Know the demographics of your community to establish relationships in the retail, medical, legal, corporate, labor, and residential sectors

Creating a successful chiropractic business begins with careful preparation. Preceding any lease signing or office purchase, diligent doctors leave chance behind by doing their homework, including a review of potential areas to market and professionals to network with.

Possibilities include people to meet and greet; professionals with whom to share expertise, corporations requesting safety and ergonomics information, and social and religious institutions needing health and wellness issues speakers. To make this happen, doctors must consider their community and its demographics—where people live, where they congregate for shopping and social events, where they pray and work, and which roads lead to these areas. Once you have spent the time reviewing the area, a more detailed demographic review is in order.

Demographics is a detailed outline of a community. Major retail and fast-food chains spend thousands of dollars for a community evaluation in choosing the best location to place their facility. They reduce financial risk by being assured the community will support their facility, is of a certain age, and sustain an average age for years to come. They also have knowledge on potential growth.

Win Friends, Influence People
Doctors who carefully review the demographics will determine where to emphasis their marketing and public relations efforts and, most importantly, where to lease or purchase their office. If they have the skill and the will, they can nurture their community by creating various alliances and offering health and wellness as their professional obligation. They can predict where to look for new patients within every area of their community. Drive around your neighborhood and record areas that offer you a similar prediction.

One mistake chiropractors make is not considering the profession as a business, and one mistake chiropractic colleges make is not providing enough business skills for their graduates. Classes are provided in accounting and insurance relations, but the art of acquiring patients and managing a successful practice is often taught at postgraduate seminars and consultants. Doctors who accept this fact will find and provide the tools necessary to create and maintain a successful business. They realize early that it takes our product—patients—to keep the engines running.

Developing a sound practice requires business skills, and I hate to say it, salesmanship. The art of closing the deal starts with every new patient consultation and continues throughout your report of findings and with each progressive visit. Call it what you will, but salesmanship, whether by design or innately inspired, is used during every patient visit. This same ability to sustain your practice must be used to create and maintain it. It is all a matter of meeting and greeting new people and expanding your professional and social alliances.

Professional networking is a symbiotic relationship—we need each other. Often the need is there but the appreciation of need is not.

Why would a medical physician, an attorney, a corporate human resources manager, a social director of the local church, benefits director of a union, program chairperson of a local civic group, manager of a retail store desire our attention? Why would they request our skills and ability to assist them and their employees, members or patients?

If they knew what we know and how well we can assist them, they would be clamoring for our help and providing many patients, group members, employees, and customers as potential new patients. There is a need, and we can supply the expertise. The question is: Do you know what the need is and if not, how do you expect them to know?

Let me break it down and point out how best to approach these people. Let’s start with our medical brothers and sisters. Why would they need us? They have a sophisticated referral relationship amongst themselves. Their hands-on colleagues are physical therapists. They would usually recommend them prior to offering chiropractic as a choice. Why do we duplicate the services of physical therapists? Are we primary or secondary providers? The answer is yes and no.

Many of us do partially provide physical therapy with similar positive results but by adding the adjustment, chiropractic far exceeds the expectations of patients and physicians. Often, open-minded physicians recommend both. Every emergency room (ER) should know of your skills, and this is also true to every free-standing medical emergency facility. How many accident victims are patched up and sent home with a pocket full of pills. These people need to see a chiropractor for follow-up care. But who is going to tell them? If the ER or local facility physicians even wanted to refer to a chiropractor, whom would they choose? It is your obligation to let them know about chiropractic, your conservative skills, and your desire to assist them in maintaining the health and wellness of your mutual community.

Look through the various managed care health insurance provider books and choose the gatekeepers. These are the general practitioners, family physicians, internists, gynecologists, and pediatricians. They have a front line role to provide a necessary service and refer out to proper specialists. Obviously this would be medical specialists, but we can also be a part of this system if there is an alliance or a working relationship.

