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The 3 Ways to Leverage Bad Reviews

Your email alert dings. You’ve Got Mail! (remember when that was a thing?)

Ah look at this! A new Google review.

Let’s open it right up and see what praises someone has digitally heaped upon us…

You click the message, and much to your horror, you see one single, glaring star almost glowing on your screen.

Someone has bestowed you with one of the greatest insults in the history of the internet – the infamous one-star review. What in the heck-fire is happening here?

Yeah it’s frustrating. Of course you don’t want it. BUT here’s the thing – Bad Reviews aren’t the worst thing in the world. In fact, there are actually some benefits to having some bad reviews.

“So you’re saying I should be happy about 1-star reviews, Troy?! That’s bananas!” Of course it’s bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. And no, that’s not what I’m saying.

In fact, if your review average drops to the mid-4s or below, you have serious problems.

That said, let’s talk about three ways bad reviews actually help your practice. Seriously.

1. Bad Reviews Make You Look Legit

Patients want to see a perfect 5-star review record, right?

Actually, no. According to research, a 5-star average is actually less believable than something in the 4.5 – 4.9 range.

Think about it: If you go to research a product or service, and you see nothing but glowing reviews, you might become suspicious. Why? Because it seems too good to be true.

Today’s consumers are more educated (and thus more cynical) than ever before. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

“Troy, I don’t care what the data says, I want a 5-star average no matter what. Stop being ridiculous.” Hey, I hear you.

To be clear – this doesn’t mean you should go out looking for bad reviews. And it also doesn’t mean that legitimate bad reviews should go unaddressed (we’ll get to that later). But if you get one, and your review average drops from perfect 5 to 4.9, research says that can actually work in your favor.

2. Bad Reviews Give You A Chance to Reframe

I had a client who not long ago received a 1-star review from someone who wasn’t even a patient. It was actually the driver of a patient on surgery day.

This person left the negative review on the practice’s Google page, something like “I returned at the time they told me, but they made me wait another 45 minutes before I could drive my friend home.”

At face value, that sounds bad. It sounds like the practice doesn’t value people’s time, and that they don’t keep a tight schedule.

This is where the reframing comes in.

Thankfully with most review platforms, you can respond to your reviews, positive or negative. (You should respond to both for a host of reasons that I won’t get into today).

If you take one nugget away from this essay, remember this one:

When you reply to a negative review, script the reply for everyone else who will see the review, not the reviewer.

☝️ Reread that so you don’t forget it.

Remember, if the negative review stays (meaning if the reviewer doesn’t remove it, or if you appeal and the platform doesn’t remove it), thousands of people will see the review (and its reply) over the next few years.

So it’s very important that you create context and reframe the review into a positive light.

Here’s how we did it for this particular reviewer:

> “Sally, we understand how delays can be frustrating.

> “Patient care is our top priority, and this is extremely important on surgery day. What this means is never rushing any part of the process, and taking careful time and consideration through each step of the procedure and immediate post-operative period.

> “For this reason, brief delays do occur from time to time. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.”

Now if someone reads the review and the response, what might they be thinking?

> “Yeah, it’s kind of lame to have to wait extra time. But I do appreciate a place that puts a big emphasis on patient care and isn’t rushing people in and out at a breakneck pace.

> “We’re talking about my eyes here, so what’s an extra few minutes of that means they’re taking all the steps necessary to make sure I’m good to go?”

This is an example of scripting the reply for public consumption. And now you’ve turned a negative review into a positive message about your practice.

3. Bad Reviews Online Tell You What’s Happening Offline

You run a busy practice and can’t know about every single patient interaction that takes place each day.

As lame as bad reviews are, sometimes they shed light on under-the-radar issues with an employee or a process that you would not have otherwise known.

Maybe patients feel rushed with a certain doctor. Or they receive a cold reception from certain team members. Bad reviews can help you better understand issues in your practice and rectify them.

