E560 | The 3 Objections You Must Handle

Today, I am talking about the three areas of sales that you will need to handle as well as anything. Not only is it important for you to master, but if you have a staff or plan on it in the future, it is equally as important for them as well. Enjoy!

• Objection #1: Money
• Objection #2: Time
• Objection #3: Spouse

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So I was having a conversation with one of our staff members about documentation and he had come over from a in-network practice that he was working at and he was talking about just how long it would take him to document and click through and the workflow and how, just how time consuming it was and how much easier it's been with the software that we use, which is PT everywhere.

And I know for us, we're very aware of. Sort of time leaks within our staff and our own schedules. And it's just one of the worst things you can do is just waste time on things when you could be doing them more efficiently. One thing for us is we have to document. It's something we need to do and you need to do it as efficiently as you possibly can because that's where you're gonna save a lot of your time.

We were seeing our staff members save upwards of an hour a day as far as cleaning up his documentation, making it more efficient. What if you got an hour of your day back just from documentation? What if all of your staff did the same thing? Highly recommend you take a look at PT everywhere.

It's been a huge time saver for us and really has made a big difference in our efficiency of our practice. You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you're gonna really like what they have to offer. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Dr. Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we are talking about sales and the three areas of sales that you need to be able to handle, as well as more than anything, how to train up your staff to be able to do the same thing, because ultimately, if it's just you in your practice you can.

You can be okay at selling and still make it work, especially if you're a really good clinician. Like being really great at sales helps with getting buy-in, getting people to commit to a plan of care, and it will definitely help you get better outcomes because people are so bought in. But you can also be a great clinician that carries a hefty reputation with them, and people will give you the benefit of the doubt if you've.

Been in the area, been in the community for a while. Not everybody is like that. Maybe you move to a new state. Maybe you are a newer clinician and you haven't been working in the area for 10 years and you have this great reputation. Like it takes a long time to build that up. The other thing is, once you bring on a new provider, it doesn't matter how great that person is, this is going to happen.

You're gonna have people that come to your practice that want to see you and nobody else. This is, it happens with every single. Practice, every single service business I would assume this is gonna happen with, right? You go in, you go to a new massage therapist, and they're, it's can't see this person.

You're gonna go see this person cuz the other person's schedule is too busy. You're gonna wanna see the person who's busier, right? It's natural human behavior. You go to a new accountant and the accountant that started the practice has to hire other accountants, and those accountants have to follow that person's style, but it's not that person that started the business, so they're not gonna be able to take on all the work.

The same thing is going to happen with you, and people are not going to wanna work with whoever you hired no matter how great they are. So they are going to have to get. Really good at sales as well. They actually probably have to be better than you do because they have to overcome the obstacles that you've set up for them, which is basically, you're not that person.

This happened to me when I started teaching for Kelly's group for the through mobility WA when I showed up and it's Hey, where's Kelly Tourette? And I would say he is back in San Francisco. I'm teaching today. You got me. It's like I am digging myself out of a hole from minute one with these people that have expectations of working with somebody and then it's somebody else is there no matter what my knowledge level was or expertise or whatever.

I had to be able to get that buy-in really fast. Now, specifically, when you look at bringing somebody new into the mix, this is where you're gonna have to focus on three of the most common objections that they're going to have to handle, and they're gonna get it, like I said. In even more so than somebody that has this amazing reputation that started the practice that you know, their friend told 'em to come and see.

They are going to have to get even more, resold into the fact of why they would wanna work there. Cause they're not even working with the person that was recommended to them. So you got three areas. It's money, time, and spouse. Those are the three main objections you're gonna basically find for almost anything.

You wanna somebody tries to sell you a new tv. I don't know if like my TV's. It's still working. I don't know why I would need it. Timing, I got, I, it is over $500. I gotta talk to my spouse. Spouse, money. I don't know. This is a lot of money. Like I, I don't know if I need it.

That's money. And those things when you look at that, In regards to what we are doing, which is helping people get over musculoskeletal injuries, primarily get back to, physical activities that they enjoy. These are the same three things. You're gonna come up money, they're gonna have to decide whether paying the one to $2,000, for your plan of care, whatever it might be, is worth it, versus buying that new TV that they've had their eye on.

