The Therapy Business Podcast

[REPLAY] Closing Clients: Consultations That Convert

• Craig Dacy • Episode 67

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Our 2nd most downloaded episode in 2025 is all about closing more sales. 


We teach a consult process that turns sales into service, so you can book ideal clients without feeling pushy. Using the PrEPS framework, we show how to prepare, build trust, name the real problem, paint a better future, and confidently ask for the yes.



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

SPEAKER_00:

Have you ever said to yourself, I'm just not good at sales? If so, you're not alone. Most business and practice owners feel this way. They don't want to become slimy. They don't want to be one of those people who are too pushy. And so what ends up happening is we just kind of step back and we lose a lot of business in the process. And not only that, we are losing and letting a lot of people slip through the cracks, not getting the help that they need. So today I'm going to guide you through a process that we use and that we teach our clients to help you make your consultation process smooth and close more clients. 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. When I first started my business, I genuinely was concerned because I was like, I just don't want to be pushy. I don't want to be a salesy kind of person. And so I would get on these calls with people who were struggling with money. And it was this constant battle of, I can help you, it's going to cost you money, and you're struggling with money. And so I took that battle on myself. And what ended up happening was they could tell that I was insecure about what I was offering them. And so I wasn't getting the sign-ups, the conversions that I was really needing in order to grow and sustain my business. And not only that, these people were coming to me for help and walking away without help because I wasn't confident enough in what I was doing and confident enough to encourage them and ask them to sign up and work with me. What I found was people were coming to me hurting for money. And again, I was concerned that I'm going to be asking them to pay me money to help them with money. But what I need to do was flip my mindset on this and realize that they're coming to me with a problem. And am I going to let the reason that they're on this call prevent them from getting help? Meaning they're coming to me struggling with money. Am I going to let their money struggles prevent them from getting help with getting money like improving their finances? It's this kind of paradigm like that we find ourselves in. And so that little shift really pushed me into you know what? If if I was a doctor and somebody was dying, or if I'm if I'm out in, let's say somebody has an allergic reaction, they get bit by ants, and I have an EpiPin and they're and they're about to die. And it's like, ooh, I don't want to be too pushy and offer my EpiPin. I don't want to, you know, step across any boundaries. No, I'm going to run over there and inject that thing in them and save their life, right? So it's this idea that these people are coming to me, they're coming to you for help. They're they're drowning in a sense. And are we going to throw them that life preserver? Are we going to help them? Or are we going to be too shy and too concerned that we're going to be too pushy and not offer them the help that they need? So, what I want to do is guide you through a sales process on a consultation that we use internally. I've taught this to my team. It's something we've used that has worked really, really well. It has drastically improved our conversion rates. This year, right now, we're sitting at about a 43% conversion rate on our consultations, which is up from previous years where we were sitting maybe between 20 and 30%. And it's because we are taking time going through each phase of this consultation. Now I want to give some credit where credit is due. One of my colleagues, Barb Stackhouse, talked me through her process, and I adopted a lot of what she taught, what she coached me through and created customized it to the industries we work with. And how can I customize this to our clientele? And I believe it's going to convert really well into the therapy world. In fact, I know it is because we've taught it to our clients as well. So I encourage you to take notes. Uh, this is gonna be super, super impactful. Take some notes on the process, the slides. Uh, if you watch on YouTube, I'm gonna go through the slides, I'll share my screen. If you are listening to this on Apple or on Spotify, you're just listening to the podcast, in the show notes. I will link to the slide deck and even on YouTube. You can download the slide deck to this so you can see the process and you can take these notes and put them into practice. All right, because I'm a former teacher, I'm all about acronyms. So we're gonna be using the acronym PrEPS today. That's P-R-E-P-P-S. How can we engage? How can we prepare, best prepare for a consultation? Now we're gonna be bridging gaps. So each of these is a core section in the process. And so again, Barb Stackhouse, who taught me her process, was using the analogy of islands. And so we're gonna view each one, and we're island hopping. We're we're starting in one piece, really vital to the consultation process. And then before we move on, we want to make sure that we have fully done what we intended to do in this one island, and then we're gonna bridge into the next one. So the first P is gonna be for purpose. What is the purpose of this call? This happens before we even get on the call, before the consultation. So you you look at your calendar, you've got a consultation call with somebody, and again, or you're teaching this to your team, whoever's doing the consultation. What