Invest in Coaching

Everybody, Michael King here with my homie, Troy Cole. How are we doing, Troy?

Fantastic, man. How you doing?

Awesome. I'm really excited about this video because I know this is a topic that's very near and dear to both of our hearts, but something that I believe that you are phenomenal in, and that's just helping practices to invest in their team, and that comes down to phone and coaching their team. From a sales perspective, what are some of the things that practices need to keep in mind as far as, like, the sales coaching and the mindset coaching and how that can have a very positive effect on the practice?

Yeah, absolutely, man. And look, I'm having been in this industry for 20 years, we've been able to work with teams on marketing and advertising, and then also on the sales and the communications part. That's a key piece of. Of the patient journey that we've talked about in other videos. And I personally have benefited quite a bit from investing significant, significant amounts of money into coaching for myself and for my team. Right. And when you really look at it, the biggest opportunity for success or the opportunity for failure lies in the skills and beliefs of your team. All right, so if you look at. Look at the greatest athletes of all time, Tom Brady, Tiger woods, you look at Jordan, you look at Simone Biles, all of these folks, right? And the ones who want to be at that level all invest in coaching. Jordan never got to a level championship, number three, number four, number five, where he was like, I'm good. I'm at the top of my game. I don't need to get any better. We're solid. Right? He had strength coaches, he had mindset coaches. He had folks that he was paying all along the way. Why is that so important? Why do we need to invest in coaching for our team? Well, first and foremost, first impressions matter, right? So, I mean, just talking from, like, the phone and the front desk and the check in part, we want to make sure that we're giving a great first impression to the patient at every single point of the line. Right? First impression on the phone, where they're just meeting us voice to voice, when they step into our office, when they meet our scheduler for the first time, when they meet our physician. We need to be able to know that we are creating, putting our best foot forward, if you will. Right. Creating a great first impression. We need to be able to communicate the value of our practice. Okay? You may have the best lasers and the best surgeons, the best location, the most experience, and all of these things. Those are fantastic. Okay? The Problem comes in. When a patient calls in to you and they call four other places, what is every place saying to them? We're the best, we've got the best. You should come here. Right. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you convey and communicate your differentiators and why patients should choose you? Why? You're in a whole different league than other practices in your marketplace in an effective way, not in the same way everybody else is doing it. So that's a huge piece of the coaching that we do. Right. Revenue growth is another big important part. If we can coach your sales team to squeeze another 5, 10% conversions out of your consults into surgery, just imagine what that would look like in terms of revenue for your practice. And more importantly, what does that look like for the number of patients that you're serving in your community and you're able to help and send out there and become evangelists for your practice. Right. Take that same math and apply it to your phone team or your engagement center. The folks who are scheduling the consultations book an extra 3, 5, 10% of the leads into consult. This math really starts to compile when you look at it. And revenue is the implication there. Right. And then patient engagement, just in general. Right. A well trained staff, a good coached up staff, they can foster strong relationships with patients, enhance that overall experience. Right. And then again, at the end of the day, you got them great results and you gave them a phenomenal time in your office. What are they going to do? They're going to tell their friend, tell their spouse, tell their church group, they're going to go and preach you to everybody else. And we all know that a patient referral is one of the highest converting types of leads that you can receive because they've already got all that inside info from somebody. Right? Right. So we want to create an experience that's so good and outcomes that are so strong that when somebody comes in and they ask about price and you're more expensive, you're pricier than the other place, they still say, wow, this is an incredible value. This is worth every dollar that I paid and more. And I encourage you friend to go over there and do the same thing. So, you know, I could talk about this all day long, but those are some of the high level elements of coaching that we have seen to be beneficial and in the actual conversion numbers that we've seen in the practices that we have worked with and why it is so consequential to your practice and the growth you're trying to achieve.

So we got the why we understand, for people that are watching this video, we understand the importance of it and why that they should actually do it. Let's talk about what are the. Some of the specific areas inside the actual practice that. The coaching that you would recommend for practices to look at. Whether it's, if I'm looking at the phone side or the sales and influence side or, you know, how they present different things. It's just curious through some of the different areas that a practice can focus on or that you will help them to focus on when you're doing coaching, if you will.

