Marketing 101 for Chiropractors
Digital marketing is evolving faster than ever, and as a chiropractor, you're not just a healthcare provider—you’re also the CEO and marketer of your practice. Without a solid grasp of marketing fundamentals, it's easy to fall for one-size-fits-all strategies that waste time and money.
Join us as we break down proven, cost-effective, and innovative marketing tactics designed specifically for chiropractors. From social media mastery to Google Ads that convert, we’ll equip you with the tools to attract more patients, build lasting relationships, and dominate your local market. Stay ahead, stay profitable, and take control of your practice’s growth!
Marketing 101 for Chiropractors
Front Desk to Sales Team: Maximizing Your Practice's First Impression
Your front desk isn't just answering phones—they're your practice's first sales team, and they might be losing you patients every single day without you realizing it.
In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Enrico Dolcecore tackles the often-overlooked weakness in chiropractic offices: phone conversion. While you might be spending thousands on marketing and generating leads, those efforts go to waste if your front desk can't convert callers into booked appointments.
The hard truth? Most people hang up within eight seconds of calling your office. That's barely enough time to ask about price or insurance before you've lost them forever. But what if you could extend that conversation to 30 seconds or more? That's where the magic happens—transforming cool leads into warm ones ready to book.
Dr. Enrico breaks down exactly how to train your front desk to handle common objections, shift conversations from price to value, and use active listening techniques that build instant rapport. With real-world examples and scripts, he demonstrates how improving your phone conversion from 30% to 50% could mean an additional $30,000 in monthly collections.
"Nobody wants chiropractic, nobody knows what it is, and nobody wants to pay for it," Dr. Enrico states bluntly. That's why your phone skills need to be exceptional—you're not selling Botox where people are already eager to buy. You're selling something most people don't understand yet.
Whether you're handling calls yourself or training a team, this episode provides actionable strategies to turn your reception desk into a high-converting sales machine without sounding pushy or salesy. Ready to stop leaving money on the table? Listen now and transform your practice's first impression.
Have questions about implementing these strategies? Reach out to info@enricod.com and take the first step toward plugging the leakiest bucket in your marketing funnel.
- Join Marketing 101 for Chiropractors Facebook Group here
- Learn more at EnricoD.com
- Book a free discovery call with Enrico to level up your business
Welcome to another episode. This week we're tackling phone calls. Did you know that a single phone call can make or break your ability to get a new patient? Most chiropractic offices don't realize this, but their front desk is actually their first sales team. The problem most receptionists aren't trained in sales at all. They just answer questions, and that means you're losing potential patients every single day. Today we're diving into the art of phone sales in your chiropractic office.
Speaker 1:If you've ever wondered why your phones are ringing but your schedule isn't filling up, this episode is for you. Please listen in. I'm Dr Enrico Del Cicori and this week we're going on to help you grow and scale your practice through your phone system. We're tackling a huge weakness in chiropractic offices and as I train more and more chiropractors, I'm just learning of more and more of the most common leaky bucket issues that are happening with the marketing stream that's going on, and what you need to do is review how your front desk handles phone calls. The truth is, most receptionists are great at answering calls, but not so great at converting those calls into booked appointments, and if you're not training them properly, you're leaving a ton of money on the table. In this episode, I'm going to give you the exact strategies to turn your front desk into a high converting sales team without sending pushy or salesy calls to your patients. We'll cover how to handle common objections, how to respond when someone asks about costs, and even how to structure your calls for maximum conversions.
Speaker 1:As I keep teaching more and more chiropractors in their businesses on how to grow and scale, the same issues keep coming up. One we do advertising and Facebook leads start coming in, but we don't convert the lead. So therefore the response on that is that the leads suck or the advertising suck, and that's not true. Or we're not doing much marketing and we're not growing, or we're not doing much marketing. Or referral're not growing, or we're not doing much marketing. We're referral based practice and we've leveled our practice into an old time system of just being referral based, which is okay. Referrals don't require much work to convert anyways, and what we've trained ourselves is that we should be referral based practices. We're chiropractors. Everyone should be referring us. We're the greatest thing since sliced bread. So it should be easy, and not only should we have to not convert. When they call us, they should be booking an appointment on the spot.
