[JOE SANOK] This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 820. I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. I hope you are doing awesome. I hope that your fall is going well. I mean, it’s already mid-November, can you believe it? I hope that you are enjoying your life. I hope that your practice is going great. I hope that life is going smoothly for you. If it’s not, well, I mean, I guess that teaches us stuff too. If you, maybe life isn’t going great, in the summer of 2022, we did a huge series called How I Got Through It. If you missed that series, I did about 20 interviews with people on just the personal side of life when they had things hit the fan and how they got through it, really interesting stories. If you missed any of that series, go back to that. A lot of just really interesting stories that happened there. We have an amazing guest with us today. I am so excited to have Dr. Cindy McGovern known across the globe as the first lady of sales. Dr. Cindy McGovern is an expert in sales, leadership and communication, author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling, Every Job is a Sales Job: How to Use the Art of Selling to Win at Work and Sell Yourself: How to Create, Live and Sell a Powerful Personal Brand. Dr. Cindy is the CEO of Orange Leaf Consulting. She’s earned her reputation by helping thousands of people take the ick out of sales. Dr. Cindy, welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. So excited that you’re here today. [DR. CINDY MCGOVERN] Thank you so much for having me, Joe. It is an honor. I’m a big fan. [JOE] Oh, thank you so much. I just had a freak out moment. I was telling you how last week a couple podcasts ended in the middle and I just saw reconnecting flash on my screen, I’m like, not again. But then I was like, I don’t even know if when I welcome you to this show if you’re going to say hi so I’m so glad that you’re here. [DR. CINDY] I’m here, I’m live, absolutely. [JOE] Just added to the list today. Awesome. Well let’s just start with the ick of sales because I remember, and I’ve told, I won’t tell the whole story, but my first sales job was selling vacuum cleaners door to door and convincing people that this several thousand dollars vacuum was going to make them money, by not, I mean, there’s all these slimy sales techniques and after that I was like, business is for slimy people. It took me until I had my private practice to realize, oh, I love counseling and selling counseling doesn’t feel like selling because it’s something I love. Talk about the ick factor of sales right at the beginning so we can get that out of the way and deconstruct that a little bit. [DR. CINDY] I used to feel the same way. So I think that’s the funny part of this is I never wanted to be in sales. I railed against it and truthfully, the first time I was put into a sales role, I rolled my eyes and told my boss that it was the most horrible thing ever. I never wanted to do it and here I am, known as the first lady of sales. So go figure that out. But it really does have this stigma attached to it that it’s this icky thing. I think for that reason is because we think of the pushy, manipulative, cheesy sales tactic when in fact we are all selling every single day we just don’t call it sales. If you have ever gotten a child to eat any green vegetable, you’re the best salesperson on the planet but you don’t call that sales. You’re already doing it. But what you just said about being in private practice, you recognize it’s about helping people. That’s really, in my opinion and definition of sales, is if you have a need and I feel like I can fill it, then I’m going to sell you something. But if I don’t think I can fill it, I’m also going to tell you that, and that’s my definition of sales, is it’s a more helpful, kind, compassionate approach, which I think is what all of your listeners are doing anyways. They’re trying to help other people. [JOE] Yes. Just yesterday I was on a quote sales call with one of our podcast sponsors and they were looking at maybe doing some webinars or some other things and it was interesting how they said, well what about if, what about LinkedIn? I said we can test that out for you, but we just don’t really see much traction there in regards to people really taking action. Like, here’s the data we have on the podcast on Instagram and on direct emails. I just said, I mean, we’ll take your money if you want to try it, but it’s going to be a test and it’s probably going to fail. She was like, oh, thanks for your honesty around that. I was like, yes, I don’t want you to put money into something that’s probably going to fail. That doesn’t make me look good either. [DR. CINDY] Yes. I think that’s the thing, is you’re selling yourself, especially in a private practice situation, so by not taking the business on, if you really can’t help them, that’s a sale too. Actually, that’s maybe even more powerful than if they did hire you or they did come to your practice is because you’ve created this trust with them and no sale happens without trust. [JOE] Well, so take us through a little bit of the ick, like where does that come from? What are the perceptions around sales that people have? Then let’s push back on some of that. [DR. CINDY] Yes, so, I have this feeling that nobody likes to be sold, but we all like to buy, so it’s a power struggle. When you’re being sold, you’ve lost the power. The other person has power, they’re the ones that are pushing, they’re the ones that are driving. But when you’re the buyer, you’re in power, you’re in control of the decisions and you’re in control of the outcome. So I think one of the things that we can do to remove the ick factor from selling is to make sure we’ve put the other position in the buying position. They invite them to buy, invite them to come to your practice versus selling them on coming to your practice. [JOE] So let’s talk through that, because I think I would say that most people that have private pay practices recognize that the need to be good at selling or at least convincing someone that they shouldn’t use their insurance and for those