Sales Secrets to more Cash Patients

Hey, it's Aaron. Today what I want to do is talk about the three sales secrets signing even more cash paying patients. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the like subscribe and click the notification bell. My name is Dr. Aaron Labourer. I'm a physical therapist. I'm a cash practice owner. I've owned a cash practice physical therapy cash practice since January 2009. I started my first cash business which was a massage therapy business in 1999. Um, I've started cash like a massage business in San Francisco in 99, in San Luis Obispo in 2003, in Greensboro 2005 and then went back to PT school and started my physical therapy cash practice in 2009. So we graduated in December and I started in January. I've never worked for another person as a physical therapist like treating patients. And since that time I've helped launch, personally launch thousands of physical therapy cash practices. So many so that people have been in business for a decade that I've helped them start their businesses. They're out there helping other people start businesses, they're helping other people learn more about physical therapy, their body, creating online courses, etc. It's really crazy to look back and think that I had any hand in any of that stuff. And I think it's, it's not that I have like this special secret sauce. Although, you know, I'd like to think I do. We all like to think I do. It's that, you know, I think the big thing was I came from another industry, saw some things that were missing in pt, started sharing wins and lessons and encouraging people. And through trial and error, in my own clinic across the street, many people I know, we've perfected a system for launching and scaling, you know, six figure, multi six figure and million dollar cash practices. So today what I want to do is talk to you about really the three secrets to signing more cash patients. And it's not about the marketing and it's about your, a little bit about your mindset and around money and sales. But there's a simple process we'll go through and I'll, I'm going to draw some things out for you as well. Most people think to get more new patients is the answer. Like my bank isn't doing right and I'm even going like, oh, my bank's not growing, I need to get more clients. Yes, that's like a thing you got to put. I was on a call yesterday in my coaching group, like, well, how many leads are you getting per month? Maybe we just need more leads. And at a certain point there is a place to get more new leads. And as people are starting their businesses and growing and scaling, especially coming from a healing profession like physical therapy, occupational therapy, massage therapy, chiropractic, etc. Where healthcare should be a right, but it really, it's a privilege. And why should people pay me a lot of money for healthcare when they should? It should be covered. Like that's really, that's kind of how we're trained in our expectation with health insurance. We all feel that actually selling and charging high prices is the wrong thing to do. If you've ever felt that, that it's wrong to charge more, it's scary to charge more. People aren't going to like you or they're going to, you know, leave. You can comment me below. I'd love to know. I mean, I know it happens to everybody whether you admit it or not. We can talk about that. And we put all our Platinum Mastermind members through this extensive, I wouldn't call it a mindset program. It's just like we have to retrain you on how to think about money and sales and what you're worth. So yes, you do need more new patients coming in the door to grow and scale your business. Absolutely. But if there was something getting started or when you're starting in our program and you're doing well, something we need to really go fix, it's the sales and enrollment process. Because your marketing's only as good as your sales process. Like you can go out and pay for a ton of Facebook ads, but if you can't convert the leads that you get into sales, like you're wasting your money. And this is one of the big problems with the agencies coming around and going, hey, I can, doctor, can I bring you 50 leads this month? I don't know. I'm somehow I'm on the chiropractic list, I'm on the gym list. I'm all, these are the lists where people are like, hey doctor, can we bring 50 people to you for decompression this month? And I'm like, I'm not a chiropractor. Like, I'm not a gym owner. You have to have a sales process. So any of my coaching or consulting clients who've gone out to run ads or agencies, and they're like, hey, we can bring you lists, bring you leads. I'm like, the big thing you need to do is not just bring someone leads, you need to help them enroll these people into cash paying programs. So if you're losing sales to, like, insurance, like, the insurance. Objection. I need to use my insurance or it's expensive. Or I need to ask my wife or my husband. I need to ask my partner. Spouse. You're not going to grow your business like you want, and you're not going to earn the money that you think you should or that you deserve. So, you know, that's a. Those are these common objections, right? And if we, we're losing sales and we just go pile marketing on, we pile in Facebook ads and social media stories, it's only gonna make that problem worse. You're just gonna hear it more. And it doesn't do anything to fix the problem. It's kind of like patient come in and saying, you know, I've got knee pain and we just rub a bunch of like, icy Hot on it and do some ultrasound. Like, we're not actually fixing the problem. We're just rubbing lotion and sound waves. That hurts. When. As physical therapists, we know if we take you through a comprehensive evaluation, I'm going to figure out it's either a dorsiflexion problem, a hip stability problem, or maybe you, maybe you do have some arthritis. I don't know, like, but you know what? Arthritis gets better with movement anyways. And if I can get you more comfortable moving, like, I can help people run, jog, play lacrosse, run a marathon hike, a, you know, a 10 mile uphill hike with knee or hip arthritis. Like, I've done it hundreds of times with my patients, but it's because what we did in our clinic was start address the root cause of the problem, not just the symptom. Okay, making sense so far. So the real problem is you were never taught business and even sales in PT