The Phone Consultation

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Business of Aesthetics podcast. This is Naren, your co-host. Today, I have a fascinating conversation with Jeff Richman, who's my other co-host. And the topic we're going to be talking about today is the phone consultation. Jeff is a master at this. Jeff has helped hundreds of practices throughout his 20 plus year career. Of course, he owns his own practice, Thrive Portland. And this is a practice in Portland, Oregon. And again, many of these ideas he has tested, retested, tweaked it, then helped his clients learn from it. And then of course, now he's sharing all that wisdom with you. So Jeff, welcome to our very first episode on phone consultation. Thank you very much. And what a great way to start where it starts in the practice too, right? With the initial inquiry. Absolutely. And let's dive in. Let's talk about the aesthetic patient. You know, they're not like the medical patients. Let's talk about them. Who are they? How do you see them, Jeff? You have sold millions and millions of procedures, dollars worth of procedures. So you know a little bit about the aesthetic patient. the aesthetic patient? Yeah. I mean, we think about the aesthetic patient more like a retail client for a number of different reasons, but we want to cater to their needs. This isn't, I mean, this is the walking well, right? This isn't someone that's sick necessarily that really

needs to get a procedure done. This is typically someone that wants to get a procedure done. They don't even always know what they want to get done. They may know the condition that they have, this redness around this area or this brown spot or these wrinkles around my eyes, but there's no crisis. And in most cases, there's no insurance reimbursement. So we're talking about disposable income, you know, people that have the extra cash where they want to do something that helps them feel better. On a little caveat, I will say in aesthetic medicine, and it's nice to remind ourselves though, even though there's no insurance reimbursement and some of this is need versus want, I don't want to detract from the idea that with an adolescent kid with acne or someone with acne scarring or adult, you know, that's maybe post-pregnancy that had some hormonal changes and now is dealing with hirsutism or there's lots of rosacea. There's a lot of medical conditions where we're are able to really help people and change their lives. So I think we could argue need versus want, but maybe that's a topic for a different podcast.

Maybe that's a topic for a different podcast. Absolutely. Now, you have said this to me before. You have said an aesthetic patient is worth $8,000 to $10,000. Can you elaborate on that, Jeff? Yeah, yeah. And I'd love to, I mean, even more, I think, even more. It's really, it's endless. It's really, it's endless. And patients that call us, they want to feel comfortable. They want next three years will do another aesthetic procedure, a totally separate aesthetic procedure. So that's more dollars within our practice. Many of these patients we may have for five, seven, ten years. So even more continuation of services to them. And then a large percentage, we hope, in response to our great service and a relationship with our patients that they refer us to one of their own friends and family. So there's even more dollars that way. And that's why we take these phone calls so seriously that every one of these inquiries as a response from some marketing we've done or some referral or whatever it is, but anyone that's reaching out to us, we look at as a $10,000 opportunity. And if you miss that opportunity, you don't pick up the phone, you do a bad job,

you're in a bad mood, whatever it is, you're missing a $10,000 opportunity every single time. Over the course of even a day, this can make huge impact to a practice. Right. So you believe in your gut that the first phone call is really, really important. And therefore, the person who's answering the phone is very, really important. And therefore, the person who's answering the phone is very, very important. I know you have used the term or somebody I heard recently used the term, the first impressions officer. In other words, if that first impression sucks, then that $10,000 is not going to materialize. Right. I, you know, I think physicians and business people are often surprised with the importance we place on the role of the receptionist or person answering the phone. In some larger practices, we may actually have the patient care coordinator answer the phone and then direct that phone to a scheduler. A scheduler may be more of the person we think traditionally as a receptionist, but whoever is answering the phone and dealing with the patient that begins the customer experience is a care coordinator.

Whatever we call them, they're the first person, they're the first touch, and they are absolutely key to any aesthetic practice. So they begin the customer experience. Talk about, you know, I know you used the phrase, begin with a smile. So even before you pick up the phone, and I know you have said, think of this like it is a $10,000 phone call. I mean, imagine getting a $10,000 phone call. How would you handle that phone call? Talk about that a little bit, Jeff. Right. I mean, let's, and with the money, but also without the money, let's just kind of put it in perspective. So here we have some person with disposable income that is calling us to feel comfortable. We now have this opportunity. So when we pick up the telephone, we really need to pick up the telephone and understand that that pickup is an opportunity. And yeah, it's a big opportunity in there and it can be a $10,000 opportunity, so there's dollars there.

