Consultation training for doctors and healthcare professionals helps convert more appointments into patients
Two reasons why you may not have as many patients as you’d like is because you don’t have enough qualified enquires and first appointments. If that’s the case, it pays to fix those problems first.
Then, training doctors and healthcare professionals in the fine art of conducting outstanding consultations can be an effective method of squeezing more income from your marketing efforts and delivering more consistent customer service.
Most doctors and healthcare professionals don’t receive expert training in conducting first-rate private consultations
Here’s the problem: You spend hours and hours conducting initial consultations, and even though your patients can afford to follow through with your recommendations, and can clearly benefit from the treatment you’re prescribing, they don’t convert. How frustrating is that!
The most qualified person to conduct a medical or healthcare consultation is the doctor or healthcare professional. The problem is, doctors and healthcare professionals rarely, if ever, have any training in interpersonal communication, let alone advanced techniques of influence and persuasion.Worse, this failure to convert appointments into patients or clients usually has nothing to do with the quality of your diagnosis, the effectiveness of your prescribed treatment, or how nice you are. This happens to surgeons, doctors and nurses across the country in every field and at every level of expertise. Faced with no clear solution, many healthcare businesses decide - erroneously - to drop their fees, stop providing free consultations, or abdicate the job to a less expensive resource.
How to convert more appointments into patients
First, identify a perfect consultation pathway that blends the knowledge and authority of a medical or healthcare professional with the availability and customer service skills of a clinical sales person.
Second, train your consultation team to
- welcome your patients
- set clear expectations
- understand dominant buying motives
- appreciate buyer criteria and concerns
- clearly recommend treatment options
- effectively answer questions, and
- confirm timing and next steps leading to a transaction
Third, tailor your facility, schedule and patient flow to align with your new consultation pathway (form follows function). This may include improving non-clinical factors, like your standards of customer service from the first point of personal contact (reception) throughout the entire patient experience. These non-clinical hurdles can be greatly improved with customer service training or a customised service improvement plan.
After training in consultation skills, doctors and health professionals tell us:
I learned the elements of a structured consultation, taking control of situation, finding the fear of loss and hope for gain. I’m ready to implement this system now.”
I learned about the process/order in which to do things, how to cover costs with patients, differences between (different product options).”
I learned about the proper way to bond with a patient. Also if the patient seems reluctant, we know how to deal with that. Also, I learned how to properly identify objections.”
I learned how to make the patient feel welcome, how to get as much information out of them without being too intrusive, and how to get the sale.”
You want to be able to completely make your potential patients feel comfortable, understood, clear in their options, and provided with some options that give them the best chance of making a positive decision to move ahead.
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