school. Because PT school doesn't teach you to run a business. It teaches you to be a competent physical therapist and not, like, kill your patients. Right? Everyone thinks that new grads shouldn't start a cash practice and blah, blah, blah, but yet the stretch zone these guys haven't been to, just been to a weekend certification course can stretch people with all kinds of problems. And yet, as physical therapists, we're telling our new grads, who are doctors that you shouldn't start a business because you don't know how to treat patients. Like, that's a load of horse hooey. I'm going to keep the language in check today. This is exactly why we teach all of our platinum Mastermind coaching members this exact sales formula I'm going to share with you today. And we work together to level up their money mindset and set bigger goals and understand, you know, why this is important. Like, we've just got a few minutes today. I'm not going to spend a couple hours with you right now. There's just a couple minutes in the time we have. I'm going to give you the best thing I got. I'm gonna give you everything I can in the next few minutes and show you like this 30,000 foot view of the sales process. And at the end, if you'd like some more help to install these systems in your business, I'm gonna show you where to go get some help. So like in our training program, one of the first things that I do with all our member, all our members is we put them through a course that I create. It's called Ethical influence. And majority of the course is me really showing you and helping you understanding really, I mean, convincing you that charging higher prices is, is your ethical obligation. Because we can go around charging $75, even 150 in places like $150 in New York City isn't going to cut it. $75 in Greensboro isn't going to cut it. Like you can't grow and scale a business that big. And people come to me all the time saying, oh, I can't afford coaching or I can't afford to invest in my business. I can't afford to. But they're charging so little that the numbers that they're calculating what they can afford are so small because they're not charging the right prices, they're not playing the right game, they're not in major leagues, they're in like Little League, you know, hitting, trying to hit a small ball with a little bat or I don't know, that's not the right analogy. But this sales formula, it works, it feels ethical when it's done right. You know, it's all about asking for permission. Okay. And what I want, you understand, is that if you know that physical therapy or occupational therapy or whatever therapy, massage therapy and massage therapist, contact me this morning for help on Instagram. Whatever your therapy is, it's not about the therapy, it's about the results you help people get. But if you know that you can help, you can truly help people make a significant change in your life. It's your ethical obligation to learn sales and install this system into your business. Okay? So to sign more new cash paying patients, there's three things you need and you need to build a bulletproof enrollment system. So there's Three things you need. So let me just show you. Let me just kind of draw like a little thing here. So if we're going to do sales, and these are ethical sales, right? We want to feel ethical. There's three things you need, you need, you need to learn the enrollment equation. Okay? The enrollment equation is, it's a formula and sales script that I teach so that when you're really pitching the sale or pitching your offer or really letting someone know exactly what they need to do, like what your recommendation is, we're anchoring what they truly want to the cost, not your time or therapy, to the cost. So it's hard to explain, but value is perceived. And if we just say, yeah, it's, you know, $250 per hour, people are like, oh my God, like $250 an hour, I can get this for a copay down the street. But if we say, hey, Mrs. Jones, based on what you've shared with me, our return to, you know, our back to the box program is just $1,500 or just $1,800 or even just $3,000. And it's designed to help you get back to the gym, run faster, longer and stronger so you can get home with a clear head and feel like a good role model for your daughter without worrying about injuring your back again and needing to stop crossfit like the surgeon told you. How does that sound? And they go, great. And they're agreeing to the goals that they want. And then from there it's like we're anchoring the price to the goals and their agreement to their goals. And then they're not concerned with how much it is per visit. And comparing that to the copay down the street, they're thinking, oh, like if you can help me climb the two story, walk up and sit on the ground with my grandkids. And that's only going to cost me 1500 bucks or 2,500 bucks because I haven't been able to do that in six months to a year. Like, that's absolutely worth it. So that's the enrollment equation. Before we do the enrollment equation, what we really need to have is we need to install an application funnel. An application funnel is basically a survey, a questionnaire that people fill out before you get on the phone to talk to them. And what it does, and it's not just the survey, there's a, there's a follow up email to it, there's a landing page to it. Basically what it does is people go out of their way to give you information ahead of time, which starts to buy them into the process. Then we move them from and we do this in our coaching business and in our clinic where you apply to join us really like you like. So for the Platinum Mastermind, there's an application and you apply to join us. Then we get on a call with you and we talk about your, your obstacles, struggles, goals, dreams. And if we're a good fit to work together in the clinic, there's a, and it was called, not called an application form, but it's a total body diagnostic request. A total body diagnostic or asked to speak to a therapist. And it's the same thing, it's an app. It's like a form, ask them questions about what happened, you know, when did it happen, where does it hurt, what would they like to be doing instead? You know, how they find out about us, when's a good time for a call back. And a few other questions. These are kind of qualifying questions and they give us this information. We get an email so then we can then follow up