How Front Desk Performance Drives $1800 Care Plans with Chris Beavers

Let's start with an open ended conversation and at least get this person talking and communicating with me and telling me ultimately what they want to get back to doing. You know, it's like, because I think too often we think it's just about pain. Right? I have shoulder pain. My doc told me to come see you, but it's like, look, you went and saw your doctor for a reason that was beyond just shoulder pain. It's like that shoulder pain is impacting your life in some capacity. Beyond just that.

How to get smarter in business and in life. This is the question and I'm on a journey get you that answer. I'm going to interview the world's top entrepreneurs and deconstruct their winning secrets. Going to talk about everything from marketing, money and living a bucket list life. I'm Rick Lau, healthcare entrepreneur. I grew and exited my 127 locations in my 30s. Welcome to the Clinic Boss Show. All right everyone, welcome to the Clinic Boss Show. So Today we got Dr. Chris Beaver, owner of Be Ready PT and also founder of Virtual Refresh and they help train and hire front desk sales. Right. And what's interesting is that you have a very unique business model where your receptionist or virtual assistants are actually PTs with clinical backgrounds.

Right.

So did I get this right, Chris?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, man. No, it's, it's been a fun, fun journey and into all the things. So yeah, you hit the nail on the head there, man. For sure. Yeah.

And we're just talking earlier like, you know, we have a, we have a common friend which is Ben Baggies out in California. You know, he's running a, an amazing like, you know, million dollar cash practice. And it sounds like you're kind of in his group as well, right, Chris?

Right, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how Ben and I know each other and obviously how we got connected too, which is cool. And yeah, we're, we own a cash based physical therapy pract. We've been working with Ben and their group, clinical Marketer. They've been a good, valuable resource and they're really changing the game in the cash world as well. So we've been lucky to hang out with them.

Amazing. So, yeah, I was just looking at your website. You guys have two clinics in Tennessee, right? One in Nashville. I love Nashville, by the way.

Great stuff.

Tell me more about the practice. Like how much staff do you have going there and is it hybrid or is it like cash or is it a combination of in network or and out of network?

Yeah, so we're Fully cached. We've got four other providers I don't treat too much anymore. Kind of dabble here and there with some clients that I treated from long, long ago, but you know, less than, less than, you know, two or three hours a week probably max. And then we've got several other treating providers at this point, all cash, all pt. Hope to maybe get into the multidiscipline world. That's probably the next step that we're looking to go. And yeah, we've got two locations here. We'll probably look to build a decent sized standalone space here in the next year or so as well and just kind of keep elevating the PT profession. And yeah, we work with all sorts of folks, mostly active population crossfitters, folks who like to do triathlons and we work with a couple of fieldsport guys as well. And so it's been a fun journey.

And was it a conscious decision to just go cash and not even go hybrid?

Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, from the get go I kind of got turned on to a lot of other cash mentors in the space and just kind of consuming some of their content and you know, just work it. I worked in a high volume clinic for about a year and just very quickly just realized, hey, this is not what I want to do with my career and I don't want to see a lot of volume. I'd rather be a big quality guy as opposed to quantity. And so that's kind of why we went that route.

Wow. And what are you charging in your cash practice right now?

Yeah, we're 225 kind of across the board and then yeah, we're up there.

That's Ben's model.

Yeah, for sure, man. We're, we're definitely similar.

You are like, you're like. I wanted to start with like, you know, the 200s, right?

Yeah, we were sub 200 once upon a time when we first started. But very quickly over the last, I guess, year and a half, we kind of did a rate raise and got over 200. And honestly the pushback we got was so little that I was like, dang, I wish I did it earlier.

Yeah, wow. Wow. Yeah, I guess at that point it doesn't really matter, right? You know, whether it's 175 or 250. Right. Or three.

Yeah, dude, if you're having the right conversations with people, it's like, dude, it's all, it's all one of the same, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And what would you say, like how many, how Many visits in a typical care plan that comes to your practice. Is it like 6, like, or 10 or 12 or like, have you seen something at your practices?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, on average we like to be in that kind of 8 to 10 range, you know, definitely for kind of plan of care that's obviously not counting continuity and some other back end stuff. Early on we had a really hard time with that. I mean, that was certainly something that, you know, even my own internal mindset was, was around, hey, I'm trying to save my patient money. I'm trying to, you know, I can see them one on one, I can shoot them a message afterwards, you know, like, so that mindset was definitely a problem early on. And like when we first started, I mean, dude, it was probably four or five visits per plan of care, which you can imagine the churn and burn that we were having to go through in order to acquire clients at that point.