Speaker 1:But times have changed and people have a lot of questions about many different things that you're probably not even thinking about, and whether you're solo or you do have a CA helping you, your CA starts to wear many different hats as well. Sound familiar? You're wearing many different hats as the owner, the CEO, the chief marketing officer, the chief financial officer, the chiropractor, the clinician, the custodian everything that you wear on your head. You start to hire help and you start to throw some of those hats at them, but what you're doing is you're not hiring based on the skill set. You're basically hiring receptionists, and if you're going to hire a receptionist, you better train a receptionist. But if you're going to hire a chiropractic assistant, you better train a chiropractic assistant. So it all comes from training, and one of the biggest weak spots in a chiropractic office is the front desk phone call.
Speaker 1:I'm a huge believer in scripting and learning scripting and making it organic. You shouldn't be reading a script on the phone to every new patient that calls, but you should have a guideline and a system and procedure on every question that comes into a chiropractic office. So training a front desk person starts with the phone call. That is the most important thing the EHR and how to book and where things are in the office, tour and cleaning and all that. That stuff is down on the totem pole. It is the calls that they have to get good at right off the bat. And if you're doing modern day marketing Google ads, facebook ads, instagram ads, youtube ads and you're getting leads, the phone system is the most important thing on this and this is why we're losing people. Once you get them on the phone, your conversion rate should be very high because we're not truly dealing with a cold call marketing system like call centers in India and the United States and Canada and Mexico. We're not doing those systems where people are literally calling your random cell phone numbers all day long trying to make a cold sale.
Speaker 1:You don't have to do this Because of your marketing. You're always getting cool. I call them cool leads because they're not truly cold. They gave you their information. You're not cold calling them off a directory. You're literally calling them and this whole episode is spurred by some of the random calls I've been getting. It says spam call detected or sometimes they're getting very savvy with these calls and using your local area code number. So it's the same area code as my number and I do pick up and these kids are slick, super slick.
Speaker 1:And I just had a call this morning. I'm like you know what. I'm going to get on here and do this episode, because he literally said his first sentence like hey, enrico, I see that you're running a great business and you're doing Google, but you're not capturing the leads the way you should. You're losing a lot of your Google leads from what you're doing. Do you have time to set up a call to talk to me so I can help you? I'm local here in Tampa. That was it. Before I could say a word, my response was man, you guys are slick.
Speaker 1:We got into a conversation. He got me into the conversation. I said I'm already doing my ads, I'm already doing this stuff. So, yeah, I see that. But when people don't book, call your office or don't leave you their contact information, they bounce and you have no way of catching those bounces. It was like, okay, well, maybe you're right, he got me, the little sucker got me, and now we're booked in for a Zoom next week on Wednesday. But they got me and what I'm doing is I don't have time for this anymore, and neither do you, and you bounce a lot of these calls. But I'm diving into the people who can get me and they're all wasting my time at the end of it. I'm just going to give you the closing comments on that. Each and every conversation I have with them in the Zoom meeting, they're wasting my time. They've got a $2,000 offer per month to do this and have that widget on your website and they'll catch things with AI bots. And, trust me, I'm on the phone all the time trying to keep up.
Speaker 1:There is nothing new, folks. Everything that you see in marketing is what it is Facebook ads, google ads. Ai is not. There's no advancements in AI. It's chatbots that are answering questions frequently. That's as far as we come with it. So don't worry, you're not missing out on anything. Don't get suckered into anything when they say AI or autoresponders or anything like that. Nothing has advanced in the last two years. It's the exact same stuff. They're just quicker and more efficient.
Speaker 1:So, getting into your front desk, you're not hiring people based on their cold call strengths. What you're doing is you're hiring people based on a chiropractic assistant type thing. Are they outgoing, are they extroverted, are they good with people? Do they have social skills? Those are the basic things, and if they meet those check marks, they pretty much got the job. In a chiropractic office, there's really no qualifications when it comes to it. Let's just be honest with ourselves. So once they come in, you may be picky based on your previous experience with other people, but the benchmark to hire someone is just them being social and bubbly and presentable and represent your business well. Unfortunately, that's not enough to help you with the efforts that you put into this and that's why you keep spinning your wheels.
