Practice Owners Manual Series, Part 5 - Clinical Sales: The Purpose Driven Provider Program With Adam Robin

[00:00:00] We're going to create an environment that we want to create. Like when people call our clinic, we want them to be like, I can tell very quickly, I'm on the phone with Southern Physical Therapy Clinic because they're doing things

[00:00:11] in a very unique way and it's not just like another random office that calling. Right? So like we are like, how do we want them to feel? What do we want to make sure we communicate? What do we want them like? How can we help them better?

[00:00:24] And we're going to take ownership of how they feel. We're going to take ownership of like how they interpret what we're saying. 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

[00:00:43] and insights on how to build successful PT businesses. 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.

[00:00:59] There's plenty of room for you as well. So come on in and join the club. Hello everybody and welcome back to the next episode in our series of the quintessential bulletproof practice owners manual for success. Hopefully you appreciated the previous episode, took lots of notes, did some homework.

[00:01:19] Now get ready to do some more work on your business. Get out, pad and paper and let's go. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am Nathan Shields and got my partner Adam Robin on with me. How you doing, man? What's up, man? I'm doing great.

[00:01:34] Hey, this is cool. We've recorded four episodes so far regarding building out the perfect practice manual. I'm excited about what we put together so far. We went through the foundation of creating your initial entity, your habits for time management and focus, talked about financial mastery

[00:01:55] and the four bucket marketing system. I guess this is part five. If I said part four, I'm wrong. This is our fifth one we've done for so far. This is our fifth one and today is going to be a little bit higher level stuff

[00:02:08] again, but important to implement into the company because it's all about sales and I hate to talk about sales because I know all physical therapists they kind of cringe like I want to be salesy. I don't want to do sales. But you have to.

[00:02:25] I mean, if you're a physical therapist, you're selling a plant of care and if you're not selling a plant of care, you're not fulfilling your purpose as a physical therapist. I mean, there's sales throughout the organization.

[00:02:34] The front desk has to get people in the door to arrive at their visit and there's some kind of sales process going in there. But long story short, part five is all about clinical sales. What do you want to say about clinical sales, Adam?

[00:02:46] Man, you're selling every day. Nathan, what's your favorite place to eat? Favorite place. I'm a Thai food fan, so I don't have a specific place, but if it's Thai food, good Thai food, I'm happy. Yeah. What do you like about Thai food? I love the flavors. It's filling.

[00:03:03] It also feels kind of fresh. Are you selling me on Thai food right now? No, I'm not. You are. But I am. Right? It's great. Yeah. You sell every day. If you've ever convinced anybody, if you've ever sent out a birthday

[00:03:17] card, you're selling people on the idea to like come to your birthday, right? If you've ever convinced anybody like, hey, I think we should go on a double date and like go watch a movie. Like you're selling.

[00:03:26] Hey, I would love for you to come to this concert with me. I think it would be a really fun time. And like you're selling the concert for free. You know what I mean? It's because you actually believe that this would be a valuable

[00:03:38] thing that we could do together, right? I really believe in this product. I believe in this thing. I think it's worth considering because I think it's going to be impactful. I think it's gonna be fun. So I think the first part of sales is to create the right

[00:03:50] mindset around it. Like what we're doing is like number one, the first person that you're going to sell is yourself. Like you've got to remember like after ask yourself, do you believe in what you do? Like do you truly believe that physical therapy, occupational

[00:04:02] therapy, speech therapy, whatever it is that you do is beneficial to the patients you work with? Are you really trying to transform their life? And if the answer is yes, then you have an obligation to try to help them in any way that you possibly can.

[00:04:15] And part of that process is to help orient them to what you do and identify like how you can help them and plug your service in as a solution to help them get what they really want. And that's all that sales is. It's not manipulation.

[00:04:26] It's not trying to trick you. It's I want to help you and I'm very, very committed to that. We're talking about clinical sales, but it's clinical sales colon the purpose driven provider program. And that's the name that you give it in your clinic. Am I right? Correct.

[00:04:44] And what's cool about is it doesn't say sales in it, but it talks about purpose. And like I said, like I gave the example, if the front desk is going to really live out their purpose to a great

[00:04:55] extent, they are going to sell the idea to that person on the phone that they need to come in for physical therapy at the time that they scheduled for it and that they shouldn't cancel or they need to reschedule and

[00:05:07] come in at the frequency that they should come in at. There is a sales process going on, but it's all about how they are living out their purpose at the front desk. It's the same thing with the provider. We don't talk about it as sales when we're talking

[00:05:21] about the plan of care that we're coming up with in an initial evaluation situation, but it is fulfilling our purpose to be successful like getting results with patients, right? That's our job as physical therapists is to help as many people as possible, as much as possible.

