Plugging A Sales Solution Into Your Front Desk With Chris Beavers

[00:00:00] Most people, if you ask them, if I called somebody's office right now and their front desk picked up and I said, Karen, a conversation and I was like, hey, do you consider yourself a salesperson? All of them would say no. Right.

[00:00:11] Every single one of them knows in the sales job. But at the end of the day, this is a sales job. Like it truly is. And that's the biggest thing is like, how do I teach somebody to have a conversation

[00:00:24] and be able to push back if somebody objects? That's the biggest thing. Welcome. You've entered the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast where your host, Nathan Shields and other successful PT owners and leaders share their experience and insights on how to build successful PT businesses.

[00:00:44] They'll share the stories of their paths to success and show you how you can also obtain greater freedom and more profits from your business. That's what the PT Owners Club is all about. Greater freedom and more profits.

[00:00:56] There's plenty of room for you as well. So come on in and join the club. Hello and welcome to the Physical Therapy Owners podcast. I'm your host, Adam Robin, and I'm here with a special guest. His name is Chris Beavers and he is with what's up, man?

[00:01:14] How are you? I'm good, brother. Chris is with a pretty awesome and unique company. Something that really caught my eye. Virtual Refresh. Chris does a lot of things with helping train sales and appointment setting VAs.

[00:01:28] You can plug them into your practice, can help you book more calls, book more initial evaluations in your practice and all kinds of fun stuff. And I don't know anybody in the industry right now that's doing that. So I thought it would be amazing to get you on.

[00:01:43] Sidebar, Chris also owns a practice. He's a physical therapist, right? That's right. He's a physical therapist and he owns Be Ready Performance. And excited to have you, Chris, man. Yeah, dude. Thanks for having me on.

[00:01:55] It's gonna be fun to unpack some common pain points and things that I've struggled with as a practice owner. And certainly many of the listeners and you have struggled with as well. And so I'm looking forward to unpacking it.

[00:02:06] Yeah, dude. I don't have any like, I don't have a script today. And I'm here to learn, man. I'm here to learn just about you and about what you're doing.

[00:02:14] I know we jumped on a call, I guess it was about a couple months ago, maybe a month ago. And as we chatted, I could tell that you had been kind of in this space for a little while. And it's like you caught my ear, right?

[00:02:25] Like I was really interested to hear more about what you're doing. So I'd love to talk about start with Be Ready Performance first, if that's cool. Yeah, absolutely. That's where it all started. Yeah. Can you tell us your journey about when that started?

[00:02:36] Like where are you located? When did that start? Yeah, for sure, man. So we're a fully cash based practice here in Nashville, Tennessee. But we started late 2019. So right before the pandemic, I quit my job.

[00:02:50] I found that my wife and I were expecting and launched a practice in the midst of obviously a very wild season. And yeah, we've been super lucky. We've full time into that at the top of 2020 and just kind of continue to grow

[00:03:02] and get some other providers out of their crappy jobs they don't like. And all the common pain points and struggles that come with business ownership, right? There's many of the same things that we struggled with and ran into and was just me and my practice early on.

[00:03:13] Cash practice is a little bit different, insurance based or hybrid. Trying to keep our overhead as low as humanly possible. Rolling out of a gym literally I was in a personal training facility just me. And yeah, dude, we just started getting busy, which was fun.

[00:03:25] But now I couldn't keep up with all the crap in my business. You know, the things they don't tell you about when you start a business, bookkeeping and following up with leads.

[00:03:32] At the end of the day, man, it's tough making phone calls after you've been treating for six, seven hours. And yeah, dude, I was just I was busted up and tired after trying to run a business and also trying to spend time with my family.

[00:03:44] And I was very fortunate. My wife started stepping into my business. She started taking some organization stuff and just back end things off my plate. And that was kind of the very beginnings of how virtual refresh kind of started.

[00:03:56] And getting our feet wet was really in my practice. And that's that's kind of how some of this started. And we've been able to grow and that's been fun. I've kind of stepped out of most of the day to day treatment and things like that.

[00:04:06] We just kind of lead our local team. We've got five other providers at this point, two locations here in Nashville. And we've got a VA who kind of helps manage all of our sales pipelines.

[00:04:15] And we run a lot of paid traffic, a good bit of organic traffic as well. And we've implemented those systems in my practice and then now taking them elsewhere to help other practice owners. And that's kind of the birth of both of our companies.

[00:04:27] That's awesome, man. So 2019, that wasn't that long ago. No, no, definitely not. Man, it's crazy. Time flies. The part of me makes it feel like it's a long time. And the part of me is like, it's not that long in the grand scheme of things.

[00:04:38] I know I get on sales calls all the time about our coaching program and I call them sales calls. But really they're just like we're just connecting. And I always find myself kind of retelling my story. And I opened my practice in 2019 as well. Yeah, thank you.

[00:04:53] And it's like, dude, it really hasn't been that long. It's like you'd be amazed at how fast you can grow whenever you get some pieces together and like you actually like dedicate your time and energy towards the important things. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of things happen, man.

[00:05:09] It doesn't feel that way for the you know, it's like for the first year, year and a half. It's like it just feels like a bunch of hard work. But once you get all that stuff settled and it's like, boom, you can like copy paste, copy paste.

