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Hello and welcome today to today’s show Growth Without Risk. My name is Dr. Janice Hughes, and I’m really excited to bring to you today, what I consider some of the best sales techniques for a professional. And why do I say that? When I was a starting chiropractor, I was so focused on being professional and the communication that I thought was going to make me professional and what I realized I was having very little impact. So I’m really excited to bring to you today, Dr. Daniel Bai who is with Close for Chiros. So please stand, come on in, introduce yourself.
Hello everyone. Hello, Janice. It’s been a minute.
Yeah, that’s exactly welcome to COVID craziness.
Oh, thanks for having me on as usual, a huge shout out the ChiroSecure their my malpractice provider, and a, you guys are doing some great work these days where you appreciate it.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So let’s just jump right in. Like, like I am interested in your perspective. I have my own ideas, but this is about you and the things that, you know, in the profession right now and how do we avoid talking and selling what we do without feeling sleazy?
Yeah. So, you know, we just had a live event this weekend in Chicago and, you know, I reflect on a lot of the perceptions that are out there, especially chiropractors regarding sales. And generally it’s a very negative connotation. So for example, if I had most of the chiropractors in the world, come to my house for a party, if I announced that this is my friend, doctor chiropractor, he’s a sales person, you know, no one was going to really like that too much. Um, and that’s because the perception of sales is antiquated. You know, it was the, I don’t know, I’m aging myself now right now, but y’all remember, uh, Cincinnati, uh, the WPR K in Cincinnati, you got par Lakewood with the plaid jacket, big fat tie. You know, bat sales makes a lot of press. It makes good TV and movies about the shyster who, you know, tricks a guy into buying a lemon.
When he knows it was bad and bad snake oil. And on top of that, the negative press, our industry has suffered about selling people, things that they think they don’t really need, want or desire that has no value. So that is the old antiquated view of sales. And that’s a problem because in reality, sales is none of those things. Uh, every major industry, uh, believes that that knows that sales is a thing that it’s a thing kind of like marketing is a thing or, or, you know, it is a thing or, you know, human resources is a thing. It’s just one of the elements of business that is required, you know?
Well, and don’t you think it’s such an incredibly important one because I’ll use the example that mentioned about, you know, PR or marketing. And so much of people’s budgets are put into that. And then I hate to say it, but you have these great, you know, profiles or promotions people come in. And then what, and if you are not really good and clear with presenting finances or what really helps you with that, now there’s a disconnect. So you’ll spend all this money to bring them in, and now you’re actually not even helping them. You know, I like to say selling equals serving them.
So good. Absolutely. So tell me,
Yeah. Tell me about, you know, because you work with thousands of doctors and we both know with COVID, there are some people thriving and there’s some people barely surviving. And talk to me a little bit about the trend in presenting finances, particularly so many people are realizing the craziness of insurance. Um, people’s co-pays anyway, why are we not, you know, just doing cash in many cases, but there’s a lot, a lot that people don’t understand. So share with everybody, some of the trends that you know are out there.
Oh, great question. Uh, I’ll tell you the biggest trend is that transparency is now the new currency, and that is so true, especially when it comes to finances. So generally the, the, uh, the emotion surrounding presenting finances to patients is, has been a negative one and probably is for a lot of the chiropractors that are listening to this right now. Oh, I’m about to present finances. Oh my God, this is really bad. How do I do this? I want to perturb them. I hope as what happens is, is that the doctor approaches the finances in a defensive almost kind of, I’m going to not really tell them what’s really going on type and in today’s marketplace, Janice, you know, by then anybody else people’s. Meters are very sensitive and they just kind of have the notion. They know, oh, the doctor is not really being forthcoming and honest with me about it.
