We invest in our location, staff, inventory, education, technology, equipment and marketing to get more business to walk in our front door, but what many of us miss out on is that if we treat these new business relationships more like a farmer treats his or her soil, we will have a better chance to get the kind of harvest that we want.
There is story used as a metaphor found in the book of Luke (who was a doctor in the bible) chapter 8, where it describes a farmer who sowed his seeds and it talks about the different types of soil that these seeds landed on and how they grew (or didn’t grow).
This “farming” concept is what I want to base my tip on this week, as I think it has a lot of relevance to the results that many of us get from our marketing efforts today.
Following are the main points that I want you to be able to walk away with from my tip today. Remember, any time I reference ground or soil, I really mean our customers, clients or patients:
- It takes the same amount of effort to sow in good ground that it does in bad ground.
- If you sow in bad ground and do nothing to help the seed take root, all your efforts will go to waste and bear no fruit or benefit
- Sometimes the ground looks OK at first glance, but once you start working with it you find that it just has a thin layer of dirt covering over rocks and bad ground underneath. Plants can start out looking like they will grow, but will quickly wither and waste away because there is no place to sink roots down for nourishment
- Sometimes the ground is fertile, but it is so cramped and crowed with weeds and thistles that the good crop that you wanted just can’t flourish due to everything else that is trying to grow there as well.
- Ground that has been prepared, weeded, plowed, fertilized and watered is going to provide you with the biggest return for your time , efforts and money, based on multiplying itself over many times with the amount of fruit or grain that it will produce from just one tiny seed, planted in good ground from the beginning.
If you are having trouble following my example because you grew up in the suburbs or city and never planted anything, here is what I want you to learn from this example:
Patient education is the fertilizer that helps to prepare any new patient or customer so they can follow along, grow and produce they types of referral and compliance fruits that you want from the investment of time, energy and efforts you put into the relationship as you help them understand more about their own health and how best to manage that in the market place today.
Some patients will only want instant pain relief and have no plans to stay with you any longer than they ultimately have to. If you do nothing to change their understanding of true health, they will be just like the bad ground mentioned above in #2 and #3 above.
Other patients may look like they want to become longer term and or corrective, elective, or proactive care types of patients, but the first time that the weather, their job, family, relational responsibilities or the car or refrigerator breaks down, they will use those “busy” excuses to quit coming and you will find that the educational efforts you made here didn’t go deep enough, or create a relationship that had any roots deeper than pain management.
The ultimate long term “Chiropractic Lifestyle” patients usually come from a well designed and scheduled program of relevant and consistent patient education that gives them ongoing educational nourishment that enables them to make informed decisions for themselves and their family members.
This also creates an incentive for them to be able to refer others to you based on the knowledge and confidence they have in your services and unique skill sets that created a healthy environment for them to learn and grow in.
The bottom line is what kind of new patient or customer “soil” do you want to spend your time. efforts and money investing in?
It takes the same efforts to do either.
Let Back Talk Systems and Colorline Digital Printing help you create the kind of ideal patients that you want to work with by taking advantage of the proven methods that are used by more doctors worldwide than any other patient education materials available today.
Find out what 44,000 of your colleagues already know. Give us a call at 800-937-3113 or visit us online at www.backtalksytems.com or at www.colorlineprint.com and find out for yourself!
We are here to help!
Dr. Rob Jackson President Applewood Chiropractic Health Center Back Talk Systems Inc Colorline Digital Printing Thompson Technique Foundation 231 Violet Street Unit 140 Golden, Colorado 80401 800-937-3113 303-277-9990 303-277-9748 fax www.backtalksystems.com www.colorlineprint.com
