In this PelviBiz Podcast episode, Dr. Kelly Alhooie, founder of Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy and PelviBiz, shares a step‑by‑step sales script for getting patients to prepay for an entire plan of care. She debunks the common myth that a $3,000 full‑plan can be sold over the phone to a cold prospect, using a coffee‑price analogy to illustrate why people won’t buy high‑ticket services without trust and proof. She advises clinicians to stop trying to sell the full plan on the first call and instead offer a low‑tier entry point—such as a single visit, an online workshop, or a low‑cost product—so the patient experiences value with minimal risk. Alhooie discusses who should do the selling, emphasizing that providers (the clinicians) have authority and can convey the treatment pathway better than administrators, but only if they truly believe in the model and understand the sales process. She recommends framing the treatment as a series of short “phases” rather than a long list of visits to make the commitment feel more manageable. Finally, she stresses the importance of communicating the practice’s uniqueness and a clear pathway to results, and she includes a sponsor message for the Jane scheduling platform with a promo code. The episode is a practical guide for pelvic‑health and other cash‑based clinicians looking to increase prepayment rates.
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Welcome to PelviBiz Podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhooie. I have grown and established brick-and-mortar practice in Northern Virginia called Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy and also founded PelviBiz, which is an online business consulting company that helps healthcare providers make more money and be healthy while doing it, especially in the pelvic health realm.
How to get a patient to prepay for your full plan of care. So here we go. There's a couple options that I like to present. Number one, there's a big myth on the internet that they can just call your clinic or call your online business and all of a sudden that they're going to hand you $3K Just because you talk to them, you know, and you you they feel hurt. That's not the case. Okay? No one. If I had this cup of coffee, okay? For instance, I have this cup of coffee. If you guys are watching this on YouTube, you can see my cup of coffee. Okay? It's not coffee, but it's tea. But anyways, beside the point. Okay? And I said this right here. This cup of coffee is a normal cup of coffee, and I'm gonna ask three K for it. Would you guys take it? Honestly, would you take this cup of coffee? No, you would never pay 3K for a cup of coffee. A, you don't know what this coffee tastes like. B, you don't know what this coffee is going to do to you. And C, it's like, well, I don't even know this brand, so like, why would I even trust them? Comparatively, if I said this cup of coffee is the premium brand that everyone knows already, okay? And when you take one sip of it, it's going to completely decrease— you're going to completely wipe out all your pain and it's going to make you have the best PR or the best marathon run. You'd be like, hell yeah, I'm going to do that. Oh, by the way, but I want to know if someone else has done this before me to see if it actually works. And it has massive proof. And you're like, yes, I understand. And then you're going to take the $3,000 cup of coffee, you would take it then? If so, if there was a guarantee that this one sip could change your life. What I find, and this is where like online marketers want to just market to you and think like it's like magic— it's not magic. There is no magic, guys. You cannot sell— I mean, you can, but it takes, it takes a very special individual to say yes to this. Um, $3K over the phone when they don't know you yet. They don't know what they're getting, especially when they get a referral list that has 12 other physical therapy, chiropractors, med spas, whatever it is. They get a full-on referral list and they're just like picking up the phone, dialing, like just being like, hi, what's going on? How much do you cost? Basically they're asking about costs, right? And if they don't know you, how are you going to convey that you're different? Like it's going to be very, very hard for you to convey that you're different. So the first mistake that I see is stop trying to sell the full plan of care over the phone. Stop trying to do that. I know there's coaches out there that coach this. I don't coach this. I think it's BS. I think it messes up a lot of y'all's heads. Okay. Because you don't even know sales yet and now you're trying to sell $3K when you can't even sell $200. You can't. You know, it just doesn't work. So stop doing that. What I need you to do is sell the first visit. Sell just the one first visit. Just get them in the door. Just get them to consume your online product. Just get them to consume your online workshop. Just get them to consume something at a smaller tier, at a lower tier price, so that if they lost something, it's not that big a loss to them. And they're like, oh yeah, like At least I tried it and it was for me or wasn't for me, but it wasn't $3K of a loss. It may have been like $50 or $200 or whatever it may be of what you're trying to get them in at the first price point. So that's my first thing is stop trying to sell the full plan of care over the phone. Hopefully I made that clear. Okay. The next thing is when you sell a full plan of care, there's Different options on how you can do it. You can, A, have the providers trying to sell the full plan of care. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes it doesn't. The benefit of having the providers try to sell the full plan of care is the provider is the authority. Your admin or your manager or whoever's in the clinic is not the authority. So when your doctor actually says, by the way, I need you to come in for X number of visits And, or, or to complete this plan of care. I don't say visits, but like to complete this plan of care, to complete these phases, then that is more replicable than the admin saying, yep, I just need to book you out. Which one sounds better? You're gonna believe the doctor and know that they have good intent versus the admin. Okay? So if the problem though is, is sometimes these providers feel that it's selling, and if you have providers that feel it's selling, A, it may not be the right provider, like at all, for a cash-based Uh, service. Um, B, that means that they don't understand sales. C, they— do they actually believe in the method that you've created and in the framework so they understand why they're selling a full plan of care? Like, do they, do they believe in the model? A lot of times these therapists do not believe in the model. And, and D, have you fully explained why you do things the way you do and why that timeline is of, of how you get actual results? That's that's huge, and so if you haven't done this, then I find sales is very hard to for therapists to do or for any provider to book people out. So just be mindful of that that you can have the provider during the first initial session. So what we do is we they pay for the single session, and then they have twelve to thirteen sessions after that. But we don't say. You're gonna have 12 visits. We say three phases because 12 visits or 13 visits sound long. Three phases sounds a lot shorter. So that is key. Okay, the next thing I like to do to be able to have like be able to book them out is you have to have uniqueness. You have to say why are you different? You also have to show the client that there is a pathway. If they do not see a full pathway. Then they can actually not get the actual results that they're looking for. And when they call an insurance-based—
Guys, so much for listening to the podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Jane. They are the people that are going to have amazing scheduling system for your patients.
