193- The 3 Critical Questions for Every MD Meeting

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langman.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmay. This week we are going to talk about the three most important questions you should be asking anytime you meet with another healthcare provider in your community that could be a medical doctor, it could be a do, it could be a midwife, it could be a doula. Bottom line is you need to have a strategy to find success. We are gonna break down those three important questions that you need to be engaging with and every time you set and execute a meeting with another healthcare provider in your community. Before we get started, I'll say a few words about Rock Tape. Rock Tape is proud to be a sponsor of the Evidence Based Chiropractor and the clock is ticking. Rock Stock the movement festival of the year. It's happening September 13th and 14th out in Huntington Beach, California. If you have not picked up your tickets, you are going to want to do so ASAP. You can head right on over to rocktape.com and pick them up from there. I'm excited. I've seen said it before. I'm gonna be out there filming, hanging out, having a great time and I would love to see you there as well. So pick up your tickets, head out to Huntington beach, get some continuing education and have a lot of fun in the process. So as I talked about at the top today we are going to talk about those three super crucial questions that you need to be asking every time you meet with engage with another healthcare provider in your community. If you want to pick this up as a PDF I have a link in the show notes so you can pick it up there, have it as a reference sheet for the future. But let's break it down and talk through it. I said it at the top and the biggest challenge I see when docs have met with another healthcare provider, I kind of ask you right now, have you met with another healthcare provider in your career? If not, sometimes the number one cause of not doing so is some intimidation or not knowing what to say or on the other half of the spectrum, I see a lot of docs who say I have reached out in the past but nothing came from it. Now the fact of there being a drop off in the follow up is one thing, but it all starts at that meeting. If you're going there as I Say, pitching everything that Doc never wanted to know about chiropractic, then you're gonna have a real uphill battle with your relationship building. However, if you're asking questions, engaging with them in their practice and, and learning how you can serve them and their patients and by the way, the side effect from that is going to give you tremendous amount of information to position your practice. Now you're set up for success moving forward. It's what we do at the evidence based chiropractor. It's one of those three legs of the stool. We love to talk about case notes, research and meetings. This kind of is the heart of the meeting itself now for all of our members. We go through trainings, reports, templates, guides which showcase how do you set up a meeting, every step of that process. But on the podcast today, I want to break down those three super important questions that you need to be asking. So I'm gonna say all three questions, then we'll break them down one by one. Question number one you need to be asking is, are you currently seeing a lot of spine or musculoskeletal complaints issues people in your practice? So there's some latitude in how you say that. But that's question number one. We'll get back to it in a moment. Question number two is what are you seeing More of that is getting them to paint a patient picture. And then question number three is, what is your current treatment protocol? What do you like to do for these individuals? So those are your three questions. It's not a lot to remember and you could tell none of those three questions had anything to do with chiropractic. It's about learning about their practice. It changes the tone of the entire meeting when you go in asking questions about them and their practice instead of, instead of initially just trying to pitch them yours. So let's break this down one by one. Question number one, Are you currently seeing a lot of spine and musculoskeletal people, complaints patients in your practice? However you want to say that the expectation for that is that yes, they are. You probably wouldn't be standing there and had booked the meeting if you thought they didn't see any of that. And we know based upon the research that 30% of the daily volume in a primary care internal medicine clinic is spine and musculoskeletal by nature. So there is a massive amount of opportunity for these referrals. You just gotta connect the dots, you gotta have a strategy. That's what this is all about. So when you're asking that question, the expected answer of course is yes, of course we do. At which point you can say great, so do we. It's an easy way to open up the conversation. Now consequently, if they say no, we don't, I'd rather know that right then than six months or one year of reaching out and, and then finding out. So for instance, I'll bring up an example. Perhaps you go into a primary care doctor office, primary care office, GP office, and you're saying, hey, you see a lot of spinal musculoskeletal and they say no, we've actually been focused specifically on upper respiratory issues for the last couple years. Now they might not be an ear, nose and throat specialist to do that, they might still be listed as a primary care office, but they might just have a focus that's completely outside the scope of what you're looking for in a referral relationship. So you'd rather know that right then. Or they might come back and say no, we don't see any of that. We directly refer that to my brother in law, Dr. Blank down the street. Well cool. I'd rather know that they're referring all their spine out from the get go than continually trying to reach out to that office and try to build that relationship when there's just no meat on the bone. So I love to ask that question first basically to pre qualify and, and start the conversation. Cause 99% of the time it's gonna be yes. Then it's easy to ask the second question. Right. Question number two is what are you seeing more of? And all that question is trying to do is get them to paint a patient picture. So quite frankly I have a lot of latitude. I'm not too specific on how they answer. My expectation is we live in the same town. They see spine and musculoskeletal cases in people. They're going to see the same thing I'm seeing, but I'm going to give them the opportunity to break that down. Perhaps they're saying, well we're seeing a bunch of low back issues as people start breaking out the golf clubs because it's springtime potentially it's oh my goodness, everybody's back to school. We're seeing a lot of, you know, high schoolers with back pain as they're carrying those backpacks. They might say, you know, right now, this time of year, we're seeing a ton of people, there's ice on the ground, we're starting to see a ton of people slip and fall in ice, ton of low back complaints or it might be, well, we see a little bit of everything. That gives you an unbelievable amount of power, so to speak, when you know straight from them, what are they seeing? It gives you the opportunity to know more than 99% of your competition knows about their practice. And it gives you the opportunity to position yourself more specifically. Right