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What are your business goals for 2010? You are going to write down some goals, right?

I recommend you spend a couple of hours over the next few days giving thought to your goals. Once you’ve determined very specific goals, write or type them out on a sheet of paper.

Do not just write down the number of visits you want to see each week. Too many chiropractors are still hung up on the “I want to see 300 a week. I want to see 500 a week.” (If you’re still in this mindset, you must read my previous post The High Volume Lie, which had quite a few comments.)

Here are the goals I would recommend you have, in order of significance…

1. Gross income and net income.

Contrary to what some politicians believe, paying taxes and hiring employees isn’t your main purpose in business. Profit is the reason you started a business in the first place. If you just wanted to just adjust patients, you could work for someone else. You opened your own practice to make a good income and life for yourself and your family. Reaching this goal will determine who well you accomplish the next 4 goals.

#2. Number of New Patients Per Month

You might be wondering why this isn’t #1? Simple really. If you aren’t taking home an income to feed your family, it doesn’t matter how many new patients you have. Back in my “dumb days”, I had plenty of new patients, but gave away so much care my family struggled to make it. (Read about my dumb days inside the Ultimate Chiropractic Ads site.) To find out how to increase your new patients monthly, look at my last couple of blog posts, where I make some predictions of what’s going to happen in 2010.

#3. Average Dollars Collected Per Visit

This is one many chiropractors neglect. It doesn’t matter if you see 300 a week if you’re average collection per visit is only $10. This number is really telling about your practice. It will give you an overall picture of how well your doing with adding additional services plus how well your staff is doing with collections. To figure the REAL number for last year, divide total collections by the number of patient visits. (To figure the FAKE number in case the real number scares you, look at your “recommended care plan sheets” and divide the cost by the recommended visits.)

#4. Case Value Average

This is the average value each new patient case will generate in your office. (Figured by dividing your total monthly or yearly collections by the number of new patients you saw in that period.) The higher this is, the more likely you are getting paid for what you do and giving the patient quality care. Above $2000 is good, below $1000 means you’re going to be in trouble if you hit a slow month of new patients. Hint: You don’t raise this number by recommending care the patient doesn’t need, but by adding additional products to your practice that the patient does need or want. Examples: massage, rehab, decompression, and supplements.

#5. Number of Visits Per Month

Here we finally get to many chiropractor’s favorite question, “How many you seeing a week doc?” Weekly is okay, but I think setting goals for the month is better. Weeks can go up and down depending on holidays, vacations, etc. This number is important, but not nearly as important as the above 4.

These are the five must-have goals. You can have others of course, and should.

I recommend using The One Page Business Plan by Jim Horan for getting it easily mapped out.

I got this book last year and it is by far the best book on business plans. Don’t think you only need a business plan when you start up a new practice. This book helps you lay out a real vision, mission, and attainable goals.

It’s a step-by-step easy to follow workbook and CD-Rom. (After being completely misled by an early chiropractic coach about the terms “vision” and “mission”, this book helped to finally clear this up.)

The good news is that it helps you produce a concise business plan (hence the name of the book) which you can refer back to easily. I printed it out and kept it on or by my desk all year.

Then, throughout the year as you consider new strategies for your practice, you can ask yourself, “Does this new addition to my practice fit my vision and my mission?” or “Will this new marketing tool help me reach my objectives?”

By doing this, it will help you to stay on track. You’ll be able to look at it quickly and get a reference point for where you are headed.

In addition to having my business goals on the One Page Business Plan, I have an additional paper where I write my personal goals. This includes family vacations I plan to take, the number of books I plan to read, spiritual goals, marital goals, etc.

Get started now with your goals. By next week you’ll want to hit the ground running with accomplishing those goals.

Here’s a list of 14 ways to improve your conversions with a new patient. The purpose of this article is to give you a quick checklist of items you can run through for your office.

The first time through, see which ones you are already doing in your office. Then start implementing one or two new ones at a time until you have them all in place.

A conversion simply means that a new patient has agreed to your plan of care, whatever that plan is for your office. (If you don’t put together any type of care plan for your office, go and do that right now!)

Ok, so let’s get started…

1. Use Marketing That Brings In Quality New Patients
For this one, we’re going back to the source — where you get the new patient. If you’re giving away free exams to anyone you meet at the mall, you’re going to have a pretty crappy conversion rate. Examples of quality marketing involves condition specific chiropractic ads, internet marketing, referrals, doctor referrals, etc. These people are often times very pre-qualified and will be eager to begin care so they can feel better.

