Developing Rapport with the Aesthetic Patient
By: Catherine Maley, MBA
Author, Your Aesthetic Practice
www.CosmeticImageMarketing.com
Most practices would like to increase their closing ratio. They have spent the time, money and effort in getting prospective patients through their door, yet too many of the patients didn’t book for some reason. They blame it on the competition, on the staff or even the marketing; however, in reality, it’s the physician who is most responsible.
The solution can be fairly simple. You can increase your closing ratio by improving your rapport-building skills with your prospective patients.
What does your aesthetic patient really want?
First, consider what an aesthetic patient is really buying. Some are buying time, recognition, prestige, happiness and love. Some will tell you they want to stay competitive in the marketplace, look better now that they are newly-single, are going to a class reunion and want to make an old boyfriend jealous.
The bottom line is that your patient wants to feel better – period! They believe looking better will make them feel better about themselves. Now, they just need to find the right surgeon to help them.
Knowing this, you must address their wants, needs, fears and disappointments. The aesthetic patient is buying hope – that you will give them a good result, with minimal pain and discomfort and that their lives will improve.
You are in the business of feelings. The aesthetic patient wants to feel special, understood, important, comfortable, significant and respected. They want to know you care about them as a person and you will give them what they want. They expect to be treated nicely and respectfully and, frankly, if they don’t get those warm feelings from you, they will go to your competitor who will treat them nicely and they’ll tell their friends.
Building Rapport Starts With a Telephone Call
Rapport is the bond you build with the prospective patient and it starts with the initial telephone call they make to your office. Your receptionist should be skilled in patient relations and have the personality and training to build a relationship with the caller. She should introduce herself first and then learn the caller’s name so she can use it often throughout the call. She should be knowledgeable about the procedures you offer and be able to answer generic questions to keep the conversation going. The receptionist should be friendly, professional, caring and skilled to know when to ask for the appointment. The receptionist can build such great rapport with the caller that the caller is instinctively bonded and excited to meet her as well as you.
Develop additional rapport with the patient before ever meeting them to build trust. Send them a formal patient information packet that contains a letter from you and a handwritten comment from the receptionist looking forward to meeting them, specific information about the procedure(s), your credentials and photo, your office and staff bios, policies, directions, PR pieces about you and your newsletter. In addition, invite them to your Website that is full of pictures of you, your staff, your office and your before/after photos and anything else that profiles you as the caring expert – anything that helps the patient feel as if they have met you already. You are only as expert as you appear so put some thought and resources into your staff, your office and your marketing pieces.
Evaluate every aspect of your practice from the patient’s perspective. Many physicians either overlook this or give it only passing attention. Every detail is either building rapport or destroying it. Be sure your office is clean, organized and aesthetically pleasing. Be sure your staff is presentable and personable. Be sure you are.
Your patients want to identify with you, your staff and your office. If you can make the prospective patient feel good, important, and comfortable as well as understand their needs, they are yours.
What is Rapport?
Rapport is that bond you build with your prospective patient. It’s building trust quickly, gaining commitment and managing objections up front. It’s the single most important personality skill a plastic surgeon needs to be successful. You do it through words, tone and gestures as well as commonalities since:
7% of what is communicated is through words
38% through tone of voice
55% body language – facial expressions, gestures, quality and type of movements
How do you get others to identify with you? You act like a reasonable, confident and professional person to gain their cooperation, loyalty and respect. Arrogance does not sell so you don’t pull rank or overplay your authority. You speak to them with empathy and understanding. You speak to their needs, hopes, dreams and aspirations. You talk with them on a human level and let them know you can help them with their problem or concerns. In this scenario, logic does not prevail and reasoning can fail because this is all about emotions. Logic, by itself, will rarely influence people. To persuade people, you must understand what they are saying, use analogies and metaphors that patients can relate to, and show them evidence such as diagrams, patient photos and testimonials.
How to Create Rapport
Building Rapport is simple and takes little time. You just have to care enough to go the extra step. It can also be the difference between a prospective patient booking surgery or continuing to shop around. Be sure you have incorporated the following into your patient relations regimen:
1) Show interest in them as a person first, patient second. Smile when you see them,
extend your hand, make eye contact, show enthusiasm and use magic words and
phrases such as:- “Hello” with a smile and “Glad to meet you”
- Use the patient’s name often
- Ask them how are they doing2) Create or discover things in common with the patient:
- perhaps its your patient who referred her
- or that you live in the same neighborhood
- or a friend of yours works at the same company they work at3) “Mirror” the patient’s breathing patterns, posture, tonality and gestures
- if the patient talks fast, you talk fast
- if the patient talks loud, you talk loud
- if the patient is meek and quiet, you slow things down
- use the same terms and phrases the patient uses
The patient will feel as if she found her soul mate, someone who totally understands her and who can read her thoughts and relate to her. That’s when she starts looking at you as the perfect surgeon for her.