Time they're going to have to put in effort. Do they have the time to do it? Oh, I'm so busy. The holidays are coming around. My kids are gonna be outta school. The timing is just, it's just bad. And then spouse man, how am I gonna explain this to my spouse? This is, you would think that cuz my back hurts, like health insurance covers that.

And it's confusing. I don't know how I'm gonna explain this to her. I gotta make sure I, we have a conversation about this because it's a significant amount of money. All those are difficult things to overcome. No doubt about that. But the only way that you're gonna do that is via reps and role playing scenarios.

So when you bring a new staff member on, and this is something that I wish I would have done more from the get-go with our staff early on, role playing scenarios. With patience and objections based on what they're going to see is gonna help them build some confidence and take away the anxiety that they will show as they go through their initial evaluation.

And then have to let somebody know what this is going to cost in order to resolve this problem. And I will say this, the consumer has a lot more skin in the game than they used to, my wife and I had to go to a hospital to have a minor procedure done for her. And before we could even go to the doctor, we had to go to their billing department and sit down and they had to collect payment before this was even done.

And they give you an a calculated estimate based on your insurance and your deductibles and all this stuff. And it was like, it was thousands of dollars and you're sitting down and it's Hey. What choice do you have? Like you, you have to decide, and we have in, we have health insurance, right?

And we pay deductible and we have premiums and all that, and. Yet still, like we still have to have skin in the game because of the way insurance is set up, especially if you're self-employed. Like it just to have just like extremely good insurance is just so expensive. If you're self-employed it's not, it's really not worth it for healthy people.

So even for us as we look at that, these are the three ver variables that we have to cover as well. And your staff. Especially if they're coming in from an in-network practice, they've never had these conversations about having to pay for anything that's all been done by somebody else. And now all of a sudden they have to have those conversations because they're the subject matter expert.

Hey, this is what it's gonna take. You've had back pain for 10 years, this isn't gonna go away overnight. We have a lot of things we need to work on, a lot of things we have to, change and rebuild and it's gonna take X amount of time. And when you see you this number of sessions, Then they have to make a decision on whether they're gonna do it or not.

And again, it's gonna come down to money, time, and spouse. Those are the main objections. And if you can work on role-playing some of that let's just talk time for a second. Let's say you have a somebody that you brought on that's a new provider, and you can sit down with them and you say, all right, I'm gonna be the patient, you be the clinician, and you tell me why I need to come and see you for the next three months.

And it's probably gonna be 10 visits or so in order for that to happen, right? So you can go back and forth with that. And you as the patient, you can bring up legitimate objections and scenarios in which they're gonna have to handle that. And if they fumble and they screw it up, it's I just don't know if I have the time right now.

It's the holidays. My kids are about to be outta school. I'm gonna be really busy. Maybe be better for me to wait, until January, and. That clinician's probably yeah, I guess we could do that. That, if that's what you, if that's what you think, like we can set up a follow up for that and it's is that is that the best way to respond to that?

Probably not. So you could give them some feedback and you say, okay Why do you think they're waiting? Yeah, they feel like they're gonna get busy. They feel like they're not gonna be able to actually like, get this outcome that they have. And maybe they really are, but life's we're busy all the time anyway.

What an opportunity to start chipping away at something that you've been avoiding for a long time. And not only that, but if you can do this while you're busy, you're gonna be able to do this any other time. So what a great way to build that, to understand how to take care of yourself and be efficient with it during a time where you have.

Less available time. It's a great time to get started. It's that way. Beginning of the year, you get back into whatever activities you want to do. All of a sudden you can hit your New Year's resolution and not be injured, not have to wait from getting into the gym or whatever it is, getting back in the tennis court or wherever their goals are, and we can get you ready to go and building into a program that's gonna get you into a better place.

Typically by. By February, right? Wouldn't that be nice? All of a sudden you're, unencumbered by this pain the beginning of the year. Why? And truly people that we see that wait about half of them never actually commit to solving a problem. And we're sitting here together right now.

