The Therapy Business Podcast

Improve Sales With Three Simple Tweaks

• Craig Dacy • Episode 64

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We share the three simple tweaks that doubled our close rate while bringing in better-fit clients for therapy practices. We show how to filter for readiness, ask for clear commitments, and keep sales calls simple, focused, and pressure-free.




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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl

SPEAKER_00:

Sales calls can be kind of intimidating and honestly frustrating at times, especially if sales doesn't come naturally to you. Maybe you are doing this to serve people, help people, and you didn't realize you would be spending a lot of your time on consultation calls trying to turn leads into clients. Well, that's something that I struggled with and had to become a student of was how to do sales calls because I didn't want to be slimy, I didn't want to be salesy. And so over the years, we've been constantly just looking at how we can refine this process. And I'm going to guide you through three tweaks that we've made in the last year or two that have doubled our close rate and really, really improved the quality of clients that we were actually bringing in. My name is Craig, and I'm the owner of DAC Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money, and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. I remember a little over a year ago talking to one of my coaches about our close rate on our sales calls, and they had kind of taken a dip. So for a while, I felt like that was a strength of ours. We had refined our consultation process, and it felt like we our close rate was really good and we were able to convert the right people into clients. And then all of a sudden, it just felt like it started to taper off and slowly decrease. And I wasn't really sure what the problem was or where it lies. And something I really learned in all of this is that we constantly have to be adjusting and tweaking our process. It's important to keep a pulse on our numbers. How are we doing? Because what we did last year or the year before may not work this year. So many factors can come into play. The economy, where people, where their mind is, what their perception is. Maybe they've been burned in the past, or you know, the uprising of certain industries, like for example, ours with COVID, coaching became such a big thing for business owners that a lot of them got burned, and that made a lot of them kind of gun shy when it came to hiring yet another coach. If the last one or two didn't work, what's going to be different this time? And so there's so many unseen factors that we can point to. And I'm a big believer in let's not use those as excuses and just kind of say, well, it's out of our control. Let's take that and say, okay, what do we need to maybe tweak, adjust about our process so that we are closing more that we're feeling better about ourselves because it can take a mental toll. It did for me when I was sitting down looking at our closing numbers with our my coach this uh little again a little over a year ago. We were looking at our close rate, and I was frustrated, I was exhausted. Like, we are getting more consultations than we've ever had before, and I feel like we're closing less clients. And it was, I was beating myself up. I was feeling like I was failing. And what we did was we took a look at a few different things that really made a huge difference. Now I'm gonna guide you through three things that have been a huge difference maker in our sales process. I don't recommend overhauling everything at once. What I believe in is doing tweaks, change one thing and see how it works. And the reason is if we go and change everything, then we one may not be able to point to what was the difference maker, or we may realize it's worse now, and we may not realize what part of that affected it. So I say go in and find one piece that you want to tweak, you want to adjust, try that for a month or two, and then go and tweak something else. If you feel like, okay, here's where the new problem might be in this area. So a lot of different things can point to this, and you know, we have an episode on what data you should be tracking that's gonna help kind of drive where and what you should be fixing first. So I recommend listening to that episode. We are big believers in tracking how many leads are coming in, how many consultations are coming from those leads, how many of those consultations are converting into clients, how long are those clients staying? All of those are important to know because they're gonna pinpoint where is our problem. So for us, and what's gonna drive us into this first tweak that we made, our problem was not that the intake, we weren't hurting to get people on consultation calls, we were struggling to convert those those people. And so that takes us to that first tweak, which was we need to better filter our intake as we went and looked at the data. Because again, I'm going, okay, I need to change our sales pitch, I need to change how this and that about the sales call. And what we determined to try and tweak first was what's the client experience like? What's that lead experience like