Yeah. Starting high level. And then we'll dig down into some specific issues. High level is coaching has to go beyond how to do a thing. Okay. And here's what I mean. There are a lot of different programs out there, not in ophthalmology, but just in general. And it's like, hey, I want to learn how to. How to. How to sell more. Right. And we can, we can. You can talk to me about the S word, as we call it here in a minute. But like, we want to learn how to book more surgeries or book more roofs or book more whatever, right? There's sales coaching that's out there. And so much of it is centered around, like, what are the words that I say, what are the scripts I need to memorize to do it. As if there were magic words that if you say bippity boppity boo, then someone's going to magically pull out, you know, a wad of Scrooge McDuck money bag and say, ooh, that's it. Let me. Let me give you my money. And that's not the case. Is that. Is it important to know the words? Absolutely. Do we coach on that? Totally. But the piece that's more important is not the how you do it, but the how you think about what you are doing. It is that mindset piece. And that's a word that gets thrown around. But truly, if you have people on your team who believe in what you're doing, who have conviction around it, and who are truly there to understand and be curious about and serve the patients that are in front of you, then the words are going to come. You don't have to worry about memorizing pages and pages of scripts. Right. You're going to be able to meet them there. So we always start with the mindset piece and really focus around that because there's a lot of different areas of growth opportunities, I will say, for many of your team members and how they think about Their job roles, how they think about what they're doing, they that need to be corrected and need to be adjusted. Once we get to that, we actually apply the tactics. You can think of that as the framework, and the tactics are the pieces that we're able to now hang on the framework. So starting with phones again, going back to active listening. Okay, what does active listening mean? We need to listen on the phones to what people are saying. It's so often that we just get on the phones and we're saying, look, I got to get through this phone call to get the next one, to get the next one, to get the next one. And we miss little clues that come up. Somebody will call your office today, and they will ask, what do you charge for Lasik? If somebody asks that, we have to have a trigger in our mind that goes off that says, hey, this person is interested in coming in here and spending 4, 5, 6, $7,000 to get a big problem solved for them. I need to turn it on right now. I got to click into that mode. Right? So active listening is a big piece of it, clearly communicating the value of your practice. We talked a little bit about that, but making sure that we're doing that in the proper manner, that sets you apart from other practices and then building that rapport. Okay, so we talk about. We talk about that. You know, once we find somebody's why, everybody has a why, and they have a why. Now, sometimes those are the same things. Sometimes they're different. Right? The why now could be. You know, I just went for my jog this morning. I got sweat in my contacts when it was a thousand degrees here in Texas, and I'm just really, really sick of it. Right? They got a why. Now. They got a pressing problem that they want to get down to, but we need to figure out what those things are and then. And then find out what the. Like, why. Is that the driver for you? Okay, and again, this goes back to, like, we try to be really efficient on the phones, get through the call, get them scheduled, et cetera, et cetera. But if somebody tells me, like, yeah, it's like, why'd you reach out? Like, man, I was on this jog this morning, and I just, you know, this, that, and the other. Got sweat in my contact. I'm just really tired of them. Talk to them about it. Okay, this is a gold nugget. Put this down. Okay. We say X marks the spot, but you still have to dig. Think about a treasure map, right? You got a treasure map. You find this treasure map. X marks a spot. I'm here. You do not have the treasure. You have to dig down and get it. Okay, so jogging, interesting. Is this a hobby for this person? Are they training for something? Do they run marathons? Do they do it with their spouse? Like, what is this? Okay, so it's not just like, okay, yeah, great. No, that's good. We're happy to take care of you. Let's get you scheduled. It's. Oh, you jog. Like, is that. Are you training for something right now? Oh, well, yeah, my wife and I are training for this 10K that's coming up. Oh, really? That's very interesting, man. Is that something you've done for a long time? Well, no, actually, we both lost 80 pounds last year. Like, we've been on this thing together, and now this is a big milestone for us. Oh, my gosh, man. They just gave you the treasure. Now I know about them, their life, their convictions, what they're tired of, what they're worried about, what they're shameful of, what their goals are, what they're trying to achieve in life. This just got way, way, way, way, way bigger than contact lenses. You feel me?

