E547 | The One Email To Rule Them All

Today, I am talking about one of the most effective ways to improve your outcomes and customer experience. If you are not already doing this, then it should be immediately implemented into your practice. It involves spending an extra 15 minutes to write a detailed follow-up e-mail after the initial evaluation. I will give you an example of how I made this work in this episode. Enjoy!

• Teeing your patients up for success
• Preframing your patient for the next steps
• They will share it with their family members

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So I was having a conversation with one of our staff members about documentation and he had come over from a in-network practice that he was working at and he was talking about just how long it would take him to document and click through and the workflow and how, just how time consuming it was and how much easier it's been with the software that we use, which is PT everywhere.

And I know for us, we're very aware of. Sort of time leaks within our staff and our own schedules. And it's just one of the worst things you can do is just waste time on things when you could be doing them more efficiently. One thing for us is we have to document. It's something we need to do and you need to do it as efficiently as you possibly can because that's where you're gonna save a lot of your time.

We were seeing our staff members save upwards of an hour a day as far as cleaning up his documentation, making it more efficient. What if you got an hour of your day back just from documentation? What if all of your staff did the same thing? Highly recommend you take a look at PT everywhere.

It's been a huge time saver for us and really has made a big difference in our efficiency of our practice. You can check 'em [email protected]. I think you're gonna really like what they have to offer. So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't wanna work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about?

This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we're talking about one of the simplest, most effective things you can do to improve your outcomes and your customer experience. And this is something that hopefully a lot of you are already doing, and if not, this should immediately be able to be implemented within your practice.

Early on when we started our practice, one thing that I found was I was intentionally scheduling people out, like multiple weeks. And the main reason I was doing that was because I was coming from an environment in the military where we were just swamped with people and understaffed. And the earliest that I could typically get somebody back was like three weeks.

So my, my. Ke tempo. My cadence with people typically was I would see them like once every three weeks, and then I would write like a detailed program that they were gonna follow for those three weeks. So this is what I started doing, not really knowing there's a different way to do it. I just was doing what I was used to.

And so I would schedule people out every three weeks or so, even though I had plenty of room on my schedule early on. And as part of that, I would've to send them an email that. In detail, explained what was going on, gave 'em their program and teed them up for success for the couple weeks before I saw them.

So soon, and I would say not relatively soon, I would say after about a year I realized, and then obviously slow to learn this, but after a year I realized this is dumb. I can bring people in faster than this. Come back in faster than this. And. Get a better outcome with them. And some of this was me getting over like money mindset issues of feeling like I, could see people more than like twice without them not being able to buy groceries, right?

Just like playing this role or this in my head where I was like, oh, they're making this hard decision with like sad music behind them about what do I buy? Do I buy groceries for my kids or do I go see Danny one more visit? Which isn't happening by the way, but that's what I thought. And maybe some of you feel the same way.

So you know, that's a problem you gotta get past, like what we do is very valuable. Took me about a year to figure that out. And what I did realize was though the email that I would send people, they freaking loved it. It's literally the thing that they would bring up all the time, like over and over again, and, What I realized was all that was happening was I was creating a lot of clarity for them ongoing and for their significant other at home, typically if they had one.

So this was something that we continued to do even though I wasn't seeing people at such a long period of time in between visits, I might see them a week a apart. I was still sending these really detailed initial visits visit emails in particular This is something that as we look at it and we look at the customer experience people would have and the practices we work with that implement similar things, it is something that.

Clients bring up all the time as one of their favorite parts of working with a practice like this is because they get a lot of transparency, a lot of clarity, and it's very detailed in terms of what they're looking for, but it also really tees you up for success going forward if you do a few things. So the first thing you need to do is summarize the visit.

So not just the objective subjective stuff that went on, but summarize what you found and why it has something to do with them not being able to do the thing that they want to do. For instance, let's say you're working with a golfer and you say to yourself, like in the office, you find out that their, the, their front leg has limited hip internal rotation and maybe they come in for like knee or lower back problems, right?

So we're assuming this joint is supposed to rotate better isn't, and then they're having to find some rotation from a joint above or below, just as an example right now. That might make sense to us. But to somebody that's not, in the field of any of the medical field of any sort, or understands biomechanics at all, they still may not understand what the hell you're talking about and have no idea what hip internal rotation is, right?

So in the office, the goal is to try to explain that stuff as best we can, but you gotta remember. We're throwing a lot of shit at people in a short period of time and they're trying to remember this stuff and they're trying to make a decision about if they wanna work with you and they're trying to, remember some of the homework exercise you're going over.

So one of the best things you can do is you can say, Hey listen, I'm gonna explain this right now. We're gonna go over some exercises. Don't worry about remembering. Any of these, just kinda remember how they feel. I'm gonna follow up with you with an detailed email that has exactly what I want you to do, and video links to every single thing so that you can basically watch me on repeat as many times as you want to make sure you're doing them correctly.

And if you're not sure, email me right back to the same email I'm sending you and I'll get back to you and we'll make sure that everything is good. Sound fair? Awesome. Let's go. So you're explaining the stuff in the office. Now they don't have to worry about, okay, the burden of remembering all this shit.

You've taken it away from 'em. In your email, you're going to summarize again, what's going on and why that is a problem that's leading to whatever frustrating injury that they're dealing with. But more than anything, you wanna be able to make sure you're tying that back. Two, the goals they have. So if the goal is, man, like I want to go on this golf trip with my dad, but like my knee is killing me, I can't really golf and.

I got six months, like I'm worried I'm not gonna be able to make the trip. Like that is something that we want to keep reinforcing. If we want to be able to do this, we have to do this, and this is gonna require you doing these things over the next few weeks before we come back together and we do the next sort of progression of whatever's going on.

