My Profession
Cafting Your Elevator Conversation
By Deborah Held Maslia
Learn how engaging in compassionate conversation builds patient profiles
In the grocery store, at the gym, at the local coffee shop or—as the name implies—in an elevator, daily, casual encounters bring you opportunities to present your “elevator speech” to potential new patients.
By focusing on your innate passion for the profession and your compassion for your fellow man, you can seize these brief opportunities to make a lasting impression, and even better, bridge a connection with potential patients.
“[The elevator speech] is an opportunity for doctors and their staff to communicate who they are, where they’re located … and the value of what they do to the person they’re talking to, in a split second,” says Eric Plasker, D.C., CEO of Atlanta’s The Family Practice and author of “The 100 Year Lifestyle.”
Here, we take you floor by floor through the keys of delivering an engaging pitch to potential patients.
First Floor: Determining Your Message & Audience
The goal of the conversation is to offer chiropractic help to the potential patient, and to leave him wanting more from the encounter, says Plasker.
Key to the efficacy of the exchange is creating a rapport or connection with the other person.
“The whole idea about short-term conversation is that we leave with a relationship,” says CJ Mertz, D.C., CEO of Team Waiting List Practice in Austin, Texas. “We must build a chemistry.”
There is no one all-occasion elevator presentation. “Your elevator speech should communicate and describe the value of your service based on what you want to do,” says Plasker.
Plasker offers one of his own elevator speeches as an example: “We provide excellence in family health care, without drugs or surgery, so that people can express their full potential for a lifetime.” This is his 11-second delivery when a person asks about the focus of his practice.
The short-term exchange is an evolving one, growing and changing with your needs, goals and audience. “The same office might have different versions [of the elevator speech] to target different types of people,” says Plasker.
When conversing with a mother, for example, Plasker may address the issues of the body’s reaction to the birth process, while when speaking to an athlete, he may talk about ways to avoid injury by keeping the body strong.
Second Floor: How to Sell It
Delivery is everything, says Plasker. Practicing to oneself is crucial. “The delivery is even more important than the actual words,” he says. A chiropractor should speak with confidence and passion, inviting trust and believability.
“Be passionate about who you are as well as being grounded,” says Lori Weiss, executive director of Breakthrough Coaching in Vernon, N.J. “As the saying goes: ‘You can’t give away what you don’t own.’ By owning chiropractic you don’t have to sell it.”
Mertz says there are three stages to the elevator conversation: the connection, the bridge and the solution.
“If you only have a few minutes, the first thing is to build a great rapport,” says Mertz. “Make a connection; without the connection there’s nothing.”
Mertz advises utilizing either an environmental or physiological situation to build the rapport and engage the other person in a conversation about himself.
“The goal in an elevator presentation is to get the other person talking about himself as quickly as possible,” says Mertz, and to use the conversation as a way to show the chiropractor’s innate compassion.
Third Floor: Practice Makes Perfect
Using the situational example of short-term conversation in the local gym as his example, Mertz explains how a connection through the environment—in this case the gym itself—can lead to an elevator conversation:
Chiropractor: “Hi, my name is CJ. How long have you been working out here?”
Using the common denominator of exercising at the same facility, the chiropractor might engage a potential patient into a conversation, or the bridge, of the elevator conversation.
During the bridge, the chiropractor might utilize his feelings of compassion and employ his skills as a doctor to look for a physiological basis for more conversation.
Chiropractor: “Oh. Well, I’ve noticed that when you do your lifts, your right arm seems stronger than your left. Are you in pain? Have you suffered an injury? How long ago?
The potential patient may be surprised by such keen observation, and will likely feel the chiropractor’s genuine concern. At this point, the conversation may continue:
Chiropractor: “Do you see a chiropractor?”
Remember, says Mertz, that engaging questions and observations are not intended as an invasion of privacy or even to offer a diagnosis on-the-spot, but are offered “as a rapport-builder, out of compassion.”
Fourth Floor: Observe, ?Then Speak
The places where your keen observation of a person’s functional or postural imbalance can be employed are limitless, and include: restaurants, medical buildings, the dry cleaners, the grocery store, movie theaters and any place you frequently visit.
“You want to be your town’s chiropractor,” says Weiss “Within your community, everyone should know you.”
The chiropractor should always remain diligent when observing others. A dullness in the eyes could indicate issues with headaches or migraines, while skin color can reflect other medical issues, says Mertz.
Any and everyone the chiropractor encounters is a potential patient, ready to engage in the short-term conversation, says Plasker. “If you have a spine, you qualify” for chiropractic care.
Fifth Floor: Provide a Solution
By now, if the conversation has yielded a personal rapport, the chiropractor will let the potential patient know that not only is he a chiropractor, but that he would like to help the person attain optimal health through his chiropractic care.
“When you build the bridge, you need to provide the solution,” says Mertz. “Don’t be afraid of this.”
This is the third and final stage of the elevator conversation—the solution, where the chiropractor offers his specific services to his patient.
Chiropractor: “I don’t want to miss any of [what you’re telling me]. Would you be available to come to my office tomorrow? I would love the opportunity to give you a check up and see what led to [this problem]. In my office, a consultation is free of charge. We see new patients at either 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. Which time will work for you?”
Or, the chiropractor can talk about available pricing specials running in his office, as may be the case. In any event, says Mertz, take the person’s contact information and offer a specific appointment time and date, called a “ghost appointment.” Only then should the chiropractor offer his own card. Without this exchange of information, the chance of follow-through from the potential patient is slim.
Both Mertz and Plasker say that a key mistake doctors make is in simply handing the potential patient a card, without offering the ghost appointment. While the other person may intend to call and book an appointment himself, he may get caught up in his life and neglect to follow through.
If the other person is not ready to commit to chiropractic yet, that’s OK, say the experts, as the key is whether or not a connection was made. Perhaps, at a later date, that person really may call for an appointment.
“Don’t just count the wins as the value,” says Mertz. “Every time you reach out, that’s value.”
©2006 Today's Chiropractic