before they get on a call with you? And so there's a few things that I discovered. One, we were not educating them on what we do, who we help, how we can help them. People were getting on calls, uh, kind of just like tire kickers in a sense. Like they had no real concept of what we do and what we were gonna do to help them. And so the call really was like, Oh, it's a free call, I'll see what you're about, I'll see if I can get some help out of this. A lot of our messaging was book a free coaching call, like get it, get some help. We're gonna help you on this call. And so people were showing up thinking, okay, it's a free 30 minutes. In fact, I even had a lot of people tell me, you know, I you it's a free call, and you said you could help, so I figure, why not take advantage of that? No intention of buying, which is again, it's fine. That's just more of our messaging was not coming across that this call, yes, it's designed to provide hope and clarity for you, but also it's designed to teach you how we can help. Because the truth is we're not gonna be able to make an impact or help you create lasting change on a 20 or 30 minute phone call. And I needed to change how we were messaging that, how we were sharing that in the world so that when people showed up on the call, they knew we were gonna make it a warm, inviting call and we're gonna get to know them and maybe answer some questions or help provide some clarity. But also, really, the point is so we can see what are you what are you struggling with, and is that something that we can help with? And if so, how can we help you with it in ongoing coaching? That's really the point of those sales calls. You you'll discover that again, we want to serve people, we want to help people. That's why we create free content. It's that's how we can help people. Sales calls really are consultations are designed for sales, and so we need to make sure people who are getting on those calls are at least open to investing in coaching and they're ready to invest in coaching. So educating them was huge. And now a lot of that was just simply changing our messaging. We everywhere now it says, you know, schedule to learn how our coaching can help you, and that's a big shift from schedule a free call to get some help, and and people are not showing up thinking they're just getting a free 30-minute coaching session. The other thing is in our intake form, we are trying to find the right fit. And sometimes for us, that might mean a business that is further along in their journey. We did a webinar for another company last year, and the webinar was really successful. We ended up booking, I think, like 40 consultations, 35 to 40 consultations within a four to six week time frame. I mean, we were slammed with consultations, and we were struggling to close those consultations. When we went back and looked at the data, like I was saying with my coach, we started looking at the size of these businesses. And I would say a majority of them were really, really small, meaning they were brand new, they were not making a lot of money. And so even investing in our coaching was gonna be a stretch. Now, we work with businesses of all sizes. I mean, we've worked with businesses that haven't even launched yet and they haven't made revenue yet. But the thing is, those people come in and they say, you know what, I'm going to make an investment in myself and in this business, and they're willing to invest the finances and the time to get the help they need. Some businesses, if they're struggling and they're making, let's say, less than$50,000 or$100,000 a year, doesn't mean they can't afford it. It's just if we are meeting with 10 businesses under$100,000, most likely we'll be lucky to get one of those as a as a client that's going to be a good fit. We never want our services to be a financial strain on a company. So if somebody's coming to us, their money's tight, they're not making a lot of revenue, they're not paying themselves, and then we're asking them to add this investment on top of it. We don't want that to create more stress. And so what we were finding was a lot of those consultations, they were just not financially able to invest in coaching. Once again, there's always the one who is the exception to the rule that maybe has some cash and savings that they are willing to go and invest and say, you know, I'm going to commit six months to turning this whole thing around, and we can help them for sure. It's just that was not the norm. Most of the time it was like, I would love to do this, but unfortunately, it's just I can't make the finances work. So we had to make some tweaks. One of those was on our intake form. Now it says it's just a checkbox acknowledging that our pricing is best fit for businesses making over a hundred thousand dollars. That doesn't mean we won't work with businesses under. We've had businesses email us and say, you know, I'm I'm making about 70,000 right now, is but I get that it's an investment. I would still love to get some help. Perfect. Schedule a call. Yeah, we just want you to be aware that that's where our pricing is. So that way you can kind of in your head acknowledge that okay, it's going to be a financial stretch for me if I get on this call. And so what ends up