HOOK ON TO THE NEW LOVE Dr. Lombardi: In your book, you dis-cuss how a brand new customer, versus a longtime customer, is much more likely to tell others about you. I totally agree with this. In fact, I find that I receive half of my new patients from patients who have been to see me three times or less. I make a conscious effort to provide sig-nificant improvement from the first visit, and this seems to stimulate more refer-rals. Why do you think that is? Andy Sernovitz: The challenge we face is that our biggest fans are often used to us. It doesn’t occur to them to sud-denly start talking about a service that they’ve been using for years. Think about it this way: you don’t wake up one day and say, “Wow! My dishwasher still works after three years. I’d better go write a review.” But the op-posite happens every day – the tiniest, bad thing happens, and you jump out of your seat to complain. So, one of the jobs of a word-of-mouth marketer is to take advantage of that new love and enthusiasm from a brand new customer who is eager to share the ex-citement of working with you. The following are the two things to pay attention to: 1. The new-customer experience – you’d better make sure those new customers get their minds blown, because they’re the ones most likely to talk about you; and 2. You’ll want to come up with a regular plan to occasionally ask your longtime customers to spread some word of mouth about you. They’ll be happy to support you, you just need to re-mind them and let them know it would mean a lot to you. Andy’s answers make me aware of the ways in which I’ve already been imple-menting his strategy in my practice. Cus-tomizing and perfecting my own assess-ment approach allows me to recognize a patient’s dysfunction within minutes. As a result, I am able to spend more time focusing specifically on treatment during our first visit. As a result, the patient feels significantly better after one treatment, which as Andy says, “blows their mind,” and showcases how I can help. From this point forward, they provide positive feedback about their visit and treatment. DON’T FORGET YOUR OLD FRIENDS The second item Andy brings to our at-tention is to simply remind established patients that you are still accepting new patients. I also make it a point to thank patients for all the kind referrals they have sent in the past. I’d like to think that my patients may become more aware of how much I value their refer-rals and hope that they continue to of-fer them. This makes them more likely to recognize opportunities to tell others about me. Dr. L: You write about three reasons people talk about you: they like you; they like your product/service and the fact that they found it; and they enjoy being part of something bigger that motivates them to tell others. In my practice, I make it a point to include my patients in helping to promote our services. For example, I had new business cards designed. At the end of each treatment I told my patients about the new business cards and asked them to pass a few out to their friends or LE BRA Our Technique is: Innovation. What’s Your Technique? YEAR O 10 CE OF VATIO S TI NG TT500-P treatment table Call 1.800.618.2253 40 • CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | OCTOBER 2012 Contact us for a quote www.canadianchiropractor.ca N INN
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