reasons. But then also insurance-based practices still need to market themselves and make sure that the community knows about them. Take us through some of the basics of selling yourself as either a solo practice or as a group practice. [DR. CINDY] One of the first things is having a really good plan. Just like you have a business plan for your practice, you actually need a sales plan and in that, you need to know what your story is that you want others to hear and know about you and promote. Because so often in a private practice situation, your business is referral. Your business is, they tell their neighbor, they say, oh my gosh, I went to this one and it was so amazing. So you want to make sure they have the right story to tell. It can’t be, I went and they gave me medicine, or they fixed me. It needs to be more than than that. It’s the impact around the experience they had with you. That’s one of the first things and then the second part of that sales plan is how you’re going to execute that? How are you actually telling your own story? How are you making sure people know if you’re a counselor, there are how many dozens of counselors in your town? What is it that sets you apart from everybody else that does that and how you make sure you’re telling that with an impact of the person listening. it’s not, I do this, it’s, I do this because it does this for people and making sure people can tie to that. I mean, we’re storytellers by trade as human beings, and we’re pack animals by trade. So we want to have this sense of belonging and the easiest way to make someone feel like they belong is to have an emotional connection with them. I’m not saying go and tell sob stories or something of that nature. I’m saying make sure they recognize the impact that you could have on their life, on their world, on their body, on their mental wellbeing. Then they get to go tell that story to somebody else. That’s the first thing is having that really good plan of attack. There’s another piece of this that I find with folks, especially in private practice, know your numbers in sales. And you know this, and I know this from your years selling vacuums and my years in sales too. But knowing what that conversion rate is and why it’s not just saying, okay, well I talked to 15 potential patients and five converted. Why did those five convert? What was it about the connection you made with them? What was it about the impact you were able to make with them? Because that’s how you’re going to increase your return on time invested, and you’re going to be able to grow your practice. That’s the first thing that they’ve got to do, is have a solid plan. [JOE] How important is it to try to get people to opt-out before they even get to an intake phone call with either the therapist or the front desk person? [DR. CINDY] Very, in my opinion, because those are very expensive conversations if you really think about it. by the time they get to the therapist, if you think about it like this, those are your billable hours. Even if you say, oh, but it was only a 15-minute intake call, you add up five of those in a week, that’s a lot of time. That’s one of the other things is if you had five of those and three of them became patients, why did those three convert? I think that’s really important. Also it’s that you want people to, in a way, self-select that they’re a fit for you and you’re a fit for them, so that when they come to the conversation with your receptionist or with the therapist or whoever it is in your organization, they’re ready to ask the right questions about fit. Because at that point they know you specialize in what I’m looking for. I like what you had to say on your website, I vibe with whatever I saw on online about you. This is sort of the final step to make sure we both have the same goal in mind. [JOE] Now you were, you said the first step is having a plan, what’s after that? [DR. CINDY] The next thing is to look for the best opportunities to talk about your plan and your practice. I firmly believe that nobody does this life alone. I think we all have help and regardless of anybody says they’re self-made, that’s absolutely not true. We know that somebody gave you a chance at some point, so lean on the fact that we are pack animals and we want to help each other, but make sure people can tell that story. Part of our opportunity as practitioners, and I’ll put myself in there too, as a coach myself, I have a company, but I’m a coach, is looking for the right moment to be able to let someone know what I call your superpowers. What are your superpowers and how you could have a positive impact on someone else. I’m a bit of a helper. That’s just my nature. I like to problem-solve and I like to help other people and I think your listeners do too. So when you hear someone talk about something that you could maybe help with, have something to say. That goes back to having your plan and being able to differentiate yourself. But you have to actively seek those opportunities. I think so often with people in, regardless of what line of business they’re in, they think I’ve hung out my shingle, everybody knows what I do, okay, they’re going to come in. No, you’ve got to find those chances to impact that person so they can go and become an advocate for you. [JOE] What’s after that? [DR. CINDY] The next one is listen and establish trust. Obviously, for any a practitioner, that’s the huge piece as I have to trust you or else I’m not going to let you help me. But how you build that is truly through listening and so many counselors are great listeners. But I also think that it’s more than just listening. It’s listening to understand, not just to sell. And I think this is where people who would even identify as salespeople mess up because they’re thinking about their answer. They’re thinking about what they want to say, they’re thinking about the next point that they want to make. Let there be some space. Let there be some air between you because if I feel like you’re actually hearing me and thinking about what I’m saying before you respond, I actually don’t feel like you’re selling me. That’s what you want