2. Have a Nice Reception Area
The first thing a patient sees when they walk in is the waiting room/reception area. How clean and nice does yours look? Cheap poster frames, toys laying everywhere, stains on the carpet, unpleasant music, and bad smells can all contribute to the new patient second guessing their decision to come in for an appointment. Make it nice. Spend a little money to ‘spruce it up’ a bit.

3. Great Front Desk CA
The new patient should be greeted right away, made to feel at home and be told what to do next. They are worried about what’s going on and what they might have to pay. Your front desk CA should make them feel very comfortable and reassure them that they’re in the right place. This is HUGE! Whatever you do, do not allow your staff to ignore a new patient who walks in.

4. Don’t Overwhelm with Paperwork
Have you gone through your paperwork lately and condensed it to what is absolutely necessary. You only need paperwork that you are going to use or that is required to protect you and your office legally. Don’t pile up pages and pages of questions that you’re not even going to look at or use during the patient’s care.

5. Do A Good Consultation
Make sure your consultation comes off caring and considerate. Listen, really listen, to the patient’s concerns and ask them questions that guide them along. This should take an average of 7-10 minutes. Keep the consultation focused on the patient and not the weather, their friends, or other time wasters. Also, don’t make a bad impression by telling the patient the “rules” of how your office works, that they’ll have to come back for life, or anything overwhelming like that.

6. Perform An Exam With A Purpose
Everything in your exam should be geared toward giving you good information, teaching the patient, or protecting yourself from legal matters. In 99.9% of cases, there is no need to do the 3 hour exam we learned in school. You should also express to the patient the concern you have with problems you’re finding.

7. Measure A Finding (X-ray, etc)
You need to have some objective findings to cover with the patient and base your care on. (I recommend taking an x-ray or set of films for multiple reasons.) If you don’t have an x-ray make sure you are doing some objective test that the patient can see. This is going to be very important in your report of findings.

8. End Day 1 Correctly
I recommend not doing care the first day, except under certain circumstances. Tell the patient what to expect on their next visit and to see your front desk CA on the way out. There are a lot of opinions on this, pretty strongly on the side of not adjusting on Day 1, but I find they aren’t based on any hard evidence. The argument is that patients won’t come back if they get “fixed” on day one. (You could also argue argue a patient won’t come back because they didn’t get adjusted on day one.) I measured it in my practice for years, doing care on some patients on Day 1 and not for others on a case by case basis. My findings? It didn’t matter that much. Many patients who got adjusted on day 1 stayed with me for years and paid thousands in care. It’s really depends on the patient’s mindset when they walk in more than anything. Test it yourself and measure it. Too many people say adjusting on day 1 doesn’t work, but I think they base this on emotion and not actual numbers.

9. Collect Information and Schedule
Your front desk CA should now collect the payment for today’s visit, ask for insurance information (if you take insurance) and schedule for the next visit. These 3 things should be done a specific way. You could do everything right up until this point, but if the patient leaves with a bad taste in their mouth from the checkout, they may not come back.

10. Do A Proper Greeting On The Next Visit
Have your staff welcome the patient back as if they are someone who’s been coming in for a long time. Make the patient feel like part of the practice.

11. Give A Short, No-Fluff Report
Again, this one is somewhat controversial in chiropractic. Some chiropractic coaches will tell you to give a long winded speech here to hard sell the patient on care. It’s not necessary if you did what you should have on Day 1. A report should not take longer than 10 minutes. Tell them what you found. Tell them if you can fix it and a BRIEF summary of how you’ll do that. Layout their care plan and explain why it takes time. Go over the cost (this is best if your staff does the financial part). If insurance is involved, have that prepared and covered by your staff at this time.

12. Get Paid For What You Do
Have a simple, easy to follow payment plan for your patients. At least 2 options of payment, 3 at most. Remember, very simple. I have seen so many complex systems that almost force the patient to “go home and think about it.” For me, this means prepay with bookkeeping discount, CareCredit, or weekly payments.

13. Adjust the Patient
This is where you get to adjust and perform your other services with the patient. Whatever you do with them, remember they may be a little timid and unsure of what’s going on. Consider the patient’s level of comfort with what’s going on and be considerate. I’ve seen too many chiropractors scare people off with performing a rough first adjustment. The doctor never knows that was the reason the patient didn’t come back, but I can assure you it has happened in many an office.