happening is people self-opt out. So in that case, they are then directed towards our free content, our free resources. If somebody reaches out and says, Hey, I would love to remeet with you, but we're not at 100,000 yet, and I don't think I can afford whatever the investment would be. We will then send them as much free stuff as we can to get them some support and some help. We might even then connect them with a coach that we know works with smaller businesses that might be more in their price range. So that is really important. When we started filtering that intake process, that skyrocketed our close rate. You know, as I look this year, so we implemented that towards the end of last year. This year, our close rate has doubled from where it was this time last year. And I look at all the businesses, then we we keep a track, we track all the consultations we've had, the sizes of those businesses, the industries, what they're looking for. When we look at the revenue size, they are more a fit for what our pricing model is, and therefore they're just a better fit for our coaching services. The next tweak that we made was when we got onto these calls, and this started probably before we made the tweaks to our intake form. We were so caught up in I need to get the sale, and even my team members on their consultation calls were feeling this pressure on themselves to get the sale. I need to get a sale on this call. I mean, the name of the call is a sales call, so it makes sense that that seems to be the end goal. We need to get this sale. What we changed was our goal is to get a commitment of some kind, not a sale. That can be a commitment to us, that can be a commitment to themselves to make a change. That is our goal. So if we can get off of this call and they have committed to something, and I'll walk you through some of the examples of what we're looking for, then that's a win. And that takes a lot of the pressure off of us. And here's the thing if you are putting pressure on yourself to make a sale, desperation ekes out, and you're gonna hurt your chances of getting that sale. It's just the psychology of sales right there. They're gonna smell it, they're gonna tell that you are feeling desperate, like I need this sale, or that you're feeling unconfident with yourself. We change it too. We're just looking for a commitment. One of those commitments can be a sale. If we feel like this call is going really well, we can help them and they they say, Let's do it, I'm ready. We're gonna help them take action. That's our job as coaches is to help our clients take action, make a commitment. And so sometimes we will take the sale on the call. It doesn't always happen that way. One of our other commitments that we're looking for is a follow-up call. So if we tell them the price, we tell them what our uh rate is for their business specifically, and then they say we need to think about it, or I want to sleep on it, I don't want to invest in anything until I've had a chance to talk to my spouse about it, whatever their reasoning is that they may not be ready to sign up on the call. And again, a majority of people are not wanting to sign up on the call. And as a coach, if if you are our client and you were looking at making an investment in something, and you came to us and said, Hey, I was thinking about investing in this program over here. I would probably recommend for sure. Here's what it's gonna look like for your finances. Also, maybe sleep on it, give it a day or two uh to think on it and make sure that it's something you want to do. So that's important to us. Now, again, we will take sales on the call because we know that somebody has been interviewing coaches already. They've thought about this, they've read the book Profit First, tried it on their own for years. They're like, I don't want to wait another day to get the support I need. And so, of course, we're not gonna force people to wait. Um, but we want something. So if they're not ready to sign up, we ask for a follow-up call and we get a 10-minute, 15-minute call in the calendar. We tell them when this happens. So maybe we're scheduling it for three days from now. We're gonna say, we're gonna let's schedule a follow-up call. You can come with any questions you have on that call. We'll come ready to get you signed up. If you decide before then you want to sign up, great, go ahead and sign up. We're gonna send you a proposal, you can sign up, and then we'll just turn that into your launch call, meaning we're gonna still keep that call, but we're gonna just use it to launch you into your program. Or if you decide this is not it for me, I don't want to move forward, then you can cancel the call before it happens. So it's this idea of we're gonna have a follow-up call, we're gonna commit to that, and then we're gonna know, we're gonna set the table for we're gonna show up on that call pretty much ready to move forward. So we want to make sure that if we're getting on another call with them, they have they have the price, they have all the information they're gonna need, that they come ready to make a decision. And of course, they can come on the call, ask more questions, and then decide it's not a good fit. That is completely fine. But we want to set the expectation