Speaker 1:So phone calls are a crucial part of the sales process, every sales process. Even if you get a referral from Sally and Becky calls and she's like, hey, I'd like to book an appointment with the doctor, the next few words can make or break that appointment and typically with a referral, it's very hard to screw this up. Hey, becky, I'm glad you were referred to us. Who referred you? Sally? Oh my gosh. We love Sally. She's the best. She's the bee's knees. Let's get you in. That's simple, right. We wish our practices were like this. Just Sally just keeps referring every day. That's all she does. But we need to get referrals from all parts that. We need to do advertising from all parts to get people in.
Speaker 1:So common mistakes that chiropractic offices make, when you know holding all calls we're going to dive into this. We need to train our receptionists to be salespeople. I know some of you are like receptionists Don't use that word. We don't hire, yes, you do. They are at your reception desk receiving customers, like that's what a receptionist does, either by phone or in person or email. So not just information providers. We train our front desk. So I like the remarkable practice.
Speaker 1:I went to a couple of their seminars. I like the way they defined the roles in the office. They had a front desk check-in person, a back-end check-out person, office manager, and they defined the roles and it was great. They said a front desk office person is the classical receptionist. That needs to be trained on this stuff and not just answer questions. That's step one. Know how to answer all the questions that are most common that come into the office. How much does it cost? Do you take this insurance? Do you take Medicare? Do I need this? Do I need a referral? Like knowing the answers and how to respond. Yes, but then having a level up on how to be the most Epic call center person is what you need to think about, like this guy that called me this morning. That's the training that you need to do. So what I'm learning from these calls and taking them and wasting my time it's not really wasting my time. I get to come back to my team and train them even stronger to be salespeople for our office.
Speaker 1:Whether you like the word sales or not, you're in the selling business, especially chiropractic. Nobody wants you, nobody cares about chiropractic. You better be a good seller to sell chiropractic. I'm not saying chiropractic is a bad thing. I'm saying nobody knows what it is, nobody wants it and nobody wants to pay for it. So you're at a loss right there. You're not Botox. If you were Botox, you don't have to do much. People just will come to you. But you're not. You're chiropractic. Nobody wants it. I know what you're hearing. I know you're getting upset, but it's the truth.
Speaker 1:So we have to be good salespeople. They have to be able to teach them to control the conversation instead of just answering the questions, and develop a script that leads the caller towards booking an appointment, especially if you're doing Facebook ads when you get these leads on the phone. We have to have a system to this. Yes, they gave you their information. Yes, they gave you their email. You're like why are they not booking an appointment? Why are they saying no, not interested? You just filled out our lead form 12 hours ago, like yesterday, and I'm calling you this morning like why are you not booking an appointment? We get frustrated. But it's really the sales funnel is the lead generation, the ad copy, the video, the picture that we use, the form that they click or the landing pages that they land on, the text messages that they get immediately after filling out the form, the emails that they click or the landing pages that they land on the, the text messages that they get immediately after filling out the form, the emails that they get and the phone script that they get.
Speaker 1:This is that's the entire set. That's the whole bundled, ribbon and bowed present of marketing delivering that across. What is in this thing? How is it wrapped, how is it bowed? How is it tied up? What's the gift? Inside? It's chiropractic guys, and inside of this box it's inside. You just got to make the box look as sharp as possible and as beautiful as possible when you deliver this to them on their first, first time. So when they see this, they're like, wow, I got to open this up and many of us are giving them this thing in this cardboard box wrapped with newspaper and we're wondering why they're like well, what is this? What are those called? Where you put poop in the bag and you put it on the front doorstep and Billy Madison steps on it? Yeah, okay that they're wondering if it's that. Okay, that's the whole issue there.
Speaker 1:Active listening and engagement techniques we have to build these. And even for you you take calls in your office having these skills of actively engaging people in a conversation is huge. Mirroring and matching the caller's tone to build rapport. If this person's coming in with energy and they're loud, respond with energy and loud. If they're coming in soft and gentle, respond soft and gentle. Teaching these skills are common sense. But if you don't have this in your training and systems procedures, once every quarter with your team being hey guys, let's review, call scripting Not the exact scripting, because they have that in front of them and they're good at it, but the tone, the conversation, value these types of things in your training.
Speaker 1:It only takes a few minutes, a few minutes every couple of months, asking open-ended questions instead of just answering. How much does it cost? Oh, it's $85 for a visit. It didn't get you nowhere because they just called somewhere else where it's $65 a visit and they're like well, hang on a second, so doing that is not the best strategy. So having the scripting for that, handling the how much does it cost, we got to do this effectively.