[00:05:19] And it's like, yeah, once you get that foundation built, that's awesome. Yeah, I tell me a little bit about your journey into like how you started virtual refresh. How did that happen? Yeah, for sure. Funny enough, it started with really just my wife.

[00:05:33] She was a full time teacher at the time and kind of expressed some interest in, hey, maybe I want to get out of teaching, be able to stay at home with the family and take care of our boys.

[00:05:41] And started with just helping me just implement some systems and her teacher organization background. Like, that's not me. It's like I'm going to treat patients and drive revenue to the business. Like that's what I was after.

[00:05:52] And so she just brought some systems and some insight into the business and things that my brain just wasn't wired for. And then ultimately, you know, I was a part of some other business groups and those kind of things.

[00:06:02] And slowly but surely, she started picking up some clients and doing some just back end stuff for them mostly. And then kind of started moving into some sales roles. She left teaching.

[00:06:11] And before we knew it, more and more practice owners just kind of started reaching out to us. We were literally doing zero marketing at this point. There was nothing we were doing. We just kind of growing organically. And eventually she kind of outgrew it.

[00:06:21] She couldn't take on any more clients. So we thought, well, I turned clients away. We had two or three lined up. So let's find somebody that we can put into these practices. Right? Can we train this person? Can I teach them sales?

[00:06:34] Can I teach them how to follow up with people? Can I teach them the nuances of the particular practice that we're going to plug her into? It was running Facebook ads. You know, how do you have a conversation with this person? And funny enough, she lived local.

[00:06:46] There was a guy I went to PT school with, his sister. She was a PT as well. And she just wanted to work from home job. Right? And she just wanted to be able to use her degree, but ultimately didn't want to go back to the clinic.

[00:06:57] She was burnt out on it. Right? And so I was like, this sounds like a perfect fit. Like I met her in person. She's really great.

[00:07:02] And basically what we did, my wife just trained her on all the stuff that we knew how to run and get into the EMR, how to follow up with clients on a regular basis and how to have a value-based phone conversation with somebody.

[00:07:13] Because that was something that I was already really attuned to. Right? Because if I'm running a like, obviously we're running a cash practice. The practice we were going to work with is going to be cash as well.

[00:07:22] And if somebody called in and they just said, hey, do you take my insurance or how much does it cost to work with you? You just price drop her insurance. They know we're out of network. Like they were going to hang up the phone.

[00:07:32] And so we just taught her everything we knew. We just spent a bunch of time with her, trained her as much as we could. And it worked out well. Like she absolutely crushed it on the phone. She was converting as high as the owner was.

[00:07:42] And you're like, okay. Like we got something here. Right? Like let's see what happens here. Like we didn't have a training pipeline at this point. I didn't have any other admins. I didn't know where to find people at this point.

[00:07:52] And so we just had this really bare bones thing that I was like, this is kind of unique. You know, like there's no one else that is hiring people who have a clinical background to have phone conversations with potential clients. And so here we were.

[00:08:06] We just accidentally stumbled upon this. And then, you know, eventually it just kind of kept growing more and more people reached out and it was like, okay, we actually need to like have a process to vet people like good quality talent because talent acquisitions are really difficult thing.

[00:08:21] We need to be able to have a training pipeline so that we like it's the same training for every single person that came in. And so then over the next year, it was exactly that. Hey, how do we replicate this process?

[00:08:32] How do we make sure the quality is there? And we're not just giving somebody crappy quality candidates and they actually know how to have conversations with people. That's the biggest thing. And how do we ensure that quality?

[00:08:43] And so then there's been this really big learning curve over the last really two years that we've put a lot of energy into perfecting the product, if you will. And now we're really getting the word out there to let people know, hey, we're here. We're ready to go.

[00:08:57] And now let's get the word out and take care of practice owners and equally and arguably the most important role in the business, right? The first phone call and the front desk is critical to the growth and health of a business.

[00:09:10] And if it's not there, it's a big, big bottleneck. It's going to cost somebody a lot of revenue. And so that's where we've been, man. Dude, that's awesome. I've got so many questions. I love it, man. I'm writing them down. Give me one second. No, you're good.

[00:09:22] Lots of good stuff in there. Yeah. So the first thing that comes to mind is what's right there on your shirt? Yeah, yeah. Be ready, bro. Be ready at all points. Be ready, dude. Like you were ready. That's right. You were ready, dude.

[00:09:38] That freaking gives me chills, man. It fires me up because I wrote down start before you're ready. And maybe that's not the right language. What I took from that and what I'm hoping some younger practice owners or people who

[00:09:51] are looking to expand their practice or get into different areas of the business. And I'm sure you've had this mindset as well. It's like, oh, I've got to get everything all dialed in. I've got to like get it all dialed in and perfected.

[00:10:03] Dude, I started my coaching practice before I just started DMing people. Yeah. Like I didn't have anything. And then I built it as I went. Right? Absolutely. Same for us. Yeah, like get ready. Like just go. Yeah. You don't have to have everything tightly buttoned up.

