How To Make More Money With Fewer Patients

If you want to make more money with less patients, then this is for you...

Most clinics are missing out on massive profits because they operate on an "Á La Carte" basis. 

They're primarily selling one-off treatments, when they could be selling full treatment packages and continuity programs that deliver the best results while making them the most money....

... Of course everyone wants to sell more complete packages and get pre-payment for them, but getting patients to understand the value of combination treatment can seem like an uphill battle. 

I get it!

I struggled selling treatments Á La Carte for years. Patients are usually interested in only ONE treatment (because that's all they've had heard of) and think that’s what they need to get great results.... 

I actually thought I was doing them a favor by not "bugging them" with other options and simply gave them what they want. 

Boy, was I wrong...

The thing is, what patients want, and what they need are often completely different things! 

The challenge is getting patients to want what they need. 

One of the most effective ways to overcome this hurdle is through the art of Cosmetic Ju-Jutsu. 

Allow me to explain... 

Let’s first establish what the word “Ju-Jutsu” means: 

""Jū" can be translated to mean "gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding". "Jutsu" can be translated to mean "art" or "technique" and represents manipulating the opponent's force against themselves rather than confronting it with one's own force.” (taken from Wikipedia)

Ju-Jutsu is widely considered one of the most effective martial arts because it doesn’t rely on brute strength, and instead leverages the opponents existingforces in your favour. 

Cosmetic Ju-Jutsu works just the same... the only difference is that you're using your opponent's (the patient’s) own force to help them, not harm them. 

You see, behind every patient who comes into your clinic is a certain force, or intent, that has motivated them to take action...

It’s your job as a treatment provider to redirect this force in the most efficient manner possible in order to lead them to the best possible outcome....

For me, I always want to schedule in new patients for a paid, one hour skin analysis and consultation where I can educate them and present a complete treatment package.

Here’s an example of how I do this: 

Recently I had a 60 year old lady come in because her friend who was in my office looked great. This lady wanted filler because that’s what her friend had, not knowing the full details of her friend's complete treatment program.

In the past I would simply say this:

“Oh, you need about 3 syringes of filler in your cheeks and marionette lines, let's go ahead and book that. We can even do it today if you want.” 

This would have resulted in a quick $1800 sale for 3 syringes. Instant gratification for her and a quick sale for me, but a lost opportunity to make a bigger sale and get a better outcome.

Here’s what I say now: 

“You’re right - you absolutely need filler, and I could even get you booked in right now, but I’d be doing you a disservice because you’d be missing out on much better results....

The best thing to do here is to schedule a full hour where we can sit down and really go over your skin in detail. I have a special camera that show's you the 8 different skin aging factors, and we can also talk about all the exciting treatment technologies available to make you look your absolute best. 

By the end, you’ll be an expert on taking care of your skin and if you’re open to it, we can even put together a special treatment program customized just for you. 

The cost of this appointment is $95 right now, but we’ll turn that investment into a $100 certificate that you can put towards treatment. The only reason I charge $95 is it means you’ll actually show up. Does that seem fair?”

Patients usually laugh at the last part because they appreciate the honesty of why I’m charging for the appointment, and then about 80% agree to move forward. 

Not surprisingly, instead of purchasing 3 syringes of filler, this lady ended up purchasing a complete package that included 4 syringes of filler, Botox for her forehead lines, a series of 3 BBL treatments and a home care package.

This same scenario plays itself out on a daily basis and it’s transformed my practice. 

Whenever I see a new patient, I’m always thinking, "how can I get this patient to see the value of a paid, one hour consult? How can I get them to prepay for this appointment and make it seem like it was their idea?”

It’s important to never correct or disagree with the patient because that would be confronting them with your own force instead of redirecting theirs.

If you ever make a patient feel stupid, misinformed, or pressured, their guard will go up and you will lose.

This is the art of Cosmetic Ju-Jutsu. It takes practice because it requires the ability to read the patient and adjust your approach accordingly, but it’s absolutely worth the effort of learning.

So next time you’re tempted to blame your marketplace for not “getting it”, consider this strategy and see if you can get more patients to see the light. 

- Peter Ursel MD

Optimizing Your Clinics Email Marketing

Email marketing is a good way for businesses to engage both potential and existing customers. In 2015, email users are nearly around 2.6 billion and this is expected to exponentially increase to over 2.9 billion in the year 2019.

Emails are very useful in the business world and as well as consumers - mainly due to its use for notification consisting of online sales.

Further, survey says that 91% of consumers check their email at least daily and 55% of companies surveyed say they generate more than 10% of sales from email.

Data from the Direct Marketing Association reveal that 66% of online consumers made transactions out of an email marketing message.

