February 2005

The new patient attracting image

by Dr. Peter Fernandez

Part 3 -- Front door appearances --The good and the bad

The first two parts of this series explained how to use professionally designed advertising and promotions and effective telephone answering procedures, to develop and enhance your new patient attracting image. The information I am about to give you in this third part, will not only heighten your new patient attracting image, it will also help you achieve a maximum new patient conversion rate.

***  What does your office sign say about you?

A professionally designed office sign will support and enhance your new patient attracting image 24 hours a day, seven days a week, generating enough new patients to pay your yearly office lease and utility expenses. Many offices report that 15‑25% of their new patients come from their professionally designed sign, attracting five to 10 new patients each and every month. 

Only an expert in chiropractic sign design can create a sign that will beat out competing signs vying for the attention of people driving past your office, and attract new patients. Keep in mind, a sign that works gangbusters in one location, won't work as well in another. So, don't borrow someone else's sign design and expect it to work for you because it won't!

While you may save a dollar today by not hiring a professional sign designer, you're gambling away hundreds of thousands of dollars in new patients by doing so. For example, my daughter's sign has attracted six to 10 new patients per month for 14 years! Professionally designed signs work.

A professionally designed sign not only says this is the established office of a successful, professional doctor, it also says "welcome ‑‑ come on in." Don't you hate to search for a street address where none of the buildings have visible numbers? There you are, anxiously trying to read street numbers while keeping your eyes on the road and traffic around you. A large, easy to see, professionally designed sign that also clearly indicates where to enter and park is a new patient attracting tool and image builder that yells "welcome" to every patient and potential new patient.

When done right your sign will work 24/7 helping you build and maintain your new patient attracting image, paying for itself many, many times over. When done wrong, your sign ends up being little more than a very expensive lawn ornament. Worse, it could work 24/7 turning people off and away from your practice.

***  What does your office building say about you?

Is your office located in a safe and respectable area of town, one where patients won't be reluctant to go? If the socioeconomic level of the neighborhood where your office is located has gone downhill (which sometimes happens even to the well‑established doctor), MOVE!

Is there plenty of parking space for your patients? Patients, who are already negative because they're sick, are not going to appreciate the further inconvenience of having to walk across the street or down the block to get to your office because of inadequate parking. Consider this important factor when looking for an office location.

Does your office building reflect pride and professionalism? People see the building in which you practice as a direct reflection of who you are. Is your building modern and well kept? Does it say "successful, professional doctor's office?" If not, potential new patients will continue driving down the street to a more professional‑looking office, and your existing patients will hesitate to refer others to you. If the appearance of your office building is not building your image, or worse yet, is hurting your image, MOVE.

Is it easy and inviting to get from the parking lot into your office? Trim the bushes. Keep the walkway in excellent repair. Make certain the walkway is wide enough for a wheelchair. Doors should be free of fingerprints and open easily. Welcome mats and carpets should be smooth with no rough edges for the patient to trip on. The entire atmosphere of your office entrance should say, "The doctor is successful ‑ Welcome."

Is that your car in the parking lot? What does it say to the patient about you? We all know we could be the world's greatest doctor and ride a bicycle to work, and that our mode of transportation has nothing to do with our technical excellence. But it sure has a lot to do with how people ‑‑ prospective and present patients ‑‑ perceive us. They'll take one look at a car that's not first class and say, "Gee, the doctor's not too successful. He must not be a very good doctor."

Regardless of fact, perception is reality. So have a "success" symbol type of automobile outside your office and keep it washed and waxed. It doesn't have to be a Rolls Royce or a brand new Cadillac. It can be an admired classic or gently used upper level car like Cadillac, Mercedes, Lincoln, etc. Then when patients drive up, they'll think, "Gee, that's the doctor's car... she must be doing well... and the only reason she's doing so well ... she must be good!" 

This is a professional image enhancer that results in potential patients being sold on you before they walk through your door, and in your existing patients proudly recommending such a good (successful) doctor to their friends and families.

Does your reception room have a positive image‑creating and reassuring atmosphere? Does it warmly "receive" all who enter? It's common for doctors and staff to become blind to the environment as they diligently provide for their patients. You or your staff may not notice a dirty carpet, stained chair, old magazines, a full trash receptacle, fingerprints on the door, etc., but your patients and potential patients sure will.

In order to make sure your reception room is always in the most attractive and positive image making condition, create checklists that are to be reviewed at regular intervals during the time you're not seeing patients, i.e., in the morning before the first patient, at night after the last patient or during the lunch hour. All required maintenance and repairs should be taken care of immediately.

Besides being squeaky clean, what you have in your reception room is also very important to your new patient attracting image. It's absolutely amazing what I've found in the reception rooms of chiropractors' offices. Does your reception room have cute little signs on the walls? You know, "Chiropractic First ... Medicine Second ... Surgery Last." Or posters with the large hypodermic needle in the child's head with the words, "Wipe Out The M.D."

One of the worst mistakes professionals can make is to try to upgrade their image by stepping on and downgrading other professionals. A patient may quit a medical doctor, not because she thinks her doctor is a bad doctor, but because he doesn't understand or can't cure a certain condition.

That patient will still respect her original doctor even though she's coming to you for a health problem that her medical doctor couldn't handle. If you make derogatory statements about the patient's original doctor and/or his profession, the patient will have an immediate disrespect for you, thereby destroying your new patient attracting image and causing you to lose that patient.

Do not post or put any literature in your reception room that may contain anti‑medical comments or insinuations. Your reception room should simply have professional chiropractic literature, and copies of your current office newsletter.

Don't scare off potential patients by using your reception room as a "selling" platform. Get rid of signs and literature that say things like "Develop The Once‑A‑Month Chiropractic Habit." A new patient uneducated to the tremendous health benefits available through good chiropractic care, can only see this type of information as a forewarning of a bigger sales pitch to come.

Hire an interior designer to color, furnish and light your reception room. All of these factors will work together to create the warm, welcome, professional reception room atmosphere that will further enhance your new patient attracting image.   

Minimize any unpleasant odors in your reception room by using a fragrance‑free air neutralizing system. (Fragrance‑free is recommended in consideration of patients who suffer from allergies, asthma or other breathing difficulties.)  This can be as inexpensive as hidden stick ups that can be stuck to the bottom of reception room chairs and changed regularly, or as sophisticated as a professionally installed electric air purifying unit. Reception room odors can also be kept to a minimum by using an efficient air conditioning system when the weather is warmer.  

A reception room is strictly that ... to receive. Just as you want guests to feel welcomed and positively impressed as they enter your home, you want the same for your patients as they enter your office.

Once you've motivated a potential new patient to call your office, you have him 98% sold on making you his doctor. After that, it's the overall sum of where your office is, sign design, parking convenience, exterior and interior appearances, reception room atmosphere, and the personal grooming and attitudes of you and your staff that will either keep, motivate or repel the new patient ‑‑ support or detract from your new patient attracting image.

(Dr. Peter G. Fernandez, is a 1961 Logan graduate. His practice with five staff chiropractors and 12 satellite offices, was one of the country's largest all‑referral, high income chiropractic clinics. As a practice consultant for the past 24 years, Dr. Fernandez has taught practice building techniques to nearly 15,000 DCs, and consulted in the opening of approximately 3,000 practices. He can be reached at Fernandez Consulting, 10733 57th Avenue North, Seminole, FL, 33772, by calling 800‑882‑4476, or via e‑mail: DrPete@DrFernandez.com. Visit him on the web at www.DrFernandez.com).