Communicate Clearly
Communicating clearly is the essence of creating the impression of competence, skill and mastery. Communication is even more important when the patient cannot see what you are offering and must go by what you are saying. Be able to explain what you do clearly so your patient can easily grasp it and relay it back. Use non-medical language, to explain clearly, the procedure, the result, the recuperation and the risks.
State what you are good at strongly, confidently and immediately – don’t hide it in tons of words. . And, don’t be abrasive, because how you say something will often determine the response you get.
Listen!
Listening is a skill. It’s also one of the most important skills you can perfect to close more consultations. The prospective patient needs to know you heard them, you heard their concerns and you addressed their fears.
Effective listening requires more than hearing the words transmitted. It demands that you find meaning and understanding in what’s being said. Meanings are not in words, but in people.
Note your listen-versus-talk ratio. Keep quiet and let the patient do the talking – initially.
Always address the prospective patient with tact, concern and interest. This will disarm them since people tend to behave the way you expect them to behave. Try to see things from their point of view or frame of reference. Listen with empathy.
Educate Your Patient and Set Expectations
Expectations come from word-of-mouth, personal needs, and past experience. Expectations must be understood and then addressed and that begins with how we learn and take in information. People learn information is different ways. There are three different learning styles – visual, auditory and kinesthetic:
Visual people want to see the results
Auditory people want to hear about the results
Kinesthetic people want to touch and feel the results
We have elements of all three modes but usually one mode dominates. So, you want to present your message in a way that gets through to the patient in the way they understand it best.
To keep it simple, your consultation should have something for everyone – something visual, something auditory and something kinesthetic. You should show them things, let them hear things and you should attach feelings and emotions to them. Some marketing tools to help:
Hand/mirror/Q-tip
Computer Imaging
Before/After Photos Books
Videos of procedures
Taped patient testimonials on a PC in your consult room
Prospective patient calling former patient
Patient information packets with PR pieces, articles you’ve written,
your credentials, your practice brochure – something they can touch and feel
The Consultation
The consultation is your opportunity to learn more about the prospective patient’s concerns. The prospective patient has a problem that they want you to solve. Find out how big the problem is and how it is affecting their life because you need to attach strong emotional reasons for wanting the change. You want to assure them there is a solution and then offer them real evidence that you are the best choice.
Start with an open-ended question and then let them answer you without any feedback or interjection from you. Questions such as, “What would you most like to change? or “What can I do for you today?” get the discussion going.
Repeat back to them so they know you heard them and that you understand exactly how they feel and how you can help them.
Assess their expectations:
- Do they have a history of dissatisfaction with previous treatments and physicians?
- Do they have history of previous lawsuits for aesthetic medical dissatisfaction?
- Do they ask repeated questions on material just covered?
- Do they exhibit awkward social relationships/hostility/excessive demands on your office staff?
And, gather helpful information so you know where you stand with them, such as:
- What’s their time-frame? Do they have an event coming up or other time constraint?
- What do they know about the procedure they are interested in?
- Who else have they spoken to?
- Can they afford it now or later?
Be sure to compliment the patient and ensure her she is perfect just the way she is; however, if she insists, you could help her. The patient must feel like you have their best interests at heart and most will be turned off by the hard sell. And, do not oversell. For example, if the patient wants her eyes done and you advise her to get eyes, brow lift, and neck lift and face lift, most patients will be shell-shocked and insulted. Tread lightly here.
Make sure their reasons for having cosmetic surgery are based on reality. Have them look at all the aspects of their life – both dark and light. Cosmetic surgery won’t bring their mate back or get them the big job promotion. Plastic surgery has its boundaries and limitations.
Now, it is time for them to listen to you – especially if what they want is not in their best interest. But don’t tell them no, tell them why what they want won’t work, why you would be remiss in giving them what they want, and be sure they know that just because a procedure was good for one person (celebrity) it may not be good for them. Be sure they know that false hope can get them into trouble and you are here to be the voice of reason.
Explain again how you can help them and focus on the good results you’ve gotten and talk about the risks, downtime, etc. but don’t harp on it during the consultation. Give them just enough information to address their risks, fears and concerns so they can make an informed decision.
Now establish your value and do a little tooting of your own horn but do it professionally. For example, mention that you have performed this procedure hundreds of times, you just gave a talk on this very subject last week, you wrote an article on this, other physicians refer their patients to you for this procedure and you have special equipment for this that only 23 others have across the United States. Mention anything that distinguishes you from your competitors.
Conclusion:
If you spend the time upfront with the patient, you have a much better chance of closing them. And, then you must follow through with a good result the patient is satisfied with.
Patient satisfaction is your optimal goal since satisfied patients refer their friends and family.
And, remember to be yourself. This is still a numbers game and not every single prospective patient is going to bond with you. You will not be for everybody but, by using the points from above, you should be able to build rapport with a large enough target market to grow a successful aesthetic practice.
