Part 2 of 2 by Alexandra Whitehead, CEO, The Practice Activator
As a quick recap of Part One, if you want the freedom and control that comes from having a profitable online practice, comprised in part of private-pay clients, then these are the six essential steps you need to take:
We covered the first three steps in Part One of this article here, and now we’ll dive into steps 4 through 6.
If you don’t tell your potential clients your story – that is, why you work in your specific niche and why you want to help them solve their problem, you’re missing one key ingredient that’s essential to the buying process for private-pay clients.
Potential clients need to Know, Like, and Trust you in order to say yes to working with you. To solve this issue, and to foster the Know, Like, and Trust factors at super speed, you need to, first of all – know your story – and then share it with your potential clients.
As you create your story to share with your audience, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
There are around nine different factors that go into creating an irresistible offer. In this article, I’m going to focus on the one factor that most therapists overlook. This particular factor prevents clients from hitting the book button! I call this factor “The Objection Buster”.
To have an “IRRESISTIBLE” offer you need to overcome your potential client’s resistance to saying yes to working with you.
As the business owner, it’s your job to uncover all of the objections people have and to come up with the antidote to these objections. People need your help to move through their objections – so that they have the opportunity to work with you and get the result they want.
People have generic objections like “I don’t have time”, and “I don’t have the money”. For many people (not all of course), generic objections can be thought of as limiting beliefs.
Think about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy! Find a way to gently challenge these limiting beliefs. For example, if money is an objection – and if you have anything priced over $97 it will be – you could say “For less than a cup of coffee a day, you can reduce your anxiety and feel more confident in the teacher-parent interview setting”. You’ll see here, that this objection buster is tailored to the niche.
Clients will also have specific objections that are related to your niche. For example, if your niche falls within the social anxiety category, an objection to working with you might be the uncertainty associated with the initial session. Potential clients don’t know what to expect, which fills them up with dread, and they decide it’s better to not book in at all!
It’s very easy to solve this type of objection. In this scenario, you could do a 5-minute explainer video outlining exactly what happens after they click that book button. Put that on your website and watch your conversion rates increase!
To get you started with overcoming objections, you can ask your current clients if they hesitated at all when they booked in for the first time. Write down all of the objections they give you, so you can begin to come up with the antidotes.
Woohoo! You’re at the final step of the six-step process.
Now it’s time to put your irresistible offer in front of the right people and ask for the sale.
I use the word ‘sale’ specifically because you’re the CEO of your business and you’re selling your services to the people who will benefit most from engaging with you.
It’s your job to help your potential clients make a choice. There are two choices:
If you don’t ask for the sale e.g. “click that book button, and I’ll see you very soon” or, “can I get you scheduled?”, “would you like to work together to solve this problem?”, you run the risk of keeping a potential client on the fence. And this serves no one.
To ask for the sale, you need to commit to a traffic source from which you can communicate and present your irresistible offer.
Here’s the formula for choosing your main traffic source:
[Where my ideal clients are] + [What traffic source I enjoy] = Traffic Source #1
It’s best to get really great at one traffic source. When you’re earning $100,000+ you can then invest your time/money into learning and becoming great at your secondary traffic source.
Once you’ve chosen your traffic source, it’s time to start putting your irresistible offer out there! Think about how people can contact you. If you’re running ads or doing organic social media, you are likely testing traffic going right to a website sales page, a booking page, or a contact me page. If you’re at a networking event, you likely have a business card with the link for that specific sales page on it (not a generic home page).
In summary, these are the six essential steps needed to have a thriving online private-pay practice:
Following this proven process, brings you much closer to filling up your online practice with great-fitting clients, on autopilot.
For FREE resources – just for Good Therapy Practitioners – including the fast way to uncovering your true desires and getting what you want in business and life + the 3-step framework for getting your first online private-pay clients, click here.
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