OM Ep. 166 Secrets to Marketing Success With Against Shelley Bostrom

Dean: Well hello everybody out there in podcast land this is Dean Steinman from o the marketing and guess what we are back another awesome podcast for you so of course we like to have some fun here we were all about in the smile business we're making people smile hopefully people just smiled and I'm smiling because I have one of my favorite people in the whole entire authentic world and even the whole entire super world here with us back again to talk about Consulting your practice and helping you get your practice to the next level I have Shelley Bostrom here who is the founder owner of align my practice and she's awesome and a we to talk a little bit my pleasure so we're going to talk a little bit today um just basic Q&A about things going on in the English stre and she's G to answer just a few basic questions that's that I constantly hear on people's minds all right so Shelley first off how are you today my dear Shelley: I'm great how are you doing thanks again so much for having me Dean: My pleasure thanks so much for joining it that love having you up aboard um we''ve had done several times before and y we doing a quite a lot moving forward so I'm excited to 00:01:33.000 have you on so just people who haven't um heard you before which I thought they have why don't you give you a quick little background about you know shell and Aluma practice Shelley: Aa thanks um yes so I am Shelly owner and founder of Alim my practice um orthodontic practice Consulting however I do also work with GP practices and pedo practices as well um I really do have a passion for Airway focused orthodontic and I just it really is just my passion to work with doctors practice managers TCS and the rest of the team with just being successful um in their role and growing their practice and helping with operations and systems so a little bit everything Dean: Awesome well um you Kim com and consulted with with many of our clients and I've always H just incredible things and results from with what you do so I'm very excited to have you aboard again and to you know and to be working with you so we're going to jump right in so ask you a few questions and these are questions that that across the board I'm hearing from a lot of our of our practices maybe you can educate you know the our listeners out there on it here so right now talk about same day starts okay you've got somebody shows up for for a consult okay and ideally you want to get them sitting there in a chair don't let them leave so what is the ideal way to get somebody to start right there because if they get up and leave the odds of them starting probably go down quite a bit yes they do c put you gu somebody right there um how do you hard to power up same day starts you know and maybe two or three things what could do to if they do a consult or if they're a TC or TC's listening or they want to tell their TC what's two things they could do today Shelley: Right so yes same day starts as everything it's super powerful and you mentioned Dean when that prospective patient walks out the door and they haven't signed contracts they haven't done their initial records or perhaps haven't even scheduled that you know records appointment to get started the percentage of that patient starting drops by nearly 20% so of course if it's a same day start it's a 100% conversion and that's what we want um and one thing that I think that TC's sometimes struggle with is that they feel like they really need to sell the patient treatment and that makes them uncomfortable but the patient wants to be sold the patient researched you they called your office they showed up hopefully they're sitting in your chair they want to be sold so um there's a couple different things one of the things that I find that's very very effective is I do encourage all of my TCS to make a welcome call the night before and that's a great opportunity for that TC to start building the relationship with the patient um and ask a lot of questions it's important for you to know what that patient's chief concerns are so that when they come in for their consultation both you and the doctor are addressing their concerns find out if they've gone to another consultation did that orthodontists recommend it's uh extractions do they not want to do extractions maybe they don't want want to do clear aligners maybe they want to do traditional braces um so finding out what their concerns are just to make sure that that is presented you know the doctor's going to have their recommended treatment of course but if that patient is just really concerned because the two front teeth are overlapping it's important to make sure that that's addressed in that presentation so it's my goal to help my treatment coordinators with getting that information so that you can check all the boxes for them and um so that's that's one is asking questions knowing what the chief concerns is um second is I do like offering some sort of sameed day start incentive and it can be tiny it could be $50 it could be $100 off the initial payment it could be a water pick it can be something um but that uh you know principle of scarcity which helps the patient psychologically think okay if I don't say yes today I'm going to lose out on this benefit um and and it's not about being pushy it's not about being salesy you can have fun with it um you know when I was a TC I we did um we would give a Magic Bullet you know because when patients are in braces they need smoothies and soft foods and they can't have anything sticky crunchy chewy so we would do a Magic Bullet and I acted like Vanna White or you could have the Magic Bullet and we have it in three colors and you can get that today and have fun with it you really want to you know engage and be you know playful with your with your um patients and thirdly I will say which um just creating an ease of purchase so we're in kind of a tough economy right now and you know a lot of doctors a lot of my clients think that you need to collect 25% for that initial payment and it's not necessary um and nobody else is doing that and everybody's really worried about getting their you know clear liner lab fee paid upfront and I really try to encourage the doctors to really create an ease of purchase be flexible you can do pay and full discounts with credit card or cash or check but you know most of my clients do in-house financing they don't charge any interest fees or additional charges but see what the patient's comfortable with and you really want to have that no problem attitude you know here's an example if you paid $900 up front your monthly payments would be XYZ for x amount of months um but if that doesn't a lower initial payment no problem you want to stretch out your terms a couple of months no problem you really want to work with them on the financials um because if you don't somebody else Dean: So let's let's talk about that as well as the next next thing next topic is financial options a how many options should they give okay because sometimes it's overwhelming we have too many different options if you go to the Cheesecake Factory have a 600 page menu you kind of you know if you know what the G is TW twitching a bit here so how many you know