“Find the Objection” 1 Fundamental to the Consultation
In my 35+ years of practicing chiropractic, I have studied patient education and human communication extensively. For years, I carried a voice activated recorder in my clinic jacket. I would study these tapes, analyzing what I said and did when a patient followed my recommendations, and what I said and did when a patient did not follow my recommendations. This allowed me to develop a game plan with important fundamentals for each and every patient visit.
These strategies can and will maximize your time with the patient. When you improve your education, your retention and referrals will absolutely explode.
At our SCT training, we teach that the first visit is the most important visit and it all starts with the consultation. This is where the paradigm shift begins.
You must have a plan for teaching patients that the crisis model will never bring health, and the prevention model is the key to health and longevity.
One main point to cover in an effective consultation is to FIND THE PATIENT’S OBJECTION.
Almost every new patient will have an objection to chiropractic care. It is your responsibility to dig during the consultation to find the patient’s objection.
If they have never been to a chiropractor before a good question to ask is:
“What have you heard about chiropractic, good and bad?”
You must be patient and persistent.
Many common objections are:
- “I heard you have to go forever.”
- “I heard the adjustment hurts.”
- “I heard chiropractic is expensive.”
- “I heard the adjustment can cause strokes.”
- “I don’t want my neck cracked.”
You must practice and rehearse responses to educate the patient. When you want to disagree with the patient always start from a place of agreement.
For example, if the patient tells me:
“I heard you have to go to chiropractors forever.”
I might tell him/her:
“I understand Kathy, I have heard that many times. I like you, but I don’t want to see you forever. In this office, we practice specific corrective care and if you do have a subluxation I will give you a timeline for correcting it. When your teeth are straight the braces come off, it’s the same in this office, when your spine is in alignment corrective care ends.”
I call our chiropractic seminars, trainings because you must train yourself through space, time, repetition so everything become a reflex in your office.
A reflex happens without conscious thought. When you train yourself to find the patient’s objection and cover many other important points during your consultation instinctively, without thinking about it, then you are becoming a Rhino Chiropractor.