Dr. Fred DiDomenico is a master at communication. His program, Elite Coaching, focuses on teaching doctors how to use life coaching principles and apply them to chiropractic practice. In doing so his clients realize that they develop the skills to predictably help patients find a deep inspiration for achieving extraordinary health through chiropractic principles. I have first hand experience with Dr. Fred’s system and can say it works. After listening to this webinar series you will be one step closer to a more fulfilling practice and personal life.
Brian Capra
Founder & President, Billing Precision
Dr. Brian Capra: Hello, everyone. This is Dr. Brian Capra from Billing Precision. Today, we are lucky to have on the phone Dr. Fred DiDomenico from Elite Coaching. As you know, I love to do these webinars obviously outside of what Billing Precision offers our clients but it’s a great synergy to have experts in our field on different aspects of practice come on and give their expertise on certain topics.
Dr. Fred is the owner of Elite Coaching and I’ve had actually some personal experience with his Elite Coaching system both in practice and as a part of what we do in Billing Precision. And I can actually say that Dr. Fred’s system is probably the only actual true coaching program not to bash any other coaching system out there, but it’s true coaching program. One of the things that make it such is that it focuses on communication. At the end of the day, what you wind up feeling is basically rather than having to sell your patients or in Billing Precision to sell my clients, I’m actually able to learn how to communicate better with them so that they find their own inspiration if it’s there to do by Billing Precision or become a patient in chiropractic.
So first of all, Dr. Fred DiDomenico, thank you so much for being on this call and thanks for getting into this.
Dr. Fred DiDomenico: Well, thank you. I think you summed up pretty well. That was one of my greatest frustrations in practice but as you know, I mean, we’re principal chiropractors and I think chiropractic is the best form of health care there is and it just got to be frustrating in practice when you’re feeling like you’re having a talk to somebody into doing something that’s going to benefit their life and they just didn’t get it or for whatever reason they have objections.
And when I started applying coaching communication principles, I always thought people should be coming to us and begging us to be a patient. Yet, here we are with this great delivery, yet, we’re trying to talk people into it and that just never resonated with me, in fact it was very frustrating.
And so once we came up with this coaching application, coaches help people find the inspiration within themselves and when you find them around emotional reason, people come to you asking to be your patient, and I just found that that was a lot more fulfilling.
Dr. Brian Capra: Yeah, a lot less frustration, yeah.
Dr. Fred DiDomenico: And a lot less work.
Dr. Brian Capra: A lot less work and easier. I can tell you that’s 100% true. All right, I guess the title of today’s webinar is “The 3 Mistakes at Your Report of Findings That Are Causing Your Patients to Walk Out Your Door.” And again back to that, okay.
Dr. Fred DiDomenico: Yeah. And again, what this is — the problem was I just found a correction so I could predict a clinical response and now there are people with many techniques. You can pretty much predict what response you’re going to get from a patient clinically, but I couldn’t predict whether or not a patient is committed. And what we’re going to go through today are three mistakes that people commonly make of why you don’t know why they’re walking out the door.
So when you can take care of these, then your results on your ROF become much more predictable and search communication. And that’s what it says, “Communication tools that would take your practice and your purpose to a new level.” So let’s go through that. We’re getting there.
Okay. Any entrepreneur, Brian, as you know, doesn’t say, “Hey, they didn’t get it.” They know their success is based on their communication. Communication is your success. So the effect of your practice is only as effective as your communication. So what we look at in chiropractic really, the strength and stability of a practice is in a patient visit average. What’s that mean? How many visits the average patient comes?
So if you take your office business per week divided by your new patient, that’s your PVA. And if you have a zero to 25 PVA, that means they’re symptom-oriented. It doesn’t mean that’s your intention, you may have corrective care recommendations, whatever that corrective care program is in your office. But if they’re basically coming zero to 25, then they’re getting rid of their symptoms. That’s they’re mindset.
If they’re coming 25 to 40, then they may be completing an initial corrective care but they’re not following through with maintenance. We look at the principle and philosophy of chiropractic, really it’s optimal, spine optimal health, and we want people to have a lifestyle of keeping their spine healthy.
