“How to Turn a Medical Practice to a Raving Success the Sandler Way”

The Sandler Training Hour

Sandler Trainers: Donna Bak & Jim Stephens http://www.peaksalesperform.sandler.com/
Behind the Business: Jillaine St. Michel http://www.mobilechiropracticandwellness.com/
Entrepreneur Radio: Todd & Elaine Damschen http://www.866411zapp.com/
Donna moved from an IT based career and looked for something that would lead to more personal fulfillment. She joined the Sandler Network out of the Computer Science field. This allows Donna to communicate on an expert level with professional services and is a network that she is comfortable with engaging that she enjoys.
Donna Bak’s book “Patient Care the Sandler Way: Running a Great Medical Practice that has Patients Cheering and Staff Engaged” engages and examines how the Sandler System can be beneficial and useful for training in the medical industry. This allowance into a specific business vertical allows for a better engagement within the enterprise. This vertical is one that Donna has worked heavily with and focuses on applying Sandler in a health care industry.
Dependent on the medical practice, there are certain industries (aesthetics) that lean toward cross-selling and up-selling, but the typical medical office prioritizes on customer care. For Donna, this book was a story about behavior. Donna regularly attended chamber events as it was part of her self-imposed key performance indicators (KPIs) that she measured in attempt to network and facilitate new client engagements through prospecting. Donna ran into an individual who was a CEO of an ortho practice. They met through a chance of fate mixed with pre-determined attempts and Donna found herself in a sales call with the practice.
Donna shows the importance of doing the behaviors that are involved in generating revenue: this specific instance is a demonstration of pay-time activity which is different than no-pay-time activities.
Donna’s strategy for compiling the book was weaving in a typical, but generic narrative of a medical practice and examining the pain points that are relevant to the motivation of change. The reasons for this change might be one of the following in the medical industry:
1. Very often we hear that the practice is unsure of how to keep a productive flow of patients coming through the practice without hurting the patient experience and ultimately compromising the future of the practice.
2. They’re frustrated that the team of health care professionals, the staff that’s working there, isn’t rising to the new challenges of the medical industry. They’re not effectively managing difficult people, and morale and motivation is down and the practice ends up losing its competitive edge.
3. They’re being pressured by patient demands for better service. Patients are able, willing, and ready to abandon their practices for locations that provide better services.
With the medical industry changing so quickly, Sandler provides a valuable way to examine change as their material facilitates change and their trainers function as direct and clear change agents. The health care segment of the economy faces public scrutiny, media coverage, and constant controversy. But, this turbulence offers opportunity to engage and elevate the consumer experience on the patient side.
Professional training does a lot for morale. When you see your boss making a decision to invest in your future, in specific and active skills. If individuals don’t understand why they’re doing something or what’s in it for them, they might use it for a while, but it won’t stick. A simple tool might be: give them what they want to get what you want.
Most health care professionals want respect. They want the ability to handle difficult people in different situations. They want a promotion. They want a way through their career. They want to make it through the day without various levels of way through their stress.
Once a trainer understands the what of a professional’s desire they can facilitate aimed goals to accomplish their objectives by using the specific, technical tools and strategies that provide the access to change and value for the future. These tools that we provide change the behavior of the every day and allow for personal development in the workplace which enables individuals to get more overall success in their life.
The one thing you need to know about dealing with difficult people is the validation principle. It simply means to acknowledge out loud how the other person is feeling with no judgment or problem solving attached. Customers regularly call very upset when something is critical to them. This type of person calls to a position of not-okay. This type of customer is generally meant with a customer service representative who pours fuel on the fire and tries to solve issues before empathizing with them. The validation allows a person to be heard rather than judged.
To deal with difficult people, you do not start with, “calm down.” The key is to validate and say, “I get it, I see why you’re frustrated and I would be too, now let’s try and solve the issue.” Donna facilitates roleplay with her customers through the typical resistance that might be active in the day-to-day activities that take place in a medical practice.
A small, genuine compliment is called a stroke in Sandler terminology. A good strategy is to use strokes in conversations with clients and customers. In particular to a client in the medical field, a client might come in with web MD research, but rather than disenfranchising and critiquing you might say, “Well, Donna you seem to take care and interest in what’s wrong with you, so what did you find out with your research?”
That idea of Staff engaged for the medical field, came with the realization that the Health Care professionals really want to understand how to talk with their peers more effectively. Sometimes between the caregiver and the patient in the medical industry there are sixteen administrative people. So roleplays can be between patient and professional or peer-to-peer. The business of a medical practice can be expressed in different roles through urgent language and what could be perceived as forced and make an individual feel as if they’ve been caught doing something inappropriate while resolving a scheduling conflict. Or feel like a reprimand while you’re trying to resolve a conflict.
Something like, “I was over there resolving a conflict, but it seems like you’ve got something more urgent going on. What can I do for you?” this allows more engagement over time between co-workers because it allows individuals to stand up or advocate for themselves.
If you’re in Idaho, and you’ve read “Patient Care the Sandler Way” and want a fast-track to activate some of the tools and techniques that Donna highlights, call or e-mail us and we’ll help facilitate a conversation. At Crossroads Business Development we understand that the Medical Industry is one of the largest in Idaho’s and prize ourselves with our ability to help businesses maintain their price-point without cutting costs and maintain the excellence that they are, and want to be, known for.