And I won't put this in context because, you know, like, so if they're coming, let's say on average 8 and you're charging 225, your average care plan, you know, or value of a patient in a, in a care plan is like approaching 1800, 2000 bucks, right? You know.

Yeah, exactly.

Practices, you know, kind of hover between the 500 to 1,000 mark.

Right, exactly, exactly. That's a big problem. Like, I mean, you're just going to constantly have to acquire a lot of clients at that lower price point, which is where we were early on, you know.

Wow, that's fascinating. And then how do you compensate your clinicians? Is it like more of a, like a commission base or is it just hourly?

Right, yeah, for sure. When they first start, we like to do a commissions base. It kind of protects us a little bit in the early goings, I mean, because inevitably if they get in and we're dishing them a lot of patience and we, you know, you know, maybe there's some mindset issues and, or maybe we didn't do a good enough job shepherding them. On the sales side of things, you know, we don't want to get, get crushed early on. So we'll start with kind of like a 90 day ramp up period, probably very similar to what Ben coaches, you know, let's ramp them up for 90 days. We'll pay them a commissions base at that point and then on the back end of that, we oftentimes will look to switch somebody over to, you know, more traditional kind of salary once their caseload is reached a point or Just salary. Yeah. Honestly we kind of have done both. We've done both with some folks. I like the straight salary for a lot of folks, but I've got some people who kind of move, you know, we've got some people that are leaders in our company and we'll give them a little bit of both.

And what's the starting percentage when someone starts.

Yeah, so usually you talk about salary, you're talking about like base pay at that point.

Or commission.

Or commissions. Yeah, yeah. Ideally it's like we'll like to pay them, you know, some type of low base salary, you know, something pretty light just to kind of give them a little bit of skin in the game. Call it, you know, a thousand bucks. But then usually I'm paying out about 30%, give or take per session. I usually just cap it at a dollar amount. That way if I do a rate raise or something, they're not immediately also getting a raise too.

I'm just going to do some experience here on the danger of this commission based compensation that I've seen with a lot of practices. Like I see it start off at 30 and then over time it's creeping out to like 50, 60 and then I've seen at 70%, you know, and nice like. And that has a dramatic impact on the P Ls of a clinic, you know. Right.

Oh, it's going to drag it down big time.

Yes. And I've. And, and this is a trend that's happening like a lot in I would say like. Yeah, we're seeing this trend like a lot in certain types of provinces or states like in Canada. Right. Where compensation for these commission based, whether it's employees or, or contractors are hovering like that. 60, 60 mark, 65%. And it started as, it started off at 30. Right. And so what 1, 1, 1 caution I would recommend is because this is so this is like fertile ground right now, you know, if you have a profitable business model, I would just like pay people's salary and just like, you know.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Like elevated to the point where you're giving out like, you know. Yeah, 60, 70%, you know, and I think go through this same issue too.

Right.

You know, they start off with like a low commission and they ramp up to like 60, 70%, you know, and there's nothing left for the business owner anymore. Right. Who wants to own a business that makes 5, 10%.

You can, you're not going to wake up in the morning for that.

Yeah, yeah. That's my, that's one thing I talked to with A lot of cash based practices like I would rather just pay, take the risk, you know, pay someone well knowing. Assuming that your systems work and like you could get.

Yeah. What do you feel like causes some of that creep? Just like long term they just ask more and more for you know, hey, I want to raise. And they just progressively creep and add. Add the hourly.

Yeah, yeah, give me, I want that first five points or 10 points. You know, like you could do the math very quickly. Especially when if your care plans are two grand, right. You know, and you're making 50 splits, right. Or 40 splits, right. the certain point the money like the, the mathematical, the calculations in your, in the clinician's head would be like, oh my gosh, I actually don't want to go on salary or hourly. I'm just, I want to stay at my 30, 40%. And then every year is like, hey, attack another five, tack another and. And right. Everyone.

Absolutely. Now you got this upright.

