EP009: Never Lose a Customer Again

Welcome to the Perfect Practice Podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel, is a functional medicine success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Hi, this is Satya Patel and welcome to Perfect Practice. In today's episode, we're going to be discussing the work of Joey Coleman. Joey Coleman is a consultant and he just released a book called Never Lose a Customer Again. I wanted to take some of his teachings and apply them to your functional medicine practice. I'm going to warn you, there's some background noise with me today. I'm in the beautiful resort called Sanctuary Resort on Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona. I'm here for the Consumer Health Summit. Not speaking this time. One day I will be, I promise. But it's super windy, so if you hear some rattling in the background, it's the windows. Hopefully the windows hold up and there's no problem. So I just wanted to forewarn you that there might be some rattling in the background. So bear with me. You probably won't even hear it, but in case you do, that's what it is. That's the upside of traveling. You get to see all these cool places, but sometimes you're going to be in unpredictable environments. But with that being said, let's get right into this. This is going to be extremely powerful for your practice and I want you to take notes. So if you're somewhere where you can write this information down, then please feel free to write down the ideas that pop into your head. Joey Coleman's book, I feel, applies to any business, but I feel that it applies to functional medicine very, very nicely. And I'm going to share with you how we were doing this in our practice unconsciously and now how we're doing it hyper consciously. So we were actually doing a lot of things I'm gonna talk about without actually even reading this book. But now that I've read this book and I'm following some of his work, I wanna actually become very conscious of it and ritualistic about it. And certainly this is a good podcast for your team members to listen to as well. So the first hundred Days is very critical to your client and it's critical to your business. In fact, he shared some really interesting statistics that I feel are very relevant to our business and even businesses that we might be patroning right now. And there might be certain experiences that you've had from businesses that we're going to be discussing. So when a patient makes a purchase or signs up for care or any customer makes a purchase, there is this initial rush of endorphins that takes place. And you've probably all experienced this. The excitement of buying a program, whether it be coaching, whether it be consulting, whether it's. Whether it be a car, whether it be a new jacket or a purse or a couch, whatever it might be, there's this rush of endorphins and excitement that takes place, but this starts to wear off fairly quickly. So you may have experienced buyer's remorse or you might be questioning your purchase. And I know I've done this. I'm sure you've done it as well. And so when this happens, we start becoming judgmental of the decision that we've made and we start judging ourselves and whether we're losing our marbles or not as a consumer. Interesting fact about banks. 32% of new customers will leave a bank within the first year. 50% of those customers will leave within the first hundred days. And this is why you probably notice that if a bank gives you an incentive, let's say they incentivize you with $100 in your bank account, they usually provide that $100 and deposit it into your bank account after 100 days. So banks know this, They've studied this. Customer retention is something that's very, very expensive and very important for the success of a business. Another thing that's interesting fact is that 46% of people who go to Chuck E. Cheese never go back. And I don't blame them. It's loud, it's crazy, it's chaotic. There's kids running around all over the place. I've been back multiple times. I've got a young son. And I'm sure you have as well if you've got a young family. But 46% of people never go back. Okay? Now, another thing that was interesting, another fact that he shared, is that 21% of people break their cell phone contract within the first year. Despite all of the roadblocks that a cell phone company puts up to keep people in their business, 20% of people leave a software as a service company in the first hundred days. So this could be a software that you're using like click funnels. It could be the EMR that you're using, it could be a payment processor that's online that you're using. That's what we're referring to when we talk about software as a service. So how you service your clients in the first hundred days is gonna be absolutely critical to the long term success of your business. And across the board in all industries, the average defection rate after the first hundred days is 20 to 60%. And what this means is that companies will have to spend large amounts of time, effort and mental faculties towards marketing. And that marketing leads to what we would refer to as getting people to understand what it is that you do. Getting people to truly understand the implications that of your business and why somebody should do business with you. And that's a lot of energy that you have to spend in order to do that. Now once you've done that, and if you've done a great job at marketing and messaging and getting