[00:10:21] It's like just like we just solved the next problem that was in front of us. Right. And it's like for a lot of like you said, a lot of these young practice owners, like they just don't know where to go.

[00:10:29] So it's like, dude, just solve the next right step. Like just take the next right step to getting this thing off the ground and make it happen. Yeah. That's beautiful, dude. You know, there's this idea of like, I don't know, opportunity or possibility or

[00:10:46] whatever, just like creation, creating what you want to, what you want to create, whether it's in your business or whatever. And that's exactly right. It's like you are only able to make progress to the degree in which you can solve problems. Absolutely.

[00:11:00] And you don't get good at solving problems unless you create more problems. Right? Like, yeah, find the problems to solve and you can't find them unless you kind of just start looking for them. It's like, you got to go, you got to put yourself out there.

[00:11:12] And it's like, I imagine like you're kind of like going through the woods and you're like kind of like picking behind the tree and you're kind of just walking around and like, you're just finding your way.

[00:11:22] And then whenever it gets hard, you stop, you solve that problem and then you keep going. That's exactly what it is. Just solving the next problem. The other thing that really caught me was you found a who? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:34] I think you said it was a woman without this woman. None of this is even possible. It's so true. Who? Not how? Right, Dan Sullivan? Have you read the book Who? Not how? It is a fantastic book and 10,000 percent is the key to so much

[00:11:51] success that we've had in all of our businesses. And I'm sure you would say the same thing. It's like there's somebody else that knows a heck of a lot more about this than I do. I don't even know what I don't know.

[00:12:00] Like teach me what I don't know. That's right. And you found her because you were willing to explore. Exactly. We just started looking. Yeah, started looking. You know what? I'm going to start trying doing this thing. I'm going to help this practice owner.

[00:12:11] I'm going to start talking about it and boom. It's like, wow, look at this amazing freaking person and opportunity. It's like you get what you're looking for, right? Absolutely. Yeah. If you're not looking, you're never going to find them. That's right, man. That's amazing.

[00:12:24] So all that stuff behind us, let's talk about virtual refresh because I'm not sure we fully got clear on it, but I'm going to tell you what I think you do. Yeah, but you're going to tell me how accurate I am.

[00:12:38] I love that sounds like what you do is you have some systems training processes that allow you to train virtual administrative people and I believe after some conversations we had, they're all stateside in the U.S. So U.S. based virtual admin that you plug into these businesses

[00:13:00] and they are essentially like your sales, your lead salesperson. Exactly. So they help you with lead generation. They help you with outbound. I'm sure there's maybe some messaging or some emails that you're doing and some phone calls that you're making.

[00:13:16] They also help you with the sales call or the conversion call. Right? And so the whole point of that person is like, they're kind of like your headhunter, right? They're at the front of the ship and they're just like, let me

[00:13:28] take all these leads and let's turn them into clients and let me find these people that we can help and get them into your business and then help more people. Does that sound about right? Or am I missing anything? Yeah, that's spot on, right?

[00:13:38] It's like we're taking these folks, they're U.S. based. They also have a clinical background. That's the other really unique thing about what we're doing. So PTAs, OTAs, I got a couple of speech language pathologists, massage therapists, folks who have been in the

[00:13:51] clinical world and can have a clinical conversation with people, right? And they can answer people's questions a little bit more in depth and really just assure them that this is the right next step for them in their journey of healing. Right?

[00:14:03] And so, and then it's like, yeah, we take them, we teach them sales, sales psychology, follow up processes, and then they have role played and gotten direct coaching from me for like three to six weeks before they've even stepped foot in your business.

[00:14:15] So this isn't the first phone call that they've taken and it's just this really beautiful process once they're able to step in. And it's like, wow, this person can have an effective phone call because it's like how many times have you guys

[00:14:26] called an office and it's like, dude, the front desk person just sounds clueless. Right? There's a lot of long pauses in between. They sound like they're just rummaging through stuff and they just don't sound like they got their crap together. Right?

[00:14:39] It's like, I want to book an appointment at this place. Right? Like I'm probably... I don't trust them. I don't trust them. I may book an appointment, but I may very well just call back and cancel because it's like, I just don't know. Like uncertainty.

[00:14:50] Like if they portray uncertainty, you're going to have a really hard time making that happen. And so that's kind of what we mitigate. Right? On the flip side of this too, something we just recently started doing is taking our exact training pipeline

[00:15:03] and our training curriculum, giving it to practice owners and training their existing front desk as well. So there's a lot of folks who have some rock stars in the front office. They just may not have the time to actually,

[00:15:15] you know, hey, here's how you need to follow up with people. Here's how you have a value-based conversation and don't just say, no, we don't take your insurance. So the things that practice owners don't have time to do. Hey, now let me step into your business with you,

[00:15:28] give you our training curriculum and then now let me listen to your phone calls that are going on and let me provide direct coaching because I've listened to thousands of these things across all the practices we've worked with and let's clean up that and let

[00:15:40] me help you clean that up. And so those are the two options that practice owners have. They look to potentially reach out for our services. Dude, that's amazing. That's awesome. And by the way, I guarantee you the practice owners don't have time. No, I know they don't.

