New Patients 201

by William D. Esteb

For all the interest that so many DCs have in getting new patients, there seems a crying lack of information about how to find them. Perhaps it is the fact that most chiropractors believe that just about everyone could benefit from chiropractic care that keeps them from seeing the individual “trees in the forest.” As a patient myself for the last 19 years, and after meeting hundreds of them at focus groups, I’d like to give you some clues as to where all the new patients are.

If you have a lot of money, getting people with spines to come to your office is relatively easy. Advertising some special offer or giveaway may not work as well as it used to when everyone had low deductible health insurance policies, but it still can produce patients. Since most of the doctors I meet who have a new patient shortage rarely have extra cash to spend on advertising, perhaps we should explore other less capital-intensive strategies.

Meeting Total Strangers

After the first wave of new patients passes through your office, usually including family members, shirttail relatives, neighbors and friends who owe you favors, new patients are basically strangers. This is where many DCs choke. Strangers are everywhere, yet they’re apparently hard to meet. Strangers waiting in line at the supermarket surround you, but breaking the ice is difficult. Worse, strangers aren’t as polite or interested as friends and relatives.

This makes approaching total strangers emotionally risky. They might insult you. They might sneer. Laugh. Embarrass you in some way. Apparently, just the possibility of this happening is enough to cause well-educated grown men and women to assume the fetal position during the free time they have between the increasingly rare patients showing up in their office. Alone. Isolated. And imprisoned by this meager practice, the office performs the pirouette of the death spiral. All because of a fear of strangers.

When did you become so afraid of strangers? You didn’t have a problem when you were four years old. Did it come later when you were taught not to accept candy from strangers? From being bullied in junior high school? From being scorned by the locals in the community where you attended chiropractic college? Maybe it was a college instructor who intoned that good doctors don’t go to patients; rather, patients come to doctors. Regardless of how you formed your opinions about strangers, meeting them and making them patients is what starting practice is really about. They didn’t tell you this in chiropractic college?

Get Out of Your Office

It’s no surprise that the best place to meet strangers is someplace other than your office. I know. Medical doctors don’t have to troll for new patients. All they have to do is put out a shingle and get on a couple of managed care lists and bang! Instant practice.

But you’re not a medical doctor. Probably never will be. Marketing your practice like a medical doctor does (which means virtually no marketing) is a prescription for frustration and pain. Since you’re not a medical doctor, the rules are different. You have some exciting latitude that the establishment will likely never enjoy. So take advantage of it!

Reveal your chiropractic identity. You don’t have to mount a magnetic sign on your car door, but at least make sure the word “chiropractic” is embroidered on your polo shirt, sweatshirt, jogging outfit or ball cap. Let the world know that you’re a chiropractic advocate and supporter. If you walk around the mall camouflaged in regular street clothes, appearing “normal” but having an empty office, this is a great place to start. Why? Because if you feel uncomfortable breaking the ice with total strangers, you’ll be delighted when total strangers approach you and break the ice for you, wanting to discuss their back or neck problem. “Are you a chiropractor?” Be sure to have plenty of business cards.

Since everybody’s wearing clothing with messages these days, you may find yourself actually blending in more than you’d like. That’s when you bring out the big guns:

Carry Your Spine

It’s an old idea, but it still works. Take that plastic spine you bought when you were in school and carry it with you everywhere you go. Everywhere. Yes, to the grocery store. Church. Movie theater. Combine that with a nifty polo shirt you’ve had embroidered at the mall with the words, “I Know Why Chiropractic Works!” and you’ll become a magnet, attracting all kinds of comments, stares and attention. “Mommy, what’s that man carrying?”

I know. This idea has probably produced a physiological response. Perhaps the tightening of certain sphincter muscles. Deep breath in. Hold. And exhale.

Scary, isn’t it? But you know it would work. The real problem is you, your fragile ego, pride and your notion of a “professional” reputation. I know a couple of new doctors who are s-o-o-o-o professional that they’ve only helped a few people. They’ve successfully kept their chiropractic identity a secret. They’re so “professional” nobody knows what they do for a living!

