How to sell products to doctors
How to Sell to Doctors w/ Dr. Corey Corpodian
Corey Corpodian is the founder of 'Unleash Success'
or should I say Dr. Corey Corpodian?
Because he's also a working Orthodontist.
And I've had several consulting clients come on
and ask me, "How do you sell to doctors?"
"Alex, how do you sell to doctors?"
"What's the best way to sell the medical profession?
Can you tell me?
Can you tell me?"
That's how they always talk.
Now, sometimes they have a much higher voice, you know, it's like, "Alex, can you tell me
how to sell to doctors?"
And sometimes their voices are so low and I can barely understand,
you know, it's like, it's almost sub, you know, like,
You couldn't even hear that because it's, it's down in the lower register.
So here's the webinar that we did with Dr. Corpodian.
And what I wanted to focus on is: 'how to sell to doctors.'
How do you actually get into an office and talk to a doctor,
specifically a dentist.
And one of the big takeaways from this was, cold email is probably not the best way to
do it.
If you want to know the best way, keep watching.
Let's jump into it.
Corey: Thanks for having me on guys.
And yeah, you know, cold email really doesn't work well with me
if you're trying to sell me something.
And definitely, I have a lot of experience being sold to as an Orthodontist for sure.
I find that, you know, one of the biggest things in dentistry
is you got to know who your audience is, just like any other kind of sales.
Doctors are really entrepreneurial, you know, they're the businessmen, you know.
You tell them, you're going to be able to save them 20%,
you're going to be able to help them make more money, they're all ears.
But there's a lot of other doctors out there that are more about,
"what's the best care for my patient?
What's the best value?
I don't care that it costs an extra $10 for this guard,
for this crown, I want the best for my patient."
So I think to start, first, before you even go in there,
you got to know who you're approaching, you got to know what kind of person they are,
or get to know them.
I find that a lot of times people come in and they might have a pamphlet, you know,
something that they show you and they are all excited about and then they
disappear.
But you got to realize, we get hit up every single day
by tons of different people via email, mail, in person.
And I think the biggest thing is that these people tend to come into the office
sometimes every couple weeks or every month, "Hey, I want some of your time.
Let me bring something to you."
And it's kind of the law of reciprocation, right?
So people, you know, give you something, you are like, "all right, listen, I really
appreciate you doing that for me, I'll give you 15 minutes of my time because
you realise doctors time is really valuable.
Time equals money, right?"
Alex: I think it's interesting how that changes per industry too,
because I feel like me and you met via cold email,
to be on your podcast, right?
So it's like, you enter a cold email there and you're ignoring cold emails that are pitching
you dental stuff.
Corey: Oh, yeah.
Well, it's totally by industry.
You've got to realize like, most of the time people
who come in to talk to me about something in my industry,
they think that they know a lot.
And I had that I had this happen last weekend, where this girl went to a class, a two-day
course, saw some cases and thought that literally
this appliance for Orthodontics was God's gift to man.
And I'm like, "Oh, yeah," like, you know, "what's the basics?"
She's like, "you've got to try it.
It'll change your life.
It'll change your practice.
It will change everything about your everything.
You will make so much more money.
Patients love it."
And I ended up looking it up afterwards, I didn't understand the name she said.
I'd seen it years ago and it's the same appliance just ,you know, with a new name and a slightly
different design.
And she's trying to tell me how it's going to change my life.
I'm like, "I have been doing this for 10-15 years,
I know what's going on and you saw a two-day course."
So I think also like, we get hit with just so much garbage.
Alex: There is a lot of MLMs.
There's a lot of cold email, not even, just marketing courses that say, "go to doctors."
Corey: Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, doctors have money and everybody knows that, right?
So everybody's like, "Okay, let me go to somebody who can afford to pay for this."
And I'll tell you right now, there are so many different types of doctors out there.
Like I have a friend who has a multimillion dollar practice,
does not spend any money on advertising.
And then I've got other doctors who maybe make, you know, $500,000 to $1000,000,
and they're spending $3,000 to $4,000 on Pay Per Click ads.
And then I even know guys who spend $20,000 a month
just on advertising just to get people into their door.
So yeah, huge range.
Alex: So what have you seen because you're buying
all this stuff that people are selling, you know, whether you're buying it from that
specific salesperson or whatever.
