One of the most common mental roadblocks we see during our sales training bootcamps: students who don’t want to “bother” their prospective patients.
This desire from good place – of course we don’t want to be bothersome in life; we generally want to be helpful. Problem is, the two are easily conflated.
The result: we lose patients we could have otherwise helped had we not been so concerned with coming across as bothersome.
I want to share a simple yet powerful reminder that will give your bookers, counselors and doctors the confidence they need going into interactions with prospective patients. And for my marketers out there, you can use this to great effect when formulating your prospect nurture strategies.
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Having worked with hundreds of practices over the years, this is one of the most simple yet useful concepts we return to time and time again.
And it’s simply this:
Your Prospects Raised Their Hands First.
Have you ever received a dinner-time cold-call trying to sell you an extended vehicle warranty? We all have. And what do you do when that happens? Politely(?) ask them to take you off their list, then hang up.
Why? Because you didn’t ask for that information.
Your practice is nothing like cold-call warranty salesmen. Everyone you connect with has raised their hand in some way and asked for help. They called, filled out your web form, got referred by their doctor, found you on Google, slid into your Instagram DMs.
However your prospects found you, they found you.They reached out and asked you for help. And this is useful to remember next time you think you’re bothering someone by following up with another call, dropping another text message or sending another email.
Call them once and they don’t answer? Don’t just leave a message and hope they call back. Call again later. And tomorrow. Twice. And text them.
Sound overbearing? Too aggressive? Bothersome? It’s not. Because they asked for your help.
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You literally can’t bother someone who asked for your help.
Consider this exchange:
“Yeah hi there, fire department? Can you please rescue me from this burning building?” OK but I wouldn’t want to impose. Are you like, double-sure you want our help?
Sound ridiculous? Because it is. Someone asks you for help, you help them. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
If you feel like you’re imposing… if you feel like you’re bothering your prospects… if you feel like you don’t want to be too assertive… that’s in your imagination. It’s literally a fake feeling that you’re projecting onto yourself. Remember they reached out to you. They asked for your help.
And so if you’re not pursuing them… if you’ve left the ball in their court to reach back out to you… then it’s your failure. Because all you’re supposed to do is help them.
Your job is not to cold call and interrupt people’s dinner. Your job is to connect with folks who have reached out for your help, and assist them in getting their problem solved.
You can be assertive. You can ask the hard questions. You can call more than once. You can text. You can follow up with a 2nd or 5th or 15th email. And you should.
Why? Because until they say, “I don’t want your help anymore,” we’re going to assume they are still in trouble. Because they told us as much when they reached out in the first place.
They’re stuck the burning building. They called 9-1-1. You’re the fireman. Get em out.
– Troy “Helpy Helperton” Cole