An obstetrician who has a pregnant patient with back pain and chooses not to offer medication would enjoy a relationship with you. But do they know about your conservative, gentle skills? A general practitioner with patients in chronic pain who are frustrated with drugs may be thankful for your conservative care as an alternative to more medication or expensive testing. The orthopedist who usually has a great relationship with local physical therapists would probably not mind some extra hands-on care. It is up to you to reach out to them.

Know Your Demographics
Every community has one of the four components of demographics: retail, residential, clerical, and labor. If your community has all four, there is no excuse to be busy helping unlimited numbers of patients.

Retail: An alliance can be maintained between your office and local retail merchants. Throughout the year, there are many holidays that provide an opportunity to request patient participation. Besides patient and community appreciation days, there are holidays and matched events such as Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s that offer patient interaction. Referral concepts and drawings using local merchant services should be utilized during these times, especially if connected with a local charity. Florists, restaurants, movie theaters, quick-lube facilities, and other community vendors can offer free coupons as part of your community charity drive.

Use these holidays or special events to collect food or funds for charities. Requesting letters of endorsement from charities helps establish credibility when approaching merchants. While collecting free promotions, gather email and Web addresses to send monthly community health and wellness newsletters. There is power in repetition and nothing works like a monthly email or snail-mail newsletter.

Residential: Who do we find in residential communities? There are many groups and organizations for you to develop relationships: libraries and civic organizations for timely lectures, churches to offer senior citizen talks or provide services for youth groups, schools to discuss safety during sports and postural checks, and municipal workers to develop special programs to help avoid chronic stress and safety. The list is endless.

The only responsibility on your part is to meet these people to create friendly and healthy alliances. Gather names of these organizations from county guides and library resources. Chambers of commerce and tourist guides are useful resources. Call and determine the proper person to contact. Write and speak, or better yet, meet them to create a relationship that will establish you firmly within the community.

Labor: Think in terms of ergonomics and safety. Ergonomics is a method of fitting the workstation to the employee or more likely fitting the employee best to their workstation. Labor-intensive work includes warehouses, stockrooms, lifting, and material-handlers. These employees need safety check and proactive preventive programs to increase the level of productivity while reducing work injuries or sustained physical impairments.

If your community has an industrial park or retail strip malls, there are plenty of people to meet. Each large corporation has a human resources division that maintains the wellness and support of its employees, and often there may also be a safety committee.

Again, review your community and make the proper calls to determine who the person responsible for employee wellness is. There are countless programs to promote, but safety and ergonomic programs stand out as well as postural and stress screening and participation in health fairs and pre-employment screenings. Ergonomic data and programs can be gathered via the Internet by just searching under the word “ergonomics.”

Clerical: Imagine yourself in front of a computer entering data all day. Would you welcome a chiropractic adjustment? You bet! Gather names of local office parks or areas where clerical employees are. Survey some employees as they enter or leave work to determine whom they work for and if there is interest in safety or stress reduction classes at their office. Begin to ask patients where they work, and if there is interest for these classes, find out who to call for approval. Many of these facilities, especially in large buildings, offer employee health fairs during springtime. The time is now to call and ask to participate.

Attorneys: They need doctors to examine their clients and render a diagnosis and bills for treatment. Otherwise, they have no case without it. Therefore, it behooves you to meet the attorneys in your community that handle personal injury cases. They may already have a relationship with a chiropractor, but it would not hurt to let them be aware of your location for clients either working or living closer to your office. This professional alliance can be quite profitable if they like the care their clients receive from you and your timely response to their professional concerns.

Joel E. Margolies, DC, has been in practice for 25 years in Atlanta and is the author of four books: Smart Start, Workshop Workbook, Chiropractic Marketing and Public Relations, and Personal Injury Workbook. He sends a free weekly chiropractic email newsletter concerning practice management, public relations, and philosophy to more than 10,000 DCs in 31 countries. Margolies can be reached via email: joel3639@aol.com,  or website: www.chirosmart.net.