Like you've got all the dental guards and like,
I don't even know what what you're buying.
So how are these people finding you?
Or like, how do you go about hiring?
What's your, not your ideal sales process, but what's been the most effective process
for selling to you?
Corey: So me, particularly, you know, I think that there's, you have to build a
relationship.
And for me, I'm skeptical about a lot of people.
I spent years studying this, lots of time and effort understanding everything
that's out there in the industry.
And so when people come to me with new products or new ideas or new this, whatever,
I'm like,"you know what?
I'm skeptical of it."
So you've got to build my trust.
For me, the best thing is, and I've got guys who do this all the time,
I'll tell you, I use a clear bracket.
We switch clear brackets in all of our offices from one company to a different company.
And the guy had come in six months in a row, every single month.
Sometimes he just stopped by, "hey, I was just in the neighborhood, wanted
to say hi."
Like, I'm pretty sure he wasn't in the neighborhood, he specifically drove to my office, right?
This is the kind of effort you got to make.
And, you know, he brought lunch one time, he offered to give us all CE credits.
So, "let me teach you about the brackets, I'll give you CE credit."
Alex: What's CE?
Corey: CE, continuing education.
So, we need 50 continuing education, different for dental assistants
but everybody in the field needs these courses.
He is like,"listen, if you give me an hour of your time,
I'll buy you lunch, I'll teach you about the brackets
and I'll give you one credit for free."
Like value, value, value.
And okay, sure.
So he comes in, I'm like, "Hey, listen-" Like this is probably the fifth, sixth month
that he's been coming in talking to me about these brackets.
I was like, "All right, I'm really glad you brought this up.
I've got my manager here with me.
We're going to sit down and talk about it."
Within two months, we had switched over completely to brackets.
And you're talking about these brackets, probably run you $200 a case, you know.
So it's like, that's to them, right?
We're paying them $200 for each set.
If I do one of those every couple of days, that's $200.
And now I'm switching over all of my brackets to that bracket maker
because he put in the effort.
And then I got other people that come in, they don't even do anything like that.
They come in and they leave a card, "Hey, you know, give us a call."
Like guys, I'm so busy, I'll forget it if I even remember that I have it .
Alex: Well, it's interesting because most of the stuff you buy is,
I mean it's stuff that a lot of different production companies,
a lot of different people can be making this.
So it's interesting, you're deciding based on relationships, right?
Because it's not like someone's going to sell you a bad bridge
or like it's nothing horrible.
Corey: Well, so there's different quality, right?
Once you meet the quality standard, it's based on relationship.
The doctors aren't going to be like,"Oh, sorry, we made a bad bridge."
They'll just tell you, we need to remake it.
But they might do a bad job and in which case, we've switched labs before.
Like, "hey, guys will give you another chance, maybe even a third one.
But if you don't step up to this quality of standard,
sorry, we're going to switch gears."
Yeah, so that happens.
Alex: What about something that's less dependent on the quality.
So, for instance, like marketing services, or pay per click or anything like that?
Corey: Well, I mean, it's still quality.
It's not- It's like, "what are my results?"
And, you know, some marketing services like SEO,
the guys that come in and want to do SEO and- Alex: I love the way you said SEO, by the
way.
I say the same thing to my consulting clients, like call yourself anything except SEO, please.
Corey: Yeah, well, and then they also tell you it will take six months.
And I'm like I know that, I've done some research into it.
So like, how can you show me that I'm going to get good results?
So something like pay per click, if you can show me that you've done it for
other clients or you want to give me a free trial or something
where it's like, "Hey, listen, I'll show you how well I can
do this for you.
When you start getting patients, then we'll start charging every month."
Alex: So what I'm hearing then is, the ideal sales cycle would be:
you keep coming to the office over and over again,
you're pitching the marketing service.
So, who you are you- You're walking into the office, maybe with
a sandwich, who are you talking to, to sell your free
trial of pay per click to?
Corey: Dude that is a great question because you've got to realize the doctor is
probably the second most, no, the third or the fourth person that you're
going to interact with before- Like as you're walking through the door, first
person, front desk, right?
And some front desk people, not the most happy people in the world.
You think they would be but they're also like the guard dog, you know.
They're like, "Oh, I see you coming a mile away with that, you know,
the donuts and everything.