They're going to provide you with a super bill.
They're going to make templates for you. They're going to provide you with the best customer service. And because of that, They allowed us to have a code for one free month for those that are wanting to try Jane for their scheduling, checking out super bills, telehealth, all the different options. That code is HealthyBiz1MO. We will put in the show notes, but HealthyBiz1MO—that is the code for Jane. And thank you so much, Jane, for sponsoring this podcast. If you guys want more information and want to learn how that you can keep. bettering yourselves, go ahead, click the link down below and make sure that you book a call and would love to provide any clarity questions on any follow-ups. Bye guys.
Clinic, do you think they're showing them the pathway? No. Name, email, phone number, date of birth, insurance. Okay, great. But when they call your place or when they're in with you, you're gonna be able to show them the path of what it's gonna take for them to actually get the result. And when they see that, They're gonna either say, yay, sign me up, or nay, I can't do that. And if they say, nay, I can't do that, then it's your job to make it as easy as possible for them to actually get the result. And if you don't know how to do that, that's when you hire a coach to be like, hey, how do I make this as less overwhelming and applicable so that I can actually get my clients the results and them actually say yes to me so that I can provide the best care that I know how to provide? And I, again, that's why I like to book on the first session all, all their sessions out. And here's the other thing that most of the providers, y'all are gonna say to me, well, Kelly, I just feel awkward booking everyone like the full session out. Like I feel like they're— I'm taking their money, so I just go session by session. Well, that you don't have a company. You can't look out and predict like, oh my gosh, like I, I have no patients on the schedule in 2 weeks from now. Like, That's a red flag, especially if you have overhead. So like you've got to make sure you're booking out like three months in advance because then that is like security that you know that you're going to have clients, especially when you hire on people. That's huge. You've got to be able to book them out and predict, and they also have accountability and skin in the game that they have committed to getting the actual results. So everything doesn't fall on you, and you feel like you have to like. Have a magic wand and perform the best and do every kind of research for them. They have to actively participate. They have to actively participate. And I think that's, that's huge. And so from there, when you guys talk about packages and different offers, you can sell a package the first day up to like the 6th visit. I always say like anywhere in that time frame, it's okay to sell a package. Okay, or a membership in some cases, guys. We also can do memberships where there's a sign-up fee. So their initial, like, a membership would be like their initial sign-up fee to just come in for an evaluation is $400, let's just say. And then after that, each visit that they— $400 a month, by the way. And then each visit is like $120 or $150 a session after that. And this is what we recommend. And so then they pay the $400 fee and then they pay the $150 every single time they come in for a visit. That's a membership offer. Um, sometimes psychology-wise that seems more doable when you're only paying like $120, $150 a session versus $250 a session, even though they pay $400 on the front end. Um, so just be mindful of that. It's all psychology. Uh, but it's like, how do you specifically get the result? And that's ultimately what you're selling. So I recommend selling a package in person on the first visit, second visit, all the way up to 6. That's what I teach my clients, um, and not over the phone. And that's how you do it. Or you can have your admin slash manager sell them. If you say like, my therapists are like not good at this, then great, the admin and manager— and you can also bonus them— can also sell it on the way out. You You just run the risk. Here's the problem: you just run the risk with them not believing or being able to speak to their problem. So if someone were to give the admin or manager an objection of like, "Well, I just can't afford this." So like, can we space it out every two weeks? Well, your doctor just said every week. So then how are they going to combat that when they don't really have a leg to stand on because they don't know the diagnoses, they don't know the goal. They don't know like what it's going to take to get them there. They're just checking someone out, aka scheduling them. So like a lot of times I find that is the mishap. Not always, there is exceptions, but I just find that that could be a big barrier of then why they actually miss booking those people out because they don't have a leg to stand on. They don't. And so that's key. So anyways, guys, hopefully this was helpful. If you have any more questions about how to actually book someone out, To make sure that you have consistency and a full schedule, please just add us at PelviBiz on Instagram at PelviBiz P E L V I B I Z, and we'd be happy to help. Bye guys! Oh my god.
