09 - Do These 5 Unscalable Things to Earn Patients for Life

It's time to do things that don't scale. What is up, my friends? It's your boy Troy, welcoming you to a fresh, piping hot episode of the Practice Growth Machine Podcast, where we teach you the persuasion tips and tactics you can use to command higher prices for your premium procedures and fill your surgery schedule. And today, we're talking about inefficiencies. Normally, when you hear that word, it's in a negative light because we want to be more efficient, right? Speed, automation, trimming the fat, stretching our time and money. We want to be efficient. But today we're actually talking about the good kind of inefficiency. To put it a different way, we're going to cover why and how you need to do unscalable things in your practice that can make a huge difference to your patient's experience. Paul Graham is the founder of the uber successful Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, and he's got a great essay on this called Do Things that Don't Scale. We'll use that as the backdrop for why you should do unscalable things, which unscalable tasks you should focus on in your practice and how they can benefit your practice as you grow. All right, let's get into it. First of all, let's talk about why you should do certain unscalable things, because it seems counterintuitive, especially as you grow, you want to be more efficient and you want your activities to scale. So why even go down this road? Well, think of all the noise that's out there in the marketplace, and I'm not just talking about your other competitors, but think about all the marketing messages and everything that is hitting your prospects from every single business out there that's trying to get your prospects attention and get their money. It's a jungle out there. Now, you hear me talk a lot about getting attention, and yes, you absolutely must get someone's attention before you can even start to turn them into a patient. If somebody doesn't know who you are, they certainly won't end up in your surgery suite. That's a given. But once you have attention, you want to show your prospects that you're different. You want to stand out, and ultimately you want to make a connection. Maybe you've heard the quote that people don't do business with companies, they do business with people. That's where all this unscalable activity comes in. Remember, we don't just want to take care of our patients, but we also want to turn them into evangelists for the practice. So how do we create that wow factor that really takes it over the top for your patients? In Graham's essay, he talks about the need to surprise and delight customers as a major reason to do things that don't scale. So let's take a second and talk about some examples of unscalable things you can do to surprise and delight your patients. When we work with our consulting clients, we map out every decision point along the patient journey and then we script and systematize the different touch points, the non scalable engagements, any automations, all of it. We build the whole thing out. Today, I just want to give you a few examples of unscalable tasks that you can do that make a huge impact in the relationship with your patients to surprise and delight them. Now look, you might be inclined to say, now Troy, we don't have time to do these things. I promise you the benefits of doing these unscalable tasks in your practice are, are well worth the few extra minutes it takes to make them happen. Example number one, call your patients the night of surgery just to check on them. Yeah, it's gonna take a few minutes to do each call, but when you consider the amount of care and concern that's conveyed by your 2 minute phone call, it's totally worth the time to do it. Example number two, take pictures with your patients after surgery. Now look, this only takes a few extra seconds and you're gonna need to have somebody else there to take the picture. But this signals that Surgery day is a day to be celebrated and commemorated. You hear me talk a lot about celebrating and creating these special moments and that's huge. When you take that photo on surgery day, not only that, but you're giving your patients an asset that they can now go and share on their social media pages. They've got that picture, they can share it, they can tag you in it, and that's free publicity, free marketing for your practice. Who doesn't want that? Example number three, sign thank you notes to your patients. You don't have to write the thank you notes out. You can have these pre printed if you want to do that, but just sign those, take a few minutes to sign a stack of them and then have your team send those out. It's a nice touch. That shows how much you value them, putting their trust in you and your practice. Example number four, have live human beings answer the phone. This isn't something that you individually have to do as a doctor, but your team should be doing it. And maybe that means you need an extra phone person to accomplish this. Is it worth it? Well, think about how many phone trees and automated phone systems that you encounter on a regular basis. The phone is your first one on one impression with a patient. Greet them with a vibrant, happy live voice, not a robot recording. It makes a difference. And example number five Take time to find out why patients chose you and why they chose you. Now, the best marketing messages come straight from the mouths of your patients. Now this might mean longer conversations with patients, but the benefit is that you get so many insights into the reasons why your patients chose you over lower priced competitors in the marketplace. And when you know that you have better marketing, you have better talking points, you have better ways of understanding the obstacles that keep people from making the decision that's right for them. Which in most cases is having a procedure with you. All right, let's recap to wrap up. These are just a few examples of the unscalable things you can do in your practice to surprise and delight your patients and create a truly magical experience. All the stories that you hear about big companies who have legendary customer service Zappos, Nordstrom, Ritz Carlton is because they go above and beyond for their customers and go to great unscalable lengths to care for them. Become known for legendary patient care by doing things that don't scale and your practice will continue to prosper as more patients come to trust you and refer their friends and family. That's it for today and we'll see you on the next show. For more persuasion tools and scripts, visit the free resources tab@troycohole.com SA.