes. Bonus points if your CRM includes the capability of automating emails and SMS messages to your leads.

If you want a CRM recommendation, hit me up. There are a few good ones out there, and I’ll help you figure out what would be the ideal solution for you.

​

Communications / Sales Coaching

More of the A-player practices have started to incorporate communications / sales coaching into their budgets. Why? Because it’s the one area where you can make massive gains whether you spend a ton of $ on marketing or very little at all.

Driving a bunch of leads through ad channels? You need to know how to followup, connect and convert them.

Not doing much marketing? You probably rely on a lot of referrals. How do you create the best experience possible so patients and other doctors can’t help but sing your praises from the rooftops?

A weapons-grade communications and sales coaching program fits the bill in both scenarios. And yes, we have what I would describe in my not-so-humble opinion as the best in the game (especially with the “real-time feedback” modifications we’re rolling out in Q1).

I’m not alone – we’ve had hundreds of students go through the coaching, and they’ve shared their stories of massive wins – converting skeptics to believers, getting in tough with no-shows and turning them into surgery eyes, overcoming the most ridiculous objections with unwavering confidence.

Reply for more info or head over here to check it out.

Enough for today. Hopefully this gives you some useful insights into how to be most effective as you plan your approach for the upcoming year.

– T-Cole

​
​

PS – I am bullish on 2025. New president, new administration. Things will be shaken up, and I believe it will be a net positive for the economy and consumer confidence. Get your plan together to make the most of it. 💪🏻

Your “red paperclip” moment awaits

Ever had one of those random Wikipedia deep-dives that sends you down a wild rabbit hole?

That happened to me recently. I came across this crazy story about Kyle MacDonald. This dude traded a single paperclip for an actual house. No really.

Started with just one red paperclip from his desk. Then traded up again and again. Each swap got him something a bit more valuable than the last.

A pen here, a doorknob there, then a camping stove. Like playing Monopoly in real life, but with random stuff instead of properties.

The wild part? After just 14 trades, this mad genius landed himself a legit house worth over $50k. And he pulled this off in under a year!

Now, I’m not suggesting you start raiding your office supplies for real estate trades. (Though if you figure that out, definitely shoot me a text).

But here’s the lesson – small strategic moves add up fast. Each little trade MacDonald made got him closer to his goal.

Look, 2025 is coming whether we’re ready or not. And our E3 Conversion System Bootcamp is your paperclip-to-house moment. We’re stacking those small wins now to crush it next year.

By the end of 12 weeks, those small improvements stack up into major conversion wins. No paperclips required.

Ready to start trading up your team’s surgery scheduling skills?

Keep stacking those wins,

Troy “Trading paperclips for progress” Cole
​

PS – Speaking of trades, I’ll swap you a 15-minute strategy call for your most interesting office supply story. Deal?

Lesson from the Ritz-Carlton of Boombox Companies

Fun Fact: We’re quite the musical family. Susan played piano and violin as a child, I’m a drum and guitar guy, and all 4 of our kids take piano lessons (and play more beautifully than I ever could).

You will often find us blasting music around the house – while practicing sports, having a game night or even just doing chores.

One of my favorite music-oriented possessions is our TurtleBox – a small bluetooth speaker that packs a big punch.

I’ve had my share of cheap bluetooth speakers. You spend $40, get something that sounds halfway decent, but only for a short time.

Then the speaker starts to crackle, the battery life drops, and it become relatively useless in short-order.

So at some point, like any responsible adult would do, I realized you get what you pay for. So I forked over $400 for one of these Turtleboxes. For that kinda scratch, my expectations were high. And boy did the Turtlebox exceed them.

It’s insanely loud, but the audio is still clear when it’s cranked up. The battery lasts for hours. And it’s waterproof, so you can have it on the beach or by the pool without any worries.

​

But I recently had a problem with my Turtlebox…

One of the rubber feet on the bottom came loose and went missing. Not a huge deal – it didn’t impact the actual function of the speaker at all.

But now it was wobbly, which started to bug me. So I headed over to their website to see if I could buy a replacement.

They don’t sell rubber feet, so I then turned to Instagram. I messaged the page and told them my dilemma and asked if it would be possible to order new feet directly from them.

I received a rapid response: “Hey, shoot me a pic of the speaker so I know what model it is. Send me your address and I’ll send one out to you.”

Awesome! Didn’t even ask me to pay or cover shipping.