[00:05:36] And we do have to quote unquote sell our services during that plan of care presentation so that they come in and get the results that you know, you can get them and it goes further on and we'll talk about it over the course of this podcast episode.

[00:05:49] But I like that you gave it the name the purpose driven provider program. It doesn't use the word sales in it just to hopefully not trigger anyone who's set about potentially selling stuff, but it's helping the clinic and the team

[00:06:03] members within the clinic remember to this is helping us drive the purpose of not only our individual positions, but the purpose of the organization. Our organization is built to help as much as possible to as many people as possible to get the best results,

[00:06:18] the most results from all of the patients that are in our community. And if we're doing that at a high level, then everyone wins. So I love that you tied it back to purpose and and being purpose driven in the title of it.

[00:06:31] Yeah, it's definitely not the trick people into giving you money for no reason program. It's not the be unethical and try to steal people's money when they're not looking program. It's like we're trying to serve massively and the way that we communicate in the way that we align

[00:06:50] like everybody around our purpose and our mission and like the impact that we're really trying to make in people's lives and part of building a great culture is sharing a language of service. Right? Like we need to communicate that we are here to

[00:07:04] help and that we truly want to help you. And that's that's all part of what the sales process is. And by the way, sales also means helping people realize that maybe we're not the best fit for them. It's not only about trying to get the sale and

[00:07:19] try to get that and try to help people. It's also trying to help people realize that. Hey, maybe like this isn't a good fit. Maybe this isn't the right place for you. Maybe you just go back and see your doctor again. Instead. Yeah, maybe you need an x-ray.

[00:07:32] Maybe maybe what we're doing here is really not the best thing for you. And so that's very much a part of the program. And at that point, it really is not sales, but it is closer to driving our purpose. That's right. Right. It's right.

[00:07:47] So where do you start with this? How did you develop your purpose driven provider program for so that every member on your team recognizes their part in the quote unquote sales process? Well, I think step one, like we just mentioned, is always the mindset mindset.

[00:08:05] There's mindsets around sales. There's right mindsets around marketing, mindsets around recruiting mindsets around all that stuff. KPIs production. So the first thing to do is like define it. What is sales? What is it? How do you define sales?

[00:08:22] And what are some of the ways that you can align your team around sharing some language around what sales is and what it isn't? And like what do you want to be known for around sales? And how are you committed specifically?

[00:08:34] Like how are you committed to helping people? And more importantly, how strongly do you believe that what you do can actually help people? And so there's some common language that you'll want to build around that with your team.

[00:08:46] There may be a few books that you want to have referenced in that. Right. And so creating an agreement with your team around what sales is, is the foundation of the program. Yeah. Since you brought it up, the definition of sale is the exchange of commodity for money,

[00:09:03] the action of selling something. So it's an exchange. We're talking about an exchange. And so you want to set that up with the people that you're working with and how that exchange is happening at each interaction. That about right? Is that? Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great.

[00:09:19] And so, you know, another way to define it is, you know, sales is serving others so that we can help them realize what's most important to them and what they really want and then enrolling them in the idea of like taking action towards it.

[00:09:34] Whether that's with us, whether that's without us, that's what sales really is in our practice and in our program. Yeah, casting a vision out there and hopefully defining it well enough so that they also can see the vision for what it is

[00:09:48] and then inviting them to buy into that and working together achieve that vision. Right? That's right. That's another way of defining it, right? That's right. So like we didn't mention, but like in your notebook that you have, right? Got your notebook.

[00:10:03] You got your piece of paper at the top. It's this is page five of the notebook. Page five, right? It's clinical sales program, the purpose-driven provider program. Step one is sales definition. What is sales? It might be worth picking up a sales book

[00:10:15] or two educating yourself on what that is and what it isn't so you can orient yourself to the sales world and you could put some language around that that is specific to your company and then you can share that with your team.

[00:10:27] Start having conversations like that with your team during your team meetings. So that's what you should have like right at the top. Sales, what is sales? What does it do? What do we meant to do? What's our purpose? All right. That's a big part of it.

[00:10:38] Revisit the purpose conversation as well. That's right. And if we get more people, if we are able to attract more people or get more buy-in from more people into our organization, what we're here to do, would that be good for us? Correct.