that we're gonna make a decision by this call. And that's because we are believers, the worst place you can be is kind of stuck in that in-between, stuck in that world of maybe is what I call it. It's I'm not sure if I want to do it, but I'm not not gonna do it. That means you're just sitting, you're you're you're stagnant, you're standing still. If you decide you don't want to work with us, that means great. Hopefully, you're going to take that decision and run out and either find someone else who is a better fit for you. You're gonna take that decision and you're gonna run out and try to implement something on your own. You're going to take action on change. Or you decide to work with us, that is action towards change. What we don't want is you just sitting here two, three months down the road, and you're just like, I want to work with them, but I'm nervous about the investment. And so you haven't done anything, and you're just sitting in that same place spinning your wheels. We want to inspire action. So that's why we ask for a commitment of some kind. Now, if they don't want to get on a follow-up call, then the commitment we're looking for is we're gonna follow up with you via email, then. And all we ask is, you know, we'll follow up tomorrow. All we ask is that you respond with a yes or a no. If it's a no, you won't hurt our feelings. So it's okay if it's not the right fit for you, but we don't want you to get stuck in that world of maybe, stuck in that in-between. So please, and it's kind of our subtle way of saying, please don't ghost us. That to me, that's that's the worst, is we don't want to be chasing you for months and months without responses. I again, you're not gonna hurt our feelings if you say we're not interested. That's completely understood. I've told people I'm not interested in their services, there's nothing personal about it. Uh, so please tell us no if it's not the right fit, but also if you decide it is the right fit, let's jump on it. Let's not kick that can down the road, prolong the spot you're in. So, for you on your sales calls, as you're talking to uh potential clients, it's really looking at what kind of commitment are you looking for? Is it let's schedule that that what evaluation call, whatever your process is, let's get you scheduled with with this therapist so you can meet them and and get to know at least do one or two sessions. Let's get that first session booked. That might be your main commitment that you're looking for. If they want to think about it or they say, you know, I have two more calls with other therapists, then you can always try and schedule that follow-up call. You can share the same thing I said. It's not pressuring, it's just the we don't want you to get stuck. From our experience, we know a lot of people will spend months interviewing and then just never making a decision. So I highly encourage you if it's if they're not gonna be working with you directly, I highly encourage you to schedule that first call with this person, or by this time next week, let's make a decision. Let us know yes or no, you're not gonna hurt our feelings. So, exactly what we just talked about driving them toward an answer. All right, so that was a huge shift in our process that has worked really well. And you know, that one has got less tangible results in this, other than we know that our again, our close rate has doubled, and our our coaches feel confident going into these calls, knowing there's no pressure on me from Craig or anybody to get this sale. It's just I'm here to serve, I'm here to listen, and then I'm here to get a commitment from them on some kind, even if it's a commitment to themselves. Because going back to that, if the answer is no, if they tell us on the call, this is great, I can't justify the expense right now, then it's awesome. Here's what I ask you the commitment I want from you is to take action on something, and then we can give them some some steps. Go and open your bank accounts, go and uh figure out what percentage you need to be setting aside for opex and and and owners pay. And then the other commitment we had it might ask, this is another one that I forgot to mention, is if the answer is no, I want you to set a date, maybe 30 to 60 days from now. And if things are not different by then, set the commitment that you are going to call. You're gonna you're gonna come back to us and you're gonna sign up because if things have not changed from then, you're now losing money and you've now lost more than you probably would have invested in our program. And of course, we're gonna get you an ROI. But point being, the time 30, 60 days from now, you're losing money if you are not making a change. So, same thing. If they say no, it's not a good fit, set that that line of you know, 30 days from now, I'm gonna reach out. If you're in the same place, let's schedule that first that first session. All right, the third thing that we did was keeping it simple. Uh, so if you've been listening to me for any amount of time, you know I can get kind of chatty, a little bit wordy. Uh, so our job on these calls is to keep it simple, meaning we're not gonna try and oversell. It's super easy to get bogged down into the weeds of here's everything we do, here's how