14. Schedule Future Visits
It’s best if you can get your patient’s care plan scheduled out for the term it runs. Sometimes this is called a MAP, after the Parker Seminars famous “Multi-Appointment Plan”. It’s best to do this on paper first, hand a copy to the patient. Your staff can put it in the computer system later.

One of the things that always annoyed me when I went to coaching “teaser” seminars is that I couldn’t get a good feel for what the program was really about. With that in mind, I want to completely pull back the curtain and answer some of the questions chiropractors have about the “Maverick Marketing Coach” program at http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

“How quickly can I start seeing results? How fast can I expect a return on investment?”

If you are one of the first 6 to join, you’re going to see a return on your investment very quickly. This is because you’re going to get a “quick start”  60-minute phone call where I will focus on giving you strategies you can implement immediately.  These strategies will enable you to more than recoup the investment you made in the coaching program.

We will thoroughly discuss your marketing plan, your goals and where you see opportunities in your area. We can also focus on any weak spots you may have in your practice regarding new patient conversions or retention. The call will be recorded* and you can download it for future study.

With a client yesterday, we found one small change he could make this week that will result in at least $10,000 more in the next 30 days… and this particular change didn’t even require getting more new patients.

If you don’t make the first 6, we can still cover these topics because we’ll be talking by email almost every day. So the answer is, it’s going to be different from person to person, but I think you should recoup your expenses (plus some) in the first month. And there’s no long term contract since it’s only month to month coaching. If you aren’t getting what you want out of the Maverick Coaching Program, you can cancel at any time.

“What makes you different from the last coach I had?”

First of all, I’m going to focus on what you really need…not a “system” of reports, procedures, and manuals.

It’s about helping you get more new patients, better conversions, and longer retention with patients. Also, I’m going to give you a new patient marketing tool each month, which when applied, will easily bring in thousands more dollars to your practice. You’ll have access to me through daily emails (Mon-Thursdays), monthly conference calls to improve your marketing skills, and so much more.

I want to stress that this coaching program is not one where you are required to go to seminars every month, made to feel guilty because you don’t have the same stats as one of the “big guns”, or given a long list of procedures to follow. Most chiropractic coaches or consultant push you to do their system (which is often outdated) and hound you until you do it their way. That’s not what I’m about.

Maverick Marketing Coach is about you and what you need to get to the next level.

“How much time is this going to take each month?”

As little or as much as you want it to. You won’t have to take calls when you’re seeing patients or plan your month around a seminar.

Sending an email takes less than a minute. The marketing tools I’ll give you are easy to implement and use (most of them you could even hand off to a staff member if you wanted). The conference calls are only once a month, and if you can’t make that you’ll get a CD/DVD mailed to you. And the “Laser Call-in” days are optional — if you want 20 minutes of phone consult, we can talk about what you want on that day.

“What type of chiropractor is this coaching program for?”

Having been a part of some unhelpful coaching groups in the past, I would always feel misled when I joined and later found out their program definitely wasn’t for me. It always sounded great at the seminar, but months later I’d find out the real truth behind those questionable procedures.

I don’t want you to misunderstand what my coaching entails. Here’s what it’s NOT about…

- It’s NOT a large “rah-rah” pump you up seminar every month.
-NOT for chiros who want to see 1000 visits per week by giving away care and sacrificing time with family
-NOT coaching for doctors who want to spend hours and hours discussing chiropractic philosophy or metaphysical concepts.
-NOT a quasi-religion where we sit around in a circle chanting or meet up once a year for a secretive boot camp.

If you’re into those things, that’s fine, but you definitely don’t want to join my coaching program.

With that said, lets look at who’s going to benefit the most from Maverick Marketing Coach. The program is for chiropractors who want…

-to attract a steady flow of new patients month after month
-to seriously grow their practice and take home more profits
-more time off from work and more time with family, fun and travel
-to start getting paid the way a chiropractor deserves
-better new patient conversions and longer retention
-less stressful practice, and better, faster systems

“How do I know if my area is taken?”

This program is area exclusive, which means you won’t be competing with anyone else when you’re using the breakthrough strategies I give you. The areas already taken include…

Southwest Ft. Worth, TX

Greater Lewisville/Flower Mound, TX Area

Edmond, OK

If this is what you’re looking for in a coaching program, I urge you to move quickly and secure your area. With ads running in Dynamic Chiropractic and The Chiropractic Journal in March, I can’t promise you that your area will be available if you procrastinate.