[00:10:53] And how would that affect our business if we got more people to commit to their idea of physical therapy and showing up all the time? Would that be good for us? Yeah. Can we do better at that? Can we help more people? Yeah. All right.

[00:11:07] And speaking of books, are there any in particular that you came across that you like? Oh man. So the one that comes to mind is sell or be sold by Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone is a controversial figure, but he's written a few books and that's a fantastic

[00:11:26] book that outlines the importance of selling yourself first. So helping you realize that the most important person that you could sell is yourself and that if you don't believe in what you're doing, you're never going to make the impact that you really want to make.

[00:11:40] And when you start establishing that mindset and establishing that belief in your company, it's a really powerful book to help you with that. I had a book and I'm forgetting the name of it. I want to think it's building a story brand. I believe that's it.

[00:11:55] That was great in that it's yeah, building a story brand by Donald Miller and it talks a little bit more about branding, but it also helps you recognize that what people are looking for and in this case, patients clients are looking for is they're

[00:12:10] not looking for a hero. And I love that he lays us out in the first part of the book. They're not looking for a hero. They're looking for a guide because each of us are living our own heroes journey, if you will.

[00:12:22] And we are the heroes of our own story. What we're looking for is a Yoda, a sensei to guide us and direct this and the Obi-Wan, but we're the hero of the story. We're not looking for the hero to come in and slay the dragon for us.

[00:12:36] We want to be the ones to slay the dragon. So as you're approaching sales and I say this because I haven't really read a lot of sales books, but this is the one that might approximate that the most was building a story brand and

[00:12:47] how you can look at a website. And if it's all about, we're the best and we have all these certifications and this is why you need to come see us because we're cooler and we're better and we provide hands-on manual care, which every other therapist says,

[00:13:02] but they're not looking for that. They're looking for, well, you're not talking about my pain points and what I'm looking for. You're all talking all about yourself, right? And so the building story brand long story short building story brand was a book by Donald Miller

[00:13:15] that I appreciated regarding sales. Absolutely. I think the next place to move into is and we alluded, we alluded to this slightly in the last episode, but the next section of your manual is going to be building out that patient life cycle inside your practice and understanding

[00:13:34] what the experience is for your patients when they come in. So patients walk through that door when their first visit. Well, let's back it up. Let's back it up. Let's back it up a little bit. Patients have that first phone call with you or check out your website.

[00:13:49] Right. Right. You could even you could even back it up to the website. But that first, I guess quote unquote air quotes here physical touch point there is going to be that phone call phone call. Right. They're actually communicating with you with somebody who's representing your organization.

[00:14:08] It's important that we have some very distinct language that we choose to use during that call. Because like you said, like we're not the heroes. We want them to feel like the hero. We want them to feel understood. We want to get clear on like what's important to

[00:14:21] them and how we might be able to serve them. There's an outcome that we're looking for in that call. And part of that outcome is going to be number one. What do they really want? Number two, can we help him? And number three, are they scheduling an appointment

[00:14:36] with us? That's the goal. That's the intention. And the only thing that you can do to manipulate or control that outcome is the way that you speak to them. So having some very clear scripting around like what your front office is saying during that call

[00:14:50] is really, really important. This patient experience life cycle is something that I've laid out in the past. It was a number of years ago where I went through it by myself, but each person can do it themselves and I'd recommend they do it and not just look

[00:15:04] for someone else who's already done it because it really doesn't take a long time. But just imagine at what points are we interacting with the patient, the potential patient, the patient and then the discharged patient all along till their balance is finished at zero.

[00:15:19] Well, even after zero is past patient experience. Right? So I think I counted, I don't know about you. I think I counted 13 touch points there. And I think I included maybe the website, but after that was the phone call and after that

[00:15:34] was the first visit and then each subsequent follow-up visit, private support visit, a discharge visit, you name it all the way through billing collections and balance paid off. I think I counted 13. Maybe I'm over speaking it, but a great exercise

[00:15:49] to go through and what we've done in the past and what you're using the same model for, what we've done in the past was how can we better show our values at each of these touch points? And this is something that honestly, I did a podcast

[00:16:03] with Jerry Durham probably four plus years ago all about the patient experience. I mean, we talked all about this. How can we improve? How can we improve the patient experience by showing our values better? How can we make it better for the patient?

[00:16:17] How can they feel our values being lived through this touch point at each point? But what you're saying is taking it just using the same timeframe, the same life cycle to say how can we improve our sales? How can we better show our purpose at this point?