Here we’re talking about legitimate bad reviews and complaints. Not a random 1-star review without comment, not the goofy driver review I discussed in the last section.

This is the type of negative review that is not good for public consumption, and they can be difficult to reframe. You want these reviews removed. So how do you do that?

This answer may seem obvious to you, but I visit with at least a practice a month that hasn’t even considered it:

Reach out to the reviewer.

If you know who the person is (which you do in many cases), have your practice administrator give them a call. Apologize. Make it right.

Better yet, you call the patient, doc. You might think you have higher value things to do. You don’t.

Some of the biggest patient evangelists are those who felt slighted, but then the practice shows they care enough to make it right. Because so many businesses won’t do this, when you do, you look like an absolute rockstar.

And once you address the situation to the patient’s satisfaction, here’s another maybe-not-so-obvious tip:

Ask them to remove (or update) the negative review.

Going back to Point 2, this allows the public to see how much you care about making things right with your patients.

In Conclusion: Don’t Feel Helpless When You Get a 1-Star Review.

You have options. You have ways to address and reframe dumb 1-star reviews. You have the power to be proactive and turn negative experiences into positive ones.

Now be like Nike, and Just Do It.

We actually have a software our clients use that helps capture negative feedback before it can turn into a negative review. This is super helpful when a patient is experiencing the type of frustration described on Point 3. Find out more here.

Podcast: 08 – Information is Not Enough. Your Patients Need This

We think if we give our patients enough information, they will make a good decision. But information is only half the battle. Today, we talk about the other 50% of the equation, to make your practice stand out as the Obvious Choice.

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Transcript

Decisions, decisions.

Hello, my friends. It’s your boy Troy welcoming you to a fresh episode of the Practice Growth Machine podcast, where we teach you the persuasion tips and tactics you can use to command higher prices for your premium procedures and fill your surgery schedule. The topic of the day is decision making. Specifically, your patient’s decision making.

Now, I read and study a ton about persuasion and influence. It’s one of my favorite topics because it has so many applications in marketing and in sales that most folks just overlook or they never even consider.

In episode six, we talked about how your main job on the phones, and even in consultations, is to help your patients make the decision that’s right for them. But, how do you do that? Let’s talk about it.

Helping the patient make the right decision for them comes down to helping them create a decision framework. A decision framework. Think back to buying your first car or your first house, or maybe even a smaller decision like which new cell phone to purchase.

In any of these situations, it’s common to try to gather tons of information so you can make an informed decision. But, information is only half of the equation. We need a framework to actually make the right decision.

If you think about building a house, all the bricks, the paint, the wood floor planks, all those different parts are like the information. But, you need the literal frame of the house so you have a place to put all those things. That’s the framework. Without that, you just have a big pile of stuff and you don’t know how to arrange it or where it goes.

This is how people get into information overload. Research is so easy now that we all have this supercomputer in our pockets, but then we have all this information we’ve gathered. We don’t know what to do with it, we freeze, and we don’t make a decision. Or, we decide to stick with whatever we’re already doing.

This is especially true when we’re faced with a new kind of decision, something we’ve never made before, like the decision to have a vision correction procedure or cosmetic procedure.

How can we help create a strong decision-making framework for our patients? This is something we get deep into when we do our client trainings. The mindset, the different types of patients who come see you, how to read them and their personalities, and then how to create specific frameworks for engaging and connecting with them. But, I’m going to share a few of the big concepts with you today.

Number one: Explain the why. Explain the why. This is a very simple but powerful principle, and that’s to explain the why behind what you’re doing. It’s so easy to go through the motions of your normal medical history and doing the scans and doing the tests and all that.

You may even explain to your patients, “Okay, now we’re going to look at the front surface of the cornea,” etc. But, what’s even more important is explaining the why behind what you’re doing:

Here’s why we’re looking at the corneal surface. Here’s why we want to know what your hobbies are. Here’s why we recommend procedure X instead of procedure Y. Because, most patients aren’t going to understand the science behind an orb scan, for example.