is the purpose of this? We want to reflect and put the prospects' needs ahead of our own. What I found a lot of times with myself was that I was so desperate for the sale that maybe I was coming in really thinking about myself or my business. Like, I need to get this client, I need to close them. But what I want to do is I want to stop and reflect on the pros my prospects' need, the person getting on the call. What do they need from me? How can I best serve them? They're getting on this call looking for help, and I want to do that. So before I get on the call, I'm gonna mentally prepare. I'm gonna whether if you're spiritual, you can pray during this time, you can meditate, even if it's just for five minutes, just get yourself to a baseline, a calm baseline, especially if you find sales calls are a point of anxiety for you, or if you're feeling the pressure to close those clients. Get into a ritual or a habit. What do you do before every single call? You know, I always like to stand. So I always have my standing desk when I'm on a sales call. I put that standing desk up. Sometimes I might just do a little bit of exercise in my office before getting on just to loosen up, get my heart rate up, uh, kind of get prepped. I also like to review my client. So this one is specific to us. You your clients are not necessarily gonna have a website, but review their at least their notes and their information. So reviewing those details of what is what do you know about the client? So for me, I will, if it's a practice owner coming to us, I'm gonna go to their website, I'm gonna get familiar with what they do, who they are, what services they offer, uh different things. This is gonna help us come into the call and it's gonna help us with some of these other steps, these other key elements of the consultation. So for you, any intake form, any questions that they filled out, review those. Get comfortable with. What are their pain points? What are they struggling with? What are they hoping to accomplish? What are they hoping to change? What are they looking for? Really hone in on these because this is what you're speaking to. This is what you're, and again, putting their needs before own. This is what you're gonna try and reassure them on, you're gonna try and provide insight on, you're gonna try and take some of that weight off their shoulders. If nothing else, the goal with this call is to get off the call with them feeling better, whether that's them having uh a counseling schedule or a therapy session scheduled with you, or if that's them just coming off me and like, you know what, just the fact that I even took this step to talk to someone makes me feel better. And then if you're not yet, get comfortable with the quote. So if you're private pay, maybe you're you're just people can sense when your body tightens up when you come out and say that what it's gonna cost, right? So we want to just get comfortable with it. Get really comfortable, say it to yourself over and over, reassure yourself of your value, of why it's worth the money, how it's gonna change their lives. Can almost like sell yourself on it before you go sell it to them. And here's the deal if you're over if you're not comfortable, if you can't sell at the rate you're wanting to sell, maybe for a short season, roll it back a little bit, sell confidently at that rate, and then slowly raise your rates as the time comes. But we want to get comfortable with whatever you're gonna quote. That's the first section. It's just before the call. Once we get on that consultation call, we're gonna get into the next piece, which is building rapport. This is an essential, essential piece of the consultation process. And it's so easy for us to want to skip this part. It's so easy for us to just want to jump in straight to business, but you're in a relational business. They're they're looking for a relationship piece with you as the therapist, with your team members. So we want to really hone in on this. We want to build trust and find some common ground. We want to be agreeable, likable, trustworthy. So engaging, and this is where maybe reviewing their notes, even as simple as where are they from? Are they from your town? Are they from uh somewhere else where they might be coming in virtually? Where are they from? Get to know them there, get to talk about uh, hey, I see that you're in this next town over or you're in this neighborhood. Um, I used to grow up there. That's where my aunt lived over there. Whatever it is, find those areas where you can bridge that gap. If you see, if it's a video call, if you see things on their background, um, really highlighting, hey, I see that you got a Dallas Cowboys poster in the background, whatever it is, finding those shared interests to just bridge the gap. Really, the goal of this piece is to ease their tensions. This is the time to help bring them at ease because they are likely anxious getting on this sales call. I know our client prospects are when they get on calls with us, they're coming to speak about something very vulnerable, which is their money. So the goal of rapport is to help drop their shoulders and help them realize, okay, I'm in good hands, at least on this 20-minute, 30-minute phone call, I'm in good hands. So that's what we want to do. Don't let them skip this part if they're trying to jump straight into the nitty-gritties. I think it's important to maintain control. The person asking the questions controls the conversation. So that's what we want you to do. Control that conversation, ask the questions. And if they're trying to jump ahead and be like, oh, first of all, like I just want to ask you and ask about themselves, ask about their family, their kids, ask about those things and get to know them a little bit so you can bridge that gap between the two. Then, speaking