with people and they get an email letting them know that we got their request. So that if they sent this in on a Saturday night, they know we're not going to call them back till Monday. And there's this follow up email process to this so that you get in, we do a phone call, we go from a phone call to an in person visit and, and then at that in person visit, that's when the enrollment equation comes through. Okay. So that's the application file. This is something we put on the websites and it's something that we can actually really set up the bones for you. We just have to install it in your business. It's not as hard. Like I've got a whole template that I can just give you. We put you on our software and it's up on your website and boom, voila, it's there. But you need an application funnel. We need that follow up email and we need to have like you and your staff and or your staff trained on the scripts for making the phone calls and booking the appointments, etc. Okay. But then before that, what we need is we need to build an irresistible offer. Those are three things. For sales, for ethical sales is we need to have an irresistible offer. An irresistible offer. There's multiple offers that you need to make. You know, like I need to make you some kind of offer to watch this video, right? The headline needs to be good enough. The first minute or 30 seconds, 10 seconds of video needs to be good enough. The subject line needs to be good enough. The link on the website needs to be good. So there's multiple irresistible offers. But there's this pathway and what we do is we have a specific training on doing this and we'll build multiple offers. And it looks something like, you know, is the offer to the offering process to create a workshop at the local yoga studio. And then there's the offer to move people from the work to get people to the workshop, but really get people from the workshop into your clinic and then from that, that visit in the clinic into a plan of care. But really the areas this will offer can be your lead magnet, it can be your workshop, but just to get to the workshop, then we have to have an offer. So what we typically do, we'll find someone who is an influencer in town, like the business owner of the gym or someone who runs, let's say we've got a client who has like a beauty counter group or maybe you have a doterra group and you invite them in and we teach a yoga class and we can do like a pain and injury Q and A. One of the most effective things we've done lately is with like the fitness franchises is do injury assessments where people will sign up and we'll do a five minute injury assessment. We do that when we go to a marketing event or a fair, like a run as well. We do injury assessments and that's a five minute conversation. And then really the offer is, it's built on asking permission. And we'll make an offer to come into our clinic for a total body diagnostic for people that we think we can help who need, we need to be able to really get our hands on them, take them through a couple screens and tests and then, and then. So that moves them from the irresistible offer and then from there, the application funnel. They may not go fill out the application, but we'll call them and fill that out while they're on the phone. And then we'll move them into this total body diagnostic and put them into the enrollment into a plan of care. So that's how it goes. Boop. Like that. So let me see if I can put a little green arrow in here. You know, go like this. Okay. Oops, that's the wrong direction. Like this. Okay. And we were going boom, boom, boom. And those are the three steps. There's a lot more details in there. Even when you, even when you have these three steps here, I'll show you one other, another part of it. But even when you have these three steps installed I'll show you where they belong in their overall roadmap. You're never going to close 100%. Like you can't help everybody. It's just impossible. It's really not. It's not something you should expect. You're never going to close 100% of your sales. Okay, so people are going to say no. Who is it? I was listening to npr. I think it's Guy Ross does How I Built this. And he was interviewing Tope Iowanda. Yeah, Guy Raz. He's interviewing Tope. What's his name? Tope Iowanda. He's the founder of Calendly Awatona. Tope Awatona. A W O T o N a. He's a Nigerian entrepreneur. He built Calendly. I mean, it's crushing it, like billion dollar business. Before that, he was going. When he was in college, he was working door to door as a salesman for adp selling security alarm systems. Right. Can you imagine going door to door these days and trying to sell something? People are like, what are you doing coming to my door? No one goes door to door anymore. I mean, I don't know when he. I mean, I'm sure this was like 15 years ago, but still. Like, did you. I went to college in the late 90s and yeah, people were going door to door, but very few. Not like in the 80s, but just imagine. But he knew it was a numbers game that it was all about, you know, he just needed to knock on 100 doors a day. You know, one of our Platinum Mastermind members, Michael Murphy. Sorry, like all the things in my brain, like, Michael Murphy was really great at this. He knew, I mean he would just go out and get workshops booked and just crushed. It went from like 0 to 20k in a year. You know, doing, doing this. He moved to a brand new town, he joined our Mastermind and two months later opened his business and at the end of the year was doing 18, 20K because he just knew that it was a numbers game. He would go and run workshops and run injury assessments. He was a connector. He was networking, he was moving people into his program who needed it and building his business. We got Owen Johnson did 245k his first year, mainly from connecting with other gyms and business owners in northern north part of San Diego. And they know it's like hard. They're running workshops all the time. But they're, but the marketing works, the networking works because they both built this bulletproof sales system on the back end. It's one of the very first things that we did in each of their businesses. I've got dozens of other stories like it. But if, but just know like if you're closing a hundred percent, you might be sitting here going, oh, but Aaron, everyone says yes. Either you're not charging enough or you're not marketing hard