[00:15:54] I guarantee you they don't have time. Yeah, because they're looking for PTs. They're trying to market. They're trying to do any other thing that they can and oftentimes there's so much turnover at the front desk anyways. They're just trying to get somebody in the seat, you know, right?

[00:16:07] So if you had to like if you could bullet point, so it starts with lead generation, right? Yeah. So like how are you doing that? Are you doing like outbound like lead generation? Are you helping them with paid ads or like how do

[00:16:23] you get that done for them? Yeah, so I'm not going to run paid ads for you, right? Like there's other people in the industry that are probably going to be top notch at doing that. And so typically what I look at from a lead

[00:16:34] generation standpoint is hey, who's coming the door that either dropped off on a plan of care didn't complete one who hasn't been in the office in a really, really long time. What was that giant list of referrals that we didn't have time to follow up with because

[00:16:47] we've been too busy. Like, hey, let me reach out to those people and the folks that have raised their hand once upon a time but never stepped foot into our office. Right? How much lost revenue is that? Tons of lost revenue. And oftentimes it's a manpower issue, right?

[00:17:01] And that's when we like to step in and say, look, you've got two or three front desk, right? But they're just busy. They're handling the person that's in front of them. They're being a smiling face when somebody walks into the office. They're helping any other number of office

[00:17:15] fires that may come up or scheduling people out for a plan of care. And then now they just don't have time to follow up with those people, right? It's a tedious process, right? But now if I've got some manpower and somebody's ability to comb through list of

[00:17:30] those people like dude or even sending out like mass text or a mass email to some of these people with some type of offer, like that's another great way to reactivate these people. And now I've got somebody waiting by the phone and if somebody raises their hand,

[00:17:44] like, boom, let me get after this person ASAP. And we run promo cycles in our practice all the time. I know sometimes it gets a little bit weird with insurance based practices and those kind of things, but it's like you could

[00:17:53] easily just say, hey, we're running a spring special where you got a laser. You're doing a discounted laser or something like that just to get some people back in the door. And now I've got somebody who's got manpower to be able to follow these

[00:18:04] people very quickly, have a value based conversation, drive them to the clinic. You know what I mean? That's awesome, dude. So you're going to start with their current list, their current and past patient lists, right? Exactly. That's the best place to go.

[00:18:18] There's a lot of gold sitting in that list way more than most of us want to lead on to or just cold leads, like just people who maybe just never made their email list. Yeah, exactly. What about I'm just curious, do you

[00:18:30] do any like social media work, like hunting on social media or doing anything like that? Yeah. So we don't do a ton of that. The nice thing is about our VAs is like we're going to give these people to you to build internally into

[00:18:46] your business. They're not going to work for me, right? And so if you've got some systems and processes around social media or you need some help with social media stuff, like most of these people are really young and know how to get into these things and mess around

[00:18:58] and build some stuff out for you. And now you've got additional manpower to do it. And so if that's an easy thing that you want to offload, boom, that's somebody that can step into that role for you. Yeah, easily. I envision like, you know, like, hey,

[00:19:10] if you could have some decent content being going out on your Facebook page, you're going to get some likes. You're going to get some shares. You're going to get some. It's like, absolutely. Hey, let's start a conversation with these people. Exactly. And see if they're open.

[00:19:22] I mean, that's how you and I got on a call, right? Exactly. Literally exactly that anybody's raising their hand in any capacity. That's right. You know, the other thing that comes to mind is Facebook groups. Yeah. It's like if you have somebody who's

[00:19:36] like, hey, every day I want you engaged in the Facebook group. I want you to post something inspiring for the community. You know, they have those like what's happening Nashville. Yeah. Facebook groups, you know, it's like I want you in there. I want you involved in the community.

[00:19:48] Absolutely. That's a really low hanging fruit. Right. It's like what are low hanging fruit? It's like, hey, I want you to spend an hour a day inside those groups and I want you to start conversations. I wanted you to build relationships. And most of the time, that's a

[00:20:00] manpower issue, right? Like 100 percent. They're just handling all the in office fires and they just don't have time to do that. And some people don't even have the thought process to do that. But like, that's a great way. We've done that a lot.

[00:20:09] You know, if we got a community event or something like that, just starting the conversation or something inspiring even right or a testimonial from a client that you've helped like posting that to Facebook group. Dude, that could get a ton of engagement before we jump into

[00:20:25] the next episode. Let's talk about something I think we'd all like a little more of and that is money as a P.T. owner. I know how hard it is to increase your revenue without spending more on marketing or trying to attract a flood of new patients.

[00:20:39] And let's face it, you're already stretched thin trying to run clinics. But what if there was a proven way to increase your revenue 10 percent in just 30 days with minimal effort? Better yet, how could you use the additional revenue in your business? Maybe you could hire another P.T.

[00:20:54] You could start saving to open a new location or my personal favorite, invest in yourself by hiring a business coach. Regardless of how you choose to spend it, a 10 percent bump in revenue can have a huge impact on your business. And that's why I created how to

[00:21:08] increase your revenue 10 percent within 30 days. A free guide to help you boost your clinic's revenue and see big changes to your bottom line by tracking just one simple statistic in your business. And here's my big promise. When you follow the three steps I lay out in the guide,

[00:21:24] you are going to see up to a 10 percent increase in revenue in 30 days. This revenue boosting strategy is the same one I teach inside my one on one coaching program for P.T. owners. But it's my gift to you just for being a listener to the show.