to happen in that moment. You don’t want them to feel like they’re being sold. You want them to feel like you’re listening to them and creating a relationship with them. [JOE] Now, what are some ways that when you’re having those conversations, that you can genuinely build that relationship and connection other than not thinking ahead too much of your next question, but what are other techniques that tend to work in regards to making that sale? [DR. CINDY] Great question. One of my favorite things is you’re actively listening, you’re saying, nodding your head if you’re in person or whatever. But it’s more than that. It’s about the kinds of questions you ask the other person. People like to talk about themselves at the end of the day, that’s most people’s favorite subject. So if there’s a way that you can show that you have genuine interest in the outcome of this partnership, so if you’re a counselor and I know I want to work on X, Y, and Z, it’s that you’re asking the questions to show me that you have a genuine interest in making sure you help me reach my own goals for that and my own goals for this relationship. Where I think, especially for practitioners leave opportunities on the table is we sometimes feel like we’ve heard this before. We sometimes feel like we’ve had this conversation before. You might talk to five perspective patients in a day and four of those conversations could almost have been tape recorded and replayed. So it’s finding a way to keep yourself engaged and present in the conversation so that you can be inquisitive, you can be curious. You know this from your days in sales, back then always be closing. I disagree. I think there is an ABC of sales, but it’s always be curious and the more curious you can show the other person that you are, the easier it’s going to be to build genuine trust with them. [HEARD] It’s never too early to start thinking about tax season. Heard is the financial back office built specifically for therapists in private practice. They combine smart software with real humans to help you manage your bookkeeping, taxes and payroll. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or are in the first year of private practice, Heard will identify areas of growth and streamline best financial practices for your business. When you sign up with Heard, you’ll connect your bank accounts so your transactions will automatically be pulled in and categorized. My favorite thing about Heard is their allocation guide, what helps you decide how much to pay yourself each month and how much to set aside for taxes. You’ll also receive financial insights such as profit and loss statements and personalized monthly reports. You can say goodbye to pouring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments. Focus on your clients and Heard will take care of the rest. Heard always has transparent pricing with no hidden fees. Sign up for a free 15-minute consult call today at joinheard.com/partners/joe. Again, that’s joinheard, like I heard it, not like a herd of cattle, joinheard.com/partners/joe. [JOE SANOK] Now I think the average therapist just feels so uncomfortable with the term sales. If you were to reframe it for them, and I know we talked a little bit about the ick, but the idea of being curious, maybe dig into that a little bit because I feel like most therapists would say, yes, I can be curious, like that can work for me. [DR. CINDY] Yes, it’s funny because, especially for a therapist, you’re selling yourself. At the end of the day, this is who they’re buying. They’re not buying your practice, they’re not buying that because the receptionist was nice, they’re buying you. So you’re selling yourself already. Might as well do it with a little bit more intention and on purpose and make sure you’re choosing your words a little differently. What’s funny is when you are with a patient, when you are with someone that is a client of yours, you are selling them on wanting to come to the next session because of the way that you behave in the session. The good news is everybody in your audience is already really good at this, but it’s that front end sale that I think we start to shy away from because we feel like it’s pushy or we feel like we’re convincing someone. But I would honestly tell you, most of the practitioners that I know and even have been a client or a patient myself, they want to genuinely help you. So if you are truly coming from that place of, I want to make sure this is a fit not just for you, but for me because they know word of mouth is going to make it or break it. So you’re already good at this and it’s recognizing it’s just a slightly more intentional way at the front end of getting someone comfortable with you, trusting you and then you asking them to in fact, come on board, be a patient, be a client. [JOE] Where do you see people maybe screw that up? I’m thinking about that final, like asking them to come on board. I was talking to one person on the podcast recently and she was talking about how frequently there’s little things like, well when do you want to come in and the client’s like, well, I don’t know, when are you Saturday? Well, oh, I’m not in on Saturday. When else would you want to come in? How annoying that is to just not have the therapist or the front desk person lead that conversation. What other things like that that are really practical takeaways in regards to framing out that intake phone call that you would suggest for therapists. [DR. CINDY] That is such an amazing question because being on the recipient side, being on the consumer patient side, that is one of those things that I’m seeking for you to guide me. You’re the cruise guide here and you’ve got to tell me where we’re going and where this is going to happen. The whole point of that is making it easy for me to make the decision and know literally in 30 seconds that this was the right one. What ends up happening a lot of times is I’ve had a great conversation with you or I’ve had a great conversation with the receptionist, and then they do say, well, when do you want to come in and then you’re booked out for six weeks. Okay, that doesn’t