#009: My best sales tip
Today I will go over my best sales tip in the episode - How to sell by using common patient questions.
Click play to listen and read at the same time with the transcript below.
Learn more sales tips at the next masterclass - https://podiatrypracticemastery.com/masterclass
- Don
Today I want to go over in preparation for the next masterclass which is going to be all about sales tips. I'm going to give you my by far my favorite the number one best tip I have today I'm going to teach you how to sell by using common patient questions and concerns.
This is going to help you to sell or offer things without being salesy and to reduce resistance from patients. And this can help you improve the amount of orthotics you do AFOs and other types of treatments.
Unfortunately, most people, most podiatrists, most of us, we don't prepare and answer common questions that patients have so we always get stuck with those questions and it's something that I never see I never see a doctor preemptively talk about a question.
First go over how to gather patient questions, how to answer the questions, and how to use the questions in your explanation and then I'm going to save at the end, give you a special bonus and how I've done this for you for some of these questions.
1. How to gather patient questions. I know this sounds funny, but you want to gather some of the most common questions. You have a little bit of a backstory to this. The way I started doing this was for a pre surgical discussion that I had with patients. And they always asked me the same question. So eventually I put those into my pre surgical presentation that I that I give my patients and in there I put in the questions because they always ask me, how long does the surgery take? How long is the recovery? How long is the incision going to be so every time I got a new question, I included that into my pre surgical discussion. And that was helpful in our patients.
They tend to have the typical questions about plantar fasciitis and other types of conditions we treat, but those aren't going to give you as much bang for your time as answering the questions and the concerns of high ticket items in your office. So let me explain. What do I consider high ticket items? There are certain things in our office that produce much more revenue than other things. So for in my office, I don't know how your offices but in mind it would be orthotics. It would be ankle foot orthotics. It would be in office procedures, Shockwave treatment, amnio treatment, amnio, injections, diagnostic ultrasound, getting referred to other patients. So all of these things are really really beneficial in the way I gather those patient questions is when they asked me a question, I'll write it down. Many times, I'll write it down on the back of my my prescription pad in my pocket, or I'll put it in a Google slide that I have open on my web browser and my Google Chrome, but specifically, I'm going to write down questions that I get about shockwave orthotics.
Let me give you one example. To make it a little bit easier for with with orthotics. They always ask me, How long do they last? They asked me how long did they take to make? They asked me how much they cost? And then they asked me why are they covered by insurance? And these are the common questions that I get. They might ask a few others but those are the most common ones.
2. Learn how to answer those questions. Because if they're asking them, you have to have a good answer that's going to explain why they take four weeks to make you know why they need custom versus non custom orthotics. And I recommend you writing down these questions and writing you the answers to these questions and ratings. You only need to do this one time. And then you're going to be you're going to be set. Then as you're treating patients this is the way I do it as I'm let's say I'm talking to a patient about plantar fasciitis, and I feel like they need to offload the area of the plantar fascia or stabilize the heel. That's how I explain it. And I recommend an orthotic and I'll say, and I'm recommending an orthotic and I'm going to go over some of the common questions that patients have about orthotics. They asked me how long do they take to make they take about four to five weeks. How long do they last? They usually last about five years and then they always asked me why doesn't insurance cover them? And I always say them today these days, insurances covering less and less. But what I find for my patients, they they appreciate that they're getting better with an orthotic versus delaying their recovery of their condition. And we do have an option for patients to use something called care credit. So that's kind of those are some of my explanations and how you explain plantar fasciitis for example, you can also include in in that your your your answers to your questions as you're explaining it as well. So I include that so as I'm explaining things like shockwave or an AFO, or things like that, I'll explain. I'll have some of those common questions answered. There's a couple of other good places that you can put these questions. You can put them on your website, and therefore let's say I don't have time to go over all the questions. You can put that on your website so they can read through those answers. You can include it in a patient video this is something that's I think is very beneficial. Many times we're busy, and I'll do a video about plantar fasciitis, and in there include some of the more common questions that patients have about plantar fasciitis and about some of these higher ticket treatments such as Shockwave, or like an arrow spring brace to offload the plantar fascia in certain cases.
Bonus: One final little bonus tip and that is to include the the questions in your actual patient presentation. This is something that I found that works very well. When I'm when I go to the slide that's going to talk about orthotics or when I go to the slide about Shockwave. Then the next slide we'll have some of the common questions. And I find it's a lot easier for me to answer those questions for my patients than it is for them to have to ask for them to ask those questions. It takes courage not everyone's going to ask you about money not everyone's going to ask you about why insurance doesn't cover it. They'll just say no. Whereas really, they just want more information. So that would be my recommendation.
My best recommendation would be to try out some of these presentations. And the slide that goes over some of these questions. You can see the questions that'll be after that slide. I'm going to include a link here to get all of my patient presentations (www.patientpresentations.com). Patient presentations.com is the actual website and then you can get a link to where I have mine you can use mine take a look at him. You're going to find it's the in my in my patient explanation slide in the slide where I talk about the all the different treatment options. I call it the treatment evaluator for the high ticket items, there's going to be a hyperlink and you just click that it will go explaining more about that option. Then it'll have some questions in there specifically for for plantar fasciitis. So this is just the beginning of one of the ways to increase the sales in your office by going over some of these questions. We're gonna go through a lot more at this next masterclass that is coming up. If you want to join the masterclass, please just sign up. I'll put the link here as well to the Calendly link. You can sign up if you're not able to make it that's fine. You can just join podiatry practice mastery the and then you can get access to all of these previous master classes. They're all right there. Okay. Thanks, guys. Until next time.