Resource
Qualifying question bank
The questions that do the work of an office call, sorted by what you are trying to accomplish when you ask them.
Supports Stage II, Step 1: Getting Prepared and Stage III, Step 2: Make A Follow-up Call of Frameworks. Read the book →
Nobody enjoys being talked at while they are trying to work. Questions are how a visit becomes a conversation, and listening is the relationship-building technique that talking cannot substitute for. Pick your questions before you walk in — they belong in the Q’s line of your pre-call note — and choose them to serve that visit’s goals.
Close-ended questions can be answered definitively, often with a yes or no. They are efficient, they are what you use on a first visit, and they do not generate much dialogue. Open-ended questions have no definitive answer, take longer to answer, and are how trust actually gets built. Both have a place; the mistake is using the wrong one at the wrong stage of the relationship.
By goal
Qualify the office
Your first visit's pitch ends in one of these. It decides whether this office is worth a monthly visit for the next year, so ask it early and take the answer at face value.
Close-ended
- Does the doctor see work comp or motor vehicle patients?
- Do you accept new work-comp claims here?
- Does the doctor see patients with injuries or complaints of pain?
- Does the doctor refer patients for massage therapy?
- Does the doctor have someone that she refers to for massage?
Map the office
Who decides, who coordinates, and who you actually need to be talking to. Most of this can be asked of a receptionist, and most receptionists are happy to answer it — you are asking them to route you, which is their job.
Close-ended
- Who handles referral coordination for therapy referrals here?
- Is there a platform that's convenient for meeting several doctors in a clinic this size?
Open-ended
- Who should I be talking to about therapy referrals?
- How does a referral usually get sent out of here — who starts it and who finishes it?
Learn how they treat
The workhorse open-ended questions. They gather clinical intelligence you will use in every later pitch, and they give the other person a chance to be the expert — which is the fastest way to become someone worth talking to.
Open-ended
- How does the doctor usually treat [the most common injury they see]?
- What kind of injury do you most commonly see with your patients?
- Does the doctor have a standard treatment plan for low back pain?
- Does the doctor perform orthopedic screenings herself, or does she have the therapists she refers to take care of that?
Discuss referral coordination
Once you know who the coordinator is, these are the questions that make referring to you easier than referring to whoever they use now. Ask them of the coordinator, not the doctor.
Close-ended
- Do you prefer to send referrals by fax, or is there a portal you'd rather I use?
- Would it help if we obtained our own approvals?
- Would a referral pad be useful, or does your system generate the order?
Open-ended
- What do you need to see on a referral before you can send it?
- What makes a therapy referral easy for you, and what makes one a headache?
Get to the doctor
Ask these of the staff who have come to know you, not on a first visit. If the receptionist offers a soft objection — 'she's busy right now' — the answer is another question, not a fall-back goal.
Close-ended
- Can I schedule a time to meet with him, then?
- Do you think the doctor might be interested in a brochure about massage therapy for lumbar injuries?
Open-ended
- When is a good time today to come back?
- What's the best way to get five minutes with the doctor?
- Does the doctor have any concerns or questions about using massage therapy with her patients?
Keep an existing relationship alive
For offices that already know you — including ones that used to refer and stopped. The second one is uncomfortable to ask and almost always worth asking.
Close-ended
- How often are you sending patients out for massage therapy these days?
- Did the progress notes we sent over come through all right?
Open-ended
- How did that last patient do?
- Is there something that's made it harder to refer to us lately?
How to respond to the answer
The questions are the easy part. What you do with the answer is where most office calls are won or lost, and the rule is simple: do more listening and digesting than pouncing and exploiting. Here is the whole failure mode in one exchange.
You“How does the doctor usually treat lumbar sprains?”
Rn“Well, she usually starts off with one to two weeks of pain medication, and if there isn’t a great amount of improvement, she might prescribe physical therapy.”
This is the moment you will want to explain the evidence base for massage in low back pain. Do not. People visibly recoil when a question turns out to have been a setup, and they answer the next one more carefully. Ask another question instead:
You“Does she find that patients usually respond well to pain medication in the first two weeks, or are you frequently sending people to physical therapy?”
Rn“Well, sometimes it’ll clear up in the first two weeks. But you know how patients with back injuries can be. Some of them live with it forever!”
You“Tell me about it! Lumbar strains and low back pain can be some of the hardest cases to work with. We perform a lot of orthopedic tests so we can find out exactly where in the low back we need to work. Does the doctor perform orthopedic screenings herself, or does she just have the therapists she refers to take care of that?”
Rn“She might do a few basic ones, but mostly she’ll just have the PT take care of that. Or she might order an MRI or X-ray to see what’s happening.”
You“I see. We get a lot of patients while they wait to have their MRI approved. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. Do you think the doctor might be interested in a brochure about massage therapy for lumbar injuries?”
Rn“Yeah, she might like to look at that.”
One position point landed (“we perform a lot of orthopedic tests”), one piece of intelligence gained (the MRI wait is a gap you can fill), and an invitation to come back with material. That is a successful call, and none of it required arguing with anyone.
Pay attention to how things are said, too. Did the nurse roll his eyes at “some of them live with it forever,” or did he look sad about it? That detail tells you how to talk to him next month, and it belongs in your post-call summary alongside what was actually said.
Learn and use names. Find out who you are talking to on every visit, and use the name at least once when you meet again — at the greeting, in the middle of the conversation, or on the way out. It matters more than any single question on this page.