Did you know there are over 18,000 ophthalmologists in the US? With numbers like that, it’s clear the ocular industry is becoming more and more competitive. While insurance-based procedures and referrals will always be a solid revenue source, there are proven simple ways to boost your revenue, increase patient satisfaction, and build patient trust. Today, we’re going to talk about an unexpected way to improve your ocular practice: sales training.
When we say sales, we don’t mean the pushy, car salesman tactics or even just trying to “sell” your patients on something that might not be right for their healthcare journey. We mean getting to the heart of what your patient needs, offering effective education, and giving them a consistent customer experience from the first phone call to the last follow-up appointment.
How Does Sales Training Benefit an Ocular Practice?
When you shift your mindset on sales from just selling to educating and providing exceptional customer service, you’ll find many opportunities to implement it into your practice. Maybe a prospective patient calls asking about LASIK. If your front desk staff has expert phone skills, they can convert that inquiry into a consultation, credential your practice, and keep that patient choosing you over a competitor. Or maybe you’re in a consultation with a cataract patient and they don’t know anything about their premium lens options. By taking the time to understand their needs, lifestyle, and concerns, you can educate them on the benefits of choosing a multifocal lens. Your patients will feel more confident in their choices, and you have the potential to increase your revenue.
Here are a few more benefits of comprehensive sales training in an insurance-based practice:
- Increased Patient Trust: When your team is knowledgeable and confident in explaining treatments, patients are more likely to trust their recommendations. This trust is crucial for patient satisfaction and retention.
- Better Patient Outcomes: Enhanced communication skills enable your staff to better understand patient concerns and preferences, leading to personalized treatment plans and improved patient outcomes.
- Increased Practice Revenue: Effective consultations and higher conversion rates naturally lead to increased appointments and procedures. This directly contributes to the growth of your practice’s revenue.
Which Staff Members Should Receive Sales Training?
We’ll cut to the chase: every member of your staff would benefit from sales training. Because your staff interacts with your patients at multiple steps through their healthcare journey, this will help provide a cohesive patient experience. This also means that they will feel listened to, acknowledged, and taken care of. The right communication and customer service techniques will help boost patient satisfaction, foster trust and loyalty, and keep them coming back to you instead of one of the other in-network ophthalmologists.
What Does Good Sales Training Look Like?
There are an incredible amount of resources out there for learning effective sales techniques. So how do you go about finding and implementing a quality sales education that is going to have a tangible impact on your practice’s success? Sure, you could assign a book that everyone on LinkedIn is recommending or pay tens of thousands of dollars for a consultant to do a one-time on-site training. But there’s a better way.
With the Clarity Practice Performance System, you’ll have access to on-demand, proven sales training that you can use for everyone on your team. It can even be used as part of your onboarding for future employees. But here’s what really sets our training apart.
It will help your staff…
- Understand Patient Needs: Training includes techniques for identifying and understanding patient needs and concerns, ensuring that each consultation is patient-focused.
- Explain Advanced Treatments: Staff will learn how to break down complex ocular treatments into easily understandable terms, making patients feel more comfortable and informed about their options.
- Build Confidence: Confident staff are more persuasive and can better handle objections or concerns from patients, leading to more successful consultations and treatment plans.
- See Results: Our on-demand training modules are designed to deliver measurable results. Practices that have implemented our training have reported significant improvements in patient satisfaction, consultation success rates, and overall practice revenue.
The Sales Training included with the Clarity Practice Performance System covers a wide range of topics from how to handle objections to the different types of personalities and the best ways to interact with them, to credentialing your practice.
Part of credentialing is determining your Unique Value Proposition, or UVP. Basically, it’s what sets you and your practice apart from the other 17,999 ophthalmologists out there. Maybe it’s specialized training, maybe it’s a state-of-the-art machine, maybe it’s your number of five-star reviews in Google.
To help you determine your Unique Value Proposition, download this free worksheet. It will provide you with key questions to help you build something impactful to communicate with prospective patients.
