Tag Archives: relationships

Building a Practice Through Relationships

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a happy bus driver like a chiropractor with happy people on their bus

Advertising has always been important. When we grew our Wisconsin network to 25 offices, we invested heavily in newspapers, shared mailers, radio, and even TV. Today, the focus has shifted to social media, SEO, and now Artificial Intelligence — positioning your practice for AI discovery will soon be essential (more on that later!).

But advertising is expensive. What truly sustained our growth was relationship marketing — connecting authentically with patients, referral sources, and our own team.

What Is Relationship Marketing?

Relationship marketing involves creating trust-based relationships with patients and referral sources, generating loyalty and organic referrals through genuine care and ongoing connection.

Examples:

  • Host a community event like a holiday food drive — invite patients and their families to participate and offer consultations in exchange for donations.
  • Encourage patients to refer loved ones with a personal touch (“Let’s check your spouse before their next soccer game!”).
  • Build partnerships with local professionals — massage therapists, trainers, or nutritionists — and support each other through referrals or shared promotions.

Your Most Important Relationships

Don’t overlook your team. When doctors and staff work together with shared purpose and positive energy, patients notice. It’s almost magnetic — phones start ringing and old patients return.

As Stephen Covey reminds us in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, success comes from empathy, communication, and a win-win mindset that creates synergy — or, as some might say, Universal Intelligence at work.

GETTING AND KEEPING PEOPLE ON YOUR BUS

As a doctor and clinic director, you are like a bus driver. You aim to make sure you are on time and complete your shift according to schedule.

One day, you turn around to look at the back of your bus and wonder why there are so many empty seats. “Where is everyone?”

Well, maybe you missed some stops and the people never got on! Or, you didn’t take time to say “hi” when they boarded, so they all left at the next stop. Or, you were so busy driving, you didn’t ask about your assistant’s new workout routine.

Take time to connect with people.

More than anything, you are in the people business.

Enjoy the ride!

Ed

Engage Your Chiropractic Practice with Your Community

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Get Out and Connect with Your Community

Summer brings farmers markets, parades, festivals, and run/walks—perfect opportunities for your chiropractic or healthcare practice to engage with your community. Community events are a powerful way to build relationships through networking, a form of relationship marketing.

As Ivan Misner, founder of Business Networking International, says in The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret  “You have to be visible in the community… It’s called networking. You have to work at it.” But with the right attitude, it’s fun, not just work.

Why Community Engagement Matters

Whether your practice is established or new, staying active in your community is crucial. Markets evolve, and without consistent marketing, your practice’s momentum can quietly fade, leading to unexpected drops in patient numbers. For newer practices or those needing a boost, community involvement is even more essential.

How to Engage

  • Join Local Events: Participate in festivals, car shows, or races. For example, one clinic sponsors the “Cheesehead Chase,” providing T-shirts to patients who join, creating a visible group of “ChiroHealth Cruisers.”
  • Set Up Booths: Offer consultations, screenings, or giveaways like pens, and greet people with friendliness.
  • Wear Your Brand: Sport clinic polo shirts and share your “Get to Know Me” attitude.
  • Plan with Your Team: Discuss upcoming events, schedule participation, and practice positive marketing attitudes (downloadable resource linked in original).

Build Trust Through Familiarity

People choose businesses they know, like, and trust. Break out of your routine, as Misner notes, and connect face-to-face. Community engagement makes your practice familiar and approachable, fostering lasting patient relationships.

Stay Goal-Driven

Get out there, have fun, and keep your practice thriving by staying active in your community!

Ed

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Community Engagement Guide for Chiropractic Practices

Why Engage with Your Community?

  • Build Relationships: Networking at local events fosters trust and familiarity, encouraging patient loyalty.
  • Stay Competitive: Consistent marketing prevents gradual declines in patient numbers, especially in evolving markets.
  • Boost New Practices: Community involvement is critical for new or struggling practices to gain traction.

How to Get Involved

  1. Identify Local Events:
    1. Farmers markets, festivals, parades, or charity runs (e.g., “Cheesehead Chase”). Check your town’s calendar for events like Olive Festival or Pioneer Days.
    2. Participate Actively:
      1. Set up booths for consultations, screenings, or giveaways (e.g., branded pens).
      2. Offer incentives, like clinic T-shirts for event participants.
    3. Be Visible:
      1. Wear branded apparel (polo shirts or T-shirts).
      2. Share business cards and a friendly, approachable attitude.
    4. Plan with Your Team:
      1. Discuss upcoming events at team meetings.
      2. Schedule participation and practice positive marketing attitudes (resource: 8 Marketing Attitudes).
    5. Follow Up:
      1. Track event outcomes and plan for future involvement.