of bridges, this is some key phrases you can use to pivot from each of these core islands, right? Where the bridge from one island to the other. So the first bridge from rapport, we're gonna go into the next piece. So this is something we like to say, maybe not always verbatim. I don't want it to sound too scripted, but here's what I would say to a client who is coming to me for help with their profitability and their finances. So after we've built that report, let's dive right in and learn about what's working, what's not working, and where you're trying to get. So tell me your business story and how you got where you are now. So we're getting to know a little bit about their history. And that's our next key, which is evaluate. We're learning about the prospect. We're learning about them. We want to know what brought them here today. Now, again, your industry is a little bit different. I want to know how what does money management look like for them to this point? What got them to be business owners to begin with or to start their own therapy practice? That's what I want to find out for you. It could simply be getting to know their their history. If they're coming to you for marriage counseling, getting to know their marriage history, what brought them here? What's how long have they been together? What did the early years look like? Getting to know those pieces, what we're trying to pull out, and the goal of evaluate is to listen and take notes and get to know. Are you sick of the overwhelm that comes with managing the finances in your practice? What if you can have a clear picture of where your money's going, pay yourself what you truly deserve, and have a rock solid game plan to grow your practice without the financial stress? Well, that's exactly what our profit coaching program is designed to do. We specialize in helping practices like yours achieve financial clarity so that you can focus on what you do best, helping your clients and managing your team, while we help handle all that business-y stuff that they didn't teach you in grad school. Our profit coaching program is enrolling new practices right now. We'll walk with you as you create a financially healthy and sustainable practice. To see if you might be a good fit, schedule a free consultation at therapybusinesspod.com. More about them. So getting to know more details about their story, what their pain points are, and what they're trying to achieve. That's what we want to know so that you can address that. Now, for us, this is a chance for us to figure out okay, uh, what's what are the what size business are they? What how many moving pieces are there? This part doesn't necessarily pertain to you as far as the size of the business for us. The bigger the sale, the longer it can take because the bigger the business we're talking to, the more moving pieces there are, and the more things we need to evaluate and ask more questions about. All right, from there, once we've evaluated, we've gotten to know their backstory, what brought them to this point in time, we have our bridge. This is a chance to say, and again, not necessarily scripted, but this is what I like to say to help take us from the evaluate phase to the next phase, which is thanks for sharing that with me. It helps me to know about the history of your business, or it helps me to know about your history. So let's focus on the big thing. What's the most important thing that you feel is the biggest issue right now? What are they here for? And this is our our next piece. So we've gone through the P R E. This is problem finding out their biggest pain points that we can help solve. So they've probably word vomited on you. All the things that, again, if they're here for marriage counseling, maybe they have just dumped on you, all the little things, all the annoyances, all the things that they argue about, all the uh fill in the blank. We want to know what's the big thing, what's the one thing that you could use help with? If they're coming to you for uh just individual counseling, maybe they've talked about their their par how their parents are dealing with this and how they have anxiety and how they have depression and how they uh fill again, fill in the blank. What's the one, what's the biggest pain point that they're dealing with? We want to fully understand their need. Why are they here? If they went to your website, there's probably a list of different services and specialties that you do. This is gonna allow you to do a couple things. One, address that you can help them, or two, figure out which team member can handle it, or if your team doesn't specialize in what they're looking for, maybe a referral opportunity to send them out and serve them in a way by saying, Hey, we can't help you with that. However, I think this therapist over here might be the best fit for you. But we want to fully understand their needs to say, okay, I can absolutely help you with that. That's the reassurance piece. We're getting to know the problem so we can reassure them that we have dealt with it before. Well, it's we eat this stuff for breakfast and we can absolutely help them. So we want them to understand the problem. We want to make some emotional connections. How is it showing up in their life? Uh, what's basically what's the worst piece of it? How is it kind of affecting them in general? Um, if they don't connect emotionally, then the problem isn't big enough. Again, that's for them. If it's therapy, there's likely it's probably all emotional connection, right? So now we come to the bridge. We're gonna bridge into the next piece. This is where we say, now that we figured out what's not working, let's find out what you want. So let's say that you and I work together through therapy and we solve this problem. What would life be like for you? Um, this again may be a