Great way to educate your staff on what we do and why we do it!

Just a reminder to all of us,

Please read the following story and then my comments below. Perhaps this will give you a better idea of what's involved in your practice to "make things work"...

A customer asked me how much it would cost to do this job (the deck pictured above), and I told him it was $1500. He responded, "Isn't that a bit pricey for this job?" So I asked him, "What do you think it should cost?" He said, "I think $800 at most... It's a pretty simple job, right?

I told him, "For $800, why don’t you try doing it yourself?" He replied, "But I don’t know how to do it." I said, "For $800, I can teach you how. You'll save $700 and learn something for next time." He thought that sounded good and agreed.

But I reminded him, "To get started, you’ll need some tools: a welder, grinder, chop saw, drill press, welding hood, gloves, and more." He replied, "I don’t have all that equipment, and I can’t buy it just for one job." I offered, "For another $300, I can rent my tools to you so you can do it."

He agreed, and I said, "Great! I’ll be waiting for you on Tuesday to start the work." He said, "I can't do Tuesday; I only have time today." I explained, "I’m only available on Tuesday to teach you and lend you my tools. I’m busy with other customers on other days."

He sighed, "Okay! So I guess I’ll have to give up my Tuesday and skip my tasks." I reminded him, "Don’t forget, when you do the job yourself, you also have to pay for the nonproductive factors." He asked, "What’s that?" I explained, "Bureaucratic stuff, taxes, VAT, security, insurance, fuel, and so on."

He reacted, "Oh no! That means I’ll spend more money and waste a lot of time!" I asked, "Do you have time to do it before?" He said, "Sure!"

I told him, "I'll prepare all the materials you need. We can load the truck Monday evening or Tuesday morning, but you’ll need to come by at 6. Don’t be late to avoid traffic!" He complained, "6? That’s too early for me! I’m used to waking up later."

Then he thought for a moment and said, "You know what? I’d rather just pay you the $1500. If I tried to do it myself, it wouldn’t turn out right and would end up costing me more." I explained, "When you pay a job, especially a handcrafted one, you’re covering not just the materials but also:

 Knowledge, Experience, Study, Tools, Services, Time, Punctuality, Accountability, Professionalism, Accuracy, Guarantees, Patents, Sacrifices, Safety and security, Taxes

Critiquing others’ work based on pricing isn’t fair. My fees for a similar task would be much higher, but the point is more about the principle than the exact amount. Only when you understand all the elements involved in producing a job can you really estimate the actual cost."

My thoughts…and how to make it real to your staff the next time you have to raise your prices…this is an actual email I sent to my staff when we finally had to raise our prices after a few years.

Now, to my doctors and loving, caring, and giving staff members who are trying to help people and also themselves, hopefully, this will give you a little better idea of what exactly is and has been involved in this whole process. 

To give you an example, here's some of what we chiropractors go through:  

*Knowledge (4 years of college and almost 4 years of post-college training and education), 
*Experience (how many years you've been in practice), 
*Study (we have a minimum of 20 hours yearly) of continuing education on a yearly basis, not counting hours we spend on our own researching and learning), 
*Tools (x-ray machines, office space, computers, software, laws,HIPAA  rules, etc), 
*Services that we put in like weekly educational orientations, etc.,
*Time (how many hours we are open a week), 
*Punctuality, we don’t miss work,
*Accountability (we do what we say we're going to do and we do to the best of our ability, each and every time), no matter how bad we might be feeling, 
*Professionalism (we've never had a complaint registered against us in almost 50 years), 
*Accuracy (our adjustments are precise, and specific), 
*Safety (we've never had a malpractice case, 
*Security (we've never had a HIPAA violation), 
*Post-secondary Training that we’ve gone through on weekends, 
*Staff training (ongoing and never-ending).That takes a lot of time and a lot of money. 
*Cost of everything else…name one business that hasn’t raised their prices in the last year.
*Oh yeah, every one of you want a raise too, right?

And patients are upset because they have to pay a little more for their care? Come on! 

I tell you all this because what we do changes lives and saves lives! If we didn't, we couldn't fool this many people for so long! 

We are so important to the health of this country that our government said we were “essential” and gave us special  permission to stay open during Covid, saying we were essential to the health of America.

So don't ever let a patient make you feel bad or give you a hard time. We will protect you and keep the patients in their place.

They would never think of giving their cardiologist or oncologist a hard time for raising their prices. In fact, they don't even know their prices and when they do raise them, they don't tell anyone, they just raise them. 

My  point: Be proud of who you are, who you represent and what we're doing. We really don't appreciate or need "price shoppers" either. If they're looking for a "cheaper" place to go to, tell them "Good luck! We don't sell prices here. We sell quality. If you want cheap, go somewhere else. But the door is always open here.”

Hope this helps. Thank you!