But if you can say, “Hey, here’s why we’re doing the scan,” in very plain terms, they can quickly gain an understanding of why it’s important and how it benefits them, which becomes part of the framework for the decision.

Number two: Share anecdotes of other people like them. Storytelling is a concept that comes up a lot on the podcast, and that’s because it has so many applications in marketing and sales. For creating the decision framework, you want to show your prospect that others like them have traveled this road before, they’ve made a similar decision, and they are better for it.

If you’ve personally had the procedure, great. Talk about your story too. If your surgeon has had the procedure, even better. Talk about that.

Talk about other patients like them. Don’t mention names of course, but you can say, “Yeah, I had a patient just the other day who was a young mom and she was just so excited to be able to splash in the pool with her kids.” That’s something that seems really simple, but she could never do it before with her contacts.

Stories like this are a highly effective way to get your prospects thinking about how their life is going to be different after making this decision. Again, it’s part of that decision framework.

Number three: Arm them with questions that reinforce you as the obvious choice. When someone contacts you about booking a consultation, just go ahead and assume they are also looking at other practices around town. If someone tells you they are shopping around or they have another consultation somewhere else, this is a big opportunity for you.

You can either be the practice to build the decision framework, or you can leave it up to the patient, or worse yet, the competing practice to build that framework.

This is where folks get into a lot of trouble because they try to apply familiar frameworks to an unfamiliar decision. I’m talking about your prospects and your patients. This is how pricing can become a deal maker or breaker for folks. When it comes to the decision framework, people don’t know about technology or experience or outcomes or surgical planning. But, they know about money and they feel like they know about pricing.

In many cases, people think the best price is the lower price. If we don’t create a decision-making framework to correct that assumption and people are left to their own devices, you’re left competing on price. Which is what you don’t want, especially if you’re doing what I’m telling you to do, which is to charge a premium price for your premium procedures.

All right, remember, the most robust framework is going to win, and we want to be the ones to create that framework. This is why I encourage you, if someone is telling you they’re going to shop around, this is the time to arm them with questions and knowledge so that you are the one controlling the decision framework.

This is where I like to have a simple one page PDF quality checklist to go through with a patient. This is a very practical thing that you can create for your practice. This would have questions that your practice can answer affirmatively, but perhaps other practices cannot.

Some examples: Did my surgeon have the procedure himself? Will I meet my doctor before the surgery? Do you offer more than just LASIK? Will you work with my optometrist?

If you can answer yes to these questions, and other practices either can’t answer yes or there’s a big fat question mark as to whether or not it’s a yes for them, then these are the kinds of questions that you want to share with your prospects, and of course you want to make sure that they understand why each of these questions are important. Going back to point one, we want to explain the why behind it.

When you frame this up and you share these questions and you tell your patient, “Hey, you know what? Here are some important questions that you need to ask, you need to make sure you have the answers to these before you decide where you’re going.”

When you come from that angle, that puts you in the seat as the educator and the advocate for your patient. You are the authority. In many times, even bringing up these details and these questions can be enough for someone to say, “Yeah, you know, I can see why I should just trust you guys. You’ve got it all together.”

To recap, providing patients information is not enough to win their business. You must also help them create a decision framework. Patients need this because this is a new decision for them. You want to be sure to explain the why, share other patient stories, and arm them with questions that show you are the obvious choice.

Remember, if you don’t create the framework, someone else will. The most robust framework is going to win. Go out there and win today.

I will see you on the next show.

For more persuasion tools and scripts, click on the free resources tab at troycole.com.

The Pirate Printer Method (One of the Best Social Media Activations I’ve Ever Seen)

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Practice marketing ideas can arise from unlikely places. Today’s comes courtesy of the Pirate Adventures on the Chesapeake in Annapolis, MD.