You're sitting with somebody that knows what's going on. That's helped a lot of people just like you get back to this and the likelihood that you come back in January and we actually solve this together. It's much lower than if we get started right now. Now if somebody responds that way versus, oh yeah, that sounds okay, right?

Like you gotta think about the patient. They're trying to, they're, they are trying to take the path of least resistance because the truth is, if you could snap your fingers and solve their back pain, they would pay you way more. Then they wouldn't care if it's the holidays, they don't care. They would just.

Pay you and problem solved and they would go back to living their life. We can't do that. That's just not how it works physically. Like not yet. We don't know how to do those things, so they have to put time and energy and effort into it, and you have to pin them down to do it. That's the thing. Like you're selling them into committing to solving a problem and when they have.

Skin in the game. When they pay attention. And when they pay, they're gonna start to make these difficult, habitual life changes. And committing to solving a problem long term and learning the skill to take care of themself long term, that is really the key. So when somebody's in your office, you've got to understand this, like you have a very finite window of being able to actually get them motivated enough to say yes, to wanna solve a problem.

And as soon as they leave your office, if they haven't done that, The likelihood that they will goes down dramatically. So you've got to role play, you've gotta go through these scenarios, and then you can give them feedback. All right, how about this, like how does it, how do you feel about responding this way in this scenario?

Because in some cases people just feel different in terms of like how they communicate and it may not feel like the right thing to say to them. I remember like the way that I would talk to people was maybe a little bit more direct than our office manager. And I remember she told me, This was like, I don't know, maybe a year after she started and I was working with her on, ha handling inbound calls and what to respond to people with and stuff like that.

And she heard, how I was talking to people and my conversion percentage was really good. And so she tried to basically talk to people the way that I would And she got this like really nasty email from somebody that basically was like, you're, I was so offended by the way you challenged me and all this stuff.

And it's because we're just different people. We have different backgrounds, we have different tone, we have different, depth of understanding of certain things. And she just thought she was doing the right thing and she never ever did that ever again. Cause she was so embarrassed by the email that she got from this person.

Whereas if I had talked to this person in the same context, but said it the way that I typically say things, it probably wouldn't have come off that way because of, just, it's different when you're talking to a doc. Versus somebody that's at the front desk. It's different whenever you're your depth of understanding of a problem is so much different.

It's also different in terms of the way in which your tone is and the way you phrase things. So you've gotta meet the person where they're at. Okay what's gonna work for you? It's not necessarily gonna be just say what I say. Say what feels natural to you. Okay, that sounds good.

Let's try that with the next few people that you have that come in, because if they can't grasp this, they're not gonna be able to function in a setting. That is a cash setting. Unless you have somebody doing all the selling for you, which you might be able to do o on the front end, that's definitely a possibility.

But in small practices, you don't have the resources to do anything like that. And even still, they have to be a part of the process of what they're saying the p plan of care is gonna be, and somebody has to buy into that. So the other thing too, as you look at this, you being able to do role playing with your staff, all it is just.

Communication education. And you've gotta keep in mind, not only does this help them in the context of plan of care commitment in your office, it helps them with everything else outside of the clinic. And I, our same office manager who is somebody that doesn't really she's non-confrontational.

She doesn't like to be direct with people. I had a conversation with her right before we sold our practice. And what was interesting for me was for, from her to tell me just how much her taking the role that she took within our company had helped her outside of working there, of being able to be more direct with people, of being able to get more of what she wanted and being less passive with things in life.

Be by being more confident with her ability to communicate. And that's all it is. It's sales. We're not telling you to like verbally bully people, but so many people are just verbally so timid and. Not unaware of how to have a conversation or shape a conversation or be able to like reframe things in a way to help increase the likelihood of persuasion for what it is that they want.

And negatively or positively, it's the same skill. It just depends on how you use it and what your intentions are. But for her, tell me that. It was so cool to hear that it's probably one of the most. Important side effects I would say that we've had with the people that we've worked with is we've been able to help them in the office, but outside of the office, they've been able to apply very similar things to their life and to their relationships and their family and all these other things.

And the more you can communicate on a more clear like direct high level and also to be really good at sales, you have to be a great listener and to be able to be actively listening to other people and understand their problems and like really Try to hear them, try to understand them.