Email marketing allows you to be efficient. You can save a lot of your precious time after optimizing your autoresponder sequence or your sales funnel. Automation takes over and does most of the work for you.

But first, you have to plan about the results you want to achieve when hatching plans to grow your list. Map out how email marketing can be incorporated in your overall marketing scheme.

So, how do you improve your patient interaction through email marketing?

Start with what you write as a keyword in your subject line. A study shows that those with keywords confirm, features, upgrade, magic and raffle are likely to be reported as spam so it is best to avoid them unless you were able to built up a list that really trusts you and your brand.

Make a great first impression on your new subscriber through the welcome email or the autoresponder sequence.

When do you send them?

Try sending them on days other than Tuesday and Thursday and email your customers between the hours of 2 PM and 5 PM.

MailChimp’s Email Genome Project reveals that more mails are sent on Tuesday and Thursday than any other day of the week so you might want to test sending emails on other days so you will have less competition. This will pave the way for increased inbox space and click through rates.

People are more likely to open their email between 2 PM to 5 PM, regardless of time zone, according to the Email Genome Project.

Where do you link your email?

Try sending your email traffic to a dedicated landing page because this is usually the one that has a higher conversion rate. Also, you might want to include social share buttons in your emails as this can also generate higher click through rates.

Got other email marketing advices? Share them by posting your comments below. =)

Touch Your Way To Increased Clinical (And Sales) Success.

Touch is a language; it is a skill that is more versatile than voice, facial expression, or other modalities for expressing opinion.

Nonverbal communication to relay our emotions and desires via our postures and expressions have been the subject of several researches for several years. DePauw University psychologist Mattew Hertenstein conducted a study to show how we have the innate ability to decode emotions by touch.

Participants of Hertenstein's study revealed a 78% accuracy for identifying and communicating eight distinct emotions including anger. fear. disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness. The power of touch is beyond physical.

It may be used as a way to effectively communicate what we feel. It does not need to be social to be effective.

This was shown in the research done in the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.

It was shown that the brain is very good at distinguishing an emotional touch from a similar, but non-emotional, one. And the emotions that are communicated by touch can go on to shape our behavior. One recent review found that, even if we have no conscious memory of a touch—a hand on the shoulder, say—we may be more likely to agree to a request, respond more (or less) positively to a person or product, or form closer bonds with someone.

The language of touch is not to be underestimated as it may increase the speed of communication.

There have been a number of studies showing that servers in restaurants recive significantly higher tips (somewhere around 20%) when they appropriately touch a customer on the shoulder in a familiar way during service.

According to Laura Guerrero, coauthor of Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships:

If you're close enough to touch, it's often the easiest way to signal something. We feel more connected to someone if they touch us.

The right kind of touch may be used as an effective sales and communication tool. A touch may be done to placate a patient who is anxious about his condition, or it may be used to encourage a new customer to try out your product.

It is to be remembered that the power of touch is to be done with caution, bearing in mind that there are people who may not be comfortable with a stranger touching them. Nevertheless, the right gestures combined with a non-sexual touch can be one of your tickets to closing more sales deals.

Read more on:

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/power-touch
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/04/10-psychological-effects-of-nonsexual-touch.php
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201302/the-power-touch

Increasing Your Medspa Sales through Learning Reinforcement and Coaching

Learning is an ongoing process, even in a medspa.

According to a research done by Sales Performance International

"Without systematic, ongoing learning and reinforcement, approximately 50% of the learning content is not retained within five weeks, much less applied. Within 90 days, 84% of what was initially learned is lost."

In another study, it was estimated by ES Research that 85 percent to 90 percent of sales training fails after 120 days because of the failure to reinforce training.

Around $3.4 to $4.6 billion is spent by companies on sales training every year with outsourced sales training providers. A company may invest in great trainings and the sales person may remember them but fails to put it into use. Event-based trainings and one-time seminars produce limited results because habits and sales behaviors cannot be changed in a matter of few days.

Hence, practice, reinforcement, and repetition are needed so that sales team members may put their trainings into use and apply them to boost and increase sales.

Severals methods of sales reinforcement have are suggested by different authors and researches including instructor-led training, eLearning, virtual classrooms, "pushed" content, video sales scenarios, webcast "refresher" lessons, searchable knowledge repositories, and webinars.

Another reinforcement technique that many authors emphasize is sales coaching. It has been shown that effective sales coaching may improve revenue by 20 percent.

Also, an improvement in performance of up to 60 to 80 percent may be achieved through this technique.

How is this done?

Plan. Having a clear line of sight between sales actions, sales goals, and business outcomes can help you keep track of your plans for your sales personnel.