There's also just the ability of someone that's calling wants something. They're looking for a solution. They want to feel important. They want to feel special, so understanding that as the special. So understanding that as the receptionist, to be able to pick the phone up with a smile, and I, you know, when we go into practices and actually look at their patient flow and do consulting with them and work with front desk people to get the right terminology and make sure they're looking at the right metrics and all these things. We like to role play a lot of times in offices, whether we're doing web consultation or in-person consultation. We like to do these so that people can find their own words and their own voice. But oftentimes we'll say, look in the mirror, and really in practice a couple of times, smiling. You know, hi, this is Jeff. How can I help you? Versus, hi, this is Jeff. How can I help you? Or I only have smiled the second time. in my attitude and in my perspective so that when I know I'm picking up that phone, I'm picking up an opportunity. I have an opportunity to share with somebody our practice and all the terrific things we're doing and make someone feel important. Right. I know you mentioned this, but I want to emphasize this. You said it's not really what you say, but it's more like how you say it. Can you expand on that? Like, I want our

listeners to really understand why this is an important point, Jeff. Yeah, you know, and it's funny, because when I first got into aesthetic medicine, granted, I'm the son of a family physician, and I've been in the medical world for some time, but I really did not know, certainly facial anatomy, how he strives so hard to customize the treatments to each and every patient and that we've made an investment in new technology in the practice and always have great new technology in the practice. Everything I just said there makes it sound like a fantastic place, but I didn't really give you anything. And yet I gave you everything in the same sense. So I think that's what I mean by how you are speaking with excitement, with engagement, with real caring and a real, um, impetus on, on helping that patient find a solution. When they picked up the phone and reached out to us or when they filled out that web form and made an inquiry, they're interested in getting a procedure done. It's ours to lose at that point. They've reached out to us to get more information or to get to feel more comfortable or for whatever reason it's our job to figure out what that is. Right. Let's talk about tracking. I know you have been working

with us for almost 10 years now. We do your digital marketing. And one of the things we do for you is track the phone calls. So you know, where the calls are coming from, is it coming from this side? Or is it coming from a CEO and so forth? I know you're a big, big believer in tracking. Tell me why you believe in it. And tell me, you know, how you use it in your practice for decision making and so forth. Yeah, you'll as we continue these, you'll see a recurring theme. I'm a big believer in the bottom line. So that's where my love of metrics really lies is gut feeling only goes so far. And it's nice to track the metrics because our guts usually right, but it's not always exact. And when we're talking about an annual spend and we, you know, different practices do different things, but, you know, of let's say an average of six to 8% of an annual gross reinvestment back in some type of marketing and a practice that's over, you know, a few million dollars in revenue.

We're talking about a hundred thousand hours or more a year in marketing dollars. So every effort doesn't always deliver the return we're looking for. As we all know, we've all tried things that don't work and some things do better than others and some things do well, but other things do better. So based on our budget, based on where we're trying to grow or what we're trying to promote, we like to see where we're getting the best bang for our dollars, so to speak. So and that, again, it starts with the inquiry. How are these people getting to us? And in the beginning, before we had separate phone numbers and different landing pages for different campaigns and all the kind of digital components that we have now, we had a little trackable spreadsheet that everyone kept right by their desk. And it was done in pen and a pencil. And then we would input it in the computer and analyze the data monthly. So even just a call tracking sheet, it seems like a menial way to do it, but it's fine. It works. So that we know where are these increase coming, where, and one other thing I want to say, if it is a referral from another physician or another patient.

In these cases, we absolutely want to be able to circle back with a thank you. It's just so important. And without asking the question, we wouldn't be able to do that. absolutely absolutely jeff thank you thank you for that now let's jump in and let's pretend like we are answering the phone right now right and let's um get into that a little bit i know something you always have preached and i've seen you teach this to other practices including your own is the idea of listening and learning can you expand on that, please? Because I think a lot of us, first of all, most of us are bad listeners, me included. We're always thinking of responding. We're not really trying to understand the person, understand where they're coming from. Now, this is a phone call coming in from a stranger, right? Because they're calling your office for the first time. They don't know you, you don't know them. So it's really, really fascinating to me to kind of see you emphasize this point. Can you talk more about this, please? Yeah, I mean, the listening and learning is a strategy to qualify the phone call and understand really quickly where we need to go with it. So typically, we will ask a couple of questions, but then you're right, we really need to listen to the answers to those questions, not think about what we want to say next, not think about how stressful or how stressed we are. I know sometimes for the receptionist, someone's waiting to check out, another person's coming in. We have strategies.