Chiropractic Coaching: How Persuasion Actually Works

Hello everybody and welcome to Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman from The Masters Circle Global and I’ll be your chiropractic coach for today. The subject matter of this Thrive in Five. In keeping with the continued discussion of the six essential strategies to be massively successful in practice is how persuasion actually works. Persuasion is one of those six essentials, and anyone who’s ever been sold anything understands the skill and the presence that it requires in order to be a good salesperson. But persuasion goes beyond sales. And today I hope to dig into some of the deeper structures of persuasion so that you can understand exactly first why it’s so important and what you can do to become a better persuader. So let’s begin. Persuasion is actually a form of relationship, and as such, it requires two different factors in order for it to work, work properly.

Now, the very first thing that you need to be able to do in order to persuade somebody of anything is for you to be able to gain and maintain rapport. You’ve heard me talk about rapport many times. Basically, people who are like each other tend to like each other, and people who are not like each other tend to not like each other. So if you’re going to enter into the persuasion arena and attempt to convince somebody of something, then you want to make sure to have a connection with them, A bond, a feeling of ease. And that connection comes from using rapport skills. Rapport skills basically boiled down to learning how to match and mirror, because when you are giving somebody back something that is familiar to them, then their subconscious shouts at them, Hey, this person’s okay, kind of like me. So matching and mirroring means if you are attempting to persuade somebody of something, then take note of their posture, take note of their facial expression, take note of their word choice, their breathing patterns, and any other distinctions that you can make about the specific way that this person communicates.

If you can match and mirror that communication style, then there’s an excellent likelihood that you’ll be able to gain and maintain rapport. And what happens from there is you have entered into this individual’s world with respect and in a way that they can both tolerate and appreciate. That sets the stage for you to be able to use the second part of this persuasion model, which is for you to be able to elicit and support values. Why are people persuaded of anything except that they can perceive that there’s a value in it for them, that there’s something that they will gain or something that they will lose, some benefit that they will experience, or some consequence that they will have to avoid. So if you want to persuade somebody of something, for example, in a report of findings to persuade somebody to accept your program of care or in a healthcare class to persuade somebody to come in and begin care as a new patient, then it would do you well to keep these ideas in mind. 

You want to match and mirror to gain rapport and then to elicit values. You want to ask questions. Tell me, Mrs. Patient, what’s important to you about health? What would change in your life if you got better? What would you continue to suffer if you didn’t get better? By asking questions like this, you can uncover their values. In other words, what’s important to them, and you can use that as leverage to be able to persuade them. Now, we all come across this daily in our office, but you may want to dig more deeply into this. And if you do, then you want to go ahead and learn more about the Six Essentials website that’s going to provide a tremendous amount of data for you to learn and understand exactly what you might need to do to become a better persuader.

All you have to do is run your camera over this QR code and it will take you right to the six essentials of a Legendary Practice website, and you’ll be able to read not only about persuasion, but about the other five essentials. Now, why is this important? Because in speaking with thousands and thousands of doctors over the years, these were the critical viewpoints that we discovered that cause you to be able to create a legendary practice. So the more you apply these six essentials, the more likely it is that you will create the practice that you really want. And you can see that the QR code is right here on this screen. Go ahead and run your scanner over it, run your camera over it, and it will take you right to the website so you can learn more about it. So this idea of persuasion is critically important.

If you want to be successful in practice and in life, you may well need to learn to be a better persuader. And the more you learn to persuade, the more likely it is that those who you persuade respond to your message and give you back what you want. I’ve heard it said that if you want to get what you want, help enough other people get what they want, and then the net impact is that you’ll end up in a much better place because of it. It’s my pleasure to share these ideas with you. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman from The Masters Circle Global, where legends are made and legendary practices are built through chiropractic coaching. Thanks for watching.

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