That ends up being the base now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we never had this. This never happened. Maybe I would say 10 years ago it was hourly and then because the shortage got so bad. Right. That people are trying to send on people to come and then you just see like the, the scope and the creep go up over the years and that's the decimated the profitability a lot of the clinic. That's why I like a lot of the compensation structure like in a lot of the states in the US where like they're paying them hourly and they pay them well or maybe, or maybe some practices don't pay them well. But there needs to be, there needs to be enough incentive for the business owner to keep on owning into investing in the training and the development and to grow the locations. Right. Otherwise it's just run by a bunch of solopreneur entrepreneurs.

Right.

You know, know which.

Absolutely, man, absolutely as well.

But that's another story. Yeah, yeah. But I'm curious like, so let's talk about that because one of one thing that fascinated me with like your business model and I guess some of the coaching or training that you do is you hire.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's kind of honestly kind of happen.

Patient conversation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It happened by accident, honestly. And then we realized we hired our first admin. This company started with just my wife doing admin stuff for my practice and then ultimately some other kind of practices in our network just kind of started reaching out like hey, who's doing your admin stuff? And eventually just like outgrew my wife and Then it was like, well, we're gonna have to hire somebody. And I had a good buddy from PT school and his sister was also a pt, and it was like, she's like, hey, I don't really want to go back to the clinic. Like, I've got, you know, young kids at the house and kind of want that flexibility to be able to stay at home and kind of drop them off and pick them up without grinding. And yeah, dude, it was just kind of crazy. We trained her on our systems and then suddenly we were like, hey, we're kind of onto this here. And, you know, I was talking to Ben and Jordan both over at Clinical Marketer, and we kind of were just dialoguing about this, of the possibility of what this could look like, where it's like, hey, if I can get somebody with a clinical background who understands especially the clinical dynamics and orthopedic dynamics, and then being able to pair that with a sales mindset, what kind of potential could that have? Right? Because if you've got somebody who's calling into the clinic, oftentimes they. Sometimes you get these people who just want it. They want to ask what an eval looks like. They want to ask what dry needling is. You know, if you got somebody who's really confused and not able to have conversations around that, obviously I don't want to get in the weeds with somebody about these things. But if I compare that clinical background with a sales background, what kind of power could that have? And it's been crazy, man. It's been really, really cool to see somebody who has those two skill sets together and then you plug it into a practice and now we've got this just match made in heaven where they understand the flow of it, they understand patient care because they've got the personality for. That's what they've done up to this time. And so now, solid personality, sales skills, clinical background. It's this nice triad of, you know, really solid phone conversations to convert more patients.

Oh, yeah. And I think it's also a unique value prop too. Right? You know, they're not speaking just to some, you know, front desk who graduated from high school or some medical office, like degree or a certificate.

Yeah, exactly. And that's. And that's what's been really fun for them, just to be able to, you know, have some of these high level conversations. They can explain what an evaluation looks like. And when we're talking to a patient, the last thing I want is them to have any uncertainty about what the next steps of their care looks like. And if they walk into, they go to schedule an eval and if they've got that uncertainty because we didn't do a good enough job explaining what the eval and follow up care looks like, you know, one or two things starts happening, right? Then you got people who cancel or no show because they don't understand, they didn't think, you know, that doubt overcame them or when they come into the clinic, now they're not completing a point of care. Right. Because we didn't pre frame some of that information on the phone or we didn't, you know, calm down any of that uncertainty. We painted the journey and they're just able to paint that journey just a little bit better than somebody who doesn't understand anything about the rehab world. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, I think you said it bang on, you know, and so. And what type of results are you seeing with your.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the big thing we're, you know, focusing on is like, hey, let's get patients in the door. And so now I've got somebody who not only focuses on, you know, they're not putting 100 fires out in the office, right. I'm trying to verify people, I'm trying to answer emails. You got somebody who's dedicated to just getting patients on the phone. And so what you start finding is that leaky bucket at the front desk where, you know, hey, I've got two leaky holes, right? I mean, they're not getting to people. Especially if you're running paid traffic or I'm not calling people back quick enough, or I'm not answering the phone quick enough, or if I do actually get them on the phone, I'm not able to have appropriate conversations. And so it's like, especially in a cash practice, that's the lifeblood, right. If I can't talk to somebody on the phone and convert them and they're not showing up to plans of care. Now I've got a leaky bucket front end and back end. And so what I'm looking at, what is that? Phone call conversion. That's the big thing. So oftentimes, most of the practices we're looking at 90 plus percent conversion for people that they're talking to. Right. So 10 people give you a call, right? Or reach out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. That's obviously the caveat there. We're not trying to kick anybody into the office. Yeah. So that's the big thing. And then honestly, I'll look at it from A lot of the practice owners historical data and I usually try to improve that 10 plus percent for various categories, one of which is especially if they're running paid traffic, you know, hey, I got paid traffic. I'm only. They were only converting 20% of those people to actually eval, actual eval. Great. How can I get that to 30% now? Right, yeah, go ahead. You're going to ask a question on that or you just kind of.

Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say like, you know what that was. So, you know, like, I think you kind of talked about it, but what type of conversion rates were you getting for like inbound versus outbound? Right. So inbound being like inbound phone calls, you know, and they're talking to someone. Outbound is like, maybe like you ran some of these like Facebook ads or these paid ads where they fill up some type of web form. Like Ben has all these web forms.

Right.

You know, fill up this web form and it requires like a callback or also, like, let's put also maybe some of these in network clinics where you get these cash referrals. Right? Like what type of conversion?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, certainly inbound calls, those are just gonna be warmer leads. Right. Those are usually much easier to convert. I mean, every once in a while, if you've got somebody who. They don't accept their insurance, those kind of things. I mean, dude, we're seeing really high just conversation continuity to care on the back end of that. I mean, it's, it's different from clinic to clinic, region to region. But it's like, I mean, like I said, we've got really high quality. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's high, high rate. Even some of the, the cash practices tend to be even higher just because they're really warm leads for them. I mean, that tends to be in the 90 plus percent range, but usually in that 80 plus percent range for even inbound. For other clinics. Qualified leads, of course. Right. We're not trying to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm seeing that. I'm seeing across like. Yeah, we have a company called Call Hero and we do like phone analytics and we measure conversion rates on that stuff. And I would agree.

Yeah. Outbound, I tend to look at that. The biggest thing with outbound is like, what about outbound speed to lead? That's going to be the biggest thing. Right. If I've got somebody opting in, how quickly am I getting to them? And oftentimes these clinics are running around like crazy. Kind of depends on the type of ads they're running, Google versus Facebook. Most of the Facebook accounts I'm looking at, like, especially for from Ben and them's group. I mean, dude, we. We're seeing 40, 50% of opt in to actual evaluation. So I mean you get 10 people opt in. Five of those are really high. Really high. Obviously. Depends on region. Oh really?

Okay.

Yeah. Some of the highest percentages I've seen cold ads, like. Yeah, exactly.

Ads, Right. Where they fill out like a web form.

Yeah, exactly. So their ads are absolutely killing it. They're killing it in our practice as well. We were at 45 last month. Opt into eval. Which is, which is great. You know, like, it's incredible. I've seen some ad companies a little bit lower than that. I've seen some that are running a cheaper cost per lead, but they're running higher volume. I tend to see those in the 20 to 30% range. Depends on the game the practice is playing.

Yeah, and what's the offer on that? What's the offer on that thing? Is it like saying like book of like eval. Free eval. Is it like you know, like 47 offers?

Yeah, yeah.

Or you trick them with some type of like lead magnet.

Like. Yeah, yeah. Discounted front end. Yeah. Discounted front end offer. So 60, 67. I've seen it. 67. I've seen it. 47. I've seen it. 97. We're running 67 as the front end offer got.

Cool.

I like that.

You know, geez, I love this conversation. Like you're a PT and you're thinking.

Like, yeah, yeah, you have to. Because at of the day this is all metrics driven and results driven. Right. And that's the big thing.

Yeah, yeah. And what, what cost per.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think we're paying. Last month we paid like 40, $45 cost per lead from Facebook. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

So you take 80 bucks, right? You know, 80 bucks all in.

Yeah, no brainer. No brainer. I mean we're typically doing 6.7x back on ad spend, which is like great. I'll keep playing that game all day long.

If you enjoy my content, I read a clinic owner newsletter. I share with you what's trending right now in marketing, selling your business, recruitment operations, front desk and more. Become a better clinic owner. Join over 22,000 clinic owners who get this free newsletter each week. Go to clinic owner.com to sign up today. But. But you're doing.

You said only.

There's only so much. I mean, leads out There as well. We agree. Or. Or you think it's.

I mean, yeah, there's certainly a finite amount, but at the end of the day, it's like, I want these. I want these folks that. Nashville's great because we got a lot of people moving here, which is nice, but yeah, definitely, for sure. You're. You hit the nail on the head there. I agree with you.

