When chiropractors talk about training their staff members, they are usually referring to handing their new employees a few crumpled up scripts that they copied from a 1978 practice management manual that their friend’s uncle used all of those years ago.
Staff training systems are a vital ingredient to practice success and thus, need to be understood and implemented immediately. The challenge is, the vast majority of the doctors we questioned are going about this procedure all wrong.
Let’s take a look at Broadway for a framework. If you analyze the rehearsal patterns of the world’s foremost theatre companies, you can easily see what has been going wrong for all these years.
When an actor is cast in a Broadway show, he or she is given a script and a rehearsal schedule with deadlines for learning the lines, songs, and choreography. What do you think happens if the actor comes unprepared?
Chiropractors need to create a Broadway atmosphere with their staff training. You can’t just sit with the new employee and discuss the concept of what they are supposed to say when the phone rings. You have to go into the next room, call them on the phone FOR REAL, and role play over and over and over again until it is near perfect.
You’ll never see an actor on the stage until they know every word and every step flawlessly. Therefore, DO NOT allow your staff members to be average. Don’t stop training and drilling them until you are fully satisfied with their skills.
The main areas of training should be: phone scripting, handling finances, new patient orientation, referrals, multiple appointment scheduling, and most importantly, chiropractic philosophy.
The curtain never goes up on a show until all of the players are prepared to give the performance of their lives. Use that reality in your training and you will see your practice run more efficiently and with vastly increased results.
Oh yeah…don’t forget to bow when you get the standing ovation.