Yeah. You know, there's Troy, a couple things that, That I. That I heard from you I want to. I want to jump back into. One is curiosity. And yes, that. That mindset of being curious. So how do you express in a natural human to human conversation that you're curious? You ask questions, right? And that is part of what you talked about, rapport building and any sort of interaction, whether it's, you know, sales interaction on the phone or in the clinic or whatever it may be, the person asking the questions is sort of controlling the conversation. You want to be asking questions and being curious, having the mindset of curiosity with the patient, because they will give you all the gold nuggets that you need. So, you know, this is a little bit more tactical, but, like, I want to know what frustrates them the most about the glasses and contacts. I want to know what caused them to come in today. I want to know how their experience has been in the clinic. I want to know if they have been researching other practices. I want to know if they have an expectation on pricing. I don't just, you know, I have seen people do consults and they literally just jump right into, hey, here's what it costs.

You ready to book?

I'm like, come on. Like, like, like. No, like, it's you. You want to take control of the conversation. And one of the best ways to influence Somebody in a natural human conversation is. Is by having rapport. And you don't have rapport unless you're asking questions, unless you're actually hearing them describe their pain point. Because the benefit of them talking through their pain points is it actually kind of physiologically can cause them to want to get away from that pain and eventually, you know, hopefully go forward and have the procedure. But you don't know these little nuggets unless you're being curious, unless you're in rapport and unless you're asking questions. And that, to me, is before I talk about Dr. So and so and the lasers and the price and all that stuff, I absolutely want to be in rapport with that patient. Thoughts?

Yes, yes, yes. I mean, my thoughts are you're 100% right on. Right. The person asking the questions is in charge. Okay, so you'll have somebody call and say, how much is Lasik? Well, it's this. Right? We'll answer the question. Well, do you have financing? Well, yes, we do. Well, what's the recovery time? Well, it's this. Who's asking the questions? The caller. Why are they asking the questions? Guys, they have never done this before. They don't know what questions to ask. It's our job with the patients to lead them through that process as well. So make sure we're the ones asking the questions, which makes us lead that process back to the curiosity point. Right. The more naturally curious you are, the easier this is. So this might be something that comes more natural to some of your team. It might be something that you have to work at a little bit more. But just having some curiosity about what's going on is going to give you those nuggets. Now, it's not enough to get that information on the phone. If it then goes into your head and doesn't go down on paper. If it goes into your head and doesn't go into the CRM, Right. And then making sure the next person sees it and can use it. All right, so we call this building a dossier on every single patient. By the time your OD or your MD goes in with that person, they should know. Jim is a jogger. He's been doing it for a year. He and his wife lost 80 pounds. They've been on this big challenge together. He's training for a 10k. They've got two kids that also run with them. They like to do so and so on the weekends. Like that all needs to be in front of your provider, because if they can see that and then go in and have a conversation with them about their priorities and their needs. Increase your conversions, shorten the time in the room. Okay. Which everybody's trying to do. I don't know where my balloons came from there, but there's a balloon skill. What is this? Hey. Because this is a balloon worthy event, right? What I'm telling you right now is worth the balloons. Okay? Build the dossier around the patient. Make sure that information follows the patient along through the journey and that we're adding to it. Okay. This is where things like we talk about. Oh, train the phones, train the schedulers. Hey, man, your technicians spend more time with patients than anybody in your practice. Do they know how to have these conversations? Do they know how to glean that info? Are they comfortable doing it? Do they know how to put that down on the sheet and do a proper handoff to the next person in line? Right. This is something that's we see overlooked all the time, but it's a huge leverage point for patients. When your techs are trained up in a lot of the tactics that we're talking about here.

I want to talk about objections because I know that this is something that practices really have to deal a lot with. And that's like, how do we sort of strengthen that muscle for them to be able to handle objections and to do so in a sort of a safe environment. So they're battle tested, if you will. What are some of the things that you'd recommend for practices to do on how to be able to handle the various objections that people get on the phone and in clinic?