So bottom line, and this will change your results immediately is the next time you deal with finances. I mean, we’re talking ultimate transparency, for example, Hey Janice, Hey, welcome to the office, blah, blah, blah. This is how the insurance works. This is exactly how much the care is going to cost. I got a couple of options, which one works best for you. Direct, simple, concise. And that’s it. And I’m telling you when we teach this the docs literally overnight, even though I didn’t listen to anything beforehand, this helps because people just feel like, oh, straight shooter. All right. Yeah. I don’t like it that much. I mean, it’s more than I wanted to spend your day. I guess that’s what I got to do. Okay. Let’s go game over. Yeah,
Absolutely. I know my own experience w multiple years ago, it really transformed when I began to give people that choice. So that suddenly I love that you’re describing that, you know, transparency is the new currency. Like I think that needs to be the tagline everywhere. You know, we’ll use that as the tagline for today’s show. And I just think that transparency allows you to be authentic. And I know that one of the challenges and you brought this up so well, that it’s a lot about what’s in our mind, how we think about money or selling. And I can’t tell you how many chiropractors now push the sales to somebody else on their team. And it’s because they don’t want to do it. And then they wonder why, again, there’s, there’s the lack of transparency so that I really think that’s a major challenge out.
That’s huge. And Janice, the excuses I get about that, oh, I’m too busy. I, I mean, it’s, I mean, you know, one of the things that we have to do is once we say transparency is the new currency, we gotta be transparent, honest with ourselves. You know, if we know that we’re not skilled at something, we can’t make excuses on why we’re continually be unskilled. So many chiropractors in our industry right now are so unskilled in the art, science and philosophy of sales. And on top of that, they’re denying its even existence because they don’t want to be accountable for the fact that they do not know how to do that thing. And that really irks me. And that really upsets me because that literally is one of the fundamental common denominators on why our profession is stuck, where it is today. We gotta be honest, Hey, I’m not good at selling stuff. I’m not good at having, having conversations with people about finances. Maybe I should learn how to go do that. Oh, what a concept? They learn it. And automatically Jen, and I know, you know, this, you see it in your career. How many times people with the snap of a finger go from zero to hero because they’re transparent with themselves. And it’s just my mom needs, you know,
But you know, still the challenge out there, don’t you think that a lot of people then say, well, you know, they’re over promising or how are they going from zero to hero? You know, how did they double or triple, you know? And I used to get that all the time, kind of in the coaching world, in the profession, you know, I would say to people like, you can literally double on a dime. Oh no, no, you can’t do that. Well, like you said, the authenticity, the transparency allows you to do that. And I think it’s also the leader, like the stepping into the leadership, you don’t have to sit and go through every detail of the finances, but if you don’t set it up and if you don’t set your team up for success, how’s your team going to sell this
Totally. As opposed to winging it with every new patient that comes in, which is unfortunately as the norm, as you probably already know.
Yeah. And, and what are you seeing? Like, uh, again, whether we like it or not, this COVID post COVID world, and I don’t know that we’re into full recovery yet, but you know, a lot of things are better, but how has that even impacted this, this piece around the communication?
Another world-class question, because this is what’s on mind. And we were just talking about this off camera about how we need to innovate, right? How we got to stay on top of what’s already happening, not be a follower, but be a leader. And the fact that you’re talking about the coast post COVID era, which we’re not even in right now is, is a beautiful question. And this is my prediction. This is my humble opinion about where we are. The marketplace is sensitive. I don’t think I have to convince anyone of that fact. The marketplace is not only sensitive to the social stuff. They’re very much equally sensitive to the commercial stuff. Them as consumers, they are so sensitive to making sure that their dollar goes as far as it can and that their dollar represents the highest value possible. Which means that if you don’t know what you’re doing and presenting what you do as viable and unique to your patients, guess what they’re not going to buy.
Which means that more and more doctors are going to see more and more new patients and less and less of them are going to be saying yes, if you don’t know what you’re doing, the marketplace is so sensitive. They’re so sophisticated. They may not know what’s in a MRR and a vaccine or who, which side of the political party is saying what, but they do know one thing. They know whether or not they truly want to buy something and whether or not it’s worth their time, energy, and money. They know that more than anything, they are wonderful consumers. They’re so smart emotionally. And so they’re not going to deal with any BS. That’s the post COVID market, in my opinion.
