Financial Advisors: How to Sell to Doctors

If you're a financial advisor, you market differently to doctors than to business-minded prospects. it's like adjusting your driving habits when you drive in England.

In this podcast episode, learn about the "B2D Swap" to conduct business with doctors (b2D) more effectively.

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Click here to download The Myth of the Rich Doctor. 

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Transcript

Financial Advisors: How to Sell to Doctors

How do you as a financial advisor sell to doctors? This is a burning topic. Of the hundreds of educational videos I’ve created for financial advisors, the single most viewed video of all times addresses this very topic.

Why the attraction? It’s because if you take a campaign that works well with business owners and put that marketing message in front of doctors, chances are good that you will get disappointing outcomes.

Today you’ll learn why this is the case. You’ll take away some principles to help you attract, engage and serve doctor clients more effectively.

And stay to the end because I’ll offer you the one thing you can do starting TODAY to set the wheels in motion.


Welcome to the Engaging Doctors podcast. If you’re a financial advisors who wants to accelerate your business growth by attracting, engaging and serving more doctor clients, you’re in the right place. I’m Dr. Vicki Rackner, your host. I’m a retired surgeon who has spent the past 15 years helping financial advisors crack the physician code and reach the doctors who want and need their help! Please subscribe so you’re notified when new tips come out.


So let’s dive in
In the US, we drive on the right side of the road. But if you’ve done any traveling you know that many countries do the opposite, driving on the left side of the road. We call it the wrong side.
Now imagine booking a trip to England to catch a Taylor Swift concert. You rent a car at the airport and and hop in to drive to your hotel. What would happen if you drove on the right side of the road. You would get disastrous results. You would almost certainly cause an accident that would hurt yourself and others.
For you, marketing to business-minded prospects—whom I’ll call Suits—is like driving on the right side of the road. You know how to safely get to your business results safely.
However, when you market to doctors— whom I’ll call White Coats—it’s like navigating in a country that drives on the left side of the road. Unless you know the local traffic laws and can read the local signs, chances are good that you will not get to your destination safely. 
When that happens, many financial advisors tell stories like, “You can’t reach doctors.” Actually that’s not the case at all. They just don’t know what they don’t know. 
Once you join the high performing financial advisors who understand that selling to doctors follows different rules and master them, you’ll get great results. Further, the fact that other financial advisors don’t learn the new rules of the marketing road now help you.

How are Rules Created?
You might wonder, “Why do different groups of people have different rules?
There’s always a reason.
Let’s take a look at why some countries drive on the right and others drive on the left.
In the Middle Ages, horse riders and cart drivers rode left-handed because they wanted their right hands free to grab their swords in case of an attack. This lead to left handed driving.
But left-handed Napoleon was more comfortable driving on the right side. He then convinced France and much of the European continent to stay to the right on the roadways. 
But the Brits stuck to the left. And many of the countries that drive on the left today were once part of the British Empire.
Suits and White Coats.
Why do you build business relationships with Suits differently than with White Coats?

It’s because the rules in the land of Business are different than in the land of medicine.

Everyone—both Suits and White Coats— wants to be successful. However, success is measured differently in these two worlds. 

In the world of business, profit is the ultimate measure of success. I delight when I meet with the financial advisors whom I coach, and they tell me their revenue increased 30%. We celebrate.

If an orthopedic surgeon walked into the surgeon’s lounge and said, “It’s been a great year. Profits are up by 30%.” this surgeon might be sent to a psychiatrist. This is not how White Coats think and measure success.

White coats measure success by our impact. We made a difference in this number of patient lives. We helped improve the clinical outcome of patients in these measurable ways.

Further, White Coats are guided by ethical principals. Our ethics hold that the care a patient is offered should not be influenced by a patient’s ability to pay. This means that Boomer physicians like myself were taught to simply not talk about money. In fact, for many doctors money is the ultimate taboo topic. I remember being at a destination restaurant in Europe and as the woman I was given a menu without prices—even though I was picking up the tab. I thoughts to myself, “that’s what it’s like practicing medicine. 

When I was a practicing physician, I treated a patient who literally died of embarrassment. She was too embarrassed to talk about the taboo topic of blood in her stool. By the time the colon cancer causing the bleeding was diagnosed, it was too late to save her.

Now, if you were selling dog training or furniture, a doctor’s relationship with money might not be that much of an issue. However, your core value promise is about building wealth.

Please don’t be discouraged. Doctors want and need your help. There are about 1 million practicing physicians and 200,000 practicing dentists in the US. According to the US department of Labor Statistics 20 out of the top 20 earners in the US call themselves “doctor.” However, as a group doctors have a hard time translating their high incomes into wealth. Half report being behind in retirement planning. Only half of doctors work with professional financial advisors. Those who work with advisors are more likely to be on track for retirement.

How do you shift from one perspective to another and drive on the different metaphorical side? 

Here’s my number one tip. Do a B2D Swap.

Conducting business with doctors follows neither the B2B nor B2C model; it’s its own thing I call “the B2D Blueprint.” Doing a B2D Swap is like shifting your driving habits when you’re in England.