Speaker 1:Whether you take insurance or not, shifting the conversation from price to value is the priority in this conversation. We have to change the entire conversation from the first second. Hey, I'm looking to become a new patient. How much is it for a new patient? These people are very direct, right? They're not wasting time. And we got to respond that that depends on your specific needs. Have you had chiropractic care before? Depends, you got you got to. You got to read the conversation. How much does it cost? Well, if they're allowed, and and direct and a type a personality, I would respond with this. I'd be like oh, our exams are 200. They include x-rays, thermal scanning, orthopedic testing, chiropractic evaluation exam and the virtual consult that the doctor will call you beforehand. But everything is dependent on how, uh, what you need for your specific needs and your condition. So it's 200 for that first day. No surprises there. But how can I get some more information from you to tell me what's going on so we can help you even better. And our front desk does that.
Speaker 1:Overcoming objections, because once you get into good conversations you're going to get objections. You should get objections. Type A personalities will object. Other personalities may just be quiet. They may not object because they don't want conflict. But common objections are cost time and skepticism. Once your front desk gets into conversations, they'll be like yeah, my feet are numb. They've been numb for two years after the surgery I had. I've been to a few doctors, nothing's really getting better. That's skepticism. That's like, hey, nothing's getting better. I read something about chiropractic. Are you guys familiar with this, your front desk being like that sounds like pins and needles. That sounds like neuropathy. I mean, we have a whole neuropathy program here in the office. Don't want to get you too excited, but I think you should talk to the doctor, right? That's where this conversation is. Yeah, that'd be great. You want me to book that virtual console? You don't have to book the $200 exam, but let me get that console booked in for you with Dr D and talk more about that. I'm the office manager here. He's the doctor. You want to talk to him.
Speaker 1:How to respond in a way that turns hesitancy into curiosity. Always leave the person curious right, and then we want to get into this. The best way to do this is having role-playing and call reviews. Having hidden shoppers I love that If you can find someone that you trust and is knowledgeable in this and your team doesn't know. Having them come in as a hidden chopper or a hidden caller every now and then plays a great role. Having your family do it, you know. Having your mom hey mom, can you do me a little favor? Can you call the office and just pretend like you want to be a new patient and just get these one, two, three points from it and see how well they respond to these? This is what they should say and my mom's actually done it.
Speaker 1:Implementing weekly call reviews with your team and practicing scripts and real life scenarios to improve conversation rates You'll find yourself, if you do Facebook marketing, you're going to find yourself delving into this very quickly because it is a problem for your team. I know it is Leads, trying to convert leads to patients. This is it. This is where I'm trying to go with this podcast is like if we get this good, you can have your own internal call team that's ready to rock and roll and build these leads into new patients so that way your 30% conversion rate can turn to a 50% conversion rate. What does 20% do for you In our office? 100 plus leads per month off of Facebook just consistently generating it.
Speaker 1:I'm exhausted just talking about this stuff and then getting someone's 30 new patients, 35 new patients, 45 new patients, 55 new patients. Trust me, the difference between 30 and 55 is a huge deal. We're talking about $30,000 in collections. That's different. I don't know what that means for you guys. Some of you, you know, do six figures a month and you're like well, 30, an extra 30 K would be nice. Some of you do 50K a month. An extra 30K is monumental. Some of you do 30K a month. An extra 30K doubles your business. So I don't know where you're at there, but that's the numbers. If you have a 2000 case value average that's how I got that number Implementing weekly call reviews with your team and doing these real life scenario conversations go a long way.
Speaker 1:Then we need to track and measure success. So having a good CRM, like Go, high Level or whatever you're using in your office to follow the lead journey for each and every lead, you need to know how many of these leads are being engaged, how many of them are cold? How many of them never respond, so that you can truly gauge your marketing. And that's how you fine tune the volume on your marketing dollars. Do we have to increase ad spend or do we have to decrease ad spend? Do we have to do more variety of ads? Do we keep the same funnel going? These are how you change things. Once you dial it in, you've got the base, the treble, the volume all working. It's like man we are jamming now. So that's what we want to do there Using call logs.