we do it, here's all the problems we solve. And it comes from this innate idea of we need to showcase that we can help anybody and everybody, that we're super knowledgeable, that we can we can tackle any problem that comes our way. That's how I approached things for a long time. It was talking about things that were not even important to uh the prospect. And I've I remember there was a time, probably more than one time, but it ones coming specifically to mind, is I am trying to sell them on these things that we can help with. And they responded with, yeah, we honestly don't even really need help with that. And what that means is I wasn't listening, I wasn't listening to them. So, really, that's what we're trying to do is not only keep it simple, but listen to their key pain points. And that's all we're gonna speak to. Their key pain points are why they booked this call. And going back to our intake process, we're asking this in advance what are the two, three things that you want to? Change about your business finances right now. We're gonna look at those before the call, and then that's what we're gonna speak to. And we're gonna ask them what else is going on. Maybe new things have popped up that is on top of mind that is maybe more pressing than when they filled out the form. So we're gonna listen to that. And then when it's our turn to talk about how we can help, we're gonna speak to those pain points. This does two things. One, we're not gonna overwhelm them and try and sell on things that they're not interested in. Two, it's gonna be really catered to them. It's here's why you're here. Don't worry, we've got you. We eat this stuff for breakfast. This is what we do every single day. We can help you solve this problem. If they came to us saying, I want to pay myself more, that's what we do. We specialize in helping you. We we believe you should be paid more. So that's the system we're gonna help you set up, is gonna make sure that you are paid what you need, that you're paid fairly, that you're paid what you deserve on a regular, consistent basis. If they're stressed about debt, we're gonna help you create a game plan to get rid of debt systematically so that way you can free up your cash flow. So do you see? Are we speaking to their pain points? It's also really tempting for us to, and I did this for the in the first few years of my business, was to get into the weeds of here's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna do this spreadsheet and we're gonna guide you through this. And I would even sometimes share my screen and say, here's the your hub that you're gonna have, and here's this process, and here's all the different things we're gonna do, and you're gonna get access to this and this and this. Again, I'm water hosing them with information when all they really care about is here's what I'm struggling with. Can you help me? There will be plenty of time when we start working together for them to learn all the different ways we help and we can help. We're gonna get them in the door by speaking to their key pain points. And then as we start working with them, we're gonna discover maybe there's other areas of need that we can step in and serve. And so your prospects, when they come to you, here is the thing I am struggling with. Can you help me? If it's mental health, here are the things, speak directly toward those things of yes, we we work with people like that all the time, or we specialize in that. If it's physical therapy, it's not speaking to here's all the different pieces of equipment we have, odds are they don't care. It's awesome. Yep, we can absolutely help rehabilitate you from where you are, the get help you get rid of that pain or help at least ease the pain, help uh whatever it is through different exercises, different modalities. So not getting into the weeds of it. That's really, really important. And then lastly, for keeping it simple, is when we when we tell a price, when we give our quote, when we share how much it's gonna cost, sometimes we get uncomfortable and we forget to leave space. We tend to almost uh we almost input objections in our own head and we start trying to to solve those objections or to answer those objections when the prospect has not even presented an objection to the price. So keeping it simple is staying quiet. This is something I implemented probably five years ago, and it's something I teach my team, it's something I teach our clients, it's something I still practice myself to this day. If you end up booking a consultation and we get on a call, look for this because I'm I'm gonna do it. And it's when I share what the investment is to work with us, I stay silent and I wait for the prospect, the person on the call to be the first one to speak. Here's why. Again, sometimes we get on there, maybe we're nervous, and I might share the investment. And in my head, I'm thinking, oh, they're probably gonna think this is too expensive, they're struggling with their finances. So immediately I'm like, I know that's you know, here's how much it is, and I know that's a stretch, I know that that might feel tight, even though you're struggling with your finances. Uh, but here's why it's it's gonna be okay, or here's why we can deliver an ROI. I've given them