piece that you're gonna have to tweak and hone in being therapy specific. This is for us, we want to know really ultimately what are they hoping to achieve? What do they want life to look like for them? This is be this is the other P, which is project. Help the prospect see the value of solving their problem. Um, so again, help them see the value of therapy. What are what is the value of getting help with what they're dealing with? So find your way of phrasing these things. Because as I once again, I'm I'm sharing my process with you. I just I like to be an open book with how we approach sales and what's worked for us. For you, it's just a matter of going in and refining. What can I say here that falls in the bounds of what we do, that falls in the bounds of being ethical without pressuring, without those things. But this to me is not a pressuring tactic. This is literally we're trying to help them see things differently. We're helping them reflect on where they are, and we're trying to help them see and understand and realize that there's a there's opportunity for something to be different, for to solve this problem and to live a life that looks different, that's fulfilling, that is everything they want it to be. So help them visualize what does that look like? What would life be like if you were to overcome, you know, if you were to, if you were to be able to figure out the tools to deal with and live with or even reduce anxiety, what would that be like? So finding those key phrases of what can what would it look like to have the solution? We want them to have clarity, confidence, and certainty that you can help them. That's really the the goal of the project phase. It's here's where I am, here's where I want to be, and then have the confidence that you can provide that pathway, you can provide that solution. All of these pieces that we've just gone through, those are the bulk of the consultation call. I would say if you're on a 30-minute call, 20 minutes of it is gonna be doing all of this, going through the getting to know them, getting to visualize, getting to project, getting to see what's ahead. Then we want to bridge into what does it look like to work with you? Now, typically I like to open it up for questions. So before I even bridge, I like to say, you know, I've asked you a ton of questions. Is there are there any questions that you came with for me that I can answer for you? Typically, uh, this is they're gonna jump right into what does it look like to work with you, what does it cost, how frequently, etc. Um, sometimes they might have a claim, a question like specifics that you can help with. Sometimes it's a specific question that you're like, you know what, I I can't answer that with for you until I get to know you better, until uh we know the full situation. It wouldn't be beneficial to you. So uh if somebody came to me and was like, and I was like, hey, do you have any questions? They go, Yeah, should I cash out my 401k to pay off all my debt? It's like, whoa, um, I don't know enough about you, your goals, your situation, any of that to say whether that's a wise decision or not. And honestly, and I even if we were through coaching, I probably wouldn't answer that anyway because I'm not here to tell you what to do with your money. However, my answer would probably be through our process, I can help you figure out what the best decision is to accomplish that goal of paying off your debt. And we're gonna look at all the different options so that you can make a decision confidently. So it's providing that answer, but if it's a quick question, like you know, I can't think of one off the top of my head, but it's something that's just very easy to answer, then we're gonna answer that. Most of the time they don't know, they don't know what questions they want to ask. So usually the question is what is what does it look like to work with you? What does therapy look like with you? So for us on the coaching side, once we've gone there, here's where I bridge it's I'm 100% confident that I can help you. And here's why. This goes back to the beginning of this episode where I talked about that confidence piece that they can sense it if we're not sure. If we're not sure that we have the solution, they're not going to be sure that we have the solution. So I Like to come out and say I'm a hundred percent confident that I can help you, and here's why. For us, it's that we have a program that addresses exactly what they're talking about. So for you, this is the stuff you're describing, is what I'm licensed in, this is what I specialize in, or this is what this clinician specializes in. It's reassuring them that we see this all the time and we eat it for breakfast. This is what we do. Okay, this is where we sell. We're gonna confidently offer the solution to the prospect. So we're gonna give them an overview of what therapy looks like. We're not gonna get into the minute details of it. It's just, you know, I would recommend meeting once once a week. It can be an office or virtual, these are last 50 minutes, 50-minute sessions. So just kind of giving them that idea. Go over what a therapy session might look like. You know, they're give them peace of mind. Let allow them to picture what that session could look like. So really describe, and again, we're not going to go into the weeds. I don't want you spending 20 minutes talking about this. It's just, hey, here's what it's like. Here's how I operate, here's the feeling you'll have, the safe space we create. It's all confidential. So whatever you need to say to reassure, um, this is an opportunity to do that. And then from there, you share what the fee structure is, what it looks like, um, the meeting rhythm that you would recommend, all those things is where we're gonna go in here. And we're gonna ask them to sign up for their