Scaling a physical therapy practice is no small feat, but the key to sustainable growth lies in consistency—especially when it comes to sales and patient experience. In this episode of the Cash Physical Therapy Headquarters Podcast, Dr. Ben Bagge shares valuable insights on how to scale a practice without compromising the patient experience or the effectiveness of your sales process. By establishing a standardized sales and patient experience, you can boost conversions and improve patient retention.
The Importance of Consistency Across PTs
As your practice grows and you hire more physical therapists (PTs), one of the most significant challenges you’ll face is maintaining a consistent patient experience across the board. Different PTs may have varying communication styles, personalities, and treatment approaches, and if left unchecked, this can lead to a fragmented experience for your patients.
While you don’t need to micromanage how your PTs treat patients, ensuring that their sales approach and the overall patient experience remain consistent is crucial. By doing so, you can avoid the pitfalls of having multiple mini-businesses within your own, each with different processes that may not work as effectively.
Step 1: Creating an Evaluation Template
To achieve consistency, Dr. Ben recommends creating a standardized evaluation template for all PTs to follow. This is where PT Everywhere comes into play. This tool allows you to create an evaluation template that PTs can use during their assessments. The template includes checkboxes for questions to ask, key statements to make, and sales steps to follow, ensuring the sales process remains structured.
Sales Process Consistency: By having a structured template, your PTs can deliver the same high-quality sales experience to each patient.
Easy to Follow: The template is designed to be user-friendly, so PTs don’t feel overwhelmed trying to memorize everything. It serves as a helpful guide while they conduct the evaluation, helping them stay on track without taking attention away from the patient.
Step 2: Simplifying the Process for Your Team
Another advantage of using an eval template is that it provides a structured process for PTs, which significantly reduces the potential for mistakes. Dr. Ben shares a story of a PT who thought their issue was their “pitch” when, in reality, the PT was missing critical questions, like “What do you want to get out of this session?” These kinds of questions help build rapport and trust with the patient, but they’re often overlooked when PTs don’t follow a well-defined process.
Self-Reflection for PTs: With an eval template, PTs can easily see which areas they excel in and where they’re missing the mark. This makes self-assessment easier, allowing them to improve continuously without needing to rely on constant supervision.
Tracking and Coaching: The structured process allows clinic directors and team leaders to easily identify bottlenecks. For instance, if a PT is struggling with building rapport, it can be pinpointed through the evaluation checklist, making coaching and role-playing more effective.
Step 3: Streamlining the Onboarding Process
Having a standardized eval template also streamlines the onboarding process for new PTs. Sales and patient experience can be a new challenge for many new hires, and a lack of structure can cause frustration and a loss of confidence. By giving new PTs a clear structure from day one, you help them build confidence, avoid unnecessary mistakes, and focus on providing great patient care from the start.
Reducing Frustration: When PTs follow a template and consistently see the results of their efforts, they’re less likely to get discouraged by patient objections or rejections. This helps maintain their confidence and ultimately leads to better patient outcomes.
Efficient Training: As new PTs learn the ropes, having a clear, replicable system reduces the stress on both you and your staff. This results in a smoother onboarding process and faster ramp-up times for new team members.
Step 4: The Benefits of Consistency for Scaling
Dr. Ben explains that one of the biggest challenges of scaling is maintaining consistent conversion rates and retention across your PT team. If your sales process and patient experience are not uniform, you’ll see fluctuations in conversion rates, and this will ultimately limit your ability to scale.
Consistency Drives Growth: Consistency in the evaluation and sales process leads to higher patient satisfaction, which directly impacts conversion rates and retention. The more consistently your PTs follow the process, the more predictable your revenue will be.
Improved Profitability: A structured approach to sales and patient experience allows you to optimize your practice’s efficiency, leading to increased profitability.
Key Takeaways
Create Evaluation Templates: Use tools like PT Everywhere to build consistent, structured eval templates for your team to follow.
Focus on the Sales Process: Ensure that your PTs ask the right questions and deliver a clear, structured sales pitch.
Simplify the Onboarding Process: Streamline new hires’ onboarding with templates that give them clarity and confidence.
Track and Improve: Consistently track performance metrics and identify bottlenecks in the sales process to improve your team’s effectiveness.
Ensure Consistent Patient Experience: Maintain a uniform patient experience to boost conversion rates and retain patients long-term.
Conclusion
Implementing structured processes such as eval templates is one of the most effective ways to scale your physical therapy practice while maintaining a consistent and high-quality patient experience. As you grow, it’s essential to ensure that your team is aligned with your values and processes, helping them succeed and ultimately contributing to the success of your practice. By focusing on consistency, coaching, and clarity, you can create a thriving business that is set up for long-term growth.
Watch and Listen to the Full Video
For a deeper dive into a cash physical therapists’ journeys, make sure to listen to the full video: Scaling Your PT Practice: How to Ensure Uniform Sales and Patient Experience
About Author:
Although the company eventually failed, it provided Jordan with invaluable learning experiences. He became passionate about designing world-class patient experiences and building efficient marketing & sales funnels for cash physical therapists. Utilizing this expertise, Jordan became the CMO of a well-known physical therapy media company, and consulted for and built marketing funnels for some of the top physical therapy business coaches.
Eventually growing tired of the typical agency and consulting grind, Jordan, alongside Max Zirbel, founded Clinical Marketer. They infused it with the hands-on support and mentorship that they benefited from in their initial venture. The company was a success from the start, aiding clinics in scaling to 6 and 7 figures in revenue. During its first launch, Jordan and his team met Dr. Ben Bagge, whom they later partnered with after helping him grow his business from $200K/year to over $1M/year in three years.
