Speak To The Doctor

On rare occasion you will come across an office that actually refers to you before you have met the doctor in charge. This is not common, however, so you should make meeting the doctor one of your goals for every single one of your prospects. Even for the offices that do refer to you before the doctor has met you, it is still a good idea to set up a meeting. It will help solidify the relationship and help put a face to the name for the doctor, which can be useful in the event of unplanned chaos. If the doctor refers to you and it does not go well, it is good for her to know who you are so that you do not get the blame for the chaos by default.

In order to set up a meeting with the doctor, you may need to make friends with the front office staff first. A doctor’s time is valuable, and so the front office staff will vigilantly deflect distractions. This is when asking to speak with a referral coordinator can be effective. If you can get in with the referral coordinator, you will be welcomed by the reception staff by default. At that point just ask the referral coordinator about meeting with the doctor.

However it comes into being, a meeting with the doctor is an essential part of the outreach stage. Do not be fooled into thinking that it is the only important part, however, because it is not. If the doctor likes you, it does not guarantee you will get a referral from her. Many doctors order a therapy on internal paperwork, the nurse receives it, coordinates it, and hands a pre-filled prescription back to the doctor for her to sign. She will sign it, probably while doing six other things, and the nurse will follow through with faxing the prescription to the appropriate therapist. While the visit with the doctor is important, it is not the be all end all of referrals.

Prepare

Preparing for a visit with a physician is extremely important. You will want to come up with an elevator-length pitch that you can expand or contract based on the situation. We will cover that in just a minute, but for now, let us look at how you should dress.

What to wear

Under no circumstance do you want to meet with a doctor under-dressed. Business attire is essential for your meeting with the doctor even if you happen to be meeting with a “casual-style” doctor. Many doctors are conservative by nature and appreciate conservatism in their associates. It is extremely important that your attire says “conservative” and “professional” with no questions about it. Politics aside, conservative is the safest image to project. Anything else puts you at a serious risk.

What to say

Speaking with a doctor can be a downright harrowing experience. There are times that I have been given a “meeting” with a doctor only to find that a “meeting” means she stands there filling out paperwork, while moving back and forth around the clinic to different charts, and the whole time not making eye contact once. You will feel almost stupid standing there talking the first time this happens to you.

But you have to understand one thing about doctors: they have been trained to listen. They can listen while performing other tasks just as well as they can while looking directly into your eyes. Do not be fooled by a doctor’s seemingly inattentive persona. A doctor’s primary job is to listen, evaluate, and make decisions. Without doubt, if the doctor can hear you, she is listening, evaluating, and deciding on whether or not to refer to you.

When you meet with her, keep it short and keep your talking points to essentials only. What does the doctor need to know about your services? There are really only three things:

1. What do you do?
2. Why are you different?
3. Which patients should she send?

These three things can and should be covered in a modified elevator pitch, called your physician’s pitch, that is specifically reserved just for the doctor. It should be no more than 30 seconds, however you should be prepared to talk at length (and by talk I mean ask questions) if you are given the chance on any and all of these points.

Your physician’s pitch should be just like your elevator pitch, but it should include a close. So let us look at that now. The entire physician’s pitch is written out here as well.

How to close with a physician

Closing with a doctor is just like closing with anyone else in the office, except that you will lean more heavily on getting the doctor to agree to refer to you. Recall that when closing with others in the office, you set yourself up for a future visit by looking forward to a next visit and you drop off material to engage them. In a physician’s pitch, instead of closing by looking forward and leaving material, you will close with an agreement to refer you a patient.

This agreement should be made tactfully. If you stand there with your hand out demanding she shake on “the deal,” you will never hear from her again. However, if you suggest that you think she should try your services and then ask her if she could try massage on one appropriate patient and see how it goes, there is a good chance that your close will be natural and effective. Many doctors are happy to try new treatment approaches, especially from professional, well spoken, kind providers offering evidence-based treatments. See if you can get the doctor to admit this.

A small affirmative at the end of the interaction is an important matter in closing with physicians. The doctor might just say yes because she wants to avoid conflict with you, but it is still important to get that affirmative because it ends the interaction on a promise from the physician. If you can ask a doctor the above question and she gives you an affirmative answer of any sort, there is a good chance that you will be seeing a referral sometime from her.

Closing is the most important part of your meeting with the doctor. Take your time and prepare for your meeting well. It really could mean the difference between a stream of referrals from an office and not.