first session. What I find is a lot of times we, and this was even in our internal trainings with our team, um, we had one of our team members who was super brave in that uh we were she recorded one of her her sales calls um with client permission, of course, and she asked me to listen to it. And she's like, you know, I'm noticing I'm not closing as many as I would like. So we listened to it, and truthfully, she was crushing it. She was serving them well on the call, she was doing everything right. But what there was one thing that was missing was she wasn't inviting them into the coaching program. Uh it wasn't super clear. I think uh she thought she was because she mentioned the price and she mentioned what it looks like to get started. But it's some even something as simple as do you want to schedule your first appointment? Are you, you know, let me pull up my calendar, I'm ready. Let's plug you in for your first appointment if everything sounds good. So being real direct, what we say sometimes in sales is we're seeking out the no, we're asking questions that they could say no to, uh yes or a no. Sometimes we're so afraid of the no that we phrase things in a way that they can't say no to it. But the problem is they can't say yes to it either. So when we seek out the no, that causes us just mentally to ask direct questions that's going to give them the opportunity to say no or to say yes. So, are you ready to schedule your first meeting? I have opening next week. Uh, would you like to schedule a meeting? Would you like to schedule your first therapy session? Let them know what that looks like, give them the opportunity to do it. If they say, uh, let me, I need to think about it, or I'm meeting with a couple other therapists, um, then what you can do is what I like to do is get some kind of commitment out of them. So, uh, and I've even called that out sometimes. I tell them, you know, the worst place, and again, I'm speaking on profitability and finances, but the worst place we can be is stuck in between. So I don't want that's what I don't want for you is to get stuck in that limbo. If it's a no, that's okay. If it's a yes, that's amazing. But what we don't want is for you to get stuck where you're you're not making moves in any direction. So my commitment to you is that I'm gonna follow up with you. I'm not gonna let you slip through the cracks. The one commitment I ask from you is that on this date, by this date, you give me an answer, yes or no. I'm in or I'm not. That's how we proceed. We like to give them direction in a deadline. Otherwise, what we have found is people are stuck six months, a year, two years down the road, and they've done nothing. They've done nothing because they sat on their hands. They they they were afraid to make a decision one way or the other. We are driving them to a no. For us, uh, we like to schedule a follow-up call. So if they need to think on it, it's like great. How about we schedule a 15-minute call for X date? And we schedule that. And it's literally on that call, come with if you have any other lingering questions, bring them. Uh, if you're ready to go, we'll sign you up on the call. Um, if not, then come to that call ready. Basically, come to that call with a yes or no answer that you're ready to sign up or you're not. Uh, I also give them the opportunity to say, if you're ready sooner, just shoot me an email, we'll get you scheduled. Don't feel like you have to wait till that call to actually get some action taken. But getting some kind of commitment out of them, letting them know you're not gonna hurt my feelings if you decide to go with another therapist. If you decide we're not a good fit, it's not gonna hurt my feelings. I want the best care for you. However, because I'm so committed to you, like I that's my commitment to you is I'm gonna follow up. We want to follow, we're we we just want to know an answer, basically. We don't we don't want to be, I don't want to be emailing and calling you. I don't want to be that desperate therapist who's just calling and texting you all the time and you're just ghosting me. So uh that's really what we're ultimately wanting is some kind of commitment from them. And I think that's reasonable. And what we found is people are very much willing. And honestly, us giving them permission to say no, because I'll tell them that, like I won't take it personally if you decide it's not the right fit. Uh that gives them gets them to say no to me. I would much rather them say no than be a maybe again for their sake, but even internally for my sake, because then I'm gonna be following up with them forever uh when in reality they're at home thinking, I'm not signing up with this guy, I'm not interested. So an answer is better than no answer. That is our sales process. Again, I will link uh the slides in the show notes for you so that you can download them, take a look at them. Remember to tweak them to the therapy industry. The reason I'm just sharing you mine because I know there's a bunch of different therapy practices out there. We got physical therapists who listen to this podcast, we got mental health therapists, we got marriage counsel, we got a bunch of different types. And so what instead of trying to customize it to each specific industry, I'm just sharing mine, and then you can just go in and tweak areas. Take out what you feel like doesn't isn't relevant to yours, add in what you think is, and try it out and then let me know how it goes. I would love to hear how this consultation sales process worked out for you. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a practice owner that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspod.com to learn how we can help.

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Craig Dacy

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