Physical therapy marketing is more than going door-to-door to physician
offices. Actually, going door-to-door and pounding the pavement is
NOT fun, and it can be very demeaning.
THERE IS A BETTER WAY.
So how do you
generate new patients then?
IMPORTANT: If you truly
want to know, read this entire page.
THE TRUE STORY
Back in 1998, when my first
practice was failing, everyone including consultants, teachers, family and
friends, told me I needed to get in front of physicians.
So I did.
My practice failed anyways.
I had to close my doors and I was
heart-broken. It took me 2 and 1/2 days to load up the huge Penske truck
with all my belongings (equipment, tables, devices, and more). I was
dirty, sweaty, tired and sore.
(I never wish this kind of failure
upon anyone.)
After saying goodbye to my first
try in the real-world,
my first baby,
I got into the Penske truck and started up the engine. The only problem
was I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I was going to
do.
It was a pivotal moment in my life.
After long and hard contemplation
(as the truck was idling), I made a decision . . . I MUST try again.
(Stay with me, I'm going somewhere
with this.)
I decided to try again BUT this
time, I was going to DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY.
Going door-to-door lead me to
failure, so THIS TIME I was NOT going to leave my office (is what I told
myself). "What did I have to lose?"
"How do you grow a practice
without leaving your office?"
YOU
CAN. I DID.
What happened next, in the journey
of growing my second practice--without leaving my office--was nothing short of a
miracle (for me).
I began discovering things
I never knew existed. I began achieving results that I never dreamed
possible.
Let me share with
you what I did AND what I learned.
1) I learned you can develop a
relationship with a
physician
without EVER meeting them.
2) And if
you send the RIGHT MESSAGES, they will send you patients in return.
3) One of the best ways to send
messages to a physician or their office person (in many cases it's not the
physician who does the referring) is by FAX. They might check their mail 3x per
week, but they check their fax 20x a day!
4) I also learned that getting
patients to bring in another patient with them on their next visit is THE BEST
way to build your business quickly.
5) Your front desk person can make
or break your business!
There is so much more I wish I
could share with you here but it's better if you take my 2-day course. I
offer a 100% money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose.
You might be the best clinician with the greatest manual skills but without enough business
coming in through your doors, you won't make it. It's sad but I've seen this happen. You might know everything there is to know about billing and collections but without enough business you will
ultimately have to close your doors.
What do you do now to improve your
marketing?
First of all, let me start by
saying that you, the owner, the PT, cannot do it all. The amount of things involved
in running a physical therapy business, even a small one, can be quite a lot. All the way
from treating to cleaning, marketing to advertising, to accounting to billing, to training to advertising,
to hiring to bookkeeping, you
can NOT do it all.
It literally takes a minimum of 3
people (wearing 7 different hats) to adequately do all the things necessary to
EFFECTIVELY grow a successful physical therapy private practice (Not
all practices are successful, by the way). If you don't
have enough revenue to hire more people than you have to
FOCUS on the most important tasks and go from there.
Here is a quick list of the most
important physical therapy marketing tasks for a private practice.
But before we continue, there is an
important message below...
IMPORTANT:
Getting
patients to call or come in is ONLY half the battle. You MUST know how
to CONVERT them! Training your receptionist on what to say, how to say
it, and when to say it, makes the difference between a hugely successful
practice and a suffering one.
1. Have something exciting to say. And it can't
be "I'm good with my hands." It's not exciting enough. Most every therapist is good with
their hands in the patient's eyes. Instead, do something such as create a special technique, name it, and build a reputation with it.
Develop a special program specific for a body part or diagnosis. Such as elbow injuries,
neck, back, etc. Name it and create a
demand with it. We can help you develop something VERY EXCITING based on
your interests, skills, and geographic location! Just contact us at
www.IndeFree.com.
2. Advertise it. There are many affordable ways
to accomplish physical therapy advertising that have a high return on the money
spent. We can help with this. Just call us at (800) 801-4511.
3. Promote it.
Create a brochure that details
your special message and start a class or "Open Clinic" that gives your
community a taste of it, then ask them to give your brochures to friends, family
and physicians. This spreads more quickly than you think!
4. Sell it. Charge a one-fee, all inclusive
price to gain access to it. Do NOT charge per treatment but per goal met such as
a 60-day program for $599 and at the end of care they will walk away being able
to sleep through the night pain-free, run pain-free, etc. Make it a
fee-for-service program. If they wish to use insurance they can attempt to get
reimbursement on their own (you give codes). Take a
private practice course to get the
step-by-step training on how to explode your private practice.
Let other tasks wait or delegate them to others.
Don't waste your time on things that do not generate new business. You are
the CEO of your business. Do your job; and let others do everything else.
IMPORTANT: Schedule two hours per week on a specific day to get started on the above tasks. This
is one of the $300-$1,000 per hour tasks that absolutely NEED to be done.
And when done,
generating business will be easier to automate. If you have a good product like
one mentioned above you can eventually automate new business flow. The
alternative is to SIT-n-WAIT for physicians to "send" you patients...which may take
time.
Less than 5% of people who would benefit from physical therapy services
actually get referred for it by physicians. You can tap into the other 95% if you
you have something exciting to offer, and get their attention!
IMPORTANT:
Getting
patients to call or come in is ONLY half the battle. You MUST know how
to CONVERT them! Training your receptionist on what to say, how to say
it, and when to say it, makes the difference between a hugely successful
practice and a suffering one. We can help you train for maximum
conversion.
We will teach you the
secrets to a
successful private practice so you won't have to wait years like
most practices to start making profit! Guaranteed you will be
succeeding more quickly and affordably than any other PT or OT in
your region, or your
money-back!
Occupational therapy services are booming as
well as more and more hand
related injuries are on the rise with the rise of computer use in this nation.
Many OT's are aligning their strengths with physical therapy businesses to share resources and
save money. Beware however because if partnerships are not defined well it could
become a "losing venture" very quickly.
You
have to take it if you want a successful practice.
Its tough to implement it all after each conference, but each
little thing I add or change makes such a big difference.
