Spinal Screenings that work.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a consistent and reliable source of new patients every month. Something that doesn’t cost a lot to run, low on staffing costs, and reliable in bringing qualified and committed patients to your practice.
Well, this week I am going to show you how that is possible.
Now I know screenings are nothing new in chiropractic and I am sure you have done them before, but so often when we do them at events and shows, we spend a whole day out for little reward. So what if I was to suggest that you can commit just 2 hours of your time and invite up to 24 New Patients into your practice per practitioner!?
Here is how:
Attract warm leads with pre bookings.
One of the reasons that conventional and external screenings fail to get great results is that we are speaking to ‘cold’ leads. This means people who have no interest or did not set out that day to find a chiropractor. Therefore, convincing them to come and have a spinal check is difficult, and often we need to massively reduce the intake fee in order to ‘convince’ them to book.
However, with pre-bookings for your screening event, you create ‘warm’ leads. Here people are voluntarily taking the time to book an appointment and travel to your practice on a particular day to attend a screening. My advice is obvious here, to do your monthly spinal screenings at your practice.
Designate just two impactful hours and book two people in every 10 minutes. Therefore, one person can see 12 people per hour.
To advertise ahead of time, you can do a short Facebook campaign or promote the event in house. I would suggest starting your promotion and booking up appointments 3 weeks out.
Send Pre-questionnaire forms and reminder calls.
One issue that can arise from pre bookings, is no shows. To reduce the likelihood of this I would suggesting sending out a pre-questionnaire. This encourages the person to reflect on their problem and it reminds them why they chose to book in the first place. Then on the day before, do reminder calls to the attendees, same as you would (should) do for a New Patient appointment.
Give a WOW welcome.
This is your time to shine! Make your practice stand out, I have written plenty of articles on this and customer service, show them that you are a serious outfit and a welcoming place.
Listen and create a problem for you to solve.
How it works:
1. Listen to the person.
2. Paraphrase their problem. And explain how we will ‘take a look today’.
3. Find a problem and explain that to them.
4. Solution to the problem and more detail to be found when they boo their appointment.
Essentially, we are not aiming to give them the answers or solve their problems in the screening. Our aim is to highlight that they do have an issue, and that we can help them. We then present the offer to book a reduced-price visit.
They will fill out a form beforehand. Show them that you have read it by opening with ‘hi Mary, I can see you are suffering with XYZ, what prompted you to make the appointment today?’.
This allows you to figure out their ‘why’ and for them to tell you why coming here is important to them. Remember it’s not the pain, it is what that is stopping them from doing.
Then explain that you will be doing the first part of our New Patient Experience and taking pictures of their posture to see if we can help them.
Take the posture picture and show them.
Here it is important to first explain what is normal, then ask them what they see. “The green line is straight, the red line follows you, what do you notice”.
This allows them to highlight and reaffirm what is going on, so they build a problem that they want to sort.
Once they have answered, ask them again, “anything else”. Repeat this until they have told you everything.
Then link this to their pain/problem. ‘can you see how X is causing Y.
“This is something we see here and I would recommend coming in for a more detailed full exam to find out exactly what is going on, that way we will be able to figure out how to properly help you.”
“Today we are actually doing a special offer so if you wanted to come in and have this looked at properly and get it sorted, your full new patient assessment that includes all your scans and tests, is usually £92 but today it is just 55”.
“Is that something you would like to do?” (ask this question, so many don’t, this is important).
Once they say yes, stop talking and go to the desk to book them in.
Book discounted-ish New Patient Appointment
As you will see from the above, I do not suggest BIG discounts, there still needs to be an exchange of value that increases commitment. The more expensive something, the more likelihood of follow through. So NO £20 offers here!
All of this information is simple, yet very effective. You will get warm leads and committed patients. So, forget the marketer who says they can get you 50 New patients per month, that you know are poor quality.
Get yourself 4 people to help and you could get up to 96 qualified New Patients for just 2hours work each month.
With love,
Tom