Yeah, right. Okay, cool. What about. So you did work at.

I did, yeah. For.

For a year in Network Clinic. You know, it sounded like. Right. Because you're seeing like 20 patients, all of it. And was it high volume? Did they have a list where.

That's it.

Okay. Yeah. And are you working, like, are you working with clients right now where you have clinicians, like, doing the.

Yeah. I'll be honest, it's not something that we've done a ton of. Like, we started primarily with like cash practices, and very recently, probably over the last three or four months, we just started onboarding some of our first heavy insurance practices or hybrid practices. So I don't have a ton of data compiled just yet on that, but the couple clinics that we've worked with, it's like, yeah, I've got somebody who's just hammering these folks as opposed to, hey, I'm going to call them once and then forget about it. Call them three days later. You know how these things go. You got one front desk wearing 17,000 hats and things like that get put on the back burner.

Yeah.

I don't know, man. Something about COVID like, accelerated this, like, desire to work from home for whatever reason. I think, I think, I think that's a big component of it. I think the other component is like, you just get people who just got hosed in the freaking clinic, man. They get tired of seeing 18 to 20 a day. And I think, you know, PT at the end of the day, we've kind of eaten our own in some regard, especially some of these big, high volume clinics where you get them in and you churn them, you burn them to the ground and they're just over it. But at the end of the day, or I also have a lot of folks who, you know, they worked in a clinic for a while, they stepped out to take care of their kids and life and family. Their kids have now gone back to school and they're like, hey, like, I kind of have all this spare time and like, I heard you guys were doing this. Like, is this something that you're still doing? I'm like, yeah, let's have a conversation and See if it's a fit, you know, and so that's honestly where we've. Yeah, we've lucked in. We've kind of become this.

Wow. And is it mostly a bit of all.

So, pt, pta, ot. Ota. I've actually got a couple speech language pathologists, too, that do a really good job on the phone. I've had a couple massage therapists that I've also really, really liked. They just. They've had a high social IQ and they fit the build. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like, you know, like it's not meant for everyone, but there's a lot of people in the industry who are frustrated or they want remote work. Right. Or they want maybe diversity.

That's exactly what it is. I mean, every conversation I have, they're like, wow. I was like, didn't think I could use my degree. I thought I would just be, like, punching numbers or I'd be stuck doing, like, case review and could no longer communicate with people. But they kind of get that fulfillment because they talk to patients, they're in pain, they get them scheduled, and then, you know, they do a weekly staff meeting with their direct report or clinic owner, and they're like, oh, yeah, dude. Like, this person came in, they bought a package, and they're freaking crushing it now. And so now they get that satisfaction indirectly without having to lay their hands on patients. Yeah.

This is fascinating. So now, like, this. My operational head.

Yeah.

So how does all, like. Let's just say I. Let's just say I have a hybrid clinic. Okay. Hybrid clinic. So I do do a bit of our network and let's just say, yeah, do a bit of network. I also do cash.

And.

How does it actually work when I have front desk and I also have clinicians like, like, you know, with like, the inbound calls and also outbound. Like, what does that look like? Because you're.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's gonna depend. You know, the classic answer. It depends. Oftentimes I like to just reroute a lot of the new patient phone calls directly to the remote staff. Right. It's like, get a phone tree set up. Hey, I'm a new person. Or, you know, click one for new. New. I'm a new patient, want to schedule an eval. And then now they're routed directly over to our team to. To be able to completely handle that. Right. And we pair kind of one to one. So it's not like I have a call center or something like that. It' that kind of is what allows it to be very specific to the practice.

And that just goes to that.

Exactly right. Or they'll, you know, it's a voip line or something like that. They'll redirect that way. It's great.

I love how low tech this is, you know, like it's not some big like call center operation with like, you know, because I bring this because we actually run that operation. Right. You know, but I love how like, you know, you got clinicians doing it and they're almost handling that.

Yeah. It makes it simple, simpler too. Right. It's like I, I wanted that quality, especially with the cash practices or even the hybrid practices who do very specific stuff. It's like I just want. Or pelvic health clinic, for example. Like could you imagine a call center trying to handle a pelvic health call? It's like it just needs to be really high quality touch point and you know, being able to have conversations with them. But yeah, basically redirect it over to them and then just let them crush the outbound and the inbo. Like let their job be sales and yeah. Just it forget works. It's awesome.

