Chiropractic Practice: Have To Vs Want To — How To Build a Bulletproof Practice

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Thrive in Five. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman, and I’ll be your chiropractic coach for today. This episode is called Understanding Have To vs. Want To. The only way to build a bulletproof practice. When patients first seek your advice, they generally come because they have to. Most of the time, a nagging or recurrent pain, a sudden injury, loss of control over their lifestyle, and the inconvenience of working around their problem eventually gets to them.

And sooner or later, they find themselves in your office looking for relief. In the beginning of their program of care, they tend to be cooperative, as they have a vested interest in getting a result they already understand, feeling normal, or at least normal for them. Their outcome is visible to them, and they tend to be determined to achieve it.

But once they start to respond to your care and feel better, their incentive for staying on track with your services begins to waver, since the reason they came in in the first place is going away, or already gone. Unless you give them a good reason to stick around, they’ll soon become inactive, discontinuing their relationship with you until they perceive a need.

Their outcomes beyond relief are invisible to them, unless and until you make them visible. Practicing this way with a revolving door where patients come and go may be exciting, but usually not as rewarding as a practice where patients come in and learn the importance of ongoing health care, and buy into your philosophy that they’re better off under regular care Than just using you as an expensive and increasingly inconvenient remedy for their pain.

This uncovers an easily overlooked aspect of patient education. The dynamic between have to. Want to when patients come in because they have to, that’s the time you have their attention, so you can begin creating the leverage that causes them to see their condition in a broader way, not just as a point in time, but the cumulative effect of their lack of awareness about key health principles on which you can now educate them.

People tend to have a short memory for pain since it’s unpleasant. And as soon as it’s no longer signaling to them that they need to take a particular action to handle it, they’ll often revert back to their more typical behaviors, which may not as of yet include your care. Bridging the gap between have to and want to requires a grasp of their values and standards so you can help them hear your message in their own language.

By translating the chiropractic story into words they can comprehend, you increase the likelihood of their engagement. So How can you get them to want your care beyond the perception that they need you? It’s all about demonstrating the positive benefits of lifetime care and revealing the consequences of not taking proper care of their brain, spine, and nerve system.

The challenge is conveying this principle in terms they can understand and act upon, and to do it at the right time in their program of care so you’re not distracting them from their intensive care, but early enough so that you still have their attention and can shape their desire to continue with you by exposing the value of ongoing care past the point of relief.

What motivates people in the first place? Most people would say pleasure and pain, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Those sensations are subjective and vary from person to person. So actually, it’s the perception of pleasure and pain that motivates people, based on their own worldview and definitions.

They’ll tend to move towards circumstances and conditions they perceive to be pleasurable, and they’ll tend to avoid circumstances and conditions they perceive to be pain. So then, you have an opportunity to communicate your perspective based on the positive benefits they’ll move toward and the painful consequences they’ll move away from.

And that’s why it’s important to identify the kind of patient before you, so you can choose a communication style that works for them in that scenario. It’s essential to recognize that most people coming to a doctor are already wired to move away from pain. And that’s why you must take action to begin the movement toward want to early in the program of care.

They’ll be focused on relief. So your opening salvo may need to be about pain. For example, you could say, once you’re feeling better, I bet you’d do anything to make sure this pain doesn’t come back. This plants the seeds for them to be responsive to your input because you earn the right to advise them when what you say makes sense to them.

But as the case unfolds, patients will resume their typical patterns from before they had the severe issue. About half will still move away from painful consequences, but the other half will be motivated more by pleasurable benefits. And you want to be able to differentiate between them for good reason.

If you try to motivate someone who moves away from pain with pleasure, They’ll think it’s weak and insubstantial, but if you try to motivate someone who moves toward pleasure with pain, they’ll rebel, think you’re negative, and otherwise not respond except with disdain and a feeling of being misunderstood.

So how can you tell who moves toward and who moves away? Remember that a large enough pleasure or pain will move anyone, like a check for a million dollars, or a gun to your head. But most of the time, we tend to be motivated by some personal scale of pleasure and pain, and we need to sensitize ourselves to the differences so we can do the best job possible communicating with our patients.

Listen to the patient’s conversation with you, not only to glean clinical data, but also to hear their worldview. For example, if a new patient says to you, I feel like I’m in the right place, I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you. I look forward to being your patient. They probably move toward benefits.

Wonderful things, your positive reputation, looking forward, all linguistically associated to pleasure. But if they say, I can’t wait to get rid of this problem. It’s cost me so much time, energy, and money. Please help me end the suffering. They probably move away from consequences. The problem itself, the loss of resources, their suffering, all linguistically associated to pain.

Notice, both these patients want the same thing, to find the right doctor, to feel the care is worthwhile, to resolve their issue, but they say it differently, which is why you need to speak both languages to connect with your patients with more clarity. So, while most patients come in at first because they have to, upon relief, they will usually take one of these two paths.

And picking up on that will streamline your engagement and enhance your leadership. After all, that’s really the end product of differentiating between have to and want to. You can consistently improve the impact of your practice and minimize your stress by knowing the best way to take optimal care of the patient in front of you.

If you really want your practice to be bulletproof, meaning that no matter what comes at you, you feel prepared to handle it, then these distinctions will surely help you get there. When you communicate with your patients by speaking the dialect that they speak themselves, you’ll make it easier for them to comprehend your message and comply, which is good for you.

good for them and also serves the greater good. If you’d like to learn more about this vital communications tool, click on the link or scan the QR code you see on your screen. Or if you like, you can leave your questions below and I’ll respond. Thanks for watching. I’m Dr. Dennis Perman for The Masters Circle Global, where legends are made and legendary practices are built through chiropractic

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