[00:16:34] How can and you're going back to what is the result from this that we want to see? Right. So at that initial phone call, what's the ideal outcome for that and how what kind of language do we need to use in order to achieve that?

[00:16:48] And to speak specifically to that first phone call, it drove me crazy when I didn't have my crap together and people were calling and just asking, do you accept such and such insurance in my front desk person would say, yeah, we do. They're like, great.

[00:17:02] And there you go. I'm like, no, what? You just lost an opportunity. They're not just window shopping. Right, right. Or I've had interviews with Sturdy McKee and he was just like the first question now that first that front desk patients or front patient care providers were mouth

[00:17:20] should not be like, okay, what's in let me get you in the system. What's your name? What's your date of birth? No, this should be a conversation about, well, what are you looking for? What's your problem? Let me see.

[00:17:30] Talk to me a little bit to see if we can help. What would be an ideal situation for? Have you had physical therapy in the past and what's worked for you? What hasn't worked for you? This is what we do.

[00:17:40] And what body part are you working on that kind of stuff would go a long way that one touch point can say a lot about the clinic for the person who is calling in is how they're being treated during that first phone call.

[00:17:53] It's invaluable to really nail that part. Yeah, I think that what helps me kind of wrap my head around it is like we and when I say we like our team, me as the owner and my team, like we're going to take 100% ownership of that experience.

[00:18:10] Like we're going to create an environment that we want to create. Like when people call our clinic, we want them to be like, I can tell very quickly. I'm on the phone with Southern physical therapy clinic because they're doing things in a very

[00:18:22] unique way and it's not just like another random office that calling right. So like we are like, how do we want them to feel? What do we want to make sure we communicate? What do we want them like? How can we help them better?

[00:18:34] And we're going to take ownership of how they feel. We're going to take ownership of like how they interpret what we're saying, like we're responsible for the interpretation. Like we're 100% responsible. So get like really granular in there and make sure that you're like taking ownership there

[00:18:50] and make it good. If you make it really good, you'll get great outcomes and your patients will be super happy. Hey everybody, we finally did it. Finally, we're doing our first in person event, the private practice owners club. First ever in person conference.

[00:19:07] September 20th and 21st in Clearwater Beach, Florida. Adam and I are super excited. Really can't wait to finally meet you in person. This entire time I've been preaching reach out, step out, network and I can now provide that to you, not just virtually or via podcast but in

[00:19:22] person. We'll have speakers that speak on leadership and growth will answer questions to your current issues will provide you opportunity to network like my with like minded individuals and obviously gain inspiration and energy from being in the room with the same people.

[00:19:34] You'll be able to literally reach out, step out and network all in one weekend. September 20th and 21st at the Hyatt at Clearwater Beach, Florida. I would really love to see you there in order to register go to PPO club events.com P P O

[00:19:49] Club events.com and register to sign up for the event also early bird registration ends July 31st. So to get a discount on the registration fees, make sure you sign up, get your room between now and July 31st. Otherwise prices will go up.

[00:20:04] So go to PPO club events.com. Thank you to all of you who have listened for so many years. I would love to find me a true person. I've talked to debills a number of times on the podcast and that first interaction at the

[00:20:32] front desk and it actually ends up being the last interaction as they walk out the door can totally frame the entire experience. You can do magic behind the scenes as far as the physical therapy as far as the therapy goes,

[00:20:46] but if they have a poor experience there at the front desk before or after care, that could totally frame the entire experience right there. No matter how good you are. Yeah. So, you know, on your paper, you've got initial phone call. How do we want them to feel?

[00:21:00] What's the product of that phone call? What's the scripting that we want to make sure we cover? What's the outcome we're looking for? Build that into your practice, standardize it, train your front desk on it. This is what we say. This is how we address this question.

[00:21:11] This is how we say it. This is the purpose. This is our purpose. Here's our here are some FAQs be prepared to answer them that kind of stuff. So there probably are 13, but what we're going to do is go through six. We'll do six big touch points.

[00:21:25] The big deals. Right? The second touch point there is going to be the intake process. We all know about that intake paperwork. There's probably, if I had to guess, there's probably some really important information that you would want the patient to understand during that intake process.

[00:21:41] Really, we won't be very clear about what's expected, about what is owed, about what they can expect from us. How to behave here. How not to behave here? We also want to give them clarity on, you know, like this is what you wear when you come to therapy.