3 days later, I received a box from the company. I was a bit surprised, seeing as the rubber feet could have easily fit in an envelope for cheaper shipping.

Upon opening the box, I discovered a full set of new rubber feet and this rad trucker hat, which they sell for $30 on their website.

Without spending a penny, without jumping through hoops, without waiting in a customer service phone queue… they solved my problem and added surprise-n-delight to my experience. Simply for being a loyal customer.

​

So what can we learn from Turtlebox?

​

1. Turtlebox is a premium product with a premium price point. They charge what they’re worth, and they deliver on high expectations.

If you’re the best in town, act like it. Charge like it. Deliver like it.

Because all this customer service would ring hollow if the product was crap in the first place.

​

2. The more you charge, the more margin you have for customer service.

Is Turtlebox the Ritz-Carlton of the speaker industry? They surely act like it.

Neither company is cheap. Neither cut corners. Both are apparently keen on providing a great customer experience.

But part of that is having the financial bandwidth to provide customer experience at such a high level.

Turtlebox has margin, which is why they (and Ritz) have the time, energy and capital to randomly send product to customers and provide quick, helpful communication.

The lower your prices, the lower your margins. (Your prices may be low, but rent stays the same.)

And the lower your margins, the more patients you have to see. The more people you have to see, the more your customer experience suffers. Long wait times, overextended team, etc. And the result of that is fewer conversions to surgery and lower employee retention.

Can you see the death spiral that occurs when you operate from cheapness / scarcity vs. high-ticket / abundance?

Not saying you do that, but in this less-than-rad economy, you might be inclined to start getting cheap. Don’t. Because it’ll cost you.

​

3. Turtlebox took care of it.

I had a problem, and they took care of it. I was happy to pay for them to take care of it. I would have immediately sent them $10 or $20 to get my problem fixed. I just wanted it handled.

People in your market – particularly the kinds of folks you are going after – are the Ritz-Carlton, First-Class flight types. They don’t want to jump through hoops or go through complicated, drawn out processes.

They just want someone to handle it. “I have bad vision. I want to get it fixed.” Cool, we’ll handle it.

In fact the top Patient Referral Strategy we teach leverages this exact principle, and it works like gangbusters for the practices who implement it.

Patient’s got an issue? Needs more info, needs flexibility in scheduling, wants something to drink, would like to talk to a doctor again? Take care of it.

​

4. Empower your team to make all this happen.

I don’t know who answers Instagram DMs at Turtlebox. But I guarantee you he didn’t go ask for permission to send me a few rubber parts and a hat that cost them $6 to make.

At some point along the line, someone empowered him/her to “take care of it.”

It looks something like this:

  • If someone has an issue, if you can fix it for under $25 cost to us, fix it.
  • If you can additionally make someone’s day by giving them free swag, do it.
  • You are authorized to give away A, B, C, D, E, F or G if it solves a problem or somehow makes a customer’s life better.
  • Any time you do this, it’s a win. I want you to focus on getting 1 win per day, and you are required to share a minimum of 1 previous-week customer win at the team meeting every Monday.

You can take that same model and apply it to your team. Empower them to fix it. To surprise and delight. To make people’s days.

There are 100 ways to do this (and we go over them in detail in our coaching community, I can’t give everything away here). But this isn’t rocket science.

There’s an added benefit to empowering your team – they start to take more ownership.

Here’s the thing:

You WANT your folks to feel ownership over their job roles and their patients. “This is mine! I’m responsible for making sure this person / team / process is taken care of.” YES YES YES.

So when you empower your people… not only are you improving your customer experience, you’re also creating the culture you want your team to experience and exude.

In conclusion – definitely go get a Turtlebox. And do everything else I outlined here. 👆

AND…

If you’re looking at your marketing budget going into 2025, and you want to allocate a small portion of those funds in a way that will create OUTSIZED results for you… reply and let’s discuss 1-on-1 coaching for your phone / surgery scheduler teams.

If you do any marketing at all, there’s a good chance some of that $$ isn’t creating a return for you. Not your fault, that’s just how it is.

But we can peel off a sliver of that marketing $$ and invest it in your TEAM. Then see what happens to your conversions, your culture and the overall vibe of your practice.

– Troy “Rock On” Cole

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • Page 6
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 50
  • Go to Next Page »

Troy Cole

Copyright © 2025 · Monochrome Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • About
  • Free Gift
  • Products
  • Sales Coaching
  • Podcast
  • Articles
  • Contact