Yeah. Well, yeah. So the inbound looks like you're measuring, you're part of, I don't know who measures. It sounds like you are like the owner measures like what is your answer rates, what is your booking rates, you know. Right. And, and then for the outbound, it sounds like it's, it's your, I think your term speed to lead, you know, how quickly are you calling them and what those.

Yeah, yeah. Those are the big things I look, look at. I also like to obviously look at schedule utilization because it's like if I introduce somebody new and I've got a drop in schedule utilization, that's going to be a big red flag. Right. So making sure that's staying stable. Total evaluations from a week is stable. I mean those and increasing. Right. Especially when we've got somebody new, you know, who's just crushing that side of things. Those are the big like indicators. I, I like to look at. I don't know. Are there other things you'd like to look at from scheduling standpoint on some of those. Yeah.

I think you hit the nail on the head, you know.

Yeah. Show up rates huge.

Your schedulization, you wonder whether showing up. Right. You know, and, and yeah, yeah. Your show up rate, are they showing up 95 or 50. Right. You know, and, and, and yeah, for sure. Like, you know, like but on the top of the funnel, like I like to know, like, hey, what is your. What is your answer rates? You know? Right. You know, are you answering 95% of the phone calls? You know, and what is the conversion rates, you know?

Right.

Or the. At that 80% that you talked about Chris earlier, Or is it the 60? Because that if you're spending all this money on paid ads or doctor market and whatever you want to do those.

Absolutely, yeah. 20% drop significantly increase your cost per lead, and now you're having to spend twice as much money on ad spend. Maybe not twice, but you're gonna have to spend more money on ads to get the same results, you know?

Yeah, yeah, but I like this idea. Like, in essence, you're saying all the. All the. All the new patient calls, whether inbound or outbound. Get. That's. That gets stripped out to call it a clinician salesperson. And then the front desk could just focus on patient experience or whatever you need to onboard, make sure, like, the schedules are above. Collect them. Make sure they walk out, like, super happy and get them to, like, do.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Because otherwise, what do most other clinics do? Right. Their focus is client experience, plus they're trying to close a new person on the phone. Plus they've got referrals coming in. And oh, yeah, I got to do the laundry. And oh, yeah, somebody's got. I got to sign for the UPS package that just came in. It's like, now your front deck, now you have turnover. The front desk because of that, too. Right. They get miserable from wearing a thousand hats.

It's overwhelming. Overwhelming. Right. You know, and so, and I'm just going to assume. And you could share that or you don't, but, like, I'm going to assume that these clinicians who are in this sales role, they are.

Yeah. Typically, you know, ultimately, I let the practice owner dictate what the exact pay should look like. So commissions tends to work pretty well in this case. I've got some folks who don't love that. If they've got super low reimbursement rates or something like that, that's fine. But I do like to incentivize on that because you get slow during the holiday season for whatever reason, or you mess up your Facebook ads, and that's what this person was doing. You don't want to have a sunk cost of several thousand dollars and no outbound to be bad. Yeah.

And what's your recommended compensation plan?

That. Yeah, I mean, it's going to vary from region to region. The, you know, the level of talent that you have But I like some type of base, call it 800-1500-give-or take, depending on what kind of task you have them doing, and then pay them. I've seen it as low as $20 per conversion, and I've seen it as high as $50 convert per conversion for some really high touch point, high end practices. We've got a couple functional med practices we worked with, and that's where they tend to fall, is in the higher end. Yeah. Super fair.

I think that's way more than fair, you know, Right. You know, and you'll know, right? Yeah, yeah. And then like. Yeah, but I'm not sure about the outbound referrals, because that's a lot of phone calls to make, right?

Yeah.

Like out of network.

Yeah, network, different story. Those are. Yeah, you got to play a different game at that point. You're like, wait a second, these are already referrals. They're warm. I just got to get them on. Yeah, you don't want to be doing that.

Yeah. Okay, cool. And what would you say is the biggest mistakes that usually happens on the first phone call that most practices have? It's the same problem with that with that patient. You know, whether it's cash or in or it's the same problem. You would treat it the same.

Right.

I don't care whether it's cash or in, network or out of network. You know, to same conversation.