[00:21:55] Right? This is going to be your therapist. You're going to be here for an hour. All those things, the intake process is really, really important because that's a big place where you get to educate. You get to educate your patient and when you

[00:22:06] can, when you can really pour into them at that touch point and really provide them with massive amounts of education and serve them at a high level, then the amount of confusion that they have during their stay with you, it's going to be, it's

[00:22:18] going to be a lot lower. And when they're not confused, they're able to sit there and relax and get served by your clinicians so that intake process is really important. It's huge and you can imagine that it's similar to onboarding a team member to your team that

[00:22:32] I know you do this because I've seen you do it and that is this is what it looks like to have a successful physical therapy experience and educating them on that. And if your front desk is giving them a taste of

[00:22:46] what they're going to hear at the initial evaluation, that's going to be super strong in that this is how you can guarantee greater results, best results from physical therapy. And that is you're going to come at the frequency that you're supposed to come at.

[00:23:01] You're going to give them updates on the things that you've done, that you haven't done and how you're feeling at that time and you're going to come and you're going to complete the entire prescription or plan of care that the therapist provides for you.

[00:23:15] People who do this, who come at that frequency communicate well with their providers and come for the full plan of care are, I want to say the numbers like 60% more likely to be successful in the results that they get from physical

[00:23:28] therapy. And if they can hear that from a non-provider and then that is doubled down with so it's not the first time that they hear it when the provider says that to them at the initial evaluation could be huge. I just think stacking the same verbiage on

[00:23:42] top of each other really hits it home to the patient as they're coming in the door. So having the front desk person talk to them about what a successful experience looks like can be great and they might even have to remind

[00:23:55] them as they're coming back out of the initial evaluation to schedule their appointments. Okay, remember we really want you to come into the frequency. What was the frequency that they recommended? Okay, we really will to get the best results, the maximum results.

[00:24:08] You're going to want to come at that frequency right for that period of time. So having that kind of language can also really help at the front desk to prepare the patient to buy into whatever the physical therapist is about to present to them. Yep, love it.

[00:24:22] You're teeing them up man. Like are there any questions? Is there any confusion? How can we support you here? Right? So you do that really, really well serve them well. They come in. It's like, oh man, this is exactly. I'm super clear. Right?

[00:24:37] I'm super clear on like where I'm at and who these people are and what's expected of me and what I can expect. Like I am just so prepared. Next thing you know is the next touchpoint is the initial evaluation at that point.

[00:24:48] That person, that patient is handed off to your clinician and there's a right. Everybody that's an owner, you have your secret sauce way of delivering the initial evaluation. Right? Of course, you're going to have your SOAP, your soap node and you're going to set some goals.

[00:25:04] You're going to do your PT thing, but you're also going to communicate in a way that's very specific to you. You want to make sure that you're listening in a way that's very unique so that you can capture the information that's important to you.

[00:25:15] You want to make sure that you communicate specific things during that eval to make sure that you're managing any any questions or any confusion that they have. Right? You want to make sure that that person is fully served and supported. They feel heard.

[00:25:27] They there's a lot of trust built. So there's a way of doing this that you have inside your head. A lot of challenges I see with younger owners is they they have a hard time letting go of this to other providers because they're not quite.

[00:25:43] They don't have this documented. They don't have this kind of systemized yet because they're so concerned about like, Hey, I want to make sure that this PT is delivering maximum quality just like I do. And so the way to do that, the solution

[00:25:55] is that is to get this out of your head and to get it on paper. So it's like, what is your subjective like? What do you say? Why do you say it that way? What are you hoping to achieve there? What outcome are you looking for?

[00:26:05] What is your objective look like? How long does it take? How many special tests do you do? Why? How do you set goals? How do you close it? How do you solidify that buy-in? And when you can outline that during the initial evaluation with some loose

[00:26:16] scripts and some ideal outcomes and questions that you that you that are important to you and you can train your team on that. You can develop a consistent product for your patients. So that initial evaluation is huge for any practice. This was a really real hard point for

[00:26:33] me to understanding and finally come around to in that I had a coach decade plus ago telling me the same thing. She said, you need to videotape your initial evaluation and see what you do uniquely well because I don't think I'm alone. You're in the same boat.

[00:26:50] The owner of the practice typically has the best productivity numbers. Am I wrong? They care a lot. You probably have the best arrival rate. You probably have the patients that come at the best average frequency. They probably come for the longest period of time because they've bought

[00:27:08] into you. But the reason why it was a hard thing for me is real real sticking point is because I didn't think that anything I was doing was very uniquely different than anyone else because it comes second nature to me like this is just how it's done.