That's a whole nother element that applies in so many areas of your life that can be beneficial because it helps you realize that you have to be open-minded with other people. Open-minded with not just the problem that they're dealing with, but factors that may hinder their ability to resolve that factors that weigh in on their decision their views on things, all kinds of things.

It allows you to be more open-minded. As a listener. And then when you do communicate, you have a much better idea as to what's driving them to then help create a solution to that problem, which frankly, all this is just sales. So I hope that helps. This is a common problem that we see in our mastermind over and over again with people, with their staff, being able to step into really a tough scenario, which is step into, a role where you are moving people over to them as a new provider in a practice, especially the first person that comes on in a cash-based practice, typically it's the toughest.

Toughest transition, and this is how you gotta, build that skillset. You have to go through role playing. You have to work on these three areas of money, time, and spouse, and then get them really comfortable with being the authority that they are in the office. Because if they can be as confident as they should be, keep this in mind.

You are. A medical professional, you have significant training, significant experience in comparison to the person that's walking through your door. This isn't like a tenured professor that's walking through your door that has all this research under their belt, and they know, every rule that you follow out there or whatever else, like there.

This isn't this isn't the greatest clinician in the world walking into your office. This is going to, check you on everything that you say. This is a accountant, this is a teacher. This is somebody that works at a big company that's in marketing. They are not health wellness injury specialists.

They're not, and they're coming to you because they have a problem that they want to solve, and you are an expert in that area. You can uniquely help them achieve whatever their goal is, to resolve whatever the injury is, to then get back to whatever it is that they love. That's what you can do. There's a lot of power behind that.

And then at, for whatever reason, at the end of a visit, when you have to tell somebody, this is what I've found. This is what we need to do to solve this problem long term. This is what the commitment is gonna be on your part as far as time and money is concerned. In my professional opinion, this is what I think you need to do.

We get so small and we talk fast and we shy away from talking about money or number of times you need to come in and then we start to be very vague. I guess you, if we need to, we might see you this number of visits, but maybe not. It depends on this and this, and how confident would you feel about somebody that told you what your problem was in that fashion?

It, you would probably question yourself like, whoa, why are they all of a sudden getting so uncomfortable? Why are they skirting around the top? Hey, what's this look like? How long is this gonna take to resolve this? Gimme that prognosis doc. And then all of a sudden you get really vague and you start to talk fast, and then you start to talk them out of the sale.

Start to talk them out of committing. That's what we do all the time. Cause we get nervous. But you can smooth out the nerves via practice. Practice is what is gonna give you confidence, not false confidence. You should already have confidence because you have the skillset to help somebody.

Practice is what allows you to have the confidence in the one sort of other parallel skill of sales that's gonna help you. Get them to buy in. So you can use your clinical expertise, you can use all this education that you have, all these resources that you've developed to then help them make this long-term change.

But you can lose it all if you don't bolt on this little side skill that you already have 80% of. You've got to really get very confident and very consistent with how you're communicating with people. And what's really cool about it is. You get direct feedback. Direct feedback. That person immediately, they're either gonna, yeah, dude, I'm totally in, or, Nope, let me think about it.

I don't know. I gotta talk to my spouse. These are all and some of these are legitimate things. All right, cool. I gotta talk to my spouse about stuff too. But, let me ask you this. If your spouse was in, in the same position, let's say, he or she's sitting right here with me and.

They knew that you had a problem that we could resolve. What do you think they would tell you? What do you think they would want for you? Probably to get the result that you want, right? Probably to actually get better to solve that problem. And it's great to have that communication and talk to that person.

But you're sitting here with somebody right now that's telling you, this is what you need to do. If you wanna get back to these things, they are important to you, and. As you go through these scenarios, as you talk through some of these with people, you have to again, reiterate the fact that practice is continual.

Because just like our office manager, she's that didn't work. No, it didn't. You. You literally talk to somebody just like I do, and yet we're very different people. So all right, now we have to iterate. We have to improve. That didn't work. Okay, here's what we're gonna do next. And then you get another at pat.