Visiting family on the East Coast earlier this summer, we booked a pirate adventure. As a father of 4 kids under 7, it seemed like the perfect scenario.

And it was! We braved the high seas, conquered the evil Pirate Pete and reclaimed our treasure.

As much fun as we had, the aspect of this that most excited me was actually before the trip even began.

When I was tooling around the Pirate Gift Shop, preparing to board the ship, this wall decoration caught my eye:

A huge X with photos attached to it. The text explained what I was looking at:

“Use the hashtag #MyPirateAdventure and put your pic up on our wall!

Your print will be waiting for you when you return from sea.”

Take a picture. Hashtag it. We’ll print it. You can have it. Sounds pretty simple, right? Nothing mind-blowing at first blush.

But this approach actually solves some of the biggest roadblocks you face in spreading your message on social media.

Here’s what I mean…

Organic social media can be big for any business, including your practice. But most practices go about it the wrong way.

How? By trying to figure out the Big Awesome Thing they can post to get a bunch of shares, likes and retweets.

Yes, you want to post awesome content on your social media pages. That’s a given. But keep in mind that the social media platforms have an algorithm that throttles how much they show your content to other people.

Let’s pretend you have an amazing megaphone and an incredible message to yell into it. That message is only going to go so far on social media if you’re the only one screaming it.

And there’s more:

To continue the megaphone analogy (I was a collegiate cheerleader after all), you can scream your awesome message all you want, but saying “We’re the best! We’re amazing!” isn’t persuasive.

What is more believable? An athlete telling you how great he is, OR a bunch of sports commentators all talking about how great the athlete is?

We believe what people say about others more than what people say about themselves.

It’s the same reason online reviews are so influential. What other people say carries more weight, objectivity and validity than what we say about ourselves.

To reiterate: you should post great content on your social media pages – testimonials, happy patients without their glasses, office staff having fun in the office, fun photos from your events and more.

But these the megaphone metaphor speaks to your biggest opportunity on social media.

Your biggest opportunity on social media isn’t about what you post – it’s getting other people to post about you.

Not to beat a dead megaphone… but instead of you whispering your message as far as you can, why not send 1000s of evangelists out into the world – with their own megaphones – to share your message with all their friends and family?

This is why we try to get people to post about / for us on social. “Tag a friend!” “Share this post!” “Check-in at our location!”

Those are all great things to strive for, but reality is (and you know this), most people don’t take the action. So how do we activate patients to market you on social in a way they’ll actually do it?

Back to my pirate adventure…

5 Reasons the Pirate Printer Method is better than anything you’re doing right now.

User generated social content – We already talked about the importance of others promoting you vs you promoting yourself. With the PPM, it’s all about the content your patients create.
Built-in reward for participation – The physical photo is magical. You know I’m a big fan of most things digital. In this case, I like the physical image because it feels more like an actual treat or reward.
Creates digital marketing materials for your practice – Just like the pirate adventures, people posting their pics from surgery day (more details below) all over the internet creates excitement and buzz about everything you have going on in your practice.
Puts you physically in the hands (and homes) of your patients – When your patient takes their printed photo, where does it end up? On the fridge? In a cubicle? In a scrap book? Whichever the case may be, it will be in a place that the photo’s owner – and probably many other people – will see it, inquire about it, and reignite the memorable story from your patient’s experience.
Creates physical marketing materials for your practice – Here’s the funny thing: after all my excitement to try this out on the pirate ship… I totally forgot to go inside and get the picture when we were done. So had many other folks, which is why there was a wall-full of happy passengers’ photos for me to see in the first place. Is that bad? Heck no. It’s influential to anyone who may come in for a consultation at your practice. Your patients are creating physical marketing materials for you! I’ll take it.

So how did they do it?

I asked Pirate Smee to give me the rundown on how they logistically pull this off. It’s actually pretty simple.