I would say the big thing is, is like, we. We make it more about us and less about the patient. Right. I think so often you pick up the phone and it's, oh, yeah, you know, when do you want to get scheduled? Yeah. Okay. What insurance do you have? Yep. So here's what the eval looks like. And, like, we just ramble on about what we can do, and we don't ever ask, like, what's your name? You know, what's your story? Like, what the hell do you want to get back to doing? And so often it's just this word vomit. And then, you know, oh, do you take my insurance? And then we just try to, like, defend ourselves as to why we're out of network. And it's like, these people don't even know if this is the right place or now is the right time to solve their problem. They just reached out. Maybe they saw it online or maybe their friend told them or maybe their doctor told them. And it's like, if I can, like, find out if now's the right time and this is the right place by getting their story and then telling them what we do on the back end of that, then. Yeah, then it's a no brainer. Right. But too often we just word vomit, you know, and that's a big, very transactional.

Yeah. Word vomit. And it's transactional, right? It's like, it's like, what is.

Give me your card. You know, you're just like, hey, you want my bank account number two? Like, what is this, bro?

What's your number? Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think definitely you would talk to any like front desk people like, hey, I don't, I don't do sales. But at the end of the day they are still convincing somebody to come in and see them. Sometimes they're just a hell of a lot warmer and it's a. Yeah, that is a hefty sale. Or you don't even know if the person you're talking to. For all you know, they may have a high deductible. And if they didn't know that and then they walked into the clinic and they thought, oh yeah, they're take my insurance. And then now you're hitting them with that estimated bill of yeah, you're probably going to be paying 1500 bucks out of pocket. Yeah, dude, if you did a crappy phone call, like they're going to be like, I'm good, you know. No, thanks.

Yeah, Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, no, that is way too often.

I mean, interesting.

Yeah, go ahead. No, I said I secret. I secret, secret call some, some clinics sometimes just to like fill it out, see what they're doing. It's a mess, man. Like, it just, it truly is. I was just like, wow. I left that five minute conversation. I was just like, I don't know you per. Like the person on the other end, they just sounded unsure and uncertain and like, man, had somebody like you could clearly hear them like ruffling through papers to tell me like what the cost of their session was. I was like, dang, that's bad. You know?

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Yeah. I mean at the end of the day, let's, let's try to break down the walls and the barriers as quickly as possible and like, hey, let's get this person's name. And like, I just want to learn a little bit more about you, right? Like what, what is it that has you reaching out? Like be open ended. I think too often folks like try to be very precise. Name, phone number, insurance. It's very, very sterile. Right. Let's, let's start with an open ended conversation and at least get this person talking and Communicating with me and telling me ultimately what they want to get back to doing. You know, it's like. Because I think too often we think it's just about pain, right? I have shoulder pain. My doc told me to come see you, but it's like, look, you went and saw your doctor for a reason. That was beyond just shoulder pain. It's like that shoulder pain is impacting your life in some capacity. Beyond just that. Whether it's, you know, hey, it's preventing you from working out and, you know, your workouts, your stress relief, and now you're a pissed off dude because you can't work out, right? Like, being able to dig into someone's purpose for calling beyond just pain. That's why people freaking deal with any kind of pain that you name for 10 years. You're like, wow, you've been in pain 10 years. Like, what's changed all of a sudden? Why are you reaching out now? And if we can understand that now it's a moot point for somebody to want to come in. It seems silly for them not to come in because we've expanded on that level of the conversation. So it's. Yeah, dude, if you have, if you have a 7 to 10 minute phone conversation with somebody and you're telling them about your, like, why you like to work out or why you want to be able to get rid of your shoulder pain so that you can show up and go to work every day without having to worry about it, it's like, yeah, dude, like, you're connected with somebody now. I'm. I'm much more inclined to have a relationship with whoever it is I'm talking to and the clinic that I'm ultimately going to work with. And now they're warmed up and these people are ready to come in at that point, you know, and, and stay for an entire plan of care.

Yeah.

Wow.

Then what happens next? And how does that.

Yeah, for sure. Look, you got to be transparent. I think that's the biggest thing, you know, right? Let's. Let's get them bought in. Now's the right time. This is the right place to get help with. Okay, Once, once that happens, then. Now let's, let's. Let's get them on the schedule, and then let's be transparent. Hey, here's the cost of our session. Here's exactly what it looks like to work with us. You know, if your insurance base is, hey, who's your insurance through? You know, we'll run your benefits. We'll let you know what that looks like. You know, and you just, you give them the lay of the land, what exactly it looks like or you know, for us, we're super transparent. Hey, the cost of our sessions are 225. We are an out of network provider with insurance. But at the end of the day we can provide you a super bill if that's something that you want. But all of our folks have insurance. They just choose not to use it because they're going to be able to get a superior quality care with us. Right. We're just super transparent and hey, yeah, exactly like that. That's just it. Like everybody has insurance. They just don't want to use it, you know, because they know we're going to give a crap about them.