someone to take action, the next thing that you have to take into consideration is the transaction. And the transaction is when somebody actually pays you after the transaction. What ends up happening is you want to develop customer and client loyalty. So, so it's marketing, then transaction, then loyalty. And that loyalty stems from satisfaction, which then leads to buy in, which then leads to advocacy. Okay? And women generally tend to be better wired at creating loyalty and satisfaction and advocacy. So keep that in mind. The person in charge of this in your business, statistically, physiologically, evolutionarily, is better for it to be a woman. And I'm not saying this to be sexist. A male is fully capable of doing this. A male is capable of anything a female is capable of, and vice versa if we want to be politically correct. But statistically and consistently, women are going to be better at this. It's just how women are wired. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing right about it. It just is what it is. So just keep that in mind. So there's six ways that you can increase client retention in the first 100 days. And all of these are completely relevant to your functional medicine business. The six ways are in person, by email, by phone, through video, through presents or surprises or gifts and snail mail. So you have to think about your business and how you can incorporate your these elements into your first hundred days with your client. Statistically, 5% of an increase in customer retention can lead to a 20 to 100% increase in profits. Now that number sounds astronomical and it doesn't seem to quite add up and make sense. But just keep in mind that somebody who's bought in, somebody who's loyal to you, and somebody who becomes an advocate of your business, they that's going to save you so much time, energy and effort on marketing. They're going to do all the marketing and business building for you. And if you can have people doing that for you. One of the things that I always say is it's easier for 50 people to refer one person to you every month than it is for one person to try to get 50 new patients. Now Joey talks about an example of Zappos. Zappos is worldwide famous for their extremely amazing levels of customer service. So one of the things that he talked about was a story of him buying a pair of sandals. And he got an email the first day as soon as he placed his order. He didn't pay for the next day shipping, but they automatically upgraded him. So their customer happiness team upgraded his order. So he got the package the next day. On the package, the next day it said in big letters packed with happiness. Okay? So he got this surprise in the email and then he got a surprise in the mail the very next day. This is day two. On day five, he got information about something that they have published called the Culture book. And Zappos is famous for company culture. And they've put together this great book that people can get for free. So if you go on their website, you can learn all about it, but you can also order the book for free and they'll send it to you. And this is a book put together by their employees and it's updated every year where people indicate why they love working for Zappos. On day six, they send a video and they show you if you want to see how the book is actually made. So this is how they incorporate video. So in the first six days, they've upgraded your order, they've packaged your order with happiness and they've sent it to you. They're teaching you more about their company culture and they've shared a video on how they actually put the book together. So they've incorporated many of the things that we talk about other companies that are great that he mentions is Audible. Okay, Audible is great at suggesting books based on your behaviors. And they have a great email follow up that they send you. So it's not just listed out and bulleted out. It's a custom created graphic specifically for you. Now listen, I get it, it's not very practical, but we're small businesses, we don't have the technological Tools and capacity to do something like that. But it's an example, okay? So just take it for what it's worth. So maybe if you don't have an Audible account. I certainly do. I've been doing business with Audible for many, many years. Maybe you can check it out and see how that can apply to your business, whether it's functional medicine, whether you're a dentist, whether you're an optometrist. Think about that for a moment. Okay? Now, the next thing he talks about is the. The eight levels of ascension that your client goes through. The first is assessment. This is actually what he refers to as step zero. They haven't done any business with you. They're learning about your business. They're perusing your website, they're checking out your Facebook page. They're reading reviews on you. They're looking you up. Okay? They're googling your name, Googling your practice. So this is step zero. This is when the client is going through the assessment phase. The next phase is activation. This is when the customer pays you. This is when the transaction actually takes place. The next phase the customer goes through is affirmation. Okay? Affirmation is where we can jump in and we can affirm their decision, congratulate their decision. I'm going to share with you exactly how to go through these steps in just a minute, but I want to walk you through them. So this is where we counter their