Why persuasion is the new black

Clinic growth expert Neil Osborne explains how persuasion is the must-have skill that undisputedly boosts your clinic’s bottom line.

There’s a curious phenomenon amongst aesthetic clinics. It’s where despite all things being equal (credentials, experience, location and staff) some practices are hugely successful and others not. What’s the difference? The answer lies within an ancient and nuanced art, best known as ‘persuasion’.

Studying that art goes as far back as the ancient Greeks. According to Aristotle, persuasion can’t occur in the absence of emotion and people are moved by how it makes them feel. He believed the best way to transfer that persuasive emotion from one person to another was through the rhetorical device of storytelling.These days, the word ‘persuasion’ can evoke negative connotations, but persuasion is also used as a positive force.

Given all that, what exactly is persuasion? In The Dynamics of Persuasion, respected author and academic, Richard M. Perloff, defines persuasion as ‘…a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviours regarding an issue through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice.’ Importantly, Perloff clearly states that people are not coerced – they are instead free to choose through self-persuasion – whichis an altogether different psychological scenario.

Skillful persuasion and gentle questioning helps you be more influential. In the clinic setting, it helps you better meet the needs and wants of your patients in ways that really speak to them. There, persuasion plays a reassuring role, and your patients don’t feel like they’re being pressured. Instead, it becomes an easy conversation, where they feel cared for and comfortable.

Persuasion + Questions = Empathy

Why do you need persuasion in your practice? Persuasion allows you to better serve your patients, as well as gently exploring the areas where missing profits may lie for your business. Patients can then access something they can’t get elsewhere: knowledgeable, well-trained nurses and practitioners who actively talk, consider and empathise with their aspirations. In turn, your business goes from good to great.

Bestselling author Carmine Gallo notes in his book Five Stars, that: ‘… standing out through persuasion requires developing empathy with your listeners, a skill that “artificial” intelligence cannot replace. Machines don’t have a heart; storytellers do.’ Using persuasion, you and your staff become irreplaceable in your patients’ lives.

How you become irreplaceable to patients

Even though many clinics still use the traditional ‘tell and sell’ style of booking a patient’s treatment or surgical procedure, the truth is that today’s customers demand a different approach – one based on engagement and trust. You now need to gently explore the hazy area between what a patient ‘wants’ and ‘needs’, and your ability to communicate the difference is the true reason some practices grow exponentially and others stay static. Let’s call it your bedside manner, and it relies on you employing empathy, listening and connecting with patients.

To be a masterful communicator, you need to consider the fundamentals. That means having a firm grasp on the amount of information each patient needs to know in order to decide.

Most people only need to know four things to make a buying decision. Working out which four they need to know to book or buy is where your skill of persuasion comes to the fore. Talking with patients is no longer a matter of the old style selling approach. It’s time to move to the new style – persuasion skill – and adjust how you’re delivering the information.

The fundamental shift is from telling (a ‘selling’ behaviour) to asking (a ‘persuasive’ behaviour).

Persuasion behaviour adjustments

There are two types of questions: closed-ended and open-ended. Closed-ended questions are used to progress or direct, whereas open- ended questions are used to gather information. Open-ended questions generally start with the words, ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ or ‘how’. ‘Why’ can also be used, however it needs to be used with caution, otherwise it can come across as judgmental.

Another behaviour adjustment is to your listening skills. Many people listen with the intent to interrupt – impatiently waiting for a gap in the conversation to get their point across, and not really listening to either the content or intent behind the words being spoken. By changing to listening with the intent to understand, everything changes. Your connection with the patient improves, because the client feels heard and trust is built, because they’re being listened to (not talked at).

Understanding comes before solutions are offered

The third step is to not be too quick to offer a solution and thinking that you already know the best treatment for their want. Remember when you’ve got home from a busy day that was full of difficulties and all your partner wanted to do was interrupt and offer you a solution? How did that make you feel? How do you think your patients feel if you do the same to them, when what their first want is to share their issue with someone who understands?

Here, it’s recommended that once they put forward their want, problem or concern, you ask a minimum of three questions to better understand their need, before you offer anything. Use questions like:

• When did you first notice this…?
• What’s brought you in today, and why today?
• How does that … make you feel?
• How would you feel if we could…?
• What’s the time frame to resolve this for you?
• Can you tell me a little bit more about that? (This is my favourite question.)

The magic of threes

However, it doesn’t start and end with just asking three questions. All of us have three layers of built-in protection, before we divulge or share information about ourselves. You need to try and break through as many of the layers as you can, with each question, to understand your patients’ needs more deeply. The layers are:

1. Public: comments that are widely used or can be comfortably disclosed publicly
2. Personal: comments that would normally only be disclosed to close friends, family or a trusted practitioner
3. Private: an inner thought that likely would not be freely shared unless it was somebody deeply trusted.

If your bedside manner allows you to get to the private layer, patients feel you’ve really listened and are sensitive to their situation and feelings. From there, referrals continue to flow. With practice, you should be able to hone your skills to be able to ask, listen and respond within the same amount of time you currently allocate for patient consultations. Once mastered, extra time is not always required.

Micro-commitments towards ‘yes’

While persuasion is a practiced skill, there’s immediate steps you can take to dramatically lift your acceptance of bookings, consultations and treatments. Generally, when a patient arrives at your clinic there’s a lot going on in their head. Most of what’s going on doesn’t make them receptive to your suggestions. To improve that situation, you begin by addressing their ‘mood’, or in NLP language, adjusting their ‘frame’.

In Robert Cialdini’s famed book, Influence: Psychology of Persuasion, he notes six key principles of persuasion. After more than three million copies sold and being listed on Fortune’s “75 Smartest Business Books,” it’s considered the bible of persuasion. One of Cialdini’s principles is ‘commitment and consistency’, which states that we’re driven to remain consistent in our attitudes, words and actions. And that by making multiple small commitments (sometimes referred to as micro-commitments), people are more likely to make a larger commitment later – one which they may not have originally made.

Similarly, other research has shown that if you can get someone to verbalise ‘yes’ three times in quick succession, it changes their mood to be more open and positive. Studies have even confirmed a 52% improvement in clients accepting your recommendations.

In the clinic situation, this works best if exercised by the practitioner who’s conducting the consultation.

3x ‘yes’ before the consult

The patient has been greeted, checked in and waiting in reception. The goal of the practitioner is to ask three simple questions between reception and entering the consultation room. The questions should be trivial (where they’re practically guaranteed to say ‘yes’). Each subsequent ‘yes’ makes them more likely to positively consider and comply with the next, bigger ask.

What three questions do you ask?

1. Hi, [name], is it?
2. You’re here for your [time]?
3. Would you like to come through?

You’ve successfully just changed your client’s mindframe, set up a more positive consultation and taken your first steps towards becoming more persuasive. AMP