Chiropractic Coaching: Influencing The Influencers

Hello everybody and welcome to Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman and I’ll be your chiropractic coach for today. This edition is called Influencing the Influencer. If you’ve been in practice any length of time, you probably already realize that, more often than not, the people you encounter do not know about or understand chiropractic care.

If people were only neutral about it, that would help, but the unfortunate truth is that we’ve built up some negative brand equity, perhaps undeserved, but still present. Until we help more people to comprehend the value and significance of chiropractic care in their lives, we’ll struggle to make our statement in the marketplace.

So how can we make ourselves better known in a positive light? There are two answers. One macrocosmic, the other microcosmic. At the macrocosmic level, we have to start with a better professional self image where we’re perceived in the public eye as competent, well educated, and trustworthy. Sadly, professions are often stereotyped, and it can be challenging to upgrade those cultural perceptions and myths.

Our best shot is to engage the establishment with our best communicators and our most astute readers, so we can do a better job influencing the influencers. For the most part, we are currently invisible to the health policy decision makers, except as an afterthought if someone has a particular interest or personal experience.

So, how do we become more visible? Doctors of chiropractic are surely able, but we must be willing to step forward as community leaders and influence keys. By taking a public stance on key issues, including but not limited to chiropractic issues, we earn respect and admiration, which then gives us the opportunity to present ourselves in the proper light.

At the microcosmic level, every DC must realize that the entire profession is on trial at all times, and each doctor needs to step up to prove his or her expertise and [00:02:00] value. I mean, if 60 Minutes showed up at your office unannounced and sought to interview you and your staff, how would you do? Another way to ask this is, if you were the last chiropractor on earth, would chiropractics survive?

The actions you might take would in many ways parallel what you need to do to build a great practice. First, you’d have to come from a deep inner place where you recognize the importance and intensity of your task. Prepare to work tirelessly, pursuing your objective with passion, resilience, and determination.

Become expert at the strategies of your service, and you’re almost there. But first, you must learn to lead, to persuade others to listen and follow, so you can complete the cycle by delivering on your promise. So you see, influencing the influencer is actually about leading leaders. Developing your persuasion skills will position you as a guide who supports people in taking the next steps in their evolution.

Whether that applies to a patient, a teammate, or the president of a major corporation, you can’t lead unless you learn how to influence elegantly. So, what does a skillful influencer need to know and do? Before you can persuade anyone of anything, two conditions must be met. First, you must have something to say, some point to be made, or some insight or perspective that will be perceived as beneficial to the individual you’re attempting to reach.

And second, you must choose the right person to deliver that message to. In other words, you must be able to identify the prime influencer amongst those you seek to influence, because your desired outcome is to get inside the head of the decision maker. So how on earth can we do that? Remember that most often decision makers got to be the decision makers because they can.

Well, make decisions. They’ve proven themselves in their community. Tiny communities like families or small businesses, or broader communities like neighborhoods, corporations, organizations, and so on. That’s the person you want to pitch. Because if you make a good case, that’s the individual who’s most likely to get behind your message and influence others in his or her reach to participate.

That’s how you get new patients, not one at a time, but in bunches. Get mom, and the kids and dad will often follow. Get the floor manager, and you become the go to for workers compensation. Enroll a key attorney, and have the other partners competing over who can feed you the most patients and make the most money on your cases.

So, let’s discuss how you can identify the decision maker. In a family setting, for example, it’s usually mom or dad, though on occasion, it’s the Little League star whose travel schedule dictates the family’s availability. Listen to the conversation between them for useful clues. Does one seem to default to the other?

Does one ask questions and the other answers? Do you find that you ask one a question and the other answers? These are some clues to discovering the decision maker in a family setting. Listen and observe. Now, in a business setting, there may be several options, human resources officers, vice presidents or middle managers of relevant departments, or even the CEO, him or herself.

Use their websites and social media searches to get any inside info you can prior to meeting. If you have a patient who’s employed at a company you’d like to create or expand a relationship with, ask your patient about the best people to speak to and find out what only their team would know. Who are the decision makers?

Or if you’re hunting and your intent is to recruit a new company, try to connect with a receptionist or assistant. You can frequently cut to the chase with a good inside point of view. So, let’s say you’ve established who is the policy setter or decision maker, and you’re ready to start persuading. You have an appointment to meet or speak, and it’s time to prepare for the actual encounter.

Remember to connect, using rapport skills like matching and mirroring, pacing and leading, and plain old being likable to facilitate the exchange. Since you’re clear on your message and have now engaged the decision maker, ask great questions to guide him or her toward embracing your offer. Listen carefully, learn his or her values and priorities, and show how what you do supports those values and priorities.

You must make a good case, because decision makers have heard it all, they’ve been there and done that, and they’re unlikely to respond to a lukewarm pitch. That’s why both your certainty and the ability to gain and maintain rapport are so critical. In order for you to earn the attention of the decision maker, and therefore a chance to capture their interest, you must prepare thoroughly and be ready to put your message into a language they can understand and instantly see the value in.

As I said before, our profession has built up some negative brand equity. But that’s no reason for us to have a chip on our shoulder. Rather, it’s an opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong and demonstrate just how much we really do have to offer, both macrocosmically as a profession and microcosmically as individual practitioners making a difference in our communities.

That’s when we’ll shift toward a more positive brand equity by getting more and more decision makers to co lead their followers toward a healthier and less stressful life. In summary, if you know your stuff, select the right individual as decision maker, develop your connection with him or her, and show how what you do supports his or her best interests, you can gently and elegantly get inside the head of the decision maker, influence the influencer, and multiply your impact exponentially.

When you enlist his or her aid in generating momentum in their circles, you’ll start to attract new patients in clusters. Getting inside the head of the decision maker is one of the six essential strategies that are guidelines for success in chiropractic practice in this era. The other five are reducing friction, proper pricing, using your coach as your COO, mastering persuasion, and branding with passion.

If you want to know more about this cutting edge material, go to the Six Essentials landing page by scanning the QR code you see on the screen. Or, if you like, you can leave your questions below and I’ll respond. Thanks for watching. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman from The Masters Circle Global, where legends are made and legendary practices are built through chiropractic coaching.

Checkout our other Thrive In Fives

Don’t forget to learn about our Practice Growth Calculator