buyer's remorse. Okay? The next step is admissions. This is where we go through an orientation or a kickoff meeting with the actual customer. The next step is going to be acclimatization. And acclimatization is the patient or your customer getting used to your processes, where we provide help and we provide support. Because, you know, going gluten free is foreign to them. They have to change the way they shop. They have to read labels again, which they may not have done for a long time. They're acclimatizing to your process. And, for example, lab testing, you know, that's unique. Usually they just go to the doctor and they just stick their arm out and they get their blood drawn and they come back a few days later and get the results. If they're doing functional lab testing, there's an acclimatization that takes place in order for them to actually do the lab testing. And then there's assimilation. This is where they become part of your tribe and your community. And then there's adoption, where they've invested and they're all in. They're mentally all in. They're financially all in. Their family is all in and they're invested in this process. And then the next stage is advocacy. Okay, so advocacy is the last step. And some of us hope that our customers become advocates of our brand or of our business. After step two, which is activation. You know, it might be too early to get somebody to start referring people to you. So you've got to take them through these steps. Assessment, which is the research they do. Activation, which is getting them on board. Affirmation, which is affirming their decision. Admissions, making sure their onboarding is smooth. Acclimatization, handle any rough patches that they might encounter. Assimilation, get them used to your process. Adoption, make sure they're all in. And advocacy, which is now where they start referring people to you. So now let's go back to the six things that we talked about. Six ways that you can blow your clients away and pace them through the first hundred days. So the first one is in person. Okay. Certainly your consultations are likely going to be in person. If they're not, then instead of doing phone consultations, I highly recommend you do video consultations so people can see you. There's something magical that happens when two human beings exchange, you know, face to face conversations. So definitely leverage video technology whenever possible. Okay. Also keep in mind that in person might mean that they're going to meet several people in your practice. The front desk has to greet them and welcome them. You have to greet them with enthusiasm. And then once they go to make a payment or check out, that person has to greet them with enthusiasm as well. So every member on your team and has to be enthusiastic, engaged, empathetic, compassionate, and reaffirming of the decision that the person just made. Okay? So keep that in mind. And that's why I want you to have your staff listen to this podcast. The next one is email. Now, there's two ways to go about email. Certainly you want to have an autoresponder sequence set up. We've got a sequence set up where when somebody becomes a patient, they get a video from me when welcoming them to our practice, encouraging them to utilize the resources that we've created. We also send another email that surveys them to make sure they had an exceptional experience at our office. And then a few a day later or so, they get another email giving them useful links so that they can get the information that they need. Now, this is all done automatically, so I don't have to fire off these emails over the next few weeks and getting them to acclimatize. But what I should fire off as a personal email. At the end of that day, I should be sending all of my new patients and even my existing patients a personal email saying, hey, thanks so much for coming in. You've made a wise decision. You congratulate them on making a wise decision and a wise investment in their health. Get excited. You should be excited. Make sure you keep that excitement and momentum going, especially for the first hundred days and forever. You. If that's possible. That personal email goes a long way. If you do that automatically. And you might be wondering, well, why don't I just automate that? Well, people can tell when it's an automatic email, okay. Because they can see the unsubscribe button or the opt out button at the bottom. When you send a personal email from your account, that's not going to be there, okay? So I would strongly suggest sending a nice, warm personal email. Not thanking them, but congratulating them, okay? We never want to thank people for joining our program because we're going to deliver more value to them than they are going to pay us for. Very important. I learned this from one of my speaking coaches, Joel Weldon. We never say thank you at the beginning or at the end of a talk or when somebody makes a purchasing decision. We don't thank them. We congratulate them for making a wise investment in themselves. We should expect them to be thanking us because by the end of this process, okay, so we've got in person, make sure you blow them away with kindness. We've got email, make sure you keep it personal. And certainly you can automate some of it. And then we've got snail mail. So this is a very underutilized element. We've gotten lazy to a certain degree with emails because they're free. We can just type them up, we can fire them off. And we've gotten