The app – They use an app called HashPrinter, which I’ve linked here. Using this, you can set up alerts for certain hashtags, and even have them print automatically.
The printer – They had a basic photo printer, like this one, that they used to print the images.
The process – It was pretty straightforward. They had the display on the wall (that I described above) to get people to take photos and use the hashtag. Then they would print them while the Pirate Ship was out to sea, so the pics are ready on the wall when passengers returned.

How could you apply this in your practice?

You’ve heard me talk about the celebration aspect of the patient journey. The Magic Moments that should be commemorated in the same way you would a birthday or graduation. (so many parallels between those events and what you do for patients every day!)

Surgery day is one of those Magic Moments, making it the perfect time to activate the Pirate Printer Method for your patients.

In the patient prep area, have a table topper that explains the gist of the program (just like the sign on the wall at the pirate place).

Have someone on your team mention it to the patient during their prep time. This could be a patient counselor, or a special greeter / concierge who stands by on surgery day for just such an occasion.

This is where the pirate folks dropped the ball. If I hadn’t been walking around a certain part of the Gift Shop, I might have missed the X. They needed more signage and awareness around the promo to get more of their passengers engaged.

Position the picture itself as a commemoration. For example, you could say “Let’s take the last photo you’ll ever snap in glasses!” Or a simple “Let’s commemorate your big day!” works fine as well.

This is just one way you can activate the Pirate Printer Method in your practice. Get creative and take action!

For just a few hundred dollars, you now have a strong, simple social media activation you can leverage to turn your happy patients into evangelists. They promote your practice to their friends and family, and they walk home with a souvenir of their big day. Big wins all around. AHOY!

Podcast: 07 – Energy: One of the Most Powerful Persuasion Tools on the Planet

It’s easy to focus on scripts and word tracks, but your *energy and excitement* are even more powerful persuasion tools to help you book consults and surgeries. onlysdfans Aries In this episode, we talk about why and where to amp up the energy in your practice.Subscribe in iTunes | Subscribe in Overcast

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Transcript

Let’s get excited!

What is up my friends? It’s your boy Troy with a fresh, piping hot episode of the Practice Growth Machine Podcast, where we teach you the persuasion tips and tactics you can use to command higher prices for your premium procedures, and fill your surgery schedule.

Today we’re talking about one of my favorite topics, and that is energy. This topic came to mind as I was speaking with a water filter lady, her name’s Mandy. All right, so a little background for you here. I live in the country-ish sort of, just outside of Fort Worth, Texas.

Rather than having city water, we actually have a well. A well out in our yard that pumps water out of the ground and it’s awesome, but the thing is, there’s a lot of minerals in the water and we have a water filter that is hooked up to our house to take care of filtering some of that stuff out. So every now and then we have to have the filter serviced.

I called the company that normally does this. This is just a few days ago. I need to book an appointment, and Mandy answers the phone, and from the moment that she answered – she was kind, she was energetic, she was happy to be doing her job. I could tell. She was happy to help me.

She took this normal, humdrum situation – me booking an appointment for servicing on my water filter and she actually lifted my spirits, made me feel good, got me excited about the service, and she got me taken care of. Let’s talk about how, and why we want to be more like Mandy, let’s get into it.

We often focus so much on the scripts, and on the specific word tracks, and those things are important, but we sometimes forget that the majority of our communication is delivered not with the words that we say, but with the tone, and the energy with which we deliver it. You can have the best scripting in the world, but if you sound like you hate your job, or you’re just moseying through the day, it’s not going to do you any good.

On the flip side, I’ve had practices who hire new folks, and maybe they don’t know all the answers and all the scripting, and everything down just perfect but they’re so happy, they’re so energetic that they’re able to book consults right out of the gate, and so, I want you to take a minute here. Think about examples in your own life where you’ve met people like this. Maybe it’s your favorite barista down at the local coffee shop, or the lady over at your dry cleaners.