Ask. Do not simply tell your sales personnel about what to do and avoid. Instead, there is more learning when your sales team members are given the chance to answer the issues themselves and provide constructive feedback regarding how to improve.

Integrate. Another important thing to remember is to have a structure that tracks and measures the team's progress in training.This can provide you with the information to track

Plan. Knowing what is expected after the reinforcement and coaching will allow you to visualize and reduce the risks of uncertainty, therefore increasing the chance of success in sales.

Storytelling As A Medical Spa Marketing & Sales Tool

If you want to increase your sales, learn how to tell stories in the consultation room.

If there's a truism in your medical spa it is the money is made in the consultation room, and the ability to tell stories about successful outcomes, happy patients, and life changing results is how it's done.

Stories trigger our emotions and allow us to create a "shared experience" that psychologically aligns the listener with the speaker and removes what are common blocking mechanisms around what is 'logical'. In telling a story, credibility is not even an issue. According to Geoffrey Berwind, a storytelling consultant

The use of stories, properly conveyed, is actually how we prefer to receive communications. When leaders learn how to meld the use of stories with the left-brain data-based information they also need to convey … well, this becomes irresistible. Their influence and engagement becomes more powerful, and real change occurs because people are moved to action.

Researches also reveal that regardless of the content of the ad, those which tell stories become relatively more successful. In the issue of The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Quesenberry and research partner Michael Coolsen found that the structure of the advertisement predicted its success, regardless of its content.

A study made by the University of Massachusetts Medical School found that more people were convinced to change their behavior to reduce the risk of hypertension after the storytelling approach was used.

In a research done by neuroeconomist Paul Zak, it was found that our brains allow us to focus in tense moments of the story because of the release of the stress hormone Cortisol. Also, empathy and the promotion of connection is felt because of the release of the feel-good chemical Oxytocin.

In an experiment, Zak asked study participants to donate money to a stranger after they were asked to watch and emotionally charged movie about a son and his father. It was revealed that people were more likely to give more monetary contribution to a complete stranger. Stories, especially those that capture the attention of the audiences, allow people to move and act.

Several researches were already made to show how storytelling can affect and motivate people to do something, or change their behavioral patterns. Marketing and brand managers capitalize on this information as a way to advertise their product. As a marketing strategy, storytelling boils down to using the right metaphors and structures and then generating a story that is remembered and attributed to a brand.

Speakers for TED talks use narratives and powerful stories and imagery to share their message. Even Steve Jobs himself uses images and one-line concepts to support verbal storytelling.

As executive coach Harrison Monarth puts it:

Storytelling may seem like an old-fashioned tool, today — and it is. That’s exactly what makes it so powerful. Life happens in the narratives we tell one another. A story can go where quantitative analysis is denied admission: our hearts. Data can persuade people, but it doesn’t inspire them to act; to do that, you need to wrap your vision in a story that fires the imagination and stirs the soul.

References:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2014/01/04/tap-the-power-of-storytelling/ https://hbr.org/2014/03/the-irresistible-power-of-storytelling-as-a-strategic-business-tool/

Limiting Options Can Boost Your Medical Spas Sales

When you're trying to be everything to every one, too many options will actually cost you.

We make choices daily, may it be major or minor. We desire choices which we can differentiate and evaluate. But presenting individuals an abundance of choices do not necessarily equate to happier consumers. Consequentially, if you happen to be providing your medical spas clients or patients with too much choices, it will almost always hurt your conversion rates.

Choices have repercussions on the brain. As a matter of fact, some studies revealed that having to come up with a lot of decisions can leave people exhausted, mentally drained and more dissatisfied with their decisions. On top of that, it leads people to commit poorer choices -- sometimes at a time when the choice is crucial. Even if we choose well, we are often less content because, with so many choices, consumers are certain that somewhere out there was something much better. We experience doubt and uncertainty about the alternatives and we ponder about missed opportunities.

The same is applicable to your clinic. Your lits of services and pricing should be simple, straightforward and uncomplicated. If you want to increase form conversions, you must think about eliminating the number of options, not continually increase them. An easy experience shows users that you have enough options to choose from, and allows them to make comparisons that are relatively easy.

In fact, offering fewer options quickly lead to many more profits:

• You're able to spend your patient markeing budget on fewer items.
• Your staff can spend less time trying to talk about everything you can do, and talk about the benefits of the things that you already do.
• You probably don't have to buy more technology.
• Your patients can make clearer choices, and feel better about their decisions.
• You sound more credibile and 'expert' in the area.

Limiting your menu of services and focusin your offering on a few key offerings gives you many benefits, and few drawbacks. If you offer everything you'll never be seen as being an expert in anything.