used to doing that. But snail mail goes a long way. Most people just get junk in their mail. So. So when they get a personal letter or when they get a birthday card or when they get a sympathy card, if that's the case, or a congratulatory card, that goes a long way, okay? If they're telling you about a particular problem that they have, or they've got a big event coming up like a wedding or their child is getting married or their child is graduating, make a note of that and send them a congratulatory card or a best wishes card, that goes a long way. You're going to be surprised at how few people do this and the impact that it can have. So just A couple of minutes. You know, every Friday, we call them Follow up Fridays. Every Friday, just send off a few thank you notes, congratulatory notes, sympathy cards if you need to, and birthday cards. We send all of our clients, active and inactive, a birthday card with a $25 gift card to our office in it. That's our way of saying thank you. And people love it. They are blown away that we do that because very few people do that. You know, the dentist might send them, you know, a birthday card, but only to try to get them back in. We actually send them a gift card which has a cash value, and they can use it in the practice for any of the services or supplements that we offer. Now the next thing is a video. So the video is really, really easy. Don't overcomplicate this. You don't need a big production studio to make a video. You can use your cell phone and fire off a text message video to your client. Okay? If your client sends you a text message, you can certainly reply to them. But I'll tell you what, when you send them a video response via text message, you're going to blow them away. Another way we use video in our practice is we do a video recording of our patients lab results when they come in. So it's one of the services that we offer them, and they're usually blown away by that. In our automated responder series, we also have a welcome video that people get so they get to feel welcomed into our practice. And we also have videos on how they can do their lap testing. So this saves my staff and team lots of questions. We still get questions. I'm not going to say we don't, but people can get 95% of their questions answered by watching the, the lab videos that we've created. So anything that you feel like your team may have to repeat over and over. Something that's important that requires specific instructions, put that in a video. Because if you explain it, even if you do a good job explaining it, the patient may forget by the time they get home, they might have a million things that come up by the time they get to their testing. So videos can be used very, very effectively. They can be personalized, they can be automated, but video goes a long way. The next of these steps could be a gift. And we do this very effectively. We actually send all of our patients, they don't know they're going to get this. We send them a few gifts, we send them a jar, and we send them a mug. And now this jar and mug has Inspirational words written all over it. So it's a great way to remind them of how amazing they are. We send them a thank you card and, you know, thanking them for their trust and welcoming them to our practice. Okay. And again, reinforcing the decision that they made. You can choose any gifts. You can choose an essential oil. Essential oils. If there's an essential oil that you diffuse in your office, then send that to them so they can use it in their home, and they can think of you every time they use it. During our second appointment, our patients go through a nutrition and lifestyle consultation, and we give them two books that they're not expecting. One is a gratitude journal, which is the five minute journal, and the second book they get is a recipe book that would be supportive of the nutritional recommendations that we're making to them. So we just try to make their lives a little bit easier. We try to make them grateful for not just joining our program, but also for the wise decision that they've made in investing in their health. Now, our gratitude journals are unique because we actually have a forever gratitude journal policy, which means that if you bring your gratitude journal filled out and show it to us, we don't read it. We don't keep it either, but we'll replace it for you for life. Now think about that for a minute. You might be thinking, doesn't that get expensive? Well, it costs about $20 for a year for someone to think about you every single day, twice a day, to reinforce a behavior that you know has been scientifically proven to produce better outcomes in health and really every area of life. Now, the last of the six steps is a phone call. Now we have a client concierge that calls all of our patients the next day. So this is a personal touch point that we offer. We also offer this concierge service throughout their program. This is a way for us to touch base with the client again, reaffirm their decision, help them overcome any obstacles that they might encounter along the way, and help them address any objections that they might be encountering from family members about going gluten free or going dairy free. Helping them find the right resources on our website or in our patient portal. You know, the concierge keeps the momentum going. So it's a very, very important role that our concierge has. And if you don't have a concierge, I highly encourage you as