Yeah. 100. And so these people who are like, let's say like in network, right. And they're calling, right. Whether inbound or outbound, what do you say is a realistic conversion rate of someone who like is calling?

Yeah, much, much harder for sure, you know, to like. Yeah, I mean, I think realistically you're probably looking at 60, 70% for some of these people, especially if you can have the right.

You think that high. You think, you think you could get. 60% of the people who have this mindset is like, hey, I, I don't want to pay out of pocket.

Well, I mean, like that's, I mean the people who call our clinic, it's exactly that. Right. Like they, I mean, so, so often the conversation starts. Yeah, I was, I was hoping to, you know, I found you guys online. Yeah, yeah.

But this is a little different because like you're.

Yeah, I mean it doesn't say that.

Explicitly online though, out of network and your cash. So like what is.

Yeah, I mean, certainly maybe a little bit more. But it doesn't say we're cash. It doesn't say we accept insurance. It doesn't say we're out of network. Like, our cost isn't listed on our website. I mean it certainly, like we have a button that literally says you can inquire about our cost, but like it doesn't explicitly say on there, you know, it's the same reason that a lot of these clinics are, you know, like we've had some clinics hire us that are primarily in network. And then like they're like, hey, I'm sick of United's nonsense. So like I want to go out and network with them, but I don't know how to have a conversation with them. So yeah, certainly now at that point let's still carry the same phone conversation. And then let's let them know. I mean, there's a lot of clinics doing out of network billing as well with people. It's like, that's technically out of network, you know, I mean, you're out of network. They're just having a conversation saying, hey, I'm gonna at least get some coverage for you. They're just taking the second step than we are now. There are some areas, like Virginia, like D.C. area, definitely tougher out there. A lot of federal plans. Yeah, a lot of federal plans. Little harder game out there. For sure. Yeah, it's fun, man. I like, I like digging there. And you've got some, like, experience in the space, too, so it's kind of fun for me to, like, pick someone else's brain on some of this stuff too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, for sure, man.

Yeah. Give us a. Check us out on Instagram, Go to our website, virtualrefreshcode.com Feel free to check out our Instagram page. We post a ton of content on there, instagram.com virtualrefresh and yeah, or feel free to shoot me an email, chris@virtualrefreshco.com open book. And yeah, happy to. Yeah. Help you, help you guys out any way I can.

I love it. I love it. And typically, how long does it take for you to train, like, someone, you know? Like, you know, if, if. If I'm a clinic, I want to do this. Like, how long will it take?

Yeah, for sure. So gonna depend on how quickly you can get me, like, pay structure and, like, logins. Barring that, you don't have any of that. I mean, I've got people ready to go. Like, we keep a constant pipeline. So, like, if you said, hey, I'm ready to go today, Like, I've seen people get, like, they're starting to interview our admins as quick as a week, which is pretty cool. You know, if they're a little slower and they don't have some of the things they need, then, hey, maybe it takes two to three weeks. But usually interview them within a week. And then usually I like to have them in sometime because they're already trained. Hey, let's get them in and start getting some outbound or inbound going usually the following week, if available. Right?

Yeah. Do you also train, like.

No, I like to do both. Yeah, I like to do both. I mean, I got some folks that want to take our. One of our remote admins and want me to train their front desk at the same time. That's a great process. Right? Because now everybody's getting on the same page. The conversation is the same from the front to the back. And I, I like doing both. I got some people that are just like, hey, I have zero interest in ever having a remote administration. That's cool, you know, no, no worries. Well, great. Let's get your, you know, what's not working as well as it needs to and then let's fix the bottleneck with your, your current existing front desk staff. Yeah, dude.

Yeah, it's cool. That's awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show, Chris and everyone. Check out, check out Chris with links that he, that he just shared with.

Right?

So if you found this helpful and want some free resources to help you be an even and better clinic owner, head over to clinicbosstools. Com. We got tons of free stuff on getting new patients, bone strips, selling your clinic, managing clinical teams, and much more. Head over to clinicbosstools.

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