[00:21:39] So head over to PTO club dot com to download the free copy of how to increase your revenue 10 percent within 30 days. And again, that's PTO club dot com. After you download it and implement it, feel free to reach out to me, schedule an appointment with me on the

[00:21:55] same website, schedule an appointment with Nathan and let me know how it went. And we can talk about next steps. That's PTO club dot com. Tons. The other thing that comes to mind, my brain's stuck on social media right now, is collaboration with other businesses. Absolutely.

[00:22:18] It's like, hey, share their stuff, build relationships with them. I want to support the chiropractor that's down the road. I want to support the veterinary guy. I want to support the physician, the private practice guy physician. That's it's like share their stuff, engage, comment on

[00:22:31] their stuff and you can build goodwill with some of those referral partners through digital means and you could flood more referrals to your office. Absolutely. It's an area of low hanging fruit that a lot of business owners joke about. That a lot of business owners

[00:22:43] don't take any advantage of. Yeah, I totally agree. The next piece. OK, so it's like, yeah, people are raising their hand. They're like, yeah, I'll jump on a call with you. So now you're teaching them sales, which is a whole different ballgame. Big old different ballgame. Absurd.

[00:22:58] Freaking literally totally different ballgame. Like most people, if you ask them, if I called somebody's office right now and their front desk picked up and I said we were carrying a conversation and I was like, hey, do you consider yourself a salesperson? All of them would say no.

[00:23:10] Right. Every single one of them knows it's a sales job. But at the end of the day, this is a sales job. Like it truly is. And that's the biggest thing is like how do I teach somebody to have a conversation and be able

[00:23:25] to push back if somebody objects? That's the biggest thing. Most of the time when I'm hearing other people's phone calls, like they just want to bring up any objections. Hey, I need to schedule this a couple of weeks out because I'm going on vacation. OK, I'll give

[00:23:38] you a call then. Do you think that person's going to answer in three weeks? Absolutely not. Like that's the thing that comes to my mind is summers coming up. That's the biggest objection. Like I just did a training for all of our training admins and people that

[00:23:50] are working in current practices. I just did training on this because it's like, look, people are going to be pushing back on it. You've got to beat them to it and you've got to be able to have a conversation with why they don't need to schedule

[00:24:01] that out for four weeks. You know what I mean? Which is like, look, if you schedule that four weeks out, you know, let's say they opted in for a Facebook ad or reached out to you and they're like, hey, you know, can you call me

[00:24:11] in a couple of days? I'm busy that I got kicked down the road for a week. Now three or four other weeks got kicked down the road. It's a month before they come in if they even answer. It's like, dude, we could have helped this person forever ago.

[00:24:24] Instead, they just keep kicking the can down the road. Yeah, I've actually, so we started, I've gotten into the online coaching space about a year ago. And so I've had to learn a lot about this topic, sales and real marketing and that type of thing.

[00:24:38] So I'm like totally in that space right now. And so I'm thinking maybe on our next podcast, you and I do, we could talk about sales a little bit deeper and we can go down maybe like a sales framework. Yeah, there's so much stuff that you can unpack

[00:24:53] and like that first phone call is critical, right? And again, so many folks are like, especially the insurance or hybrid practices that I've worked with, their front desk is just a leaky hole for hey, yeah, I've got United. Do you guys take my insurance?

[00:25:09] And I know a lot of people are getting out of network with United right now, just because of how annoying they are. And they're like, yeah, we don't take United. And they just hang up the phone and they don't have a crying chance to even have

[00:25:21] a conversation with them and potentially convince them to come into the clinic, right? You guys may be a perfect fit, right? Like if you work with a niche population or maybe you crush it with balanced patients or whoever it is that you crush it with,

[00:25:34] and this is your ideal client on the road and get piss poor quality care or they don't even call them at all, right? But if you can have a conversation with this person that's much beyond just superficial, do you take my insurance? This person, you

[00:25:49] may be able to overcome insurance objections. And then two, even if they don't come see you, you've at least had a conversation where at the end you can say, hey, I get it. It's a little bit expensive. It sounds like it's not going to work out for us.

[00:26:05] The level of care that you're looking for, is it OK if I follow up with you in two to three weeks? And so now that door is at least going to be open. That person may be receptive to the fact that, hey, this person just talked to me

[00:26:19] for 10 minutes and actually was really genuine about helping me. And if they go somewhere else and they have a poor experience, who do you think the first person is they're going to reach back out to? They're like, wow. Like it happens to us all the time. Sometimes.