Yeah. And it’s interesting. I, I do some just, you know, sort of helping mentoring, guiding a lot of chiropractors, particularly in some of the women’s groups. And last week I was looking at someone stats who has put so much emphasis on what we talked about at the very beginning, the marketing side of it. Um, and they literally are seeing 78 new patients on average a month, but their numbers have been in a constant decline. And what I mean by that, for everyone listening is like, they are getting people engaged in care. They have all these people coming in because of the special, because of what’s being offered out there, but they are so not able to be transparent or to have themselves, you know, be allowed to sell the uniqueness, to share the uniqueness of what they do. You know? So it’s interesting because that really also tells me when you look at the number of new clients that are coming into some clinics right now and in this kind of post pandemic. And I keep saying posts because I’d love to be out of it. But a lot of people are realizing even with the craziness of media, they’re realizing that it’s about their health and wellbeing. So more people are coming. They want what we have, but tell me your perspective. Like, I don’t think that they’re rejecting chiropractic when they don’t follow the care plan or the recommendations, what are they actually projecting dental?
Oh, another fantastic question. Yeah, you’re right. They’re not, they’re not objecting the thing with it. They’re, they’re not objecting to the, what they’re actually objecting to the who, because the that’s actually representative of the product and service has a huge plays, a huge factor. They’re also saying no to this thing. They’re saying no to something subconscious. That’s telling them, you know, I’m not really sure. And as consumers Jenice, I mean, I think you understand, like, haven’t you been presented with a purchasing a thing, whether whatever it is, and then you don’t really buy it, but then you come home. You’re like, ah, you know, you can’t really verbalize it, but you know, it’s not something you really want right now, but you can’t eloquently express why you said no to it. I’ll tell you what you’re saying no to you. They’re saying they’re the people and yourselves are saying no to the fact that it’s actually not truly something that I want.
I thought I wanted it, but I really don’t want it. Let me give you an example. And this is so critical, is that in a day one? So when a person first comes into the office, classically in bad sales, we’re designed to plant the seeds for them. Okay. Water, it force it to grow. Let’s say we want our patients to do a care plan of like, you know, let’s say a month or two, like that’s our agenda. So in the day one, we consistently lead them to make those decisions. Right. And in the court of law, when you lead a witness, what is that? It’s an objection, your honor, it’s not allowed, but we somehow do it to our patients every day. So in a day one, the way we teach it is this is even the tonality of speeches. Monotonic it’s matter of fact, it is unbiased because if you can keep it that way, your patients come to the realizations on their own to, to the yes. As opposed to the doctor’s consistently manipulating the patients to say yes. So if you’re consistently manipulating your patients, say yes, and eventually they do say, yes, they go home and think about it. They say, no. Why? Because subconsciously somebody told them to say yes, which was not authentically. They really wanted to say, I hope that made sense. But ultimately fundamentally, that is what they’re saying no to.
Yeah. And it’s like, you know, and I, and I know there’s amazing schools of thoughts, but you know, like with the NLP, um, have the, you know, be doing the head shake, um, you know, plant those seeds, show them, you know, the, the, the plan that you want them to take. You know, and, and we’re not saying that like, we ourselves, haven’t been part of that. Like, how did you get into this? Like, why did you get into this? Like, I know why I want people to learn. This is because I made all those mistakes.
Yes. Well, same here, Janice. I made mistakes. I so many mistakes early in my career. And it’s a blessing that I made those mistakes. So early in my career, those mistakes were so profound and it, it, it cuts so deep. I almost got out of the profession. Okay. Yeah. I remember it was the year, 2003 and Emma was a February and I, and I remember going online, I’m thinking, okay, what else can I do? Because the rejection was overwhelming. And I didn’t know, I didn’t know how to sell something. Right. I just knew it’s something, what didn’t feel right. It was achy feeling because I was being taught to sell the old antiquated, sleazy way. Cause I’ve done. That didn’t feel right. Because there was a, there was a problem with it ethically. And I plus I couldn’t pay my bills that didn’t help. And so I needed to get out. So that, and then, so that started the, uh, the, I guess the, the, the train on. Okay. So I have 120 new patients that I saw in the past two and a half months. 90 of them said, yes. Okay. That’s a sales problem. And once I admitted that game over then I had to look and unfortunately sales training was not available in chiropractic at the time. Um, so I had to find it from other industries.