To join, visit http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

If you’ve been following my blog posts over the last 2 weeks, you know there needs to be a serious change in how chiropractic coaches help practices flourish.

Because of this, I’ve designed a very limited coaching program that works in competitive areas…without high pressure closing scripts, expensive seminars, or long term contracts.

What chiropractors need right now, during this tough economy is reliable, consistent new patient marketing tools. That’s the #1 priority. In addition to that, chiropractic offices need effective strategies to convert and keep those new patients.

That’s why as a member of the Maverick Marketing Coach, you’re going to get the latest marketing tools I create for my clients, month after month. These are easy-to-implement marketing tools you can plug and play into your practice to bring in more new patients and keep your patients longer.

Here’s what you’ll get as a client…

-Marketing tools you can implement immediately in your practice to bring in more quality new patients — that includes effective strategies for referrals too.

-Personal, one-one-one mentoring and coaching via daily email where you can ask any questions you want about growing and running your practice.

-Live small group and webinars where I show you how to use the dependable marketing tools. (Which means you won’t have to spend money and travel to coaching seminars anymore!)

-Laser focused call-in days to quickly drill down and solve any questions you have. Call when you want during the allotted times so you don’t have to miss patient appointments or family time.

(You may be thinking this is all a bunch of hype and you’ve it all before, because most coaches ‘sell the sizzle but don’t give you the steak’. But if you take a close look at http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com — whether you choose to join or not — you’ll agree what’s offered here is unlike anything else you’ve ever seen chiropractic.)

“No Long-Term Contracts”

The coaching runs month to month, there are no long term contracts to sign or yearly commitments to agree to. If you aren’t getting what you want out of the coaching program, you can cancel at any time.

Being a member of Maverick Marketing  is also area exclusive, which means you won’t be competing with anyone else when you’re using the breakthrough strategies I give you.

And for all the doctors who’ve picked up my Ultimate Chiropractic Ads, you’re going to get credit towards the coaching program.

The first 6 doctors who take action and join will get a bonus 1 hour phone consultation to lay out a step-by-step plan for your practice. This is a $500 value and will likely be gone quickly.

Due to the fact I’ll be spending quite a bit of time and energy on each client, this program is only open to 50 chiropractors total.

Check it out:
http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

This is not a canned, one-size-fits-all approach to coaching. And if you’re looking for a large “rah-rah” pump you up seminar every month or want to spend hours discussing chiropractic philosophy or metaphysical concepts, my coaching program isn’t for you.

What I can do is give you reliable strategies and tools to grow  your practice, the support to easily implement them, and direct one-one access to me for tailored, customized coaching.

http://www.chiropracticmarketingcoach.com

Have you ever been told you shouldn’t have to “go out” and get new patients? You just needed to “plug the holes in your leaky bucket” or get more referrals?

This is a lie peddled by some chiropractic consultants, coaches and gurus in our profession. And its very frustrating to think of how I struggled in years past, and others out there are struggling, as a result of this lie.

Why We Fall For It

Well, it’s no secret that chiropractors lack good business and marketing training in school. We all want to build that low stress, high income, self-sustaining-referral-only practice.

Plus, many of us have tried (and been burned) by bad marketing in the past. So the belief that you don’t need to market for new patients outside your practice sounds great.

Also, “who wants to spend money on marketing when you can get referrals for free?”

The Reality of A Chiropractic Practice

I’ll agree, not having to spend time and money marketing to new patients sounds like a good idea. But this type of thinking ignores 2 very important things…

#1. Not every patient you have is going to refer. Not even 50% of them will refer. If 20% of your patients refer that’s exceptionally well.
(That’s one patient out of every 5 referring someone in.)

#2. Most patients will not stay with you for life. (Even if a coach convinces you that his system will have them stay for years, and all his doctors have a PVA (patient visit average) of 998 visits.) That’s just human nature. Do most people stay at the same job all their life? Drive the same car? Live in the same house? Sure, some do. But my point is most do not.

So if only 10-15% of our patients are going to refer, and the majority of your patients won’t stay with you forever…how are you going to grow your practice?