[00:26:35] And they'll go somewhere at a big box clinic that their doc referred them to and they get trash care, right? They're going three times a week. They're off in the corner. They get no one-on-one time with a PT. And we'll reach back out to them two to

[00:26:50] three weeks later. And they're like, this kind of sucks. Right? Like I'll just pay the money to come see you guys because I know I'm going to get a better quality experience. And that's because we had a value-based conversation with them. Not a, no, we don't have any

[00:27:05] value-based conversation. We're a very high-end business, but we're not going to be paying for anything. We're going to be paying for everything. So, we're going to be paying for everything. And so, we're going to be paying for everything. So, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like,

[00:27:33] never split the difference. Yeah, great book. Yeah, yeah, great book. It's a sales book, right? I need to read it again. Yeah, yeah. I read it on, I listened to it on Audible and I need to listen to it again. But the biggest takeaway I got from that

[00:27:46] book, the biggest nugget, was the negotiation starts with the first objection. Yeah. And it becomes a information gathering session. Yes. Right? So, I like what you said there of like, is it like you always asking the question? If you approach it from a place of curiosity,

[00:28:04] it's hard to not find a more ideal outcome for both you and the client if you dig a little deeper. So, it's like, hey, this is not right for me right now. It's like, totally understand. Tell me more about exactly what's not right for you. If I place,

[00:28:18] if I get curious or like, no, I think that's a good idea. Would it be okay if I followed up with you in the next two weeks? It's like, I'm searching for more information, right? Because that's information that's very valuable to you. And that could be the key

[00:28:30] of you like being a good person. And it's the same thing. Like, everyone wants to give you the money objection, especially like on our cash side or if they're out of network or maybe you got a cash service you're adding on. Like oftentimes, they're just like,

[00:28:42] that's a lot of money or that's expensive, right? Or do you take my insurance? They just don't know what else to ask. But if you give them the opportunity and you ask what they really mean by that or you've had a really nice discovery process around, hey,

[00:28:57] you've got an e-pay. Like people are not going to pay $200 because they have knee pain. Like people deal with knee pain for years before they do anything about it. But if I can find out, like what is the knee pain keeping them from doing? Oh, it's playing

[00:29:10] with my grandkids. It helps me keep my weight off because I go out and walk a lot and I can't walk now, right? I'm gaining weight back and I'm worried about that. That's a much more in-depth reason and value that someone's going to pay for.

[00:29:23] They're not going to pay for knee pain. And so many front desks don't know how to dive deeper than just exactly that. Oh, you have knee pain? Yep, we see knee pain a lot. OK, great. Yep, who's your insurance? When do you want to come in?

[00:29:35] Yep, next week? OK, see you then. And then they cancel or no show, right? Like it happens every single day. And now not only do we, that's a lot of revenue right there as well on folks who we just canceled or no showed because we didn't have

[00:29:49] enough conversation with them that was beyond the superficial. So I had this, I think it was yesterday, and you're a member of our Facebook group. Yeah, and I think I was running. I was going for a run or something like that. And you do a lot of thinking

[00:30:03] when you run, right? And I was thinking like, man, you know, I think sales could be the most important skill set that you can learn as a business owner. Yeah, I think so. And in my opinion, sales done ethically is the ultimate manifestation of leadership.

[00:30:18] So I posted a poll in the group. I said, hey, what's the most important skill that you can, that's most, like what's the most important skill that you need to run a successful business? And I put on there like leadership, financial management, sales, marketing, da da da da,

[00:30:34] and one person selected sales. No way. One person. A lot of people selected leadership, which I can give them a pass on that. Yeah, I can too. But only one person selected sales. And I was like, man, people aren't thinking about sales. Not in the private practice space.

[00:30:48] They're not, right? But there's so much sales in health care, right? Like, you know, again, the orthopedic surgeon walks in the room like an arrogant cat and says, yeah, you need this $30,000 knee procedure. And here's why. And they don't say anything else about it.

[00:31:02] People don't object to that, right? Like they just listen to whatever the doc says and like they'll freaking mortgage their house to afford the knee surgery that this guy afforded. But now, nitpick when their deductible sets at the top of the year, they're over here complaining about paying $200

[00:31:16] when they're going to meet their deductible anyways, right? And so it's like, that's selling. And if you can't sell that, your caseload in January and February and March is going to look terrible, right? And so versus if you had the skill set

[00:31:30] or your front desk had that skill set, they're not going to show up for one visit and be like, oh crap, I'm done. So you mentioned you're working with in-network and cash-paying practices, right? So I would say we probably have a good mixture that listens to this podcast.

[00:31:44] We have some in-network, we have some cash, we have some hybrids. Yep. So tell me, if you don't mind, just run me through like, what are some of the pros, cons, like are there any differences that you're seeing from the people who get better results?

[00:31:57] Tell me more about that. Yeah, no, I mean, I think, look, the results are going to be the same regardless. I think there's long been this big pin, especially with like younger clinicians. Like you and I started our practice pretty early on. Like I started my practice

[00:32:10] a year out of school, right? Like it was crazy. I practiced for years. I'm out of here. Yeah, I was two years. Yeah, like very early. And I think a lot of young clinicians are just coming out and I was in this camp

[00:32:20] where it was like screw insurance. I want nothing to do with it. And like, it's the worst thing ever. And like it was a little bit of, like it was a slower slog for us to actually get some traction, right?

[00:32:29] It was perfect for me as a solo provider, but I knew I didn't want to be just a solo provider. And so it took some more time. Again, I was honing my own sales skills at this point, but I don't think it has to be cash versus insurance.