So if they are averaging 20 to 40 visits, yeah, they may have followed corrective recommendation or their first set of recommendation but they’re not following through with the lifestyle. We had people coming 60 to 90 PVA. And when we’re talking about PVA, Brian, a lot of people, they take the PVA, the average visits of the people that commit. Well, we don’t do that because what if you only have 30% of your new patients committing? Then that’s a problem, that’s the day one problem.
So every patient that walks through your door and puts the pen on that application or that new patient intake form, they count as the statistic. So we have to average everybody in there, not just the people that commit but the people that walk out your door. Now, when you keep that stat, sometimes it gets a little bit scary.
So when you have 60 to 90 PVA, that means the majority of your patients are going through the corrective program whatever that may be, and they’re following through with some maintenance and that’s really the goal with the lifestyle of chiropractic.
Now, I have down here CBP. I actually used this slide on a presentation speaking to a group of CBP practitioners, but this really applied to any chiropractor regardless of the technique. So your PVA really is the strength of your practice.
MISTAKE # 1 – Talking Too Much
Number one, you’re talking too much, and this is what most people do. And the thing is the smarter you are, then the more you want to tell them what you know, and that’s where the problem begins because hey, there are tenants at grocery stores, there are bank tellers, they sell cars or sell real estate, they don’t want to know what you know, okay, they have their own job. And sometimes when we’re so smart, we want to tell them everything we know and the more you’re talking, the more you’re talking them out of care.
So it’s not how much you say, it’s what you say and the impact, in other words, how they feel about what you say. And the reality is, the less you say and the more impactful, what you say is to them, the more they’re going to commit. So number one, there shouldn’t be a 45 or a 30-minute report of findings. You’re talking too much.
Dr. Brian Capra: All right, that’s right. Is it basically what they feel about what you say or is it what they feel about you and what you say, or is it the feeling that they get after you say what you say?
Dr. Fred DiDomenico: Well, it’s going to be both, Brian, because as you know, you went through some Elite coaching training and I think over 90% of communication is non-verbal. So when you’re looking to influence studies on patients actually going to doctors of whether or not they followed the recommendations of the doctors. So when we look at the influence the doctor had over patient, only 7% of that influence was related to words.
So if you think what you’re saying is influencing them, then you’ve got a 93% chance of failing. Tone had 38% and body language had 55%. So your body language, when you’re not moving and your body language doesn’t match your words and your tone, people won’t trust you. So that’s number one. In other words, if you say, “I’m having a great day,” but your head is shaking no, people won’t believe you. They look at how you move not what you’re saying.
And if your tone and body language match your words — so to answer your question which is a great question, Brian, first, you’re going to get a feeling, “Are you confident with what you’re saying?” That means your body language and words have to match.
Secondly, they could be confident that you’re an expert but they just don’t like your idea and that would take us to the next slide, to the next series of slides and that is, first of all, what you have to understand is if you want to change your practice, you can’t do the same thing but harder. Now, you can’t fix the problem with the same mind or the same communication that created it.
Now, let’s go what most people have been doing and let’s go to the next slide. And this is when you’re talking too much and this is your idea, that’s consulting, even through most management groups. They say you have to answer the three questions, “What’s you’re problem? How long is it going to take? And how much is it going to cost?” That’s you doing all the taking. That’s your idea.
Well, do you ever think, “What if they don’t like your idea?” It doesn’t even matter if you can help them. They just flat out and may not like your idea. And then you’ve got personalities because they just don’t want to be told what to do. And just the fact that you’re telling them what to do, even if it’s a suggestion and even if you use “My recommendations are–,” then that’s giving them a choice to choose wise, “Here’s my recommendation but you can do whatever you want.” And that’s where the weakness in your delivery starts happening. And if your body language doesn’t match your tone, you’re using like, “Here’s what I suggest. What do you want to do?” Then you’re communication pattern is just getting weaker and weaker.
Number one, it’s your idea. Number two, it’s a recommendation. It may not feel that solid. So now they don’t trust you and who knows how you’re moving when you talk? And that is 50-year old chiropractic. I mean, we’ve been through that, our management groups have taught that for decades, and that’s just not as effective communication. So what is more effective?
