Chiropractic Coaching: Persuasion, Your Key To Effortless Ease

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman, and I’ll be your chiropractic coach for today. This edition of Thrive in Five is called Persuasion, Your Key to Effortless Ease. We’ll concentrate on two of the six essentials, mastering persuasion and reducing friction. I think you’d admit that one of the toughest friction points you need to address in your office is patient compliance, getting people to keep their appointments, follow through without quitting prematurely.

Do their home care, avoid re-injury, come in on time, and so on. What’s the common denominator here? In each situation, a patient must be persuaded to do something that is not their natural default, and is often contrary to their sense of convenience and ease. That’s why it’s so important to become an effective Persuader.

If those patients are going to get the best you have to offer, and experience the magical results chiropractic is famous for, then they’ll need to get on board with your recommendations. And many will fight you every step, not to be difficult, but because this idea of regular chiropractic care is so new and foreign to them.

Only by consistently persuading them as they progress and by continually refining your communication will they be shaped into cooperative patients for their own good as well as yours. So, what are the main components to becoming a Master Persuader? The first necessary precondition to persuade is to gain and maintain rapport, a skill that creates a feeling of connection between you and the individual or group you’re communicating with.

Notice the details of their communication style. Like their pace or tempo of speech, their volume, their facial expressions or posture, and their word choice, including verbal non fluencies like well, okay, or right, for example. Your challenge is to give them back enough of themselves in your communication so it resembles the way they communicate with themselves.

This builds a deep and resilient rapport, so they feel comfortable communicating with you, and you feel the same in return. Some students of rapport skills wonder if giving the person back their own characteristics could be misconstrued as mocking or making fun of them. It’s a reasonable concern, but in almost 40 years of using and training people in these skills, I’ve never heard of anyone reacting in this way.

It’s too subtle. And if anything, feels more comfortable for the person being mirrored. So there’s no reason to expect any other response. Remember to match and mirror them throughout the conversation. Staying flexible enough to shift as they do. If they lean in or out, do the same. If they vary their tonality or speed, be aware and subtly change toward integrating the changes they make into your communication with them.

The more you do it, the easier and more organic it will become. Once you use rapport skills to generate and preserve your connection with them, now it’s time to start persuading. The second skill you must develop is the art of active listening. They will tell you much of what you need to know in their conversation with you if you’re astute enough to pick up on it.

Pay attention to values or beliefs that pop up in their conversation. They’re clues to better persuasion. The third skill you must master is asking artful questions. The elegance of your questioning is the primary distinguishing factor between a fine persuader and an astute persuader. And a superb one.

The fourth and final skill is pleasant persistence, where you realize that no often doesn’t mean no. It means not now or not yet. Great persuaders know how hard to push and when to abort today’s mission and set the stage for another day where the stars may be more aligned. Persuading someone invariably requires leverage.

In other words, the individual you’re communicating with has a particular position, and to move them off that position in the direction of your intentions will demand that they have a good enough reason to make that change. In persuasion, that good enough reason is referred to as leverage. Leverage is a product of the person’s values filtered through the present moment.

Bringing the person’s awareness to key values is one of the secrets of powerful persuasion. Where your attention goes, your energy flows. And directing the person’s focus toward key values that support your persuasive effort will dramatically improve your results. Watch out for the trap of expecting the patient to respond to your values rather than their own.

For example, if you pitch a program of care to a prospective patient, and you use values like health, longevity, and a better immune response, what you’re saying is accurate, but it may not match up to the patient’s desires. If the patient doesn’t prioritize those health values, but is passionate about golf, You’re better off suggesting that a healthier spine can add yardage to his drive or bring more balance and focus to her short game.

Persuasion calls for the ability to speak the other person’s language. So let’s look at three common scenarios that occur daily in your office and how you can use your persuasion skills to streamline the process and get better results. First, let’s look at the report of findings where the patient either accepts or rejects your recommendations.

Obviously, you want to match and mirror consistently to gain and maintain rapport. You’ve met the patient at consultation, and because you listened carefully, you have a sense of the patient’s hierarchy of values. Now you want to use effective questions to guide the conversation to your preferred conclusion, where the patient accepts your recommendations and becomes a great chiropractic patient.

How about a patient voicing an intention to discontinue care prematurely? Again, match and mirror to preserve rapport. And listen to what values they’re expressing in their desire to quit so you can formulate reframing questions around those values. They can’t afford the money? Ask, how much money would it cost you if this problem got worse and you couldn’t work?

They don’t have the time? Ask, if you don’t take care of this problem, don’t you think your body will make the time for you? They want to discontinue care prematurely? Ask, what do you think will happen if you stop your care before the problem is fully corrected? Learning the finesse and timing of these exchanges takes a little training and experience.

But you can see how mastering this technique will increase your power and help you get your points across in a language that your patient will understand. Let’s look at one more scenario where your ability to persuade will be productive. Enrolling a stranger in your practice. You know the scene. You’re online at the bank and you think, all these people online, and none of them are patients in my office.

What can I do to change that? So you gain rapport with someone near you, and strike up a conversation. Nice day, isn’t it? This rain is getting old. I like your hat. What a beautiful baby. Who cuts your hair? Or whatever. Listen for values. Golf, children, work, convenience. Once you train yourself to listen, you’ll hear a wealth of valuable information.

Once you get some experience with this, you’ll develop a catalog of questions you can ask based on what values are illustrated in the person’s conversation. Some values show up often. Questions about good parenting, about improving peak performance, about being responsible for others lives, and so on. All of these are sources of great leverage.

It doesn’t have to revolve around pain only, though of course, pain is a great persuader in its own right. And so is the relief of pain. That might be why so many DCs are hung up on pain oriented practice. It’s the easiest situation to persuade on. The problem is, when the pain is gone, so is the leverage.

Great persuaders learn to create more long lasting leverage, and therefore a more long lasting relationship. In the final analysis, the more persuasive you are, the less friction you have, and that. Is your key to effortless ease. If you find these ideas on the six essentials as compelling as we do, or if you just want to help as many people as possible and have as much as possible to show for it, scan the QR code you see on the screen and it will take you to the six essentials website.

Thanks for watching. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman for 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