[00:27:22] This is this is how isn't this how everybody does it? I mean, it's just everyone and I had that attitude as I was bringing on the providers and they didn't have the same productivity stats that I did is like, what are you guys doing?

[00:27:34] I mean, are we all not doing the same thing here? No, we weren't because they weren't me and I didn't train them on what it was that I did to get those engagement numbers. And so like you said, having some kind of loose script is really

[00:27:48] important especially if you're at a smaller scale where there's maybe one to three providers, including yourself. Another way to do this with something that I did with Tom Dolonzo or that Tom Dolonzo Baker shared is because he had the experience where he was bringing

[00:28:03] on these other providers and other physicians were not were referring patients over to his practice and telling patients, you need to go see Tom. And so when they came to the practice, they were expecting to see Tom and not the other providers

[00:28:15] and he was able to wasn't able to get separation from him and his therapists and the doctors minds. Right? Everyone experiences this, I think to some extent. And what he did is we he got his team together and this was over the course of many weeks and

[00:28:29] months was they decided that they were going to have a standard way of doing things across their practice during initial evaluation and specific to each a major body part. This is the home exercise program that we're going to all agree is kind of our beginning in the

[00:28:45] back and the back and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we're going to figure that out. So this is standardized. We come to agreement. This is our protocol. Very rare exceptions. Do you go off of the protocol? You can add some things to it,

[00:28:58] but this is our basic standard of care for each of these. According to our practice that way when someone gets over gets referred over from the physician. It's not just Tom who is providing unique care that no other provider can provide, but everyone

[00:29:12] but Tom and everyone else is going to provide the same pretty much the same care and to your point, they're going to use some of the same verbiage. They're going to agree that we're a three time a week clinic or with these cases, we are two

[00:29:23] times a week or they're going to have some kind of agreement, some standard of care to the practice and that can go a long, long way. If you're looking, especially if you're looking to expand, if you want to stay a small practice might not matter too much,

[00:29:38] especially if each provider has a unique specialty. But if you want to have more than a couple of providers, I'll providing the same niche of care and wanting to go beyond the clinic to maybe a second or third clinic, that standard of care in the verbiage that

[00:29:53] you're talking about having that script is vital. You want them to have, I don't want to make it sound cheap, but you want to have the McDonald's experience where it's systematized. We know we can punch patients in and get these results because we're all saying these scripts

[00:30:07] using these scripts using the same recipe, if you will. Yeah, if you really, really care about your patients and your team, you just got to do this. Like what a, this is a massive way to serve them each. Like you're giving your team

[00:30:23] so many tools and you're giving your patients this amazing experience. Like I've seen new grads, like new grads that we've hired two months into their training, just like they look like seasoned like rock stars because they're so trained. They're so trained on like how we do things

[00:30:44] and they're so bought in. It's like confident, secure, like powerful. And then like you walk in the clinic and like I haven't been to the clinic in two months and they're like Adam, the patients, they're like Adam, like I just want to say, man, you're therapists.

[00:31:00] They're just, they are amazing. They are just, I cannot tell you how much like they are just amazing. I don't know what you guys do here. I'm like, yeah, I know what we do here. You know what I mean? It's just incredible. It's incredible.

[00:31:12] It's like it's a really valuable thing. Yeah. And if you're talking about the patient experience, we're talking, I know we're talking about the initial evaluation here, but in general, I have had coaching clients in the past that say, I might, you know, are my patients love it here?

[00:31:27] My providers love it here. And I don't know what it is that brings people back and the exercise I gave them was ask the patients, why did the patients love being here? What do they notice? Why do they come across town to come

[00:31:41] and see you or even ask the providers? What do you guys think? What do we do differently here? You've been to, you've worked in other practices. What do we do differently here? That makes you happy, makes the patients happy, that it and you know what?

[00:31:55] When you get some of those answers, see if there's any way you can automate it, systematize it to keep it going. So it doesn't fall out. So in that instance, they did want to say once a quarter. I don't think it was once a month,

[00:32:09] but maybe once a quarter, they all agreed on a charity that they were going to work with whether it was doing a 5k or a food drive or you name it, that kind of thing. So they, that was kind of their team building experience for the providers.

[00:32:22] And when the patients came in, everyone knew their name and they called them by the first name. Hey, hello. Duh, duh, duh, duh. For us, it was we had a whiteboard and we put like the riddle of the day or the joke or the trivia of the day

[00:32:34] and we had TVs and I know in Will's clinic at 10 a.m. They're going to watch the prices right as a clinic while they're doing their therapy. So if 10 or 10 a.m. came around even the patients would be like, hey, it's 10 a.m. Where's the prices right? Right.