I’ve even had memorably pleasant experiences with AT&T customer service believe it or not, and it’s all because they have that energy, and that excitement about what they are doing. Let’s talk a minute about why energy is so powerful.

Why is energy such a powerful attractor? Well, there’s a few reasons here. Number one, it’s noticeable. When someone loves what they’re doing, and they’re not afraid to show it, it’s very clear. It automatically stands apart in that way.

Number two, it’s rare. We encounter so many people every single day, and they’re going through the motions. When someone’s energetic, and they engage you with energy, and excitement, and happiness, again, they really, really stand out against all the other interactions that you have going through life.

Number three, it creates this natural curiosity – why? Why is this person so darn happy, and excited? I need to know.

When it comes to your practice, that excitement, and that energy is reflective of the experience that they’re going to have when they come in, and when they see you. For all of these reasons, energy, and excitement in your voice, in your tone is very persuasive when it comes to booking your consultations, and even turning consults to come in, and do surgeries. Let’s talk about a few areas where you can amp up the energy.

All right, where can you amp up the energy in the practice? First and foremost, on the phone. That’s the first area. The phone, think about it, is often the first human interaction that somebody has with the practice, it’s the first voice to voice engagement, and it’s a critical first impression. You want your people on the phone, they’re staying fresh, they’re amped up, they’re excited for every single call. I know that’s not easy, but it is critical to set that first impression, and set the tone for what they can experience when they come in and see you.

The phone really is just the start though. That energy has to carry into the consult, into the meeting with the doctor, because at that point it’s clear, you’re not just dealing with one awesome person on the phone, but a culture, and the whole practice.

A culture of excitement across the board. It’s kind of like “What is in the water over here? What are you guys drinking? Because this place is amazing, and I want a piece of it.” Going back to that curiosity point we talked about in the last session, and you’ll also find other creative ways to showcase your energy. For example, I intentionally have a very high energy, and excited voicemail message, not the typical, “Hey, this is Troy leave a message.” But, I really, really get into it.

Even when someone leaves me a voicemail, I want folks to know, hey, this Troy guy is loving what he’s doing over here. If I miss a call, it’s not uncommon for someone to leave me a message that starts with, “Wow, that’s an awesome voicemail.” I can tell that it’s had an effect on their energy just based on the tone of the message that they’re leaving.

I can hear it in their voice, which is another critical point is, your energy reflects on to others. You will set the tone, whether it’s up, or whether it’s down, you’re going to set the tone for interactions with patients who call in, and come into your practice. Set that tone, set that energy high.

Let’s do a recap on everything we’ve learned today.

To summarize, more than scripting and word tracks your energy is one of the most impactful forms of communication that you have. When you have high energy, you display something that’s noticeable, it’s something that’s rare, and it creates curiosity, all of which is persuasive and attracts others to you.

You want this energy to be palpable on the phone, in the consult, and all the way through the patient journey. All right? So get out there, get energized, you love what you’re doing, you’re changing people’s lives.

Make sure that you show it, make sure that they know it, and have a positive impact on the lives of your prospects, and patients.

We’ll see you on the next show.

To dig deeper into the ways you can use persuasion to grow your practice, head over to troycole.com and check out the free Resources tab right there on the homepage.

Podcast: 06 – Avoid the “Right Answer Trap” on the Phone

“The Right Answer Trap” is an easy yet costly mistake to make on the phone. In this episode, I explain what it is, and what to do instead.

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Transcript

You don’t want your phone team falling into this trap.

What is up my friends? It’s your boy Troy with a fresh episode of the Practice Growth Machine podcast. Today we’re talking about mind-set and specifically we’re talking about a situation that happens a lot on the phones. And it’s what I call, the right answer trap. The right answer trap.

When I’m working with phone teams and I ask, “So, what’s your job on the phone? What are you doing?” A lot of them will say, “Well, we’re answering questions. We’re trying to answer questions for people who call us.” Then others will say, “We’re trying to book a consult or book an evaluation.”