[00:32:39] I think there's a lot of like areas that like insurance makes some sense, right? Like if you're freaking down in South Florida and you got a bunch of snowbirds or on Medicare, like I think you'd be kind of silly not to take Medicare in that case.

[00:32:51] Now I think there are some providers that hang on to some insurance payers that probably need to get rid of, right? Like they use them as a little bit of a crutch and they continue to blast them with $60 reimbursements. And like that's hard to live on.

[00:33:07] But as far as the phone conversation, a lot of that still should be core, right? It should still be a value-based conversation around, hey, what are your goals? What do you want to get back to doing? And can I pre-frame what an entire plan of care looks like?

[00:33:23] And then is there any continuity options or cash services that you can bolt onto the backend, which I think a lot of especially insurance practices don't do a great job of. And so if you can have a conversation on that first phone call and you can pre-frame,

[00:33:39] hey, most people see us on average two times a week for six weeks, whatever your average duration of care looks like, if you can pre-frame that, and then oh yeah, most of our clients, they do laser services with us or dry needling services.

[00:33:52] And or they also do personal training with us on the backend. And if you can pre-frame that and start planning those nuggets on the first phone call, then that sell can also happen in the office. And now I got people who are going up for the visit,

[00:34:07] which is the most important thing in their evaluation. Now they're completing a plan of care. And then now they're also hanging on for some type of cash service on the backend. And so what was a $2,000 lifetime value is now infinitely more and your caseload's full even longer

[00:34:23] without you having to constantly acquire new customers. But all of that is central to the first phone call. Right? And that's why it's such a powerful role to have the right person and the right conversation in there. Yeah. So I'm going to give you my opinion,

[00:34:38] Chris and everybody listening. We talk a lot enough to in-network providers who are, you know, maybe they want to add massage or laser or dry-needling. They're like, I really want to start adding cash services to my clinic. And the first thing I say,

[00:34:54] the first thing I recommend is you need to teach your team how to sell. The first thing you do is like, if you don't have a documented sales process, that it's part of the onboarding process. It's like, this is how we sell the plan of care.

[00:35:07] This is our sales framework. Here's our language. Here's our emotional response that we're trying to get from our clients whenever we're pitching this. This is what we're listening for. Like you need to have that framework built out. Role play with your providers. Absolutely. Role play is critical.

[00:35:23] And your front desk. Right. And then I also recommend having some type of like incentivizing them. It's like, hey, you know, like commission-based. Like have like, you know, if you sell, maybe you can get 5% of the deal or 10% of the deal. But when you build that out,

[00:35:37] then you could sell anything. You could just start throwing cash services in there. And you know that the team's going to get behind it. You put some KPIs behind it, then it's like, hey, let's rock and roll. Yeah. Yeah. Let's have a process.

[00:35:49] Let's measure what KPIs are for this exact thing. And then let's just keep drilling it, right? Let's keep role playing. Like that's a critical piece. And having it messaged on the front end phone call, which most people don't have that piece.

[00:36:02] They'll do an okay job sometimes with the in-office staff, but that's the biggest thing. They got to be able to have a sales conversation. And it's funny because like I've hired a lot of PTs in our practice and like obviously working with other practice owners. It's tough.

[00:36:15] The folks that have worked in an insurance practice, especially the big mills, have some of the hardest time selling cash services to people. Like I don't know what it is, like especially like the clinic directors or folks that have been like upper level management.

[00:36:29] They have a tremendously hard time changing their mindset around. Exactly what I was going to say. It's a mindset thing. Like they have trouble selling services. Like, I mean, we've hired providers and like who I thought was an absolute rock star on paper.

[00:36:43] They got every certification under the sun. And I'm like, this is going to be perfect. And they cannot sell. Like they, I don't know what it is. And I even had my own money mindset issues once upon a time too. But like they just,

[00:36:54] they get in their own way and they have a hard time selling. But that's where getting into mindset and getting into drilling and having a process. And here's what a desired plan of care looks like. And here's what a desired backend system or backend continuity looks

[00:37:09] like too is huge. Last question I have, you've had to have worked with some coaches at some point. Yeah, for sure. One or 20. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, like, you're impressive dude, man.

[00:37:18] I like the way you communicate and you've done a lot of great things. Tell us about your experience with working with coaches. What types of coaches have you worked with? Just tell us as much as you want to know. I think the first question that I have is,

[00:37:32] like, what's your experience with coaching? What's the experience you've had with coaching? Like, what's the experience you've had with just tell us as much as, as one or as little as you want about like how coaching has been a part of your process. Yeah. Look for anybody listening,

[00:37:47] like anytime I'm on a podcast and somebody asked me anything about how we've managed to get any sense of positive traction. Like dude, I think it's like, even if you've treated in an area for 15 years, if you just like casually hope that like you're going to open

[00:38:01] a practice and it's going to be successful. Like you may have patience in the door, but you may also be hemorrhaging cash, like left and right because you don't have any clue how to manage your P and L. Right. It's so critical. You know,

[00:38:13] I hired a coach really early on. I was like three months into practice. I did like an early incubator kind of like course online. It was, there was no coaching involved. It was just me consuming some stuff. It was a real low ticket offer. I paid for that.