Yeah. So I mean, role playing is the best way to do that. Role playing. And having one of your team members be a patient, one of your team members be a counselor or phone, team engagement center, what have you. And being able to role play these different scenarios will really help them to fit, feel out the best way to handle these objections. Now I will tell you, when it comes to objections, okay. We don't necessarily want to. You know, objections often come up in the form of asking questions. Right. Our job, hearkening back to something I mentioned earlier, our job is not necessarily to answer questions. Okay. If I get off the phone with a patient who's asked six questions and I've answered all six of them perfectly, and they get off the phone and they have not scheduled. I have not done my job. Right. It can feel like I have if I think my job is to answer questions, but I haven't. Okay. My job is to address concerns. To address concerns. Take the pricing question, for example. People call and they ask about pricing all the time. Well, I just, I want to ask you, like, if you're doing Lasik, Smile, Prk, Evo Rle, like you're doing all these things and somebody calls and they essentially ask like, well, how much is it for me to get my eyes fixed? Do you have an answer you can give them? No, you don't. That's like me calling my Toyota dealership down the street and saying, hey, what do you guys charge for a car? I'm thinking about getting a car. How much is a car? It's like, well, it's a great question. Let's talk about what you need the car for. Let's talk about what's going on in your life that you're going to utilize the car. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions to get some information and then I can better address that for you? Now I'm the one asking the questions. I'm back in the driver's seat and I'm actually helping them make a better decision than if I just given them the price and let them get off the phone.

Let's talk action items. So people that are watching this video want to know, okay, great, you got me. I believe in what you're saying. What are some specific steps that practices can be able to take to be able to enact this in their practice, if you will?

Well, obviously I'm a big fan of external coaching, right? So, you know, we work with practices all over the country. We, we see what's happening in different places, we're able to test different things in different markets, different scripting, different approaches, et cetera, and we get to see what works. Right. It also hits different for your team when they're getting coaching from outside necessarily than when they're getting it from inside. I'm not saying don't do it, it just rings in a different way. And my best analogy for this is I've got 10 and 12 year old boys, I coach them in sports, right? But like I've got hitting instructors, I've got pitching instructors that we go to. Why? Number one, they're better experts at it than me because they do it all the time. And then number two, somebody else that's an expert telling my kid what to do hits them different than when dad said to do it, right? So it just rings different from, from outside. So I'm a big fan of outside. But you still need to, in your practice, need to make sure that you're doing some kind of regular meetings, some kind of Regular training and coaching scenarios where you're talking about what are the objections that are coming up in the office. Let's do a post mortem on a patient that came in and didn't schedule. Why didn't they schedule? What was the objection? Okay, let's role play that out. How could we have handled it differently next time? Okay, there's no, there's typically not one point within the process here where it's like, okay, if we fix this one person, then it's going to fix everything. Yeah, everyone's involved in the sales process, just like I said with the text. Right. You don't think of them as being part of the conversion process, but they totally are. So doing that kind of a postmortem at a team meeting, at a, at a weekly huddle or what have you is a great way to really drill down on that and figure out, hey, what's going on? Where might we need to adjust some processes or do some additional coaching to make sure that this does not happen again. So that's, that's also the feedback loops, right? I'm a big fan of the feedback loop from marketing to sales. If sales is coming and they're saying like, hey, man, people keep coming in and they think that we're doing Lasik for $3,000 and we're not, what's the deal? What's the disconnect? Right? People keep coming in with this question and they don't. They've never heard of RLE before they get in our chair. Marketing. What can you do to support us in that? Well, marketing might be able to set up a email sequence going out to patients 50 and older before they come in the office to do some of that education. So that's a feedback loop that needs to occur within your practice so that everybody's on the same page one. And you're constantly working to iterate and create a new patient, a better patient journey, if you will. And then lastly, just knowing that you're not, you're not ever done, you're never done. Even if you feel like you're in first place, even if you're the elephant in your market and you're awesome, somebody's back there, somebody's hungry, somebody's coming to get you. And the minute that you sit there and you say, man, I'm comfortable, man, I'm Jordan, I've won five rings, I'm Tom Brady, I've won five super bowl trophies. The minute you do that and you relax, somebody is going to come up and bite you. Do not let that happen. Get a stranglehold on your market, develop your team and continue to dominate and.