zero time to even think of is this something I want to do? Is this worth it to me? Is this too much for me? If it is, then maybe they'll come back and say that. So, what I do is it is gonna be X dollars per month for six months, or X dollars up front for six months. And then I'm silent, and I just wait for them to answer. It's done wonders. I think we, as the person leading the call, are scared of awkward silences when in reality on their end, their brain is working. It's it's they're having a conversation in their own head, they're hearing the price for the first time, and in their head, they're starting to think, okay, is that something I can make work? Uh that that is that's more than I was thinking, maybe, or oh, actually, that's less than I was thinking. Um, what could I do? Like, is that something I could fit in? Yeah, I think we could make that work. Could it work now or could it work next? So they're starting to do those things in their head. Um, I remember the when I first started this, it was recommended by a coach of mine, I think maybe back in 2020. I was on a call and it was killing me, y'all. It was killing me to be there and not say a word. I again, I'm chatty. So I said the quote and I sat there silently. And on the other end of the call, the prospect goes, Oh wow, okay, yeah, that's more than I was thinking. And I stayed silent. And then she's like, I don't know how I'm gonna make that work. And I stayed silent. And then she said, Well, but I need it to work, like I need something to change, and still silent. And then finally she goes, Yeah, I I think I have to do this. Like, let's do it. So you see how I created that space for her to kind of think through it, and it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes it's yeah, that's just more than I was thinking. Uh, I don't know if I can commit to it right now, and that's fine. But I want to create that space for them to say to ask a question. And usually I will leave it until they say, Yeah, let's do it, or until they say, okay, what are next steps, or until they say, okay, thank you. I want to, I want to think on it. I'm not gonna make any decisions right now. Once they kind of create that space for the next steps, that's when I'll jump back in. But I'm gonna create some time for them to think on it. I don't want them to feel pressured to decide really quick. And honestly, that's where the pressure can come from. It's funny because we're doing it usually out of a, I don't want to pressure them. So I'm gonna try and just mitigate any any uh any objections they might have to what I just said, but by doing that, it's not giving them space to think, and now they're starting to probably feel that pressure of okay, they're they want me to give them an answer. So create some space, leave it open, try it and let me know. I think that's gonna be such a huge difference maker. I know it was for me in our consultation process. All right, those are three tweaks we've made over the years that have made a world of difference. Going back to what I said at the beginning, pick one. If you're struggling to close because you feel like the people you're getting on calls with are just not a good fit, go tweak your intake process. If you feel like maybe you're just not like they're good fits, but people are just ghosting, maybe they're they're falling to the wayside after the call. So you get off the call and then you never hear from them again. Focus on getting a commitment out of them. Or maybe if you feel like there's just too many price objections, or you feel like this just you're losing them once you you pitch the price, try creating some space there. There's a lot of different things that you can be doing differently, uh, but I recommend tweaking it one piece at a time. Of course, if this is something you're struggling with, uh you want to see how we do our consultations, but more importantly, you're looking for ongoing help. Because again, our consultations, it's not designed to be a one-time thing. Really, it's yes, we can help you with your consultation process, but that's just a piece of our coaching program, and it takes time to help you develop a plan to do that. If you want to improve your sales, if you want to improve how you manage money, that's what our coaches do. We always have a link in the description to help get you connected to them, help you get some support and guidance in that process. All right. Whether you get on a consultation with us or not, I do want to hear how these things work. So after you listen to this, if you implement a change, set a reminder in your calendar to email me infotherapybusinesspod.com and let me know how did it go? Did you see a difference? I want to celebrate it with you if you did. And if you didn't, then move on to the next thing, make another tweak, see how that works. All right, we're rooting for you. We're hoping that you not only close more sales, but you find the right clients, you close more of the right clients. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a practice member that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspod.com to learn how we can help you.

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Craig Dacy

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