Doctor doesn't have time."
I'll literally have the front desk be like, "just tell them I'm busy."
And like I won't come out for 15 minutes until they leave.
But, you know, we're so busy.
We can't give everybody time, unfortunately but sometimes people, like they don't do it
the right way.
So you got to make sure you sweet talk the front desk person, receptionist.
You might then go to the assistant or office manager,
kind of depending on who's available.
And if you get to the office manager, that's a good jump.
Because the assistant, you know, they might not have everything,
but they're kind of like, "Hey, what's going on?
Let me see if I can help."
Because the assistants will talk to the doctor a lot, you know.
They're like, "Oh, I heard about this, you know, can we try this?"
They're the person who helps the doctor funnel everything.
Alex: What have you seen?
So let's do it step by step then.
What have you seen to get past that initial, first,
the front desk to the assistant jump seems like a pretty big one.
Corey: Well, it is.
It's just about, you know, you got to have a smile on your face.
You've got to be happy.
Offer something of value.
And I think that, you know, sometimes people brush off the first person
because they're seemingly unimportant.
And you don't realize, by doing that, that it creates this negative air about it,
and they'll screw you before you even get in the door really.
So I think just being friendly, "Hi, how are you doing today?
Listen, I'm here with this company.
I'm just trying to get a moment of the doctor's time.
I'd love to be able to talk to him about this.
Is now a good time?
If now is not a good time, is there another time that I could come back?"
And if you're just nice to them, you know, honestly, I think compliments work really
well, not like in genuine compliments, like,
"Oh my god, I love your eyes."
Like that, you know, it's not going to work out too well.
But if you like, you know, "wow, like this office is so great.
You know, I love the organization of the front desk.
And this is, you know, really good.
This is such a beautiful area, did do you do this?"
And, you know, they'll take it as a compliment, whatever you want to say.
Alex: It as a compliment because you're not talking about their eyes,
like you just said.
You're like, "what does the Assistant do here?"
They're probably cleaning, they're probably organizing stuff
and you're talking about that specific thing that they do.
Of course, they're going to find value in that,
Corey: Exactly.
And so just by saying simple things like that, which like I say it's simple, but most people
don't do it and they get denied right away.
They come in like, "oh, I've got to talk to the doctor."
Like okay, "well, who are you, first of all?
let's slow down."
And you realize that once you get past that front desk,
that's a big step and then you might go to the office manager or the assistant,
you know, one of the two,it's just kind of who's available sometimes.
And it might be the office manager.
And then the office manager, they're well aware of what's going on financially
within the Office.
A lot of times, they're well aware of decisions and products that we use.
And so you got to make sure that you're kind of doing the same thing.
You're super friendly.
And that's where you want to be able to add value.
Like, listen, "I brought these cookies for you guys and go and have them.
But I'd like to come back maybe, sit down with you guys for 30 minutes.
You know, I could bring you lunch if you guys want, if you have that time.
You know, you can learn."
And like that one guy did, he offered to give us a continuing education
course for free.
So that was like, win win win.
Alex: All right.
So how much of the bribing is food?
Corey: A lot.
It's a lot of food.
Like, pretty much everybody brings food because everybody loves food.
You know, it like makes people happy, it's cookies.
You know, I wouldn't say like a gift basket, it's always food.
It's always something: cookies, donuts, lunch.
But it's just like, "Hey, I'm here."
And it gives people a reason to come by.
And I've seen other people just leave cards, you know, "oh, here's a stack of my cards
in case you want to refer us to, you know, this oral surgeon or orthodontist."
Like, okay, I don't remember that but I remember the guy who brings frickin
doughnuts every Wednesday, on the first of the month, for three months.
"Oh, there's Joe.
What's up, Joe?
How's it going?"
Like, you know what I mean?
Alex: Yeah.
By the way, guys, this is why I don't recommend selling the doctors.
That sounds like so much work.
Corey: So it is a lot of work.
But I think the reason that people go after doctors a lot
is because of the amount of money that we have spent
Like a lifetime patient for general dentistry, you know, maybe $3000, even $15,000 over the
course of their life.
So if you were able to get that person in and say,
"I pay you, you know, $100 per patient that you're able to bring me, roughly."
Then now it's $3000 to $15,000.
For orthodontics, our average case is $4500- $5500.