The Truth About New Patient Marketing

Here’s the truth about growing your practice that most chiropractic coaches and consults will never tell you…

Attracting new patients is the most important element of a successful practice. It’s ‘numero uno’! Nothing else compares to it — not procedures, not office flow, not report of findings, not retention, not education.

If it’s so important, why do chiropractic coaches not provide easy-to-implement tools to help you bring in more new patients?

Because most chiropractic consultants are still two decades behind in their marketing strategies!

What you need are new marketing strategies that your prospective patients haven’t seen before and that connect to them on their level. Things like email messages, blogs, newspaper ads with emotion (and without the hype), direct mail letters with empathy, etc.

These are what I’ll be spending 2009 focusing on. What about you?

Before I go, I do want to state that referrals are important. And they are much easier to get than most chiropractors make it out to be. But you still want to be marketing as much as possible outside your practice.

Think about it for just a minute.

Do you personally know a chiropractor that never spends a dime on marketing, internally or externally, and only gets new patients from referrals? And I’m not talking about for just one month, but month after month, year after year.

I have heard quite a few doctors say this…”Most of my patients are coming from referrals. I’m going to kick back on spending money on marketing.” Then the next 3 months the referrals dry up. Why? Because most referrals come from new patients in their first 2-4 weeks.

So the more new patients you bring in through outside marketing, the more you get referrals internally. Now that is reality and it can be accomplished in your practice.

—-

This is blog post #4 in a five part series entitled “5 Lies Chiropractic Coaches Tell“. You can read the first 3 parts here, here and here.  Here’s what some readers have said about this series so far…

It’s great to know that I was not the only one who thought some of the coaching stuff wasn’t on target for how I wanted to practice. Excellent article. Thanks — Steve

Excellent. Fell for them all. I don’t mind so much, I needed very basic biz training. It served it’s purpose.
Love what you are doing here…. — Jeff

It took me the biggest part of 29 years and going through at least 10 management firms to affirm everything Dr. Beck is saying is TRUE. Listen up people! This guy’s been around the block and knows what’s around the next corner. Everything he’s saying is 100% on target.– Jack

Having seen all of the different groups over the past thirty years you are right on. Growth in practice depends more on effective marketing in my opinion than most any thing else.–Rick
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Have you ever been told you needed to see a large number of visits per week to be successful in practice?

While it’s not going to make some of the coaches who read my blog happy (yes I do look at my subscriber list), I’m going to let you in on a little secret…

You Don’t Need High Volume To Be Profitable In Practice

I’m not certain where this got started.

It was likely back in the early days of chiropractic, where chiropractors only did adjustments and everyone charged the same price. Under those conditions, it makes sense that the more visits you see the more you’ll collect each week.

But to believe that today is simply false.

Every doctor has different prices, different therapies, different equipment.

You see, most chiropractic coaches lead you to believe that high volume (or at least more visits) is the way to go. Some even make you feel bad about your practice if you’re not seeing what the top doctors in their coaching group are doing.

Here are some of the ways the high volume lie is used by coaches to make doctors feel guilty…

-when you do an event like a P.A.D. or dinner workshop and you don’t get 60 new patients from it

-when you’re not seeing 1000 visits per week many will say you aren’t “sacrificing enough” or “you don’t have a big enough mission yet”

- if you’re not getting “x” number of referrals per week like the big guns are, you’re not “on purpose”

Number of visits per week is only part of the practice success formula I teach. Dollars of income per patient visit is a much more telling number.

Here’s how you cut through the fluff and find out how these high volume doctors are really doing. Ask them for their average collected amount per visit. Not there “estimated care plan” numbers, but the real deal. I’m about to reveal to you the secret formula no high volume coach wants you to know….

$collected each month divided by your monthly patient visits= average $ per visit

Wow, eye-opening isn’t it. (But believe it or not, this stat is does not show up  on any of the coaching group’s statistics forms I’ve been a part of in the past.) Turns out most high volume doctors are making less than $30 per visit, some even lower than that.

Funny story about coaching groups and high volume real quick…

One group I was a part of did put your monthly collections number on your name badge at the seminars. They did it as a mental boosting type of thing, where you were excited to show up and get your new badge when you hit a certain goal.

The thing I really like about it was this…

No one could come up and B.S. you about their practice. A guy could come up and talk all day about seeing 300 a week, but if his “badge number” was lower than mine, his advice went in one ear and out the other. Turns out high volume guys weren’t the mentors everyone looked up to in this group, it was the “high income” guys instead.

