Top Ten Keys to Effective Sales Techniques
Whether you attend a live event or I come to your practice to train your staff, I teach sales strategies and communication techniques to recognize opportunities, diffuse objections and provide solutions.
Participants will learn the seven fundamentals of a 7 figure practice and the 7 steps to the patient experience–with specific focus on the art of phone skills, converting web leads, high-converting patient consultations, personality types, objection handling, closing strategies, building long term treatment plans and establishing patient retention techniques.
1. Create a Unique Value Proposition and Credentialing
Learning to create and articulate a clear, consistent message around your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) can take the guesswork out of promoting your practice, get your entire team on the same page, and help answer the prospective patients’ questions of “What’s in it for me and why should I choose your practice or provider over another?”
2. Identify Your Ideal Clients
What is your target market? What is your niche? What image do you want your brand to convey? Knowing who you are trying to attract and what you want your brand to convey are critical. Are you in the Groupon mindset? Do you specialize in one thing or everything? Are you a specialist in a specific area? An older demographic or preventative services for millennials? Or, perhaps your niche is injectables or skin resurfacing? Remember – there are riches in niches!
3. Communication Strategy
Learning to match your communication style to your patients’ personality characteristics and needs is key. Understanding the four basic client types and how to acknowledge, validate, engage, listen and respond accordingly to each type can lead to consultations that convert at a much higher rate.
4. Engage Patients More Effectively
Instead of doing all the talking, learn to ask open-ended, engaging questions and then listen. That’s where the magic happens and you are able to gather critical information. Using scaling questions (on a scale of 1-10, how committed are you to getting the results you desire?) can give you a barometer of whether the prospective patient is serious or just shopping around.
5. Increase Retail Sales
Retail sales should account for 15-20% of your overall monthly revenue. The key to a successful retail program is to focus on products that complement your treatments and services. Carefully define what products will enhance your practice; research the options; have the reps come in and do an in-service so you can evaluate the products.
6. Up-Sell and Build Treatment Plans
I always teach that instead of thinking of sales as selling, reframe it to educating your patients. What treatments can you combine that will give the patient a better outcome? Are they on a skin care plan prior to a laser? Are they getting a hydrafacial post the laser or LED light? What value-add services can you educate them about while they are in for a treatment? Something as simple as offering a hydration mask post a resurfacing treatment can extend the effects of the treatment and can add up to additional revenue for your practice. Results = Happy Patients.
7. Enhance the Patient Experience
We all want five-star reviews, but are you providing five-star customer service? Simple things like getting a call back number in case they get disconnected, using someone’s name, or sending a hand-written thank you note are what can set you apart from the competition. It sounds so simple, yet most people don’t take the time to follow up. Remember, people may forget what you say or do, but they remember how you made them feel.
8. Patient Retention
Creating a long-term treatment plan is a key factor in generating ongoing revenue, repurchasing opportunity, and increasing patient retention. The amount spent on skincare is 3x more compared to services, so every procedure should have products and additional procedures to augment sales.
9. Objection-Handling
Viewing objections as opportunities and learning how to tackle the top 5 objections (price, budget, need to think about it, downtime/schedule, and pain/discomfort) are the most valuable skills you can learn. You can use objections to gauge whether or not your patients need more information, more value, more assurance, more confidence or more trust.
10. The Close
Most people get tripped up in the close. The goal is to establish a solid flow that recaps the patient’s wants, provides a solution agreement (treatment plan timeline and cost), outlines pre- and post-procedure protocols, secures a commitment and ends in a scheduled appointment.