options should they give and how open what you know should they be as far as will you tell us what to do because or what you want or do you have certain parameters or just tell us what you're willing to pay and blah blah blah so um first how many different Financial options should they you know showcase or give them to and then you know how flexible really should the practice be Shelley: Great questions um I like three options I have a couple clients that do use outside financing something like Care Credit as a as a fourth option um if you have that and you find that that is something that's really popular in your area then of course you don't want to take that away you really want to make treatment affordable for everybody so um in my neck of the woods because I also do a lot of TC tempting locally um Care Credit and thirdparty financing isn't isn't big um even when I was running a local practice here in Orange County I think I had two patients on Care Credit so I like to offer it but I don't like to sell it necessarily because normally those third-party finance companies take a big chunk um away from your profits um so I normally like to do an in-house payment plan option I definitely don't do billing I don't want to send statements to the patients every month it's a too time consuming and frustrating um so typically just the um you know in-house you're going to pay this amount for the initial payment we're going to leave a credit card C on file we're going to run your monthly payment um so that's typically I think the most popular with orthodontic treatment but I always like to start with the pay and full option and wait for their response so we've got this great plan we do offer um pay in full options if you did want to pay in full with you know cash or a check we're going to give you 5% off how does that sound and wait for their feedback before you offer the other options because that's my I you know gosh if I don't have to worry about posting charges every month and oh the credit card expired and you need to reach out to the patient I think that's the best option so I start off with that option how does that sound oh I don't know if I can do that I you know don't have um my checkbook with me today okay no problem we also if you've got a credit card you want to earn some you know points on we do offer 3% for painful with credit card how does that sound get their feedback and then you can go into well we have this other wonderful option um a lot of our patients enjoy this benefit also we can Finance it for you we're not going to run your credit we're not going to charge you any fees um and here's what that could look like if you did like I said $900 initial payment then you've got 24 payments of $300 a month and um how does that sound and then you kind of just go from there so I like I like three but maybe four you definitely want to have you don't want to have too too many options because they might feel a little overwhelmed you want to keep it pretty simple Dean: I agree um so you know you said you know here's a quick like little sales tip for some for for people and you mentioned first person in a negotiation to speak loses you know so when you're talking and you give the price and you say stop and wait how long do they should they just sit there and quiet and wait for somebody to respond before they say something because first person opens their mouth loses so realistically somebody when they put it out there they should close their them out and in their head count to one before they say how does that sound or what do you think so yeah should they they keep their mouth closed before they say they Shelley: Um not too long because I think if you do let that silence go on too long it can be uncomfortable that's what you don't want for the patient you don't want them to feel like they're being pigeonholed into you know answering you can normally if you're you know I try to teach my TCS to be a sleuth and so you really need to be in tune with their body language and 00:13:43.800 their expressions and if they're tensing up so I think again your goal is to is to build that trust and that relationship with the patient so you'll know within even a second or two if that's not a comfortable option for them and you definitely don't want them to feel bad that they maybe can't make a cash payment that day so you really just want to say no problem we've got this option we've got this option so um I think just be really intuitive to them their facial expressions and their body language and don't let the silence go on for too long Dean: Well this is great information do you have any resources that a TC should maybe read like a book on salees or this or that or or keep up the the I mean I still I still read how to friends and influence people you know D gigie that was written over almost 80 years ago it's still relevant and it still is a great resource is there you have any particular you know books or resources that you as your go-to that you think or just GRE with people to just brush up on their salesmanship because that's what this is at TC you're in sales so in order to keep up the date and come up with new ways to you know be a good salesperson do you have any any suggestions Shelley: I have a favorite that has really helped me to be really successful in my roles um and it's Dr chini's principle of influence um and I do teach that a lot to my clients when I'm doing my new patient experience all team training and then I take bits and pieces of it for my other courses because I do really believe in it so much um and it's really learning about the patient psychology and eth ially persuading them to buy your service and it can really be applied to any different industry um so yes I would definitely read it um he has he has six principles of influence and a couple years ago added a seventh principal I don't want to give them all away because I really would encourage everybody to go um and and pick up that book it's um it's pretty fascinating and again it's it's helped me be really successful in my different roles that I've had within my career Dean: Terrific such great resource and again you'll see it in the in the link below um details on it maybe link to Amazon to buy it or what have you so J thanks so much this is a couple of great tips I really appreciate it and um if somebody wants to more information reach out to you what's the best way for them to do so Shelley: Um gosh you can go to my website and uh it's www.alignmypractice.com I'm on all the social media platforms as well so you can always message me on Instagram Facebook um or LinkedIn or YouTube I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding me Dean: By the way it's a beautiful website by the way um Shelley: I'm don't know Dean: who built it for you recomend that Shelley: You might have to check that out it's beautiful see who built it Dean:well well Shelley thanks so much I really appreciate it everybody out there in podcast I thank you so much for listening of course you a lot more from us a more from Shel down the road um this is B little Q&A here and hopefully you're going to get some good tips out of it so shelle thanks so much everybody podcast land thanks thanks go for listening watching and be safe Shelley: bye