I’ve seen moderately high volume and I’ve seen what most would consider low volume. Guess which practice was more profitable, had lower stress, and allowed me to take time off?

When I was “higher volume”, I was was flat broke making $17 per visit because I was giving away care for free. At the lower volume, I was getting $90 per visit. Maybe I wasn’t making as huge an impact on the planet as the guys seeing 1000 a week, but you know what…I was making a huge impact on the patients I did see each week.

And I was making the biggest impact of all…being there as a father for my children!

What’s really going on here is that these coaches are imposing their values, their goals in life, they beliefs on you. If you really want to see 1000 visits per week, that’s great, go for it. But don’t believe the lie that you can’t be happy without seeing high volume, or that high volume equals high income.

It urns out the low volume practice fit my lifestyle better. I wanted to help people get well, make a good living, and spend time with my family. None of those things require high volume.

What about you? What do you want out of your practice? If you want a high volume practice, tell us why? Let us know in the comments below.

Are all chiropractic practices and doctors exactly the same?

Obviously the answer is no, but you wouldn’t know it by asking many of the chiropractic consulting groups. This is Lie #2 in my “5 Lies Chiropractic Coaches Tell” series.

Most chiropractic coaches think every problem in practice has the same answer, and it usually involves studying their procedures more thoroughly. In other words, there’s no personalization, no one-on-one tailored coaching.

You see, these coaching groups want client #1 in Dallas, TX to be no different their their client #2 in San Diego, CA. It doesn’t matter if client #1 is insurance and client #2 is all cash. If #1 has decompression and #2 is “adjustment only”. The coach wants them to have the same hours, same layout, same procedures, etc.

Let me tell you how they tried to convince me of this lie…

Years ago, with only $3000 a month in collections and an overhead of $15,000, my practice was in big trouble as in, get evicted, close the doors, and call the bankruptcy attorney. Things had gotten so slow that at one point my practice was averaging only 1-3 new patients a month.

I even hired two different practice consultants during this time. I studied their manuals, listened to the videos did everything they taught. I went to as many seminars as I could afford, memorized all the scripts to a “t”, and tried to get new patients just like the consultants taught.

Every couple of weeks I would have a phone call with my “assistant coach.” He would tell me how the head coach built his practice — doing outside events (which in most cases just means he did spinal screenings), running a newspaper ad from 1968, and “persuading” his patients to refer.

I would then put their one-size-fits-all plan into action.During one of my worst months, I spent every spare minute I had doing 8 screenings and 2 outside talks. Sure, I got a handful of patients to sign up at the screenings and talks, but most of them didn’t show up for their exam or stay around long.

Two weeks later, I’m back on the phone with the coach, and here we go again…

“Dr. Beck, you must be doing something wrong. Our system works, it’s the doctors that don’t work the system. Did you do…” Then he would ask me a list of questions about unimportant procedures that had nothing to do with getting new patients. Silly questions like “Are you saying your cheers and chants in the morning? Is your CA holding her mouth right when she answers the phone?”

Mr. Coach, are you kidding me? Your system not only sucks, but it hasn’t worked well since 1982 when the head guru built his practice. You’re fired!

Here’s the truth…

EVERY PRACTICE IS DIFFERENT! EVERY CHIROPRACTOR IS DIFFERENT!

A good coach or consultant should recognize this truth and personalize his coaching to reflect it. If a question comes up about a coaching recommendation or procedure, the consultant should be available to answer it with a specific answer.

How many times have you asked a chiropractic coach a specific question, only to get a vague, generalized answer. Can you imagine a pro golfer asking his coach a specific question, then the coach going off on a long tangent about the metaphysical aspects of Tiger Woods’ swing? That coach would be fired very quickly.

Coaching is a lot more than “Here’s the manual, here are the cd’s, come to a seminar every month, don’t ask questions about the system, just implement it!”

Coaching is guiding the chiropractor, giving him tools to make things easier, and helping him personalize those tools to his practice.

What kind of coach do you want? One that has a “one-size-fits-all” approach, or one that works with you to personalize and customize proven tools to your practice?

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It’s no secret that the economy is going through tough times right now. Chiropractors are suffering as well. Many doctors will be looking for a business coach to help them grow during these troubled times.

Hiring a coach is a great idea (I have one and I’ll even be coaching a limited group of chiropractors starting later this month.) But there are some big lies, I mean whoppers, that are drilled into chiropractors heads.