enough and growing like you should. So if you're closing a hundred percent, we either need to raise your rates and or put in even more robust marketing. Because what good, what good is your therapy if you're not helping as many people as possible? Because if you know it works and it helps people truly, then we need to go out and help even more people. So once you put in the sales system, you're going to need to learn how to conquer sales. The objections and eventually you'll get busy that you'll need to put in systems to hire another PT because a waiting list isn't doing anyone any good. So let me show you one more thing where this kind of thing fits in. This is our platinum mastermind roadmap that we give all our, you know, we take all our members through. And I want you to see. Let's see. I think this is it. Oops. Well, yeah, so this is what we just talked about right there. So what we do a lot of time is look at, you know, if there's this whole like how you launch your business, setting up your emr, getting PT email engine and dptpreneur going. We've got some other these systems and scale strategies but we've got the marketing and the, and the sales part pieces. I just want to let me choose a nice color purple. So we need to know who, we need who we're targeting. This is a Dream 100 is a organic marketing strategy. And then we need to do more organic leads, we need to run workshops and events. But we can go do these all day long and we can spend a lot of time on the logistics over here. But if we don't actually do have a good sales system, it's going to be really hard to make it up to this next level and hit 10k and go to six figures. Like you might be able to do six figures without this. And if you are, just imagine if we put this in your business, how fast you'll move up the ladder here. Because I can take people in who are doing 70k and they have no sales system and we install a sales system and maybe you're doing enough volume that we only need to take you from an average of $85 collections of visit to 100 and add a couple extra hundred thousand dollars to your business a year. It's really powerful what this will do when done right and set up correctly. So as you can see like so here's just a little thing, what we do three times a year we meet and will choose one or two projects every three months to make your business better and one or two projects for the next three months to make more money. And every three months we create a new game plan. We create a customized game plan for each of our clients. I also just show you while I'm here, I've got an online business roadmap as well. I've helped people go from 0 to 6,000amonth, from 3 to 20,000amonth. You know, make 40k in a week and scale their online business to, I don't know, 30k, 40k, 50k months and more. So this is this a very similar roadmap. We're going from the bottom right to the upper left. If you're just getting started, you need time to build an email list and online goodwill. Just know that it can be from here to here. There's a lot of things to work on and even just these projects here for a clinic, there's more than just one project in each of these. There's lots of little things to do. But there was just three things to work on. It would be these that I showed you. Like I said, once we get these in, you'll need to really focus on how to conquer the objections. And then what do we do when we get busy enough? I've got three or four clients right now who are starting to get wait lists in their cash practice. They're running out of time because their practice is growing so quickly because of we fix the sales systems and some of them we haven't even done all the marketing and the sales system just built them up. Matt Audia out in San Diego has a neuro practice and he's been busy for the last six months. He almost closed down his practice and then he joined the group and got so busy fixing some of these like sales systems and bottom line things. I mean he's been in business for 10 years doing multiple six figures a year but now he needs to hire someone and the bottleneck has been finding the right candidates because he was busy and he needs more time. We got him time back with a VA and now he's got a couple interviews this week and then once he gets some time off, now we're going to go implement the marketing pieces which is incredible. I've got other clients who just have a wait list. And it's because, you know, like, finding the right person isn't always the easiest thing. But we also want to hire slow, fire fast. And a wait list doesn't do anyone any good because you can't see the patients. So if we can build you up fast, just imagine what that next level could be if you could be the person, be the PT that goes out and hires amazing physical therapists or creates jobs so physical therapists don't feel burnt out after 18 months. So we need to do objections. We need to do the hiring because you're going to grow so quickly and be like, what do I do? You know, you want to go take two weeks off and you want to be able to generate income and revenue. We need to either hire other people or build some kind of automated online course type of thing. Okay. So to do that, we've got a whole roadmap. I'd love to help you create a specific game plan and figure out which piece of the puzzle that you really need to take your business to the next level. And so we've got room to bring on just five more clients this summer or actually this month. And I'd love to build a personalized game plan with you, you and me together, build it and install these vital sales processes in your business. If you want to build a game plan together and get these processes installed in your business so you can grow and scale and help even more people, just comment the word game plan below or maybe shoot me a DM with the word game plan. I'll reach out to you, ask you a few questions, and we'll set up a free strategy and skill session for you so we can figure out where you are, where you want to go, brainstorm some ideas, and see if we're a good fit to help you take your business to the next level. Thanks so much. I'll see you on the next the next video. Be sure to comment below. Let me know if you want a game plan. Comment below. Game plan. If you're like, not now, let me know what was most helpful for you about this training, what you learned, what your insights were, and we'll go from there. Peace out.