Speaker 1:If you use Excel in books, that works well. We have a paper and pen book for every call that comes in, every call that comes into the office. Some days we have 100 plus calls. They write down on a piece of paper 1107 AM. Mary called 1109 AM. John called 1115 AM. They're just quickly jotting it down so you can go back and be like did we call? Did we have a conversation with it? This is great. I've been doing that for 15 years.
Speaker 1:The call log book, setting conversation goals for your front desk like setting actual goals. Can you get them to this part in the scripting funnel on the phone and these conversations are just a few minutes. It's not like they're on the phone forever. Can you get them and keep them on the phone for more than 30 seconds? Most people bounce within eight seconds. In a chiropractic office it's eight seconds. They'll call, they'll ask a question and the price is either responded or no. We don't take insurance, or boom and the and the call's done in eight seconds. How do you get them past the eight second mark? And then the magic number is 30. Cause now, at 30 seconds, we've answered a couple questions. Now they're engaged. You've turned the cool lead into a warm lead, which is absolutely fantastic. And then, lastly but not least, using up follow-ups to re-engage cold leads. Once you have a superstar that's on the phone now, your recall system becomes even better. Now you've got somebody who's making the calls. Even their voicemails are going to be home runs.
Speaker 1:Hey, sally, it's Brittany from Full Life Chiropractic. I haven't seen you in a couple of years. That's right back when I started, I was going through an audit and your name popped up. It reminded me of that time when you had the baby and you guys came on in. You told me all about that formula and I haven't forgot about that. I'm just making sure you guys are okay. What's new with you? Could you call me back? Give me an update? That'd be super cool. Oh, me an update. That'd be super cool. Oh my God, come on, who's not going to respond to that voicemail? Hey, sally, it's Brittany from Full Life Carburetor. I haven't seen you in two years. It's time for a spinal checkup. It's time for your wellness exams. It's time for your subluxations to be removed. That's not going to go very far at all.
Speaker 1:Okay, so from this podcast, a little passionate. But I'm glad that guy called me this morning. It inspired this podcast and I was like man, what, how great is this good sales team, especially in this day and age, to actually one to get me on the phone? I ended the conversation with like how did you get this number? It was my cell number. He's like I went on uh, find the real me, or find find the real personcom or something. He's going to show me how he did it. I'm like you got to show me how you do it. I don't want to talk to you. He said, okay, I looked at the owner, went to sunbizcom, the Florida business website, looked up who the owner was, and then he just kind of reverse engineered and found my phone number and because of that I'm now on a Zoom call with them, which is the potential of turning into a sale for them, which will not. I know I'm not giving them my money, but that's just the way it's going to go.
Speaker 1:So how can you take this and build your call team to decrease frustrations in your business, not just from Facebook ads, but imagine converting an extra patient every week or every month because of just the rock star person at the front that can just answer the questions and get them into an engaging and emotional conversation. By the end of it saying, man, it really sounds like your life could change. If you meet Dr Enrico, let me get you booked in. What days work best for you? And that's why we do the virtual consult. In case they're like, no, I'm not ready to book in. 200 is a little steep, I don't want to do that. Um, you know we have things like that and they'll leave. They'll say, hey, price was an issue. And when I call them, I call them up. Hey, sally, what's going on? I heard you. Your feet are numb. What's going on? Boom, boom, boom, boom, opqrsd. They tell me life. I mean, let's get this going. This is a no brainer for you. It's a home run. We tackled the objection. The price is now not too expensive. It's too cheap. For 200 bucks we're going to change your life and we're like holy smokes. Sign me up, doc. And that's the emotional.
Speaker 1:We get so busy in our office. It's tough to do this for 55 new patients a month. Trust me, I know, I know it's tough. Some of you are listening to this and you get 10 new patients a month. You can do this and you can build such great training and systems and procedures that when you do scale and you start to grow and you grow and you need to hire another front desk person or a backend check-in person, the training is going to be so much faster and so much concise and so much precision in it that they're going to hit the ground running faster than anyone else.
Speaker 1:And bringing people onto your team won't be a grind like it always is, because we're stuck in our ways and once we hire people, we just teach them the old ways and we wonder why we grind. And employment is the most expensive part of running a business is employees. Coming and going is the worst. A revolving door is a great way to fall into the negative and crash a business. It really is. So keeping good people and training good people goes a long way. I know I'm preaching to the choir. Have a great week. Keep doing what you're doing. We're here for you. Go to info at enricodeecom if you have any questions.