At the expense of making a few coaches and consultants mad (and even rubbing a few subscribers the wrong way), I’m starting a series of blog posts that are focused on uncovering the “5 Biggest Lies That Chiropractic Coaches Tell”.

So with that said, let’s get on with #1 (a lie that really gets my blood pressure up!)

Lie #1: It’s All About You “Head Space”. With some coaching groups, this lie is a HUGE one! If you’ve been to many chiropractic seminars, listened to any coaching CD’s, or been with a consultant you’ve likely heard it.

In 99% of cases, when the “head space” lie is used it’s a total pile of B.S. The coach pulling a guilt trip on you. Here’s the 2 most common ways it’s used…

1. You feel uncomfortable doing something, ie. high-pressure sales scripts, spinal screenings, controlling the patient (you know, things that 99.9% of the human population would feel uncomfortable with). If you voice this concern to your coach, typically he will tell you to work on your head space by saying things like “You should go meditate some more…Read the green books some more…Get over yourself… Get out of your own way already…Most chiropractors are just subluxated between the ears…Don’t you want to save the planet?”

One chiropractor contacted me about this awhile back, saying…

“Implementation of some of their ideas was tough (mentally). I’m sure they would work but my confrontation levels were not high enough to be effective. I asked about other methods and they told me that I need to just continue to get out there and my confrontation levels would improve and it would get easier. I agree that it would but I still have a mental block about it.”

2. If the consultants procedures and systems aren’t working well for you, and you speak up about it, you’re likely to find out it’s “all your fault”. And what’s the solution for this? Yep, they try and have you beleive “it’s not their systems that are failing, it’s your head space…it’s not their coaching that sucks, it’s gotta be your head space…it’s not the system that’s failing, it’s you!”

At best these are half-truths, a partially true statement intended to deceive or mislead, about a doctor’s mindset (I think it’s a half-truth in about .1% of chiropractors). At worst, and certainly in many groups, I believe it’s a type of brainwashing (check out”Guilt” in Dr. Lipton’s brainwashing processes here).

If they can break down your will enough, and make you feel guilt, you’ll do just about anything (including pushing patients to refer, making patients bring their family in or you’ll kick them out, spending thousands of dollars on marketing that sucks.)

For those who’ve never been part of a chiropractic coaching group, you may think I’m being a bit far fetched here. But let me assure you, these things do occur every day in our profession. If you’ve been in one of these groups, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This coaching lie is quite difficult to defend against, after all how do you argue with the statement “it’s all in your head.” Chiropractors who are struggling are very susceptible to this because they will do just about anything to get out of their current situation.

I’ve been there too. One coaching group I was in required you to go to a 5 day “bootcamp.” At this camp, I did some things I would have never done if I wasn’t in a severe financial crisis.

Each morning we’d get up, gather in a circle down by the river, and chant “ohhmmmm, ohmmmmm”. After the circle chant we’d individually go sit in a private place outdoors to meditate, then rejoin as a group and talk about the “visions” we had. Next, we’d run 6 miles up and down rough country roads. Upon completion of this morning “ritual”, we were officially ready for brainwashing learning part of the bootcamp to begin. (Disclaimer: yes mediation done the right way can have benefits, just as running can.)

Fortunately I was too broke to make it to Bootcamp Level 2, where I heard doctors went into smoking teepees and laid done until their bodies shook with visionary convulsions.

How do you protect yourself against all this “Head Space” nonsense?

First, when considering a coaching or consulting group, look to see how they are marketing themselves to you. Are they using guilt and head space tactics right from the outset? If so, do you think their coaching will be any different.

Second, look at what they are offering you in their program. Are there any actual tools for marketing or is it all about feeling like you’re “part of a movement”? Is their group/seminars just an excuse to get together and get “pumped up” every month?

What should a coach provide?

A coach should provide proven systems and tools for new 1. patient marketing, 2. conversions, and 3. retention based on sound business principles. If you can’t easily find those three things (in that order), or they aren’t based on proven marketing principles that work, then run away as fast as you can.

A coach also guides and helps you along the way, personalizing the proven systems to your practice. Every city, every town, every chiropractor is different. You can’t just hand out a manual and some cd’s, then hammer the doctor until he has everything down pat.

If the #1 problem in chiropractic is poor-to-no practice marketing, then that should be the first priority for your coach. Nothing else matters if you don’t have new patients coming through the door.

