Personality In Your Practice

Does your practice have personality? Do your patients miss working with you when they are away / when they miss treatment sessions? Do they talk about you even after discharge, and sing your praises months after physical therapy?

Imagine your patient at lunch with a friend, 3 months after being discharged from your clinic.

Your name comes up during a conversation, since the patient’s friend is looking for a physical therapist. The patient searches for words to describe you, and uses one of 3 descriptions to paint a picture:

a)    That therapist.. I can’t remember his name, but I got some massage, exercise and electrical therapy.
b)    John was an excellent therapist, helped reduce my pain and I like his sense of humor!
c)    That therapist was a punisher, I dread the appointments.

This is a CRITICAL perception, one that you can control.  Clearly, the second choice reflects camaraderie; a strong, positive rapport between patient and therapist.
The more patients you have, and the more they get along with you as a therapist, the more successful your practice will become. With the right planning, you can use your personality to get more patients and improve relationships with existing patients.

This is personality driven physical therapy.

Physician Profiling Principle

I get asked a lot of questions about the physician profiling principle that I revealed to my inner clients of Therapy Newsletter, and am spilling the beans today. Holding nothing back, here is my super-secret “Physician Profiling Principle”, which is an under-the-radar technique to increase referrals and grab the attention of referral sources. It is simple, effective and easy to execute and consists of the following steps

a) Approach them with a giving hand
b) Leverage the basic human principle of reciprocity with effective follow up
d) Ask for something in return
e) Follow up again using different forms of media

This is a system, not a product of chance.

I know it sounds super simple, because it is. But the truth is, this can change the way you see marketing and referral generation forever. The following video explains, in detail, the physician profiling principle and how you can use it to get referrals from all types of businesses, not just physicians.

Video Interview With Brad Hogenmiller, PT From Chicago

I was interviewed by Brad Hogenmiller of SPOTonChicago, a therapist resource site recently and revealed some of my best marketing tips in this video call. It’s a fun interview filled with valuable nuggets of information.  Sorry about the lighting on my side – I am waiting to get my new webcam, which will provide a clearer picture. Brad provides educational resources to physical therapists in Chicago.

Referral Ignition – Part 1

We know the importance of building a strong relationship with patients and referral sources, but how do we go about building a system that is seamless and automatic? The entire process of building a brand can be broken down 3 steps.

STEP 1
Educate a stranger (in need of therapy) about the benefits of physical therapy, and convert them into a prospective patient.

STEP 2
Provide outstanding care to the patient and transform them into a powerful referral source

STEP 3
Empower and remind the referral source to educate ‘prospects’ about your practice. THIS is where most practices need to step up their efforts.

The top of this cycle represents the ‘funnel’ for prospective patients.

The bigger and wider your ‘funnel’, the more patients you can reach.

Community outreach is one method. The more community outreach you engage in, the greater the number of ‘prospects’ that learn about your practice, largely due to word of mouth publicity.

In a growing practice, this cycle repeats itself several times and becomes progressively larger in scope, as it involves more patients and myriads of physicians, patients and other referral sources.

Here’s a little secret.

The principles are the same – they don’t change.

The scope of execution does.

For example, I still write this blog today like the day I did when I had 2 website visitors (myself and my mother – thanks mom – hope you still read my blog).

This takes a little time, but should not take forever. It does NOT take time to build a practice, it takes the right measures, and the right timing.

With the right words and language, you can expand your ‘funnel’ of potential patients, feeding the cycle till it becomes a frenzied branding activity.

From day one, every single patient in your practice should be conditioned to refer other patients. The first time a patient meets with you, they are filled with hope and anticipation about what you can do for them. This is an ideal opportunity to seek referrals and instill the importance of ‘word of mouth’ publicity. You literally want to form a ‘referral engram’ in the patients mind. Your goal is to provide the patient with the highest standards of care and remind them about your expertise and the power of their referrals.

Each patient has a significant sphere of influence and is an underutilized referral source.  Remind them about the importance of referrals over and over again during the treatment process and transform the patient into a human billboard for your practice!

Make sure your staff says the same thing (or follows a similar script) you use. Reminders are the secret to referrals.

This is the 3 ‘R’ principle in my upcoming course on Referral Ignition -

1. Request
2. Remind
3. Refer

This strengthens ’step 3′ in your marketing ladder and becomes a seamless, automatic way to boost referrals.

Note - These are strategies from my upcoming “Referral Ignition” home study course and the “How To (Re)Launch Your Private Practice” DVD series, complete with scripts, tools and specific templates you can use to boost referrals in your practice.

The $12,000 Bagel

Yesterday was my birthday (and my Ritika’s was 2 days before mine in the same year – we are just 2 days apart so we celebrate the New Year and our birthdays in quick succession). I lucked out because Ritika took me to this gourmet place for breakfast called “Jersey HOT Bagel”.

We normally go to another smaller joint called Jersey BOY Bagel, known for its collection of 40+ bagels and 30+ cheeses..

This time, we decided to try something new…

As it turns out, the large joint had the same selection and was the ‘parent company’, having split from the smaller one because of ‘commercial differences’, as the owner put it..

As far as I was concerned, we were there for the BEST low fat vegetable cream cheese and the multi-grain bagels ever – certainly the best in the east coast.

But this is where the similarities ended. The 10 minutes I spent at Jersey HOT Bagel made me their customer forever.

As soon as we walked into the new place, we noticed -

a) A smiling, talkative owner called ‘Yogi’ who chatted with EACH customer, asked them “where have you been?? / so good to see you / happy new year / look at that beautiful scarf / the bagels just popped out of the oven / can you smell the onions / try this cheese – it has walnuts in it..

b) The proprietor was VERY generous with the portions of cream cheese on the bagels.. One might argue that $2.75 for a bagel and cream cheese should get you a generous portion, but that was not the case with the older place

c) My wife did NOT like the jalapeno cream cheese, so I decided to get her something different, and walked over to the counter to buy some walnut cream cheese as a side order. The owner scooped up ANOTHER generous portion of the cream cheese and said “it’s on the house, come back again and bring your friends”

What do you think happened here?

A brilliant combination of

- customer support
- overdelivery of product
- integrated referral reminder

This guy knows a thing or two about business. My wife spend about $12 on breakfast, including eggs and coffee. When we do this twice a week (which we normally do), we will help him bring in $100 each month, $1200 each year from us.

This is one of the ways the ‘Lorenz curve’ works – a representation of the manner in which wealth is distributed across masses. In a 10 year period, we are worth $12000 to him, and its business he generated out of thin air, while Jersey BOY Bagel lost us because of

- complacence
- ‘regular’ delivery of product (not as much cheese on the bagels)
- no referral reminders

This does not even take into account the potential of referrals. Let’s say we referred ONE person a year to him (we already referred a couple of our friends), our combined value to him now, is over $100,000 over a 10 year period. The relationship with us can pay to send his kids to college.