I know. Medical doctors don’t wear their stethoscopes around in public. But maybe you forgot. You’re not a medical doctor. More and more patients don’t want to deal with medical doctors anyway. They want different. So be different.

Whip Out Card

One of the pleasures I especially enjoy is getting invited to speak at chiropractic college graduations. Lacking a professional degree myself, it’s pretty heady stuff to be invited to share some pithy words before a group of new doctors and their families. I especially like the custom of throwing the business cards into the air at the end of the ceremony.

It often gets me thinking about the new business cards that they’ll all need. Will they choose the design with the gold foil-embossed chiropractic caduceus, or will they turn their business card into a strategic marketing tool?

I collect chiropractic business cards. I have about 3,500 from around the world that I’ve collected since 1986. They are as diverse as the profession itself. But almost all ignore the seven square inches on the back side. Instead of using the reverse side to explain what chiropractic is, how it works, why it has survived, why it enjoys high levels of patient satisfaction or what patients can expect on their first visit, most chiropractic business cards are blank. A blank back side of a chiropractor’s business card sends a different message. It says, “Whatever you’ve heard about chiropractors, that’s me. I don’t need to explain anything or clear up any misconceptions because everything you already know about my profession is true.”

Ouch.

If you could use a few more patients to fill your practice, why not use the back of your business card to neutralize some of the concerns and wrongheaded ideas that a prospective patient might have? How about something like:
“Chiropractic works because you are a self-healing, self-regulating organism controlled by your nervous system. Millions of instructions flow from your brain down the spinal cord and out to every organ and tissue. Signals sent back to the brain confirm if your body is working right. Improper motion or position of the moving bones of the spine, called a “subluxation,” can interfere with this vital exchange by irritating nerves and compromising the function of affected organs and tissues. Specific spinal adjustments can help improve mind/body communications. Health often returns with improved nervous system control of the body.”

In fewer than 100 words you’ve explained chiropractic to a total stranger. Better yet, consider having several different business cards with different messages.

Patients Prefer the Familiar

Marketers know that it is difficult and expensive to get consumers to change brand names, whether it’s soda pop, laundry soap or doctors. When you come into the lives of total strangers, you’re hoping that they’ll change their brand preference. And as with packaged goods, competing brands rarely have a real opportunity to be considered until the preferred brand fails or disappoints. Ask your patients what other methods they’ve used in their failed attempts to solve their presenting complaint and you’ll see what I mean! Chiropractic wasn’t their first choice.
The pecking order is based on familiarity, not some carefully thought out, rational, analytical process. How do you become familiar?

Get out and speak to groups and organizations.

Oops! There’s the physiological response again. Afraid to share your ideas in public? Reluctant to expose your career path to the criticisms of total strangers? Unwilling to learn the skills of public speaking? Don’t need new patients that bad? No problem. But it’s an effective and virtually free way to become familiar to strangers ready to try something new.

Creating a Wow Experience

Even in the shadow of HMOs, many practices are thriving from the referrals produced by positive word-of-mouth advertising from delighted patients. What struggling practitioners don’t see is that symptomatic improvement doesn’t necessarily delight a patient. Most patients expect at least some relief or they wouldn’t even give chiropractic a try.

No, delighting patients takes more. Every patient is different and it can take a whole constellation of experiences and perceptions to move a patient from expectations to delight. Your personality, approachability, office environment, staffing, conversational style, perceived confidence level, language, patient respect, tone, timing, compassion and dozens of other factors all come into play. These issues are almost totally nonchiropractic and are practically entirely the result of your willingness to risk being… yourself.

As you can see, there’s a common theme here. It’s about the emotional risk you’re willing to take when sharing your ideas with total strangers. Whether you take these risks within your office or out in public, getting new patients is largely about taking risk. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of people who need your help who are hoping you’ll take that risk. Now.

Excerpted from
What a Patient Wants
Published in 2002
240 Pages
US $24.95

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