For braces, sometimes invisalign is more expensive, $5000-$6,000.
And so if you're saying, "hey, listen, I'll be able to bring you know,
one patient in for you every single day," up to me to close,
but I'll be able to get one extra patient in for you to see every day.
And you know, the cost for them to come in $20, $30.
Well, you can see where my profit margins are,
you can see that that's bringing me value.
Again, though, I we focus on the money because it's all marketing and how much money
you have to spend and how much money you earn.
But I think a big thing too, is that not every doctor thinks that way.
I know that, like how do we understand the finances,
the scale, what's the metrics.
They want to know the numbers of success but not always the financial success.
Sometimes it's about bringing better value as well.
Alex: What have you found the best way to find that out?
So are there any questions you should be asking?
Are there any clues, like when you're coming into an office,
how do you know what to pitch to the doctor?
Is it going to be you know, new revenue?
Is it number of patients ? Like how do you know what to do there?
Corey: So if you're talking about marketing, and you're doing a pay per click ad spend,
you might come into a doctor's office and say you get past, you finally talk to
the doctor and the office manager; and you're like, "listen, guys, you know,
I believe that I can do this for you, would you find that a value if I could bring
in more patients for you to help?"
Like, "would you want more patients?"
And when you ask if they want more patients, and its like, "yeah, I'm just trying to grow
my practice.
I'm trying to grow my business.
I'm trying to help more people."
It's like, "do you want to help more people?"
Or, you know, "do you want to make more money?"
Kind of asking, really in our business, that's the same thing, in my mind.
I think that the more people you help, the more money you make,
It is kind of similar a lot of businesses.
But one of the big things is, you can ask that question both those ways
and then depending on which one they jump on,
you know, "do you want to help more people?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I do.
The mission of our practice is to help every single person in our community.
I want everybody in our community to know we are."
"Okay, great, we can help you do that."
And then focus more on the value add and the fact that they're helping people.
And if you ask the next question, you say, "You know what?
What would you think if I could tell you that we could bring in,
you know, $20,000 more revenue for you every single month?
Would that be something you're interested in?"
"Oh my god, yeah, we've been struggling in revenue."
If they latch on to the financial aspect, then go down that path.
You talk to me?
I'll tell you right away.
"Listen, okay, I'm sure your product works, right?
We'll figure that out.
Assume the product works in a way.
What are the numbers?"
That's what all I'll say to people.
You know, I'm a financial guy.
I'm like, "What are the numbers?
How much does it cost?
How many patients am I going to do?
How many patients are you going to get in here?
What's the ratio?"
Like I'm always focused on that, because when it comes to the business side,
I put my business brain on and that's my switch.
ot every doctors like that, sometimes they're still focused on what's
the value to the patient, "can I help people more people?"
So I think if you ask those two questions, you'll kind of get a hint.
Alex: Alright, that's awesome.
Some other people have questions too.
'Flint Spark Media' said, and I actually had this question too,
"is it worth cold calling first to schedule a meeting or talk to the assistant?"
Like basically, I guess the question is, can you do anything besides just walk into
these doctors offices?
Can you cold call first and then show up with food
once you find out there into that?
Like, what have you found there?
Corey: Absolutely, you can cold call.
And I think that there's a lot of power in that.
I just think you're going to hit the receptionist who's first going to be be like, "okay, you're
not a patient."
They might say, "Hey, you know, we've got time this morning.
We've got time this afternoon."
They might give you a better window for an idea when you visit.
I don't say that you can't cold call but don't expect to get the doctor on the
phone when you cold call.
Alex: That's interesting.
So I used to do this when I was selling to restaurants,
like the very first company I started, I would call them and I would ask,
"Hey-" First, I look up the owner's name
and I'd be like, "Hey, is Mike in today?"
And then they'd say, "yeah, he is in at one," And then I'd come in after one.
Like that's the only way I use cold calls.
I wasn't using it to book meetings or anything.
Corey: Exactly.
Yeah.
Alex: All right, I'm going to ask this question exactly as he asked it
because I want to get your read on the question too.
Mario McCann says, "what's the value ladder of services in your practice?"
Corey: The value ladder of services from my, from like what I sell, or like, from which
perspective?
Alex: Mario, you see how confused he is man?
This is what you're doing your clients.