So summarize the visit and always make sure to tie it back to the goals. The other thing that you want to do is you want to take the opportunity to preframe next steps, even if they're negative. If, let's say you have somebody come in the same scenario and you say, all right, I have to do some manual therapy to this hip joint.

Maybe you're doing some dry needling to some soft tissue stuff or whatever, and you in the office, you let 'em know Hey, it's really normal for people to be sore for a couple days after this. Okay? In your email, you want to preframe. Hey, if you feel sore for the next couple days, that's totally normal.

Don't worry. In fact, like if you feel sore, like that's just part of the process as we're creating some change physically and. If it doesn't go away at this point, let me know. But we fully expect for the next couple days you're gonna be sore. But once it goes away, we should see X, Y, and Z and preframe what that looks like, which will allow us to then work on the next things.

So you're preframing not only okay, you're sore. Great. But then this is gonna let us get to this next step, which is gonna be this. And then after this, then we go to here. And then from here then we're gonna be able to get back into fun stuff, which looks like this, and this. So right now, this is the stage that we're at.

This is what we're gonna focus on. So preframing, the next stages that's gonna help you a lot with drop off, with people actually coming in to complete a plan of care and finishing their visits. And then the last thing you wanna do is reinforce their decision. Reinforce their decision to put the effort out, the time, energy, the investment to work on themself and, reinforce that they're actually doing something that a lot of people don't like.

A lot of people will avoid things forever until they literally can't anymore. And you are in here working on this and I appreciate the opportunity to help you with this because, It's not at that stage yet, but it could be. And we have an opportunity to work on this before it becomes a real problem to be able to get you back to these things that you wanna do, X, Y, and Z.

Play golf with your dad on this trip, so you're in the right place. This is something that we see all the time. We look forward to helping you with this, and just let me know if you need anything. Send me an email right back to this, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. So again, you wanna summarize the visit, reframe the next steps, even if they are negative, and then you wanna reinforce the decision and tie it back to the goals they have.

So they don't have buyer's remorse and be like, ah, what do I get myself into? And, ah, man, I'm really sore and I don't know if this is gonna work. And the next thing they're dropping off and you're not getting the outcome you want. They're not getting the outcome they want. It's not good for anybody.

So sending an email like that and then having their exercises tied in there as well, in an organized manner of what they should do. It's huge. It's huge. And I just thought it was normal. I cuz I couldn't work with people for a few weeks, so I had to do that, otherwise they wouldn't do shit. So if you can put together a detailed email, and this might take you, an extra 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes maybe to write if it's really detailed and you have to think through some of this stuff.

But really it should take you probably an extra 15 minutes, an extra 15 minutes at the eval. This one thing will help increase your outcomes, decrease your. Churn are people that are dropping off and ultimately dramatically improve your customer experience. It's just a matter of doing it, like doing it and making sure people are very clear on what's going on.

The other thing you have to keep in mind is they're gonna show this to their spouse. Cuz if they're like, Hey, What's going on? Why did you just drop like 1500 bucks with this person for your knee? What is this? You gotta realize they're having conversations with their significant other at home and it's, it is a substantial amount of money.

And if they don't know what they're working on or why, You're gonna get people asking for refunds more and people that are dropping off because their spouse doesn't want them to keep coming in, even though they don't know what's going on. So if you can send them a really thorough explanation of what's going on, why and how it's all tied together, and they can let their spouse read that.

You can even tell 'em in the office like, Hey. Your spouse, I might have some questions about what we're doing, let them read this email and let them email me if they have any questions. And I'd love to answer. I wanna make sure you guys are on the same page with this and like you've just diffused a situation for this person.

When they get home, they're like, Hey, no, it's. I feel really confident with this guy. Check this out. This is what's wrong with me. I feel like I'm finally in a place where they know what's going on. I'm excited to work on this stuff. And instead of it being like, why'd you just drop $1,500 with this person?

It's oh shit. Awesome. We're finally gonna find a solution to what's going on with you. This sounds great. And you're able to actually have the time and the buy-in from that person because of the clarity you've just created with a simple email you follow up with somebody that they can look at, they can.

Review whenever they want, and they can even let their family look at it if they have questions about what they're doing and why they're working with you. So anyway, this is something I think will help you immediately. If you're not doing it, I highly recommend it. Spend the extra 15 minutes, write a detailed email at the initial valuation, and watch how your client outcomes improve.

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So we actually help you get crystal clear on how much money you're actually gonna need to. Replace with your business to be able to make a lateral transfer. How many people you're actually gonna need to see based on what you should be charging. We're gonna tell you three different strategies you can take to go from part-time to full-time, and you get to pick the one that seems like the best fit for you for your current situation.

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That's what this is all about. We want you to win. We want you to take action, and in order to do you have to get really clear on what you need to do next. So go to physical therapy biz.com/challenge. Get signed up for the challenge today. It's totally free. We think this is gonna be a game changer for you and are excited to go through it.

Hey, real quick before you go, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and I would love it if you got involved in the conversation. So this is a one way channel. I'd love to hear back from you. I'd love to get you into the group that we have formed on Facebook. Our PT Entrepreneurs Facebook group has about.

4,000 clinicians in there that are literally changing the face of our profession. I'd love for you to join the conversation, get connected with other clinicians all over the country.

I do live trainings in there with Yves Gege every single week, and we share resources that we don't share anywhere else outside of that group.So if you're serious about being a PT entrepreneur, a clinical rainmaker, head to that group. Get signed up. Go to facebook.com/groups/ptentrepreneur, or go to Facebook and just search for PT Entrepreneur. And we're gonna be the only group that pops up under that.