We’ll be talking a lot more in upcoming blog posts about what a coach should do for you and your practice. But now I need to go get adjusted so I can get my blood pressure back down

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Have you ever had people try and keep you from being successful? Enduring through trials in business and life is one of the major keys to success.

I’ll never forget going to over 20 banks to get a business loan, each of them telling me no. One Vice President of a community bank even said “Oh, you’re a chiropractor. Chiropractors just don’t do well in business” with a sad look on his face.

When my practice was struggling, many extended family members were pushing me to declare bankruptcy. One of them even said “You should go to medical school and become a real doctor!”

There will always be people and difficulties in your life that try to discourage you from being successful. How many times in the past year did you run up against a trial and think it was going to be a big struggle to overcome?

But many times these “tests” of character are what sharpen us for greater things…

If not for the banker “feeling sorry for me”, I may not have gotten mad and kept trying until I found a bank loan. If not for my family members insisting I declare bankruptcy when my practice was struggling, I may have not been so “stubborn” and resisted any notion of it.

What do you have to endure in practice?

One chiropractor recently spoke with me about his struggling practice. He said that his patients were complaining about paying for care and were even quitting care because their insurance wasn’t paying correctly.

My answer to this doctor…”Focus on getter better quality new patients so you don’t have to deal with these problems.”

This is why I created The Ultimate Chiropractic Ads. I got sick and tired of seeing chiropractors having to meagerly survive on spinal screenings and other outdated marketing strategies.

Whatever you are struggling with now, you can overcome it. Look for solutions and tools that can help you. It’s likely that someone else has gone through it before you, and now has the answers you need. Find those people and get the answers.

I hope you’ll find many of the answers you seek from this blog and my products (especially if it’s a marketing problem because that’s my purpose for this business). But if I don’t have the answers you need, then keep searching until you find it.

Don’t give up. There’s a reason you are a chiropractor.
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In my last post we covered the first 4 of seven internal marketing strategies you can put into your practice. In today’s post I cover the next 3, plus an extra bonus strategy. While all 7 of these chiropractic marketing strategies should eventually be implemented for maximum results, you can use any one of them and still have great results.

5. Use blogs and email to stay in touch with patients. With today’s internet technology, you can stay in touch with your patient base very easily. E-newsletters and event promotions can be sent within minutes if you have a good email system. Blogs are also a great way to stay in contact and educate your patients about why they should stay under care. While print newsletters go out once a month, blog articles and emails can be sent 3-6 times per month. You can tie blogs to an email service and update all of your patient list whenever you post a new article on your blog. Chiropractic internet marketing is only getting easier and less expensive, so get started with this one as soon as you can.

6. Make Recalls. Every 6-8 weeks, go through your patient database and make a list of those you haven’t seen in awhile. Give your front desk person an easy recall script to follow. When she’s calling someone who’s been inactive for some time, have her say that “Dr. _____ want me to give you a call and see how you were doing?” If they say they aren’t doing well, then your staff schedules them for an appointment. Many times they will say “You know, I was just about to call you and schedule an appointment.” If they have slipped off of their current care plan, your staff just needs to get them scheduled without any questions asked. Expect about a 5-10% schedule rate from these calls. I always got better results when I gave my front desk $1 Starbucks credit for each person that shows.

7. Have a VIP list. 80% of your referrals come from 20% of your patients. What are you doing for them to make them feel special and give them more opportunities to refer? Go through your patient list and pick those patients that have referred the most patients into your office. Make sure you are sending them a gift each month “for being a great patient.” Let them know you are thankful for their referrals and give them 1-2 gift certificates to refer friends and family. I always sent small gifts with a letter each month, and a big basket of goodies in the $80-$100 range for Christmas. Don’t be cheap and think it’s not worth it to send out gifts (or that you can’t afford it). When you do the list, you’ll see how valuable those 20% really are.

8. Market other events, products and services. (I know, I said 7 but I couldn’t resist giving this 8th one.) Do you sell supplements, pillows, orthotics, etc in your practice? You should be sending letters out for special events regarding these products. For example, we did a weight loss seminar to promote our supplements once. A letter went out to all the female patients in my practice. About 10% called in to reserve a seat (seating was limited to 20). I had two speakers come in (one lady had lost 140 lbs) and talk about the products. Of the 20, 15 showed and 4 ended up spending around $800 each on supplements over the next 2 months.