your practice grows. You know, you can be doing this initially, or you can have a staff member doing this initially, but these touch points, I promise, promise you go a Long way. And it's a way for you to keep your ear to the ground. Listen, if you keep getting the same questions over and over again, then it's a way for you to recognize that, hey, maybe I need to put this on my website somewhere. Maybe I need to put this in my autoresponder somewhere. Maybe I need to print this information out and give it to patients so I can make my practice more efficient. Nobody likes to email you with questions. Nobody likes to call you with questions. It's when they get stuck that they have to reach out to you. People like to be independent, so give them the tools and resources to be independent. Okay? Now, just in closing here, you know the best way to identify what you can start incorporating into your practice. You're certainly welcome to use what I just talked about right now. But the best way is to really investigate. The first step is to investigate and study your consumer. Study what these people actually want. Check out their Facebook profiles. You know, are they married? Do they have kids? Do they have pets? Are they pregnant? Really get to know your consumer. It takes literally a minute to hop onto your customers or patient's Facebook profile. Most of them have one. Chances are, if you're doing Facebook marketing, then they certainly have one because that's probably how they found you. So do some research. Investigate. Dig through their intake form and read between the lines. Okay? Really get personal with these people. Not in a creepy way, but in a way that really impresses them that you did your due diligence and research and you actually care about them. And, you know, it's a way for you to do your due diligence so that you can be more effective at your job. You know, if they let you know they've got a wedding coming up or they've got a special event coming up, you should be marking that in your calendar. Okay? It's a real, real awesome way for you to blow people away. The next thing which ties into what I just said is personalize their experience. Okay? When you personalize things, it's really going to blow people away. They're not going to feel like a number. They're not going to feel like a customer. They're going to feel like a family member. And the next thing is to surprise them. Okay? So if you give out a gratitude journal, if you're going to give it out anyways, don't put it as one of your offerings. Don't put it as something you list in your program. Because if you list it as part of your program, then guess what? They're going to expect it. And when you give it to them, they feel like, oh, I've already paid for this, so I'm expecting it. But if you gift it to them, they're going to be blown away. Okay, certainly we could add all of these little touch points that we do and list it as part of our program, but it's way more fun when you surprise people. It's way more fun for you. It's way more fun for them. I mean, even when you're packing a gift that you want to give to somebody, isn't it exciting? You've got endorphins flowing through your veins as well, because you're excited, you know, so it's mutually beneficial when we surprise people and gift them. And the reactions that we get from people are totally awesome. So my challenge to you is I want you to think of something, six ways that you can improve the first 100 days of your customer's experience in person. Through email, through snail mail, through video, through a gift, and through a phone call. Even if you do half of these things, you're gonna notice that you feel better, your customers and patients feel better. You're gonna have higher retention, and you're gonna ascend through the eight phases that the client goes through. And I'll review those with you one last time. Assessment, activation, affirmation, admissions, acclimatization, assimilation, adoption, and advocacy. So if you can take through these six touch points, your clients on this eight step journey, you're going to have advocates for life. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you got some value out of this. Please share this with your staff and team members or. Or maybe even a colleague, because I know that people can really benefit from this information. I want functional medicine to be the leading form of healthcare that people receive. And I know that we're positioned clinically to do amazing things. But I want your life to be easier. I want you to reach and impact as many people as possible. And that means we need as many advocates out there promoting your practice as possible. So take this to heart. Do this simple exercise. Look at your process. If you're already doing these things unconsciously, become super conscious about them. See how you can optimize them. See how you can tweak them to make them more exciting and fun and turn this into a ritual. And I guarantee your practice will grow. Have an awesome day. I look forward to sharing some insights that I learned from CHS with you. On the next episode. Get to hang out with some pretty cool people and. And I'm going to bring some amazing content back to you. I'm excited to hear how you implement the things that you learned from this podcast into your practice. I'd love to hear your feedback, and I'd love to hear how positive of an impact this has on your client outcomes and how much better your practice runs.