make me feel like you really want my business. I think it’s also setting expectations in that initial conversation of, hey this sounds like this is sort of the treatment plan, this is where I think we start. Here’s my recommendation, here’s when the availability is, will that work for you? So you’re setting it and you’re setting that expectation. And I know this even, you call and you’re like, I need to come in right away and they’re like, sure, in nine weeks we’ve got something for you. So making sure you set that expectation, because that’s where people get anxious is when they feel like they’ve lost control, they start to get anxious. I’m preaching to the choir here, but helping them to make it easy to come into the fold, I think is really the key and that takes planning, that takes training, that takes coaching of your receptionist, of yourself to know how to guide that conversation. [JOE] Yes, I think that idea of coming into the fold, just thinking about like how do you onboard people well so that it’s not frustrating and they feel like, yes, like I’m taken care of. Even just how we switched that when someone signs up to do consulting with me say it’s for nine months, we’re going to do 12 sessions, that all 12 of those sessions are scheduled out. Now does that mean that if things come up we don’t change it? No, of course. I may have accidentally scheduled over spring break or something, but just to know, okay, we have it set up, you’re in my calendar, you don’t have to wonder. We can just say, oh, next month we’re meeting at this time, does that work for you still? They say, oh, I forgot Tuesday’s now I have a client at that time. Okay, great, but at least we’re in the calendar. So I love that idea of having strong onboarding. Now if people are looking at going from a solo practice where they’re the primary product and they maybe even have an assistant to then moving into a group practice, so they start adding 1099 through W2s they’re scaling up, one thing we often recommend is figuring out what’s the focus of this group practice? Is it, we have a lot of different people, we serve different niches and so there’s, each person has a superhero power or is it we as a practice have a niche, like we help women in transition, so imagine a group practice. What would you suggest as someone’s thinking about rebranding or even just leveling up in that it’s no longer like Joe Sanok’s practice, this is a group practice that goes beyond me? How do people screw that up? What should they do to not screw it up? [DR. CINDY] We see this happen all the time in our consulting and coaching practice too, is you’ve built a brand around just you versus some of those pieces. You absolutely are selling you when it’s your practice and you’re a solo practitioner, but as you do transition, it’s helping people to recognize the benefit that these other people are bringing in, that superpower piece, especially if you’re bringing on somebody that has a slightly different approach than you, maybe it is women in transition or anxiety or something like that. So making sure that they know this is the person for you at this stage. I am a firm believer that you outgrow someone, like I’m a human being, I have a finite list of skills as well. My job is to give you as much as I possibly can and then you should outgrow me. You don’t get any points for sticking here for the next 25 years. So I want to make sure that I have resources available to you and that’s part of your branding as your own personal brand, is making sure they know what you do and what your superpowers are and also how others can help you. My guess is your listeners have often referred people to someone else when they couldn’t help them. So it’s recognizing how to do that but if you’re bringing people in this group practice and you’re starting to pull them in, one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is that even just referring to the practice still as you, it’s like, oh well it Joe, well there are more people. So it’s even the words that you use so that they can start describing what your practice does so they can tell others what your practice does. Because so often if I know that Joe works with just this particular population, I’m going to refer business only to Joe because I don’t know he has other offerings. That’s one of the first things, is making sure your own fans and I will call them that truly know how to tell that and know how to tell that transitional story. [JOE] What makes up a good transitional story? [DR. CINDY] The impact that it has on the person. I firmly believe that we need marketing and sales, but a marketing message should talk about how that’s going to impact me, not what you do, not your skillset, not that you just specialize in something. We grow business, so do you and so we talk about the impact we have. We don’t talk about coaching and consulting necessarily. We talk about the fact that we help people grow their practice. We help people grow business. And I think it’s really important that a practitioner be able to tell the impact story that they have. That’s the most important thing. When you’re growing your practice, when you’re transitioning your practice, when you’re selling your practice, what’s the impact because that’s what people are going to hold onto. [JOE] Where do people screw this up? We’ve talked a lot about sales. What bad habits do people go back to? How do they not make it a priority? What is it that people screw up when they have a long-term, when they want to have a long-term sales plan, but where do they screw it up? [DR. CINDY] One of the biggest challenges is we stop selling when we get busy. We are human beings and there are only so many hours in the day. As much as I’ve tried to invent the 30-hour day, it doesn’t happen, so we only have so many hours we can use. When you’re busy and you’re back to back with patients, it’s really hard to make the time for sales but as a solo practitioner or even a group practice, you’re an entrepreneur. When you’re not feeding the top of the sales funnel to use sales jargon, that’s when you have some of those yo-yo PNLs is, it was