I think the question is like, how, "what do you kind of value, again?"
Like, I'm going to skip that question.
Corey: I think what you mentioned, though, really quickly
is what kind of questions he's asking us.
If he's asking the doctor that or as a- Like, what's the value ladder?
They're going to look at you like that.
Like, "wait, what do you mean?"
Alex: Yeah, that's why I wanted to ask you the question like that.
Corey: And communication is so important.
We're talking about understanding what the doctor values,
worth money or time or patient value, "does it make my patient services better?"
And so, communicating that is really important.
Alex: That's interesting.All right.
Larry Henson seems to be going really in depth: "What's the percentage of patients that are
cash versus insurance when it comes to dentists, that you have seen?"
Corey: It really depends on the area.
I've got some areas where, you know, we're 90% insurance.
And then I've got some of the, like just more affluent areas
that might be 30 to 40% cash pay.
But everybody's got insurance, and so with orthodontics, specifically.
Alex: Yeah.
So it sounds like it depends a lot on the doctor's office.
Corey: Location, right?
Like which area you're in.
So if you're in a really high socio-economic area,
you're probably going to have more cash patients because they have the cash and insurance doesn't
always cover the nice veneers that you want, right?
Like they don't cover the $20,000 worth of work that you want to do,
so they have to pay cash.
So when you're marketing, you should know that as well.
Like if you go into kind of a lower socio economic area,
you're going to end up running into people who, you know,
they've heavy HMO plans, maybe even medicare.
We take Medicare in some of the offices that I worked at,
which is a government based insurance.
And I mean, there's a lot of reasons we take it:
one, because even if they don't qualify for it,
they'll end up paying cash or they finance it.
Alex: Interesting.
I have two people here asking, Carlos Garcia and Mario McCann, again,
they're both asking about retainers.
"So, are all the marketing services that you buy,
are they like, pay per lead?
Get one client, you pay him 20 bucks?
Or are you paying retainers for anyone?
Have you seen that work?
Like, what sort of retainers have you found that dentists are willing to pay for marketing
services?
Corey: That's so funny.
I thought you're talking about orthodontic retainers for a second.
Then I was like, what, that's a really specific question.
Alex: Different words.
Different industries.
I don't even know what that is.
Corey: It's what holds your teeth straight.
So basically, yeah, when it comes to it's usually like,
you might pay a monthly spend.
We might say, "Alright, we're going to spend $1,000 a month towards this service."
And you spend $1,000 a month, they do their thing on the back end for pay
per clicks.
So it's kind of like a, just a monthly fee.
Alex: Most dentists are fine paying a monthly retainer, easily?
Corey: So yeah.
If you're bringing in the value, for sure.
I think one of the things I would say is that, you can't really pay per patient,
that's technically legal, it's called fee splitting.
So like, you can't be like, "I'm going to give you $100, and you give
me this one patient," that's illegal.
But if I'm paying you for a service, which is marketing my practice,
and I pay you $1,000 a month to do that then, and that ends up getting the patients,
it's just not per patient, can't do that.
Alex: Cool.
Then what I would do, Mario to answer your question,
is price based on the value you deliver.
So figure out what a dentist makes from a patient,
figure out how many patients you can bring them on average,
and then try to figure out your pricing in there.
Basically do a 10x type of thing: so if you make $1,000 charge them $100, sort
of thing.
David Lux: "how would you approach selling web design for dentists?
Would you lead with it or use it more as a profit maximizer
once they are your client?"
Corey: What's his other service that he's going to be using him for, as their client?
Alex: Let's assume it's marketing services or SEO.
Corey: Marketing services?
Alex: Yeah, yeah.
Corey: I mean, we all know the power of having a great website, especially mobile.
We also know that some dentists, I mean they're just not tech savvy.
So depending on what you're going for, like I got,
like I said though, you got to know your dentist.
One of my friends: multimillion dollar practice, no marketing, website is super simple
and basically leads to a phone number, get the patient in on the phone.
I think that having a good mobile friendly website can only enhance it,
as well as, if you're also doing the SEO, if you're doing pay per click and they're
going to this website.
You want to make sure it's super easy to find.
I think that you look at what the dentist, what they have,
what does their website look like right now?
If it looks like crap, it's 10 years old, it's running off of like Microsoft97, whatever,
right?