[00:38:25] And then I enrolled in a mastermind literally three months into practice because I was like, I have got to I'm a liability to my business and my family. If I don't know what I'm doing. And that scared the crap out of me. Right.

[00:38:39] Because my wife and I were expecting our first kid, I have got to make some money to be able to pay for my family because I don't want to go back and work for somebody else. So I literally spent two years in that mastermind after that

[00:38:50] learning a ton of stuff. Mindset was a big one. Right. That was the first big thing that had to shift in me. Right. Is I've got to be shifting from, Hey, I'm just going to show up to work too. Like I got to be durable. Right.

[00:39:01] And if I'm not taking care of myself on my own mindset, I'm going to have some issues. And that was the foundation of it. And it was sales and it was marketing. And then it was like, Oh crap. Now we have staff.

[00:39:10] I got to learn how to be a good leader. And then it was like, now I've got staff on board. How do I lead them? Well, and then we left that mastermind and we joined another program. The biggest thing I needed was some patient acquisition.

[00:39:20] So we hired somebody to teach us how to run Facebook ads. And it was an expensive program. I mean, it was like $8,000 like out of pocket. I wanted it upfront. All right. I mean, it's the price I'm paying and literally to this day, that one program, like,

[00:39:32] I mean, I probably get seven to eight X back on my Facebook ad spend every single month and have for two years. It's like paid for itself. And then some, I haven't even done the ROI on it. And so I think that,

[00:39:41] and then even on the virtual refresh side, I mean, we've hired two coaches on that front and they've taught us so much. Right. So much on sales, so much on how do I just structure my day? Like I didn't know what I didn't know. You know?

[00:39:54] And then when you go and you talk to somebody, you're like, Oh, I don't know anything. Like, I think it's the same thing when you're treating right. When you get first, get out of school, you're like, I'm an expert.

[00:40:06] I've done nothing but study this for the last three years. And then you're handed three patients and you're like, Oh shoot. This is really hard. And then you start taking more courses. And it's like, I'm, I'm not going to be able to do this.

[00:40:17] And then when you're done with your courses and it's like, I'm finishing up a fellowship for a manual therapy fellowship on the clinical side of things right now. And it's like, dang, I thought I was pretty good at what I was doing. And I'm like, bro,

[00:40:29] I don't know anything. The more I'm hanging out with other people and that's the biggest thing is hanging out with somebody who's ahead or where you want to be. And when you can hang out with somebody who's doing 10, 12, 20 X,

[00:40:41] what you're doing and you just get to be around them and see their mindset and see the struggles and the pain points they've had. And if you can avoid one of those struggles, it was worth its while. Right? And that's what I love about coaching groups,

[00:40:54] the importance of them. I literally would be out of business and still working a nine to five at a PT mill. Absolutely miserable right now. If it wasn't for that instead of doing this podcast and dropping some knowledge, which is even more fun. Yeah.

[00:41:07] Hanging out on a Thursday. Yeah, exactly. I always like to say coaches help you see what's possible. Dude, so true. Like you can't see it. It's like you can't see it. It's like you literally cannot see it until you find a leader or

[00:41:19] something. Like you said, like somebody who's been there. You're like, Hey, let me show you this trail I made. Like, Oh my God, this is amazing. Like look at all this cool stuff. I can do this. And it's like your vision starts to expand and it's a fun

[00:41:30] journey that it is, man. I'm super, super thankful that you were willing to share all that stuff with us today. Absolutely, man. Hopefully some folks got some good nuggets and we'll spend some time training up their front desk and putting some time into a

[00:41:44] little TLC to those folks. So I know that if there are people in the Facebook group, you can shoot Chris at DM. If you have any questions, you can shoot me a DM or you can email me and I can connect you with Chris,

[00:41:57] or I guess they can email you and find your website. How would people find you? Yeah. A lot of different ways. Easiest way. Feel free to go to our website. We've got some testimonials and things like that on there. That's virtual refresh co.com.

[00:42:10] You can also follow us on Instagram at virtual refresh or feel free to shoot me an email. Chris at virtual refresh co.com. I'm super like transparent, dude. Like, I mean, I'll shoot straight with you if I think you need to go a

[00:42:24] different direction or something that makes more sense for you. Like again, there's a million and one options out there. My passion is just helping other practice owners just get through their bottlenecks, get through their problems. And oftentimes some business coaches make some more sense.

[00:42:36] And that's where I'm kicking them back to you, Adam, because I'm like, Hey, you guys need some more robust training on some other things. And that's the key man. Just everybody helping in pitching out and getting people where they want to go and wanting to see more private

[00:42:46] practice continue to expand, elevate our profession. And that's the biggest thing I'm after. Sounds good, brother. I really appreciate your time. Let's circle back in a few months and we'll start talking about sales more. Yeah, heck yeah, dude. Let's make it happen, brother. Thanks, man.

[00:43:02] Thanks for joining us today in the physical therapy owners club, the resource for stability and freedom in your PT practice. Reach out and join the network today. Subscribe to our podcast, get links to social media, and access all of our episodes with show notes at PTO club.com.