really good for a while and then it was not so good for a while and it was really good for a while. So I think it’s recognizing that sales is an all season sport and making sure you are actively selling all the time. [JOE] I mean, why do people stop selling when they’re busy? What’s the mindset that we need to change? [DR. CINDY] Well, I think there’s two things that happened. The first one is I think that we just plain get busy and something has to fall to the wayside. Something has to fall to the bottom of the to-do list. And let’s be honest, we’re all in a helping business. So the patient or the client is going to take precedence. Whatever is going on with them will always take precedence but we have to make sure we make room for sales. Then the other thing is, when times are good, it doesn’t seem like it’s as big of a priority. When we have a full patient roster it doesn’t seem like that’s as important as taking care of the patients and making sure other things are done for the practice. I think we trick ourselves into a, I don’t want to call it a comfort zone because I don’t think it’s a comfort zone. I think it’s more of a familiar zone, but we absolutely need to be as proactive as possible, especially right now with things changing in the market and changing in the world and coming out of the things that we have in the last couple years as we’re recording this episode. I think it’s super important that people are recognizing the changes around us impact our ability to sell. So looking at how you are creating space in your practice to make sure you are always letting people know you are accepting new patients, you are always letting people know there is room for them. [JOE] I’m wondering with the pandemic in 2020, at the time of this recording, inflation is what, 7%, 8% and potentially going up and people’s thoughts around recessions and money and buying may be changing. I mean, I guess that’s an assumption I have not based on any data other than my own feeling. What do you think people need to consider during a time when maybe the average person is starting to tighten their belt a little bit, maybe second-guess how much they’re spending when it comes to sales during, I don’t want to say a downturn in the economy, but just maybe a slowing of the economy? What should people think about in regards to how they sell during a time like this? [DR. CINDY] Such a good question. It’s funny, I actually just wrote an article about this, about basically recession proofing your personal brand because we do have an opportunity right now at this moment in time, but the economy is cyclical. I mean, we know this, there are market corrections every 10 to 12 years. So if you look at it, we know if we are customer facing in some regard in what we do in life, it is a cyclical business that we are in. So it’s looking at how you plan for those cycles. The biggest thing that you can do is recognizing that maybe people categorize some of the practices as a nice to have, not a need to have. We have to categorize ourselves in their minds as a need to have that this isn’t the thing that gets cut in the home budget line. This isn’t the thing that gets put by the wayside until we have an extra cash. This is part of helping me to be the best version of myself in the world and I need this. I think it’s the, again, goes back to a little bit of the story that we tell to our patients and potential patients and clients, is letting them know this is something that helps them be the best them out there. I think we don’t do that maybe as proactively as we could and should because we feel like, well they’re coming to us. We’re used to being the flower, not the bee and I think it’s really up to us as practitioners to create the buzz that we want out there and continue to do that proactively, especially in a shifting market, let’s call it. [JOE] Well, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [DR. CINDY] That they are selling themselves already in everything you do and also everything you don’t do. So make sure you’re selling the personal brand that you want to. I think it’s really important that we create, we live and we sell our personal brand on purpose, so recognizing what that is and taking a little honest inventory of the messages you’re sending to the world and make sure it’s the right one. [JOE] So, awesome. If people want to get your book, if they want to connect with you, what’s the best place to send them? [DR. CINDY] They can go to drcindy.com or sellyourselfbook.com. [JOE] Love it. Well, go check that out everybody. Dr. Cindy, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice Podcast. [DR. CINDY] Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun to chat with you. [JOE] I always love having conversations around something that maybe in the past or even currently intimidates me, like sales and realizing it’s just conversations. It’s getting to know people that always be curious. Love that, that switch from the always be closing, that whole like close, close, close versus let’s just make sure this person’s a fit and see if there’s something that I can help them out with. I hope you got a ton of value out of today’s episode, whether you have a private pay practice or an insurance-based practice, a solo or a group. Today’s was an awesome show all about sales. You know what, we couldn’t do this show without our sponsors and it’s amazing to just see how many people are signing up for Heard. As a therapist, the last thing you probably want to think about is doing your own bookkeeping and taxes. Regardless of whether you’re seasoned or your first year, you can say goodbye to spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments. You can just focus on your clients and maybe doing some more sales. Heard can take care of the rest and prices begin at $149 per month for solo practices and can be tailored to your business’ financial needs. You can sign up for free for a 15-minute consult today over at www.joinheard.com. That’s spelled like I heard it, not like a herd of Elk, so h e a r d, so joinheard.com/partners/joe. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.