Like it looks like shit, then change it and help bring them more value.
Also, I would have really focused on mobile because mobile is where everybody's on,
you know, everybody is on mobile devices.
Alex: Yeah and I- So I was kicking around this idea a little
while ago, which was: the people with shitty websites at this point
in 2018, they know the value and they just don't want
to change.
But I think that might be wrong, they might just be very hard to reach.
Nobody's putting the time to actually find these dentists.
Corey: And it might not actually matter, you know.
A lot of these dentists' practices grow by word of mouth
and that's like the biggest growth factor.
For the ones that aren't heavily in marketing and don't have the revamped websites,
they might not care because they're like, "my practice is still growing.
I've still got patients coming in, new patients coming in,"
because they do such a great job and they're so friendly,
the community knows about them, and word of mouth grows it.
But then you can say like, "Hey, this is how we can maximize it so when
other people-" Because like, let's take a look at things
like Yelp, you know.
That, one platform is huge for ratings and reviews,
you got Google reviews as well.
But these things, every time you type in the doctor's name,
you'll see like what their rating is or the office
or you type in 'dentist' right now, you'll see all the top dentists around you.
So I might not say necessarily, you want to have a good website
but focus on those reviews because that what is going to get people right
at the top to be like, "oh this guy's better, this guy's got 4.9
stars, this guy's got 4.2."
Alex: Those directories.
And I guess that's true for all local business because I'm not even seeing,
I was thinking 'Zocdoc' at first but you don't even see 'Zocdoc'
when you search Google for anything like that.
So it really is just Yelp, it's Google Places, that sort of thing.
Corey: Yeah.
Ale: Very cool.
Awesome.
Guys, any other questions you have?
Wait a second.
Corey: Sure.
In the meantime, I think that, like you want to focus on a couple of things
as you're going to to pitch a doctor is: first you want to know who the doctor is,
first and foremost, like what drives them.
And ask questions.
We ask questions about finances, we ask questions about whether they are value
driven.
And remember like, you got to be super friendly as you go through the process
yo you can get to the doctor.
But know who you are and then of course you got to know your product
right?
If you're sitting there and you're saying like,
"oh, I'm going to be able to bring you all these people
into the ads per click or like some numbers, if you haven't got any of that stuff already
then, offer to do a free trial.
"Listen, I won't charge you for the first month
and I'll just show you the results."
And then the third thing is, you know, also know when they're ready to buy, i think.
I think a lot of people keep on talking and instead of like,
I'm like, "yeah you know what, let's do that.
I want that product, let's go."
Like, "redesign my website, done deal."
Know when to shut up and just close the deal, kind of thing.
Some people, like I get sales people in a lot
where they just keep talking and you're like, "man, you know what, the more you talk,
the less I'm interested actually."
I'm not sure like, "oh now that you say that, I don't know if that's really going to work
for me."
So just kind of knowing when to stop too.
Alex: Awesome.
All right, Corey, where do you want people to go
after watching this video webinar recording.
Corey: You know, honestly it's just podcasts: we are on iTunes, Spotify and revamping the
YouTube channel to be able to release a bunch of episodes
there; unleashsuccess.com
or you can reach out to me on Instagram @coreycorpodian.
Alex: Awesome.
I think the best first episode for them to listen to is the one with me
if that's out, I don't know if it's out.
Corey: That's right.
Alex: Yeah.
Corey: It's such a good tactic to think about like doctors
and because you're- we've focused so hard on cold emailing and
sales and to kind of be able to say like,
"all right, this is a different approach," now you got your you got different weapons
in your tool belt.
Alex: That's all it is.
Just gathering info, gathering is my-
Corey: Absolutely.
Thanks for watching the video, I'll put links down below two Corey's podcast:
unleash success.
He does video interviews on YouTube and he also has a podcast for a lot of entrepreneurs,
a lot of really big names.
And I was on the show a few months ago, I do not know if that episode is out,
if it is we will link it down below.
Thanks for watching the video.
Subscribe, if you haven't already, Like it, if you haven't liked it;
leave a comment down below.
Do you have any other niches that you are wondering about?
For instance, this was selling to doctors and dentists,
maybe you want to sell to architects; I threw that out there randomly,
let me know down in the comments.
Thanks.
I'm Alex Berman and thank you for watching.