Leverage data to that, to that effect. Meaning you want to know how effective is your team on, on answering a phone call and converting that patient to a, you know, or at least at the very least, extending, extending them an invitation to schedule a consult. And one of the things that I've really enjoyed using is technology that is powered by AI to be able to transcribe the calls that, that come into the practice line is one of them. L I I N E is great for that. CallRail also has the ability to, you know, if you're using CallRail numbers that practices click on your site, then they can be able to transcribe and get the sentiment as to why somebody is not booking and then also be able to drill down by rep and you can be able to, instead of listening to a call, can have it all transcribed and it can literally provide you with a data point to know. Here's why people aren't scheduling. And I'll tell you, one of the biggest things that I've seen is many people are not only not properly greeting people on the telephone, but they're also not extending an invitation for them to schedule a consultation. And that to me is just mind blowing that they're like, okay, they give the answers to the questions and then they leave. To me, you know, it's a problem. If you are a successful practice and you're doing marketing right now, hands down, there are obviously going to be people that are going to be missing the ability to get that invite to come in for a consult. And you want to be able to use technology as well to kind of get a handle on that. But then more importantly to Troy's point is be able to know the positive effect of it and measure the after effect of investing in coaching and, you know, phone training and whatnot. So, Troy, anything else that we wanted to add to this before we close it down?

Yeah, I got one more thing that I want to throw in here. Zooming back out, talking about marketing. Your biggest marketing audience and your practice is not your patients. It's not RLE prospects, it's not LASIK prospects, It is your team. Your team is your biggest and your most important marketing audience that you can have. So make sure if you're an admin and you're watching this, you're a manager, you're a surgeon, you're, you're a physician CEO, make sure that you are marketing to your team. And what do I mean by that. Make sure that you're casting the vision. Make sure that you are reinforcing the values that you want to be present in every little step in every single person that's within your office. Celebrate the wins that patients have. Right? Make sure everyone knows Mrs. Johnson baked us a cake last week because she can finally read her recipe book again after her cataract surgery. Show everyone the picture. Read some patient reviews at your team meetings. Make sure everyone is constantly, not once, not once a year, constantly, continuously being reminded why we are doing the way we are doing this, why we're doing it, and, and what that, what that means to the patients that are coming through our door. Right? Why we have the high standards that we have. Because you want everyone to continue to maintain those high standards. And look, it's hard, it's tough. You got a tough day, you got an angry patient, you're backed up in clinic, whatever. Like, we gotta be able to maintain consistent patient experience through the good days and through the tough days. So continue to market to your team so they know exactly why you're doing what you're doing. And they've got that energy and that drive and that vision that you're casting and they can use it and make it their own.

One of the things before I close it down, that it brings me back to my days when I used to work for Tony Robbins and that's. He has an acronym. Can I C A N I Constant and never ending improvement. This is one of the areas that I. If you have a team that's not effective at being able to convert people into for consults or they're not really engaging with their prospective patients and the same thing in clinic, then no amount of marketing can fix that. No amount of money spending money on marketing will fix that. So this, to me is one of the first places that I like practices to focus on as well, is, you know, investing in coaching up your team. And so if you have gotten value from our video here today, Troy and I would love to have a conversation with you if you'd like to kind of discuss how to be able to make this work in your own practice. But really, Troy, I think that this is just a lot of awesome content that you've dropped today. Thank you so much. Any final words, my friend?

Nah, man, that sounds good. Just make sure your team's getting coaching early and often and ongoing and you will, you will reap the rewards, I can promise you that. Love it, man. Hey, look, that's it for this video, though. We got, we got more to go. Make sure you're watching the other videos in this series. Make sure you're checking all those out and sharing them with your team. Right. I. I love that you're here. I love that you're watching this. Make sure that you're sharing them with your team, too. Send this over to somebody who needs to, you know, talk about coaching. Send the marketing videos over to your marketing department so they know, like, hey, here's some of the things that we need to be doing and we need to be looking at for our practice to, you know, continue to continue to maximize everything that we're doing here. So we love it. Appreciate it. We'll see you in. See you in the next video, guys.

Thanks, everyone.

Sam.