[00:32:49] And they'd answer some of the questions and stuff and that all of that was systematized. We had, there was going to be someone in charge of putting the riddle of the day up on the whiteboard. There was going to be someone in charge

[00:32:59] of finding the charity for the next quarter and making sure that everyone was bought in. So those are all things that can't that need to be systematized. I'm going past the eval a little bit here, but to the greater patient experience.

[00:33:11] These are all things that need to be dialed in. Dialed in. So we've got phone call, initial phone call, valid in intake process, initial evaluation. And then there's I consider those two different things. What's that? The initial intake at the front desk and for sure. VAL right.

[00:33:32] And then the initially VAL right. And like a couple of things in between there, like what about your confirmation call before the initially VAL? What is that look? That's I only bring that up because that's how I got to 13. There's also the confirmation calls.

[00:33:46] The email that you send, the email that you send like, Hey, I hope your first visit was good. If you have any questions, make sure you contact blanky blank and your home exercise program is important. That's like a formula to template and thing that goes out. Right.

[00:33:58] Those are also touch points. And I think that's how I got to 13. So the next I'm going to do two. The next two in a row is going to be similar. You're going to have the check-in or the progress note. Right. Well, the yeah, for in the

[00:34:14] I also had a separate one for the daily visit. Correct. So like you'll have your daily followups. What is the visit? The subsequent regular visit going to look like. That's another touch point. But yeah, let's move forward to the progress report. Right.

[00:34:26] And then you're going to have the big touch point of the check-in. So it's almost like the reeval. It's like, All right, let's see how you're doing. Hey, what's up? What's going on here? Then the next major touch point after that would be the discharge.

[00:34:37] And I think that the mistake that we make that I've made is we treat the progress note in the discharge kind of like a daily note. It's kind of like, Hey, Nathan, come on in. Let me take some range of motion. All right, jump on the bike.

[00:34:49] Let's let's get going. It's like, No, have a conversation with the patients. You know what I mean? Make sure we're asking them like, Hey, what's your experience like with us? How are things going here? Like from curious, Nathan, like from zero to 10,

[00:35:00] like how would you rate your experience with us? Is it is it? Are we hitting a home run? Are we hitting a single or hitting a double? Like, Is there anything we can do to get better here? Are we always satisfying your needs? Here's another great question. Hey,

[00:35:11] would you be willing to refer a friend or family member to us? Right? Probably a pretty cool question. Like, so if I have a progress note with a patient like I would expect that my therapist would actually have a sit down and look this

[00:35:24] patient in the eye and review their progress and like have that like, Hey, are we hitting home runs with with you? Like what's going on? Same thing with the discharge, right? You're going to have that touch point where it's like, Hey, these are all the things we've accomplished.

[00:35:39] Is there anything that we're missing? Would you consider this a home run? Oh, really? Home runs 10 out of 10. Fantastic. Would you be willing to like leave us a review or a testimonial about your experience with us? Would you be willing to share your experience with your position

[00:35:51] that referred us? All really important things. So those two touch points are really, really important as well. Yeah, I think they are super important because you want to you really want to highlight the progress that they've made because it's our human nature to focus on what's still left.

[00:36:06] I'm not where I want to be and because I'm not where I want to be, I'm upset about it or yada, but we don't recognize the game that we made in the past. And so you want to really highlight the game you made

[00:36:17] in the past with the intervention that you provided like, Oh, well look at these objective numbers. You were here and now you're here. Here are these functional tasks that you can do that you couldn't do before and to show the value that you're providing.

[00:36:30] So you kind of have to retrain the patient to see the success that's been achieved over that time. And I think it's important to have the conversation like you're talking about simply because I think we are losing our, what's the word? Not losing trust. That's too strong,

[00:36:48] but we're losing the battle if a patient is coming in and saying how much longer do we got? If they're saying that I'm assuming it's coming from a place of I don't know if I want to keep doing this and it seems like there's no end in sight.

[00:37:01] And if you're hearing that, I would say that you're probably failing in the communication side of things as the provider because you're not giving you're not telling them where they are in the course of the care. And if you're just having them come in and go come in

[00:37:17] and go and they do their thing and they leave and they're not communicating well according to our expectations, you were probably about 40% of the way there 50% of the way there. You should be able to be able to do that as a provider. And say we want we're expected.