Key Quote
“You have to be visible in the community… It’s called networking.” — Ivan Misner, The World’s Best Known Marketing Secret

Action Steps

  • Research local events for the next 3 months.
  • Assign team roles for event participation.
  • Order branded materials (T-shirts, pens, etc.).
  • Stay goal-driven and make networking fun!

The Chiropractic Patient Engagement Scale

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group of goal driven patient focused people “The Chiropractic Patient Engagement Scale” outlines the importance of leadership and patient engagement in chiropractic practices. It emphasizes that effective management and leadership are crucial for the success of a practice, as they enable clinic directors to focus on leading rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks. The article highlights the role of leaders in providing trust, compassion, stability, and hope to both staff and patients.

I’ve put together a Leadership Scale that you can you use or make one of your own, and recommend that you review it often. You can go over it with your team and reflect on it – get everyone’s opinion on where the office ranks. You can also have individual doctors, providers, and departments rank themselves in terms of how well they provide leadership from their role.He also shares Fives Levels of Leadership Scale where you can rank your own office

Download the scale and read the full article here:

https://www.goaldriven.com/post/your-leadership-with-your-chiropractic-patients

Ed

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If your practice-building efforts aren’t taking you to your goals, there are reasons — many of which are hidden from you.

Find out what they are and how to sail to your next level by getting and implementing my book, The Goal Driven Business.

goal driven business www.goaldriven.com
 

The Goal Driven Business

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Just Gabbing

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I was once hired by a dental clinic years ago. Numbers had been headed the wrong way (down). Visiting the office, I discovered that no one talked to one another. This was the doctor’s policy. The staff didn’t talk to each other, or to the doctor, and the doctors only talked with the patients. Patient communication was limited, short, and almost brusk.

For about 3 months, I worked with the staff and two doctors to get them together and communicate. No marketing, no policies, no strategies… just gabbing. They got to know each other better. They also discussed issues in the office and started having ideas for improving things.

Also…stats went up!

The doctor was not happy and accused me of not working, just talking! Despite my urging, he didn’t manage by the numbers, just by some old-school idea of working on an assembly line where no one was allowed to talk.

The work ethic of the Industrial Age was that you “clock in,” leave your life behind you, work like a machine for 8 hours, and then “clock out.” You worked at a machine as a machine.

But people aren’t machines.

Minor confusions and then disagreements can accumulate in any relationship. Imagined or real offenses occur. It does in any family, for example. Relationships stiffen when this happens, like a hose in winter with summer’s water frozen.

Relations can be warm and friendly or deteriorate to a cool façade. The internal relationship within the office team ultimately affects both the quality and quantity of the clinic’s performance.

Relationships can be difficult, no doubt. People are complicated, and life is constantly throwing each one of us different curve balls. This is why relationships need regular maintenance. Your family relationships, for example, require time for communication and working things out when there are differences. Planning vacations, reviewing budgets, children’s school and sports activities, and much more takes work.

The same goes with your office family.

A practice is a network of relationships that is created and sustained through communication and service.

I have used this definition for years. I am sure there are other definitions, but this has worked.

This definition applies to your patients. Give them great service, engage in meaningful and empathic communication. They will get better, and they will stay with you longer.

This definition also applies to generating new patients: Expand your network. Get people to know you and how your services can help them.

But this definition also applies to your staff: create and maintain a great relationship with your teammates – and support them.

You must schedule time each week for each other. Staff meetings, training sessions, marketing meetings, lunches, one on one meetings, square dancing (good exercise!) – whatever the venue, make the time to communicate and support each other. This simple act with your staff will help you provide the best service and outcomes to your patients. And help you reach and stay at full capacity.

Keep dancing and …Seize your Future,

Ed

If your practice building efforts aren’t taking you to your goals, there are reasons — many of which are hidden from you.

Find out what they are and how to sail to your next level by getting and implementing my new book, The Goal Driven Business.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Creating a Chiropractic Community

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Used to be a popular TV program called Cheers back in the 80’s. It was modeled after a bar in Boston with the same name. As a situational comedy, Cheers presented a familiar group of customers who came to the bar to have a drink, but also to relax, socialize, and have good cheer.

 

Patients come into your office to improve their health and find relief from discomfort. But they are also looking for something more.

 

Remember that a practice is a network of relationships created and sustained through communication and service. That’s my definition. There are other definitions, I’m sure, but at the foundation, communication is critical.

 

It can be a lonely world where there seems little time for real communication – or friendship.

 

You are more than a doctor, and your staff are more than just support professionals. You and your entire team are part of a caring family, a community of like-minded people who are committed to health and helping each other achieve it.

 

Creating a community is a big deal in businesses now. For good reason… Belongingness has been identified as an intrinsic motivation we all have, according to Self-Determination Theory. But it can be contrived and gimmicky if it is not genuine.