Yeah. And, and that’s the thing, like you’re a student of taking a look at like what’s right in front of me. And I think that if I’d love people to take away from this, like just that realization, that example I gave that, you know, all these new clients and yet you’re spending all this time and all this energy processing, and that’s not translating into care. It’s not translating into people choosing this thing called chiropractic, or some of you listening already have really great success because you are getting them really excited to get started with that care and sign up. And then I call it the drop visit analysis. Like where are you losing them? Because you’re losing them. You’re losing them really, really quickly. You know? And, and so I think it is really embracing like why and how to learn this. And so share with the listeners. I, I think lots already know you are. I think it’s crazy that they don’t, but tell them a little bit about why you and your team created clothes for Cairo and what you work on. And I’m excited that you just had a physical event again, because I think some of it, the power of doing this in person, so share with everybody, just a couple of the gems of what you do and why you do it.
Sure. Well, there’s two part question, like why we do this? Well, fundamentally we believe that this is, this is the most important, if not one of the most important, fundamental reasons why our profession is stuck because we have left this portion of our businesses out because of the antiquated notion of it. Number one, um, number two, uh, what we work on. Well, we could say what we have seen is that there’s many people out there who cover everything and that’s, that’s fine. We love that. Right. Uh, and th the decision came like, what do we want to help docs? And what did we work on? Well, obviously sales is our passion. So that’s all we do. So we’re not going to talk about marketing still required, but that’s not something we teach. We do it even as our own practitioners, we don’t teach it. We don’t talk about procedures or human resources or technique, or the clinical and science behind everything else is critically important.
We don’t cover that. All we do is walk a doctor through what to do and what to say when a first, a patient first walks into your practice until the point where they’re saying, yes, I want you as the solution to my very deep want, need or desire. And I’m willing to pay what you ask me to pay. And I’m willing to comply with what you want me to comply without twisting their arm without manipulating them without, you know, beating them over the head with your agenda, all about being their agenda. And you just meant, you mentioned the drop visit analysis. It’s Janice. I got to tell you people quit when they say I’m simply because they don’t see any value in them. Continuing. I know it’s very obvious, but what’s the value. It has to be very selfish. It has to be for the PR firm on the part of the patient that they are selfishly benefiting from being with you, right. Visit after visit. And that’s all we teach. Uh, and it’s very deep, a ton of depth into what goes into a first visit. What goes into giving recommendations, how to handle the finances, dealing with objections and all those things. I mean, like any great topic, it’s easy to kind of learn, but it’s very difficult if not impossible to master,
Right. And, you know, I guess to everyone listening, what I want you to really stop and think about is when is the last time you studied this? You know, I think we spend so much time on our technique. We spend so much time on the marketing money, time and energy. We put a lot into what we do and the clinics, the practices we have. When have you ever put time and attention to this? And when you do this, when you get clear on this, you then don’t have to walk in every day and keep trying to convince someone to continue care or sigh and shrug and go, oh gosh, I don’t even want to have to go in with so-and-so because I’m spending so much time in their, not on their care, but on convincing them to stay. So I think for everyone listening, like, like obviously Daniel, I could ask you a hundred more questions, you know, and, and I’d love to, in fact, I’ll, I’ll make sure that we get you back, like, like one of my, um, focuses here and thank you to ChiroSecure again, for always sponsoring and promoting the, you know, these, these, you know, things that are resources for you is my background as a coach or coming from what I, we always called those practice management days is that, you know, we’re here to help you.
We’re here to bring you these tools and awareness that then I just want you to realize like the depth of knowledge and resources that are available and, and check out some of, you know, Dr. Daniel’s, you know, profiles their Facebook, and we’ll make sure that we include all of that. You know? So I can’t thank you enough for coming on and letting me badger you with some questions, you know, but I like to be really transparent. I love that, that tagline for you, that, you know, everything that Daniel is talking about, we can not increase our impact without thriving practitioners. We can’t continue to change the health and wellbeing of people. So whether you like it or not, it’s important to have a look at the sales, the communication around that, you know, so that you can serve the population. So thank you again, Daniel, and next week, your host is, um, Michael Miscoe for the next show, um, Growth Without Risk. So thank you again to ChiroSecure and thank you everyone for listening. Have a wonderful day.