If you’ve been a student of mine for any length of time, you know I’m a big advocate of offering and selling a monthly nutritional plan to patients.

This strategy for Chiropractic Offices has proven to be extremely lucrative (and can be adapted to other professional offices – just change the particular product)

It’s really easy to do and it makes you a lot of extra income.

Here’s what it might look like: During your Report of Findings, you build in a nutritional recommendation along with your other recommendations. For goodness sakes, I hope by now you’re taking a case approach to care so that you can collect pre-payment for services!

But how do you turn a recommendation into income? It’s far easier than you might imagine. You do what other doctors have been doing to them their whole lives… you write them a prescription!

Dr. Gregg Nielsen and myself have developed an interesting marketing tool called The Chiropractic Prescription Pad. It looks like a traditional prescription pad used by every non-chiropractor. With one exception.

During your Report of Findings, when you get to the nutritional recommendations, you whip out your Chiropractic Prescription Pad and you say “Here’s what I’m recommending for you. Just get your prescription filled on your way out.”

Of course, your prescription is a nutritional recommendation and not a pharmaceutical one. 

What are the results of our strategy?

Get this…

Over 80% of patients will comply with your request and will get this prescription ‘filled’ during check out

I recently taught this to doctors in my coaching program. In the short time theyve used it they report a nearly 95% compliance rate when done as described above. They found a less than 80% compliance rate when they felt compelled to ‘talk too much’ and justify their nutritional recommendations.

Isn’t that interesting?

In other words& the more you make it seem like it’s no big deal, the higher your compliance rate. The more you act as though it’s business as usual you’ll find that nearly 95% of patients will purchase your nutritional recommendation. The lesson here is that the more you act like you’re doing something odd and out of the ordinary, the lower your compliance.

The emotion of certainty is very important from a psychological stand point. The more certain you are with a patient, the more certain they will feel. Conversely, the more uneasy you are in a presentation, you literally transfer that emotion of uneasiness and uncertainty to the patient.

Hmm… Doesn’t that sound like exactly what happens when we ask for pre-payment? Doctors taking the its-no-big-deal and sign here approach to pre-pay also report that about 90% of new patients will go ahead and pre-pay.

However, those doctors that can’t deal with money and feel the need to ramble on for 10 minutes justifying why they’re making a request for pre-payment usually get bad results.

By the way, if you stammer when the issue of money arises, it might be a wise strategy to delegate all financial discussions to a C.A. or designated Financial Coordinator. I’ve seen some mighty fine D.C.’s struggling desperately because they couldn’t address financial matters who suddenly became prosperous when they delegated all such discussions to a staff person.

Let’s get back to selling nutritional products in your practice! One of the biggest mistakes I see you all making is you’re selling products with horrible profit margins.

You must make a profit. Period.

Whenever you’re buying something wholesale and reselling it for retail prices, you need a 3-5 times markup.

For example, if it costs you $10 for a bottle of Glucosomine, then your retail price to patients should be $30.00 to $50.00 per bottle.

Every retailer in America demands at least a 3-times markup. They all realize that without a 3-5 times markup, it’s not even worth their time selling a product. When you factor in shipping and handling costs, staff costs to keep track of inventory, credit card fees, etc., if you’re getting anything less than a 3 times markup you might as well stop selling that item.

If you take a look at big successful companies that went bankrupt, you’ll find that at some point in their history they stopped marking things up 3-times in an effort to be price competitive. This made them go out of business in a hurry. The latest example of this is K-Mart and many other retailers or tend to panic in the face of a recessionary economy.

Warning: If you have joined a Network Marketing Company and plan on re-selling their products, then I know you’re definitely not getting a 3-5 times markup on your products. There is simply no margin when you try to re-sell network marketing products.

Why?

Because all the margin is eaten up by the extensive down line compensation plans that they offer. No promise is ever made of making an excellent living from the actual sale of the products. They’re selling the dream of down line, which is vastly different then the reality of profit margin!

Private Label Your Own Products!

Let’s get real. Since few doctors will ever get rich from down line profits, I suggest that we deal with reality and find a vastly more inexpensive products that is of equal quality, so you can start making real profits on the products that you’re working so hard to sell.

If network marketing as such a great product to retail,  why isn’t Wal-Mart stocking AMWAY products? Because the margins on network marketing products are lousy!

What do I suggest?

One of my favorite strategies is to Private label your own brand of products.

Imagine walking into a doctor’s office and seeing their own personal line of nutritional products! Aren’t you less likely to price shop since you can’t find this doctors ‘brand’ anywhere else? If you had your own proprietary product line and link it to your recommended corrective care plane, then you’ll find that an even greater number of patients will purchase your supplements.

Wouldn’t you be more likely to pay a few extra dollars for an exclusive private label brand of products? Most people would. Also, with a private label featuring your doctor, doesn’t it increase your confidence that this person is a successful person? Doesn’t it lend added credibility to the practice?

A dentist I consulted with found a private label source to offer his own tooth paste.

A podiatrist I know private labeled his own shoe inserts for flat feet.

When you start looking, you’ll be surprised just how many companies offer “private label” products and programs, just for this reason.

It Makes You Stand Out!

The implication of having your own line of products, in the patients eyes, is… gee, if someone has their own brand of products, they must be a really good doctor!

Doctors learned in my Monster Patient Flow! Vol. 2 course, that purchasing decisions are made in the subconscious mind. This is one way that you can boost credibility in your recommendations and avoid the price shopping syndrome.

Is it hard to private label a product?

Not at all.

In a recent consultation with long-time Mentor member Dr. Bruce Lubitz, he brought to my attention a company that will private label your own brand of nutritional products which they will do with as few as 12 bottles! With a strong nutritional products plan in a practice, you could blow through these in 60 days!

Want to know what else is great about this company?

Their prices are low, which enable you to make a 3-5 times markup when you resell them to patients! Their website is www.yoursource.cc

It’s easy to private label – look at this website I found!

Check it out for yourself. This is just of many companies out there that will do this, if you but only make a few calls or spend an hour on the internet. This company could probably refer you to other companies that will private label other supplements.

Get started in your research now

This is one strategy that you’re really foolish not to take advantage of because it’s so simple to do. If you’re not offering nutritional products, why not? What are you waiting for? Lastly, stop selling overpriced network marketing products and get real about business realities. You need a minimum markup of 3-5 times your cost and you can never ethically do that with the already inflated prices offered by MLM’s.

Don’t keep us a secret! Tell another practitioner about our practice building community.