[00:37:33] We agreed at the initial evaluation that you wanted to achieve these functional tasks. You can only do these functional tasks so far pain free. We want to get you there and even further because you might regress after physical therapy. So you're only about 40-50% of the way there,

[00:37:48] which means we're expecting our initial plan was to have you come in for three weeks that at your current progress rate, we either need to see you more frequently or we need to plan on seeing you another an extra two to three weeks.

[00:38:01] Now those kind of conversations need to have be had on a regular basis or only every visit because they want to know where they're at in terms of how much therapy they really need. Yeah, at that point it's and this is why sales is important.

[00:38:15] This is a sales process. It's like you helping them understand how what they are doing is going to positively improve their life and help them get to what they want to do so they can understand the value and they can they

[00:38:30] can buy into the idea of doing it unless they're just like, you know what? I don't want to do this. Like that's a different story, but like that's part of what sales is. You're helping them see why this is important. So yeah, really, really important touch points.

[00:38:43] You want to make sure that you're capturing the buy-in and then you're capturing the positive testimonials there. The final one is is the follow up, right? Patients being gone, they're discharged. Our thing is like once a patient always a patient.

[00:38:56] Once you step foot in our family in our clinic, you become family. We're going to call you. So there should be some periodic touch points that you have with those patients after they leave your clinic. And ideally, they should be some phone calls, not just

[00:39:10] phone calls, but maybe some emails, maybe some text messages too. And it's like, Hey, Mrs Smith, how are you doing? It's really like, listen, I hope you're doing fantastic. Tell me a little bit about what's going on in your life. How's the shoulder?

[00:39:20] Is there anything I can do to support you today? And so there's some communication there. That's important. Like what's our what are we trying to do here? How can we support them? A lot of times, not all the times, but sometimes you'll

[00:39:30] find that maybe there's opportunities for you to serve them more. Maybe there's a new issue that they're dealing with. Perhaps they have a family member that they want to refer to you and worst case scenario, if none of that's

[00:39:41] true, maybe you could just get to say, Hey, I really appreciate you. And if there's anything you need, we'd love to support you show some gratitude to him. So having that follow up is really, really important. I can keep them in the life cycle and that you

[00:39:53] can be there when when they're ready, when they're ready to be served. Well, this is where we where physical therapists can truly devolve into a commodity. If it's just one and done like we treat you for your knee and we never see you again.

[00:40:06] That's when patient later down the road is going to have a shoulder issue and they're just going to go wherever the physician tells them. It's with these follow ups where you act like the dentist. I usually when a person has a dentist, they have a dentist.

[00:40:22] They don't bop around to different dentists all the time. They want to stick with one and this is how you avoid becoming a commodity and become that patients physical therapist that family's physical therapists hopefully for life. And and that's how you do it. You maintain communication.

[00:40:39] You say, Hey, how are you doing? Hey, how's the puppy? I'm sure it's full grown now. Super fun. Right. How's the vacation to Italy? Yada, yada, yada. Anything else going on that we can help you out with or you're doing okay? How's the family? Right.

[00:40:51] That's how we maintain that place in their lives and they know, like and trust us. And when they have something else come up, but they're going to come back and see us and not wherever the doctor wants them to go. Love it man.

[00:41:03] So your final product today is your piece of paper with the clinical sales or some type of name at the top. Section one is going to be your mindset and your beliefs and your definitions of around what sales is. You're going to create some alignment with

[00:41:16] your team around what that is. Section two, maybe a handful of books that are really relevant that help you and your team develop a framework around sales. And then section three is going to be mapping out that patient life cycle at minimum initial

[00:41:33] phone call intake, initial evaluation, progress note discharge and follow up minimum and developing strategic language communication and outcomes that you're looking for with those interactions and standardizing that across your clinic with all your providers. And I would add, I would add just making sure

[00:41:51] their standardized communication from the billing collections team as well. Sometimes we think that they are outside of us, especially if they're a third party, even if they're in house, but you want to make sure that their language is following in line

[00:42:03] with the values of the company and that they're because they're a representative of you even if you're hiring that out and you want to make sure that's aligned and then they're using the proper language. Love it. Rock and roll man. Yeah. Part five in the books.

[00:42:16] I think we're, I don't know, even know for halfway there to this to this drop is so much value here man like gosh. There's a lot more to come. Lot more. So much more. Stay tuned. All right. Cool man. Thanks again.

[00:42:30] We'll see you next time on the podcast. All right, buddy. Have a good day. See bro. 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.

[00:42:47] Subscribe to our podcast, get links to social media and access all of our episodes with show notes at ptoclub.com.