A couple months ago, I had lunch with Frank G., a local acupuncturist.  After lunch we visited his clinic, where he walked me through his intake procedures. (I don’t want to give away his secrets if a patient googles him, so I’m withholding his last name.)

Frank has a fantastic intake procedure that builds his credibility.  He uses charts to locate pain and discuss how acupuncture can treat it.  He also shows patients how pain in one area is connected to other parts of the body.

While I was there, he had a call from a prospective patient. I caught him telling the patient something like, “Why don’t you come in, and we’ll discuss your problem.  Then I’ll let you know if I can help you.”

These two sentences alone did a lot:

• He convinced them to come in without hard selling.
• His attitude implied he wouldn’t do any hard selling.
• He established a basis of trust - he’ll tell them the truth, even if it’s that acupuncture isn’t for them.
• He avoided the “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome.  (Chiropractors in particular tend to try fixing everything, even if chiropractic isn’t the right approach.
• He established himself as an authority in their minds.  The authority principle is one of the six Cialdini principles - mental shortcuts to persuasion.  (I discuss the Cialdini principles in an appendix of Never Market Again.

This is just a small part of his intake procedure.  Believe it or not, your intake procedures ARE part of marketing acupuncture.  As I mentioned in Never Market Again, intake should be like a slippery slope.  Once someone starts on the path to becoming your patient, it should be easy and effortless to end up in your clinic for treatment.

Note that although Frank wasn’t definitive whether acupuncture would help, he was definitive that he would be able to find out.  That’s the authority principle in action.

How do you use your intake procedures as part of your marketing?  (If you don’t, you might want to start.)