And you get to try that, and you get to see how things are going, and then, it's like a baseball reference, right? It's like, all right Your average increases, you're spending some time like hitting off a tee, hitting off a tee, cuz you know you're when the ball's away, you can't push it down the right field line.

Like you, you pull everything. So if somebody throws a ball outside plate or throws an off speed pitch to the outside, you're screwed. You're one dimensional. People are like that in the clinic too. They're one dimensional. They only are do a really good job with people that they have direct rapport with.

They can't do a good job of talking to somebody about what's going on with somebody that's different than them. And then all of a sudden you have to understand, okay, now I get practice on this. I'm gonna take some reps. Probably not gonna do so great initially, but I'm gonna get some feedback and then we're gonna iterate on that.

Okay. That didn't work. Here's what we do next. All right, let's try that. That felt more comfortable. Okay, let's try to tighten that up a little bit. Here comes another one that gets more comfortable and then all of a sudden they feel great. They feel great about where they're at in the clinic. And it's gonna help your business tremendously.

But you gotta put the effort into that person first, yourself. If you haven't learned how to sell, you gotta learn how to sell. If that's a problem for you, you gotta check out our Clinical Rainmaker program. Straight up. It's the best cash or hybrid sales training out there. It's. Sales marketing. If you suck at that's what you need to look at.

You can check [email protected] and get more information on that. But if you have a staff member that you're bringing on, you have to be able to train them and mentor them and impart them the information that you have just as you are a clinical mentor, helping them deal with shoulder impingement, cuz maybe they're struggling with that.

You have to spend the time with them, the reps on that, and you have to do this on an ongoing basis because their confidence can sway dramatically. And you are, you're the one that has to help build them up and mentor them. So that's it guys. Money, time, spouse. Get good at those three things. Get good at selling.

Teach your staff how to sell in a really ethical, and lemme keep this in mind in an ethical way, like this is, this should just be given. This is like somebody that says I pride myself for having integrity. You should have that shit to begin with. Man, that is a check the box like ethical sales. If somebody doesn't belong in your office, you need to refer them to the right place.

It's not about money. It's not about, oh man, there goes a package I could have got. I don't care that what's right for that person. Send them to the right medical professional. Do not just try to squeeze somebody for money if they don't belong in your office, but if they belong in your office. You damn well better try to solve their problem and help them change their life, cuz that's what's happening.

And if they leave and they haven't committed to you, the likelihood that they're coming back drops significantly. Like we know that now from almost a decade of working with these practices and running their own, if somebody leaves and they haven't committed to a plan of care with you, the likelihood that they're going to drop off is very high around typically between visit two and three, because that's where they start to have symptomatic change.

But with acute on chronic problems in particular, that is not. The re resolution of the problem. You maybe occasionally you can do that in that shorter period of time, but it's very rare for somebody that has an ongoing, problem. If somebody has a grade one ankle sprain, yeah, you might see them once or twice.

They have no problem, right? They don't need to see you for. 10, 15 sessions, that's not the case. But if somebody comes in with a decade of back problems, they sit all day, they have all these health problems that are going on, like you, you gotta have the time to spend with them, to educate them, to help solve these long, complex problems.

And that requires them completing and committing to a plan of care, which sales. That's it. So as always, guys, I appreciate you listening. Thanks so much for, listening to the podcast. If your first time listener. Thank you so much for listening. If you can, listening for a while, I really appreciate it.

I'll tell you what would really help me out if you like one of these episodes in particular, maybe one of the interviews we're starting to interview a lot more of our mastermind members that have some pretty cool things to share. These are all, multi six and seven figure. Business cash and hybrid practice owners.

We're starting to interview a lot more of them, if you like some of those, and take a screenshot of it of the podcast you're listening to, tag me, tag pt biz. On Instagram and we'll re-share it was, it's really helps us understand like what topics are are you into more than anything else.

And we started to see more of that. It really gives us a good idea of like, all right, why are we hitting the nail on the head with this? And we wanna do more of that. Whatever it is that you wanna learn, obviously wanna teach you more of that. So again, as always guys, thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you next week.

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Get signed up for the challenge today. It's totally free. We think this is gonna be a game changer for you and are excited to go through it. Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one way channel.

I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about. 4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group.So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.