now, you're not just carte blanche from that point forward having conversations about who knows who, but now you can direct that conversation to and around the exact patient type that they told you they're seeing more of. So I love that question because it gives them the opportunity to dive into their practice and answer. And it also gives you the opportunity to truly get a great understanding of who they are, of who they're seeing. And then step number three, we dive into what they're doing about it. Right? So question number three is always going to be awesome. What's your current treatment protocol? What do you like to do for those individuals? And that's what you're really trying to get to, right? That is the meat of the conversation. Because once you understand their referral or their treatment preference, now you have all of the information you need to properly position yourself and your practice as that logical choice as somebody who makes their life easier, improves the outcome with their patients, et cetera, et cetera. So when I'm asking, what do you like to do for these people, here's the beauty of asking that question. So if it's related to spine and musculoskeletal care, all of them are gonna say the same three things all day, every single day. So there's not like a million options you need to remember and be prepared for. It's the same thing all day, every day. What do you think Those three things are probably named one or two in just that moment, right? Medications, physical therapy, or referral to another specialist. So we see those three things being done each and every time. Prescription of medications, NSAIDs, predominantly. Number two would be referral to physical therapy and or number three would be referral to another specialist. So let's break down if they answer in terms of they start with NSAIDs. So as part of the evidence based chiropractor with all of our members, we break down these conversations and every option for every answer. So on this podcast, I'm gonna break down the first one, which is nsaids. We go through sort of retorts for physical therapy. We go through retorts for if they're referring to another special. But on this podcast, let's break down for all of our members on this Podcast, let's break down. If they're say, you say, what do you like to do for these people? And they say, well, typically we start by treating in house. That's another way of saying we prescribe medications. They might just say, hey, we usually start with a course of NSAIDS over those first couple weeks and see how we do from there. Here would be my recommendation. Now you can go a ton of different directions with this. So you could pick and choose, but here's how I've seen success in an answer and where I've also seen success with hundreds of other docs worldwide at this point with the evidence based chiropractor is something to this effect. If somebody says we usually start by prescribing NSAIDs, treating in house, I might say something like a lot of our referral partners start out exactly the same way, but they get frustrated with those patients that have GI or heart complaints that can't take the NSAIDs. So they love to look towards our office to start those patients conservatively. So you can see exactly what I did there. I'm gonna say that in non medical lingo. I understand what you're doing. This is a challenge you must be encountering. I can help you overcome that challenge. So I love positioning that way. And I'll say it one more time, if somebody says to me, hey, we love to start with NSAIDs in our practice, I'm not gonna say your guideline discordant, man, you're crazy. Obviously I'm trying to build a relationship, not diminish one. So I'll respond something to the effect of hey, a lot of our referral partners start out the same way, but they get frustrated with those patients that have GI issues going on or heart issues and can't take the NSAIDs. So they love to look and those providers love to look towards our office to start those patients conservatively. So you can keep it. You can see how simple that is. You can keep these conversations simple. You don't need to get overly technical. You don't need to dive into every single nuance. The meeting is part of your journey. We always talk about those three legs of the stool list. Let the research be the marketing and be that drip, drip, drip. Let your case notes showcase the great results that you get in your practice and emphasize the co management and utilize the meetings to build trust and rapport, ask some good questions and get a better understanding. Now after you go through those three questions, now you've had a conversation, now you might open it up to say, hey, what do you know about chiropractic? Do you have any questions about what I do in my practice? Let me tell you a little bit about what we really focus on and what makes our practice special and unique. But it's only after I've asked questions am I starting to get into what starts to become more of a marketing and or sales pitch. It makes a world of difference when you execute a meeting based on the Socratic method, based upon asking questions first and then talking through the rest of what you would love to get to immediately afterward. So this makes this process should make it whether you are a super introverted doc, whether you are an extroverted doc, whether you've never taken a meeting or perhaps you've taken hundreds in your career, that simple framework, that simple three question framework gives you the strategy, it gives you the guide, it gives you the playbook needed to go in calmly, coolly execute those meetings, get great information, seem engaging to the other party, ask them questions about their practice. It always then shines well on you and consequently it also gives you that unbelievably awesome information that you need to better position your practice. It's truly a win win all around. If this is the type of stuff that you geek out on, if it's what you'd love to learn more about, and if you believe that there is more top end in your practice for incoming referrals. Quite frankly, I have never met a chiropractor that doesn't have more top end for incoming referrals. Very few chiropractic practices, if any, are maximizing their referral capacity from other healthcare providers. I'd encourage you to head on over to the evidencebasedchiropractor.com, become a member of the Evidence based Chiropractor. Everything is month to month. The price is under a hundred bucks a month. You get access to all the tools, all the resources, all the support. I spend an implementation call with every single new member making sure you understand the process. We are all about getting your practice out there, helping you build the gap, bridge the gap, I should say helping you get out there and build those relationships and ultimately have a more successful practice that helps more people in your community. That's really what it's all about. If you want to get these three questions in a PDF, you can check out the show notes. I left a link there so you can have kind of a hot sheet or a quick sheet specifically for these three questions. But if you want to take it to the next level, come to see what we have going on@the evidencebasedchiropractor.com Shoot me any feedback at Jeff the evidence based chiropiractor chiropractor.com and I hope you have a great week in practice and I will talk to you soon.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.