 

In the best offices I have visited, staff and doctors formed a work family… genuinely caring for each other as well as for their patients. The patients were also included in the family. Sometimes, I would see them spending too much time gabbing at the front desk or bringing fresh produce for the doctor from their garden. I would even see patients just stop by the reception area to chat amongst themselves, catching up on shared concerns and local news.

 

Yes, the best practices have policies and procedures. These are the systems that help ensure fast and efficient service in high quantity with high quality.

 

But procedures cannot take the place of a real person interested in and caring for another person.

 

In very lay terms, the spine is the structure that supports and protects the function of the spinal cord. It is the function that counts, that comes first.

 

Many offices have their function impeded by tangled up, omitted, or unfollowed procedures and policies. You definitely need a strong infrastructure to have a prosperous low stress business. But the reason, the goal for good systems includes having good communication with your patients and each other.

 

There are many troubling issues we all face. Make your office a place where people want to go for better health and better friendship.

 

A place where everyone is glad you came and where everybody knows your name.

 

Ed

 

Theme from the sitcom Cheers
“…Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

 

Wouldn’t you like to get away?

 

Sometimes you want to go

 

Where everybody knows your name,
and they’re always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.”

 

Carpe Posterum (Sieze the Future)

 

Ed

Relationship Marketing: Build and sustain your practice through relationship marketing

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You are in the relationship business.

People see you for a result – but they stay with you because of the relationship.

There are many different definitions of relationship marketing – marketing isn’t codified like CPT®! (That is maybe a good thing!)

Last week I talked about direct response marketing and indirect or brand marketing. Relationship marketing stems from direct response. It emphasizes retention and patient and customer satisfaction.

Relationship marketing works. It helps with patient retention and patient referrals. It also helps generate referrals from external sources.

But what is it, and how do you improve it? 

What is a Relationship?

A relationship is a connection that you have with another person. It is based, ultimately, on communication. Therefore, the quality of that communication determines the quality of the relationship.

Good communication, one that creates a good relationship, centers around understanding. As Stephen Covey advises, Seek first to understand, and then to get understood. Understanding is fundamental for good communication.

The relationship between you and your patient depends on results, of course. But to get results requires understanding the patient. Seeking to understand the patient – showing them a genuine interest in their condition and life – is not only needed from a clinical point of view, but it is vital for good communication and developing the relationship.

How to Improve Patient Communication

Patient Care can be an overused, even over-advertised term. But care is founded first on interest in and concern about the other person.

This means not just going through your script (yuck!) or your checklist with the patient, which may help keep you on track. It means do you understand them, or how and why they came to you? Are you interested?

But how do you do this after the 10,000th patient comes in to the office?

By being a real person who is interested. For example, a patient comes in and wears a green hat. You wonder about the green hat, so you ask them about it. “Hi. I can’t help but notice that you are wearing a green hat. It looks…stunning! Any special occasion?”

A checklist can help you communicate important information, but it can’t take the place of a real live person. It can’t make a relationship. You are not a robot, and neither is your patient.

Be appropriate and respectful, but mostly, be authentic.

This creates trust because your customer sees that you are interested in them as a unique person, not the 10,000th customer. And they see you as a real person, not just a busy professional trying to be interested but really faking it.

I am sure that you have experienced employees in other businesses trying to be interested in you but merely following a script. A bank teller asks me: “Have plans for the weekend?” I am nice back, but I know that she is just doing what her MBA executives in some office far away think she should say.

So, honest and interested communication, added with services and results, will create a strong relationship between you and your patient.

Outside of Your Practice

But relationship marketing goes beyond just your office.

Your patients know people. They can help you get to know their family, friends, and business associates.

You can create relationships with other professional practices, businesses, and organizations. I have seen many examples where a relationship was created between the doctor and an outside entity that resulted in many new patients.

Some examples:

  • YMCA’s and commercial gyms whose owners and managers were also patients.
  • Dentists who didn’t treat TMJ.
  • MD’s who didn’t want to deal with patients with back pain.
  • Ballet company that wanted to keep their dancers in shape.
  • High school coaches who wanted to see their athletes do their best.
  • Motels who needed a “house” medical doctor, dentist, and chiropractor.
  • Autobody shops that took care of injured cars and sent injured passengers to the chiropractor.
  • R. managers at companies who referred employees.

And this is vital: the relationship must be between you and another person associated with the outside entity. You are always dealing, first, with one person.

I have used this definition for years, and it still holds true:

A practice is a network of relationships
 that is created and maintained through service and communication.

There are specific barriers to implementing relationship marketing, and you will run into them. I want to keep this article short, so I will refer you to my book below, which addresses the barriers and how to avoid them or bust through them.

But regardless, just communicating more with more interest will bring in more new patients and keep the ones you have longer.

Communicate more and with interest.

And…

Seize the Future (That is where your goals are!)

 Ed

Link to the Goal Driven Business Book

Link to the Video Supplement to Relationship Marketing