IT’S ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATION Ask them what you want to know! The best gurus for your business are not on the stage. They’re lying on your tables. They will tell you how to serve them. Will you be quiet long enough to ask and listen? A solid relationship with our PMs be-gins with a very probing consultation that includes asking them what their ex-pectations are of you as their chiroprac-tor, while uncovering how they want to live their lives. It’s also most effective to ask new practice members (NPMs) dur-ing their consultation what they think it’s going to take in terms of frequency of care to achieve their goals, then once they’re living their ideal lifestyle, what they think it’s going to take to keep living that way. This is “retention factor number 1.” Factor number 2 is to engage PMs daily gathering testimonials to 13 effective le -verages. It is not within the scope of this article to outline these, but my point is that I feel this is important enough to re-quire a rigorously designed, and upheld, protocol. Why? Testimonials are our greatest source of believability and the most effective marketing message you can ever use. Not to mention, when you use a PM’s testimonial you are placing them on a pedestal as the face of health and well-being. They love it! ensure that your audience remains en-gaged with you. ENGAGE pMs IN REFERRALS The fourth factor to ensure your PMs are satisfied and are deriving value (all lead-ing to retention) is to first teach them how to refer and then ask them to refer. Asking for referrals is an act of love and kindness because, when an individual is surrounded by healthy, happy, optimistic ASK AND YE SHALL FIND OUT WHAT THEY NEED TO KNOW! The sixth retention factor stems from the fact that we fail to ask questions to reveal our audience’s paradigm regarding a given topic. If we randomly offer them concepts, they have nothing to anchor the new in-formation to: they don’t know where to place it in their memory bank, and so, it’s quickly deleted. Then, when individuals don’t track with us or follow our recom-mendations, we as chiropractors bash them, saying, “They just don’t ‘get it’!” Of course they don’t “get it,” because you didn’t get them first and thus you didn’t help them to establish the proper place to download your new information. SOMETIMES, CURIOSITY DOESN’T KILL THE CAT The previous section leads us to reten-tion factor number 7, which is that we must focus on being interested over being interesting. Be completely curious about your audience – who they are, what they think, what they know, how they oper-ate, and what they want. Remember, they already have the answers to the solutions you seek for them to stay, pay and refer. IT’S ALL IN YOUR SYSTEMS! The final factor is simple but embod-ies the previous nine – you must have a system for education! Your system may include a weekly health talk, newsletters, specialty workshops, white board topics, articles, testimonials, videos, books and a plethora of other tools. The point is clear: you must have a sys-tem that is mapped out and then choose discipline over regret as your means of implementation. Chiropractic success is easy and friction-free once you find the tools that are a fit for you, then take action con-sistently and unhook from the results. Execute your systems in the same way so that you can measure their effective-ness to determine if they’re working for you or not. Success is within your grasp. The doors of abundant opportunity are swinging wide open in front of you. Will you commit to mastering the systems for a highly profitable, fun, and retention-strong practice? • www.canadianchiropractor.ca The best gurus for your business are not on the stage – they’re lying on your tables. in conversations designed to uncover their values and reveal their paradigm about all matters concerning life. My experience proves that the easiest and most effec-tive way to do this is through stimulating white board topics, which I have been of-fering to the profession since 1999. Ask them to address questions: “What do you value the most about our relationship and your care?” or “What keeps you coming back?” or “What is your favourite benefit of regular chiropractic care?” In the nervous system, optimum com-munication yields health in the human body and the same is true in the chiro-practic office. If your practice seems to be consistently “stuck” and underper-forming, the cause is likely found in your communication! “My schedule is booked solid, my event show rate is 100 per cent, and it’s all because I’ve changed my communication,” says Dr. Maddy Perry, after she’d employed interactive commu-nication as a system within her practice. people, their health quotient rises and their well-being is improved. It’s simply a matter of quantum physics. I have devised eight daily systems to stimulate referrals, thus yielding a con-sistent stream of NPMs from within. THE pOWER OF TESTIMONIALS The third factor is contained in the sys-tems established to gather testimonials. I recommend establishing three set systems to request written testimonials from members, namely, visits eight, 20 and 35. I would subject these systems for 30 • Canadian ChiropraCtor | oCtoBEr 2011 EDUCATION – KEEp IT SIMpLE, RELEVANT AND CLEAN The fifth factor to ensure your PMs are satisfied and raving about you is to pro-vide excellent and simple education. Remember the formula Education + Rela-tionship = Retention. Most education efforts fail because of one or both of the following factors: • As chiropractors, we are really good at making others wrong and ourselves right. Have you noticed? The problem with this mindset is . . . you’re right and standing all alone. Proving oth-ers wrong never makes them take steps closer to you. • A common reason education fails is that we often have “diarrhea of the mouth.” Our audience – whether an audience of one or 10,000 – is secretly wondering how they can hit our “off” button. The solution is to work to share three statements – and then ask a question to
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