Why People Choose Physicians Over Pt’s In The First Place – And What To Do To Reverse Engineer The Referral Process

by · 21st January 2015

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So if I’m going to help you to defeat your number one business challenge – getting patients to your clinic in-spite of where doctors send referrals too – and achieve your business goals…

…then “Direct Response Marketing” is something that I need to teach you some more about.

So, off we go:

First, think about how a “typical” patient with, say, something like “back pain”, might think and take action.

As you know…

MOST patients don’t take action the minute they feel their back pain coming on.

No.

Many wait weeks, months and even years before doing something about it.

Why?

Well there’s a whole bunch of reasons and the more of them that you know, the easier is it to get more patients to your clinic.

But I’d say there’s a few common ones why patients don’t move toward seeing a physical therapist at the same speed they would, say a dentist, at the first sign of tooth ache.

Including, but not limited too:

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* Not sure what a pt actually does

* Insurance hassles and headaches

* Time – everyone thinks that tomorrow will be the day it just disappears

* Self doubt – most people are so negative that they think nothing and no one can help “ME”.

* Easier to just suffer (than find time for 10 sessions of pt)

* Too much choice (pt, chiro, osteo, drugs, homeopath etc etc) meaning that it’s easy to get the decision wrong – so inaction seems the best and safest one.

* And many, many more.

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So now think about how you could possibly motivate all of these people people, who think like this, to call your clinic?

Are you really going to do that by simply putting an advert in a newspaper or on Facebook which says “I’m here, call today”.

Truth is, you’re not.

Not enough to forget about the physicians not referring thing, anyway.

Now think about why a patient might choose a physician or medical doctor in the first place – or better yet, WHY they will accept a referral to any pt clinic that the doctors sends them…

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It’s all to do with “trust”!

Something that because of their perceived status and authority in society, is difficult for anyone to match – pt’s included.

But there is a way to get round this…

And you’ll do it by catching their attention of a (usually unsuspecting) prospective patient by offering them something that is much easier and less hassle and comes with no effort, zero risk or finical outlay – than calling their network.

And you’ll do that by using marketing which offers something like a “free tips report”.

Something that promises to solve their problem – with very little effort required on their part.

That free tips report could be:

“How To End Back Pain Quickly And Easily In 9 Simple Steps”…

And would Giving people a reason to RESPOND to your advert by calling your clinic and gives you an opportunity to first get their contact details, and then begin to answer questions that your new prospective patient has about pt and back pain.

And the real GOLD in this strategy, is this:

Once you’ve got their contact details, you’ve also bought yourself some TIME.

TIME which you can use to build authority, trust and respect – as well as over come all these objections I just listed.

(Like what the physicians get automatically).

Now you can FOLLOW UP with that person and convince them that YOU (and pt) are the best solution to solve their problem long term.

Tell them all about how you help people just like them…

..show off your testimonials…

..add them to your mailing list…

…explain why coming to see you is going to be better in the long run

– AND –

That you CAN take care of all the referral and insurance headaches for them, by having your assistant setting up appointments or getting forms faxed to and signed by doctors.

To sum up todays lesson:

Use “direct response marketing” to exchange valuable information for contact details and you get a change to explain what you really do and how you can really help – LONG before those people were even beginning to think about calling their network as their pain inevitably got worse.

In essence, you’re getting to all these people before physicians are even mentioned.

Make sense?

Let me know what questions you’ve got for me about this.

I love to hear from you and I read all replies personally.

(Just give me a day or so to respond as I’m busy with my own patients too – really busy with new patients at the minute ;-).

Go ahead, hit reply.

Paul.

P.S Look out for the next email in this series devoted to showing you how to put an end to worrying about doctor referrals at your clinic.

HIT REPLY and let me know what questions you want answering.

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About Paul Gough

PAUL GOUGH is one of the top Marketing and Business Coaches in the physical therapy industry and his Systems are helping clinic owners all across America run more profitable clinics. He is a published Author, Newspaper Columnist and before his stunning success in business was hired by top professional soccer teams. HIS SUCCESS STORY is one that inspires many pt's around the world - at the age of 26 Paul QUIT a high profile job in professional soccer to begin his own clinic. He had NO money, NO business or marketing skills and NO experience - and yet now owns and runs 4 pt clinics and has a proven track record of growing a physical therapy business from 0 - $2m in record time.
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