But if I dig deeper and say, “Okay, literally how do you do that?” it still comes back to, “Well, we need to make sure that we’re answering all of their questions when people call in.”

And the thing is that answering questions is the one thing that we should not be doing on the phone. So, let’s talk about why.

Your office takes calls every day and you are well versed in the ways of your procedures, the language you use, all the technical aspects of it et cetera. But think about this. How well versed are your prospects? In a lot of cases they don’t know much about what you do at all.

They may know that you offer a certain type of procedure and they’ve heard of that procedure. They’ve heard of Lasik or a face lift or whatever it is but they probably don’t know a lot about what you’re actually doing or how it works. What that means is, they don’t really know what to ask.

And so, what do they do? They do what we all do when we’re talking about things that we don’t really know about and they end up asking random questions to fill the space and try to carry the conversation. And a lot of times that’s a price question. Sometimes it’s a technology question. It doesn’t really matter. The thing you need to know is that people are asking questions on autopilot because they really don’t know what to say otherwise. And this is where the trouble starts.

The trouble starts when we start trying to answer these questions and we think we need to answer questions but that’s exactly what we should not be doing for a few reasons.

Number one, when we’re answering questions we are being responsive to the caller and at face value that sounds good. It sounds like, ‘Hey that’s good. We want to be responsive.’ But we also put in a position where we’re being reactive. We don’t want to be reactive to whatever random question a caller may throw out at us.

We want to guide and be in charge and take the lead on the call. So getting into a rhythm where they’re throwing questions at you and you’re answering those, really puts them in the driver’s seat. They’re the ones that are guiding the call and not you.

And that’s a problem because as we already discussed, these callers, the prospects calling into your practice don’t know a lot about what you’re doing, don’t know a lot about the value that you provide, how you’re different than your competitors et cetera. So we don’t want them guiding the call. You need to guide the call.

Number two, it’s important to remember that every question is born out of a concern. So if someone says, “How much is it?” what they’re really meaning, what they’re really getting at is, “Is this a good value? Is this a good use of my money? Is this a good investment in myself?”

If someone says, “Hey. Do you do all laser procedures?” they’re really getting at the idea of, “Hey. Do you have the latest technology? Can I trust the technology that you offer? Is it the latest, the greatest and the best?” So people are asking questions and they’re rattling off these inquiries but really they’re revealing what their true concerns are.

So if we can pull back a minute and not focus so much on the question but the concern beneath the question, that is what we want to address on the phone. Rather than answering questions, we need to address concerns.

I’ll say that again. Instead of answering questions, we want to address concerns. And there’s many ways you can do that. You can do it by telling stories, by talking about what other patients have shared with you through anecdotes. You can talk about what you’ve observed being in the practice and working with other patients.

That’s a topic we’ll deep dive in another episode. But the big takeaway here is that if you get a phone call and you answer 20 questions but if you get off the phone without some kind of a next step, then we failed.

You may think your job on the phone is to answer questions but it’s not. Ultimately, your job is to help someone make the right decision for themselves. Booking a consult is great. That’s not actually what our ultimate goal is we want to help someone who calls into the practice make the right decision for them. And in many cases, the right decision is to take the next step and come on in, meet with the doc, have a consult and see what their options are.

But think about this, if someone has 20 questions it doesn’t really matter what those questions are. The fact that they have 20 questions shows you that they need to come on in and take that next step for a consultation and learn about what their options truly are to move forward with a solution that you provide.

In closing, don’t think of yourself as a glossary but as a guide. Your job is not to answer questions. It is to address the concerns of the prospect as you guide them through the call and ultimately you want to help your callers make the right decision for them which in most cases is to take that next step. Come on in for a consultation.

So go forth today. Don’t just answer questions but address concerns and help your prospects make the right decisions for them.

We’ll see you next time.