Here’s how to do it. You mirror doctors’ behaviors. Think of the last time you or someone you love had a health challenge. Imagine sitting on the exam table in your gown that leaves you exposed. You might worry. “Do I have cancer? Will I make it, or is this it?” The the doctor walks in and sits in front of you. Your energy shifts. You think, “I’m not alone. This person has dealt with this before. I’m in good hands!”

Now imagine that you and this doctor switch positions. Now you are the “wealth doctor” in the white coat. Your doctor prospect is in the exam gown. Many doctors who consider their financial futures have the same apprehension and discomfort you have when there’s a health scare. 

This is the B2D Swap. Some of my financial advisors clients even go out and purchase a white coat to drive this home.

The B2D Swap is helpful in all phases of marketing and relationship building.

Are you wondering about the best way to engage new doctor prospects who don’t know you exist? Think about how you found your last doctor to treat yourself and your family members. My guess is that you went to someone you trusted and asked for recommendations. That’s exactly what doctors do. Your goal is to become the go-to guy or go-to gal among targeted groups of doctors.

Let’s say you have knee pain. What would you do? I bet you hop online and identify DIY interventions. Doctors also go online searching for solutions to their sources of financial pain. Now imagine a doctor told you what words they put into the search bar.  You could then include these words in your own marketing materials, and be found in doctors’ searches. You can also created more compelling marketing copy by song doctors’ words. “Doctors, have you ever wondered?”.…

Let’s say the pain is bad enough that you make an appointment with your orthopedic surgeon. Imagine the surgeon said, “I see you’re in for knee pain. Let me tell you all about the great new mechanical knee I’m implanting in all my patients.” You would think, “This doctor hasn’t asked me any questions. He hasn’t examined me. How does he even know I need a knee replacement?” 

Unfortunately I’ve seen financial advisors launch into their wealth-building methods before they learn anything about the what the prospect needs and how they experience their pain.

As you plan your discovery calls, be guided by the flow of a clinical encounter with your doctor. Think of the questions your doctor asks you in the interview. “Where does it hurt? How have you treated the pain? What makes the pain better or worse?  On a scale of 1 to 10 how severe is the pain? How does the pain impact your life? Are there things you have given up doing that you want to do again?” 

You can ask similar questions to doctors in financial pain. Where does it hurt? Maybe they tell you, “I wanted to move up retirement, so I invested in a speculative venture to get the big gains. Then I lost it all.”   

The B2D Swap is a new way to see the many parallels between your job as a wealth strategist and a doctor’s job.

We know that prospects want to work with financial advisors they know, like and trust. Our brains are wired with a special cell called a mirror neuron. The words’ I like you” really mean “I’m like you, I see part of myself reflected in you.”

Now here’s the great news. The job you do is very much like the job a doctor does.  

You both help people you serve create a plan for achieving optimal health in an uncertain future. You optimize fiscal health; doctor optimize physical health. 

You and doctors face the same challenges. The stakes are high for the people they serve. There are many choices. There are no right answers at the back of the book; however, there are choices that are right for each individual.

Suits are comfortable with financial decision-making.They deal with business choices on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, they might be very uncomfortable and emotional when they face health challenges. Medical decisions are outside of the usual day-to-day experience. Think of how you behaved the last time you or someone you love has a health challenge. My guess is that you were not at your best. You may have made choices that don’t make good sense as you look back. 

White coats are comfortable with medical decision-making. They know the medical literature and can tell you 5 year survival statistic with different treatment options. They fully engage their pre-frontal cortex—their thinking brains. The reason that doctor don’t treat themselves of people they love is that emotion can cloud judgment.

When it comes to managing their money, most White Coats behave more like their patients. We physicians are not taught how to build wealth. It’s  embarrassing to be so smart and know so little about money. We fear possible consequences of making bad choices, like outliving our money and needing to move in with our children. 

Further, White Coats have trust issues, because there are so many financial predators out there targeting doctors. Bernie Madoff’s clients included doctors. 

How can you make it easier for the doctors who want and need your help? Help create a sense of safety. 
For example, master the fine art of using medical metaphors. That way, doctors move from a topic they are innately emotional about to a topic that feels safe.

Let’s say a doctor asks you, “How safe is this investment?”

You might say, “Doctor, when your patients ask you about their probable outcome of your treatment, you would love to say, ‘I promise that you will be pain free.’ In a similar way I would love to promise that you will see remarkable returns. I can’t make promises for the same reasons you can’t . There are factors outside of our control. However, if you look at the data, the benefits of this strategy far outweigh the risks.”

Doctors will think, “I get that!”

Always ask yourself, “How can I conduct myself more like a doctor?” You most likely have a privacy policy. Doctors have one too. Every time you see the doctor you sign a HIPAA form. Why not create a FIPAA form that describes your privacy policy in terms that feel familiar to doctors.

Having a hard time inspiring doctors to get documents to you? G online and purchase a prescription pad. Then send doctors a written prescription. They will laugh, but there’s magical powers in the perception pads. And, by the way, you don’t need to be a doctor to purchase prescription pads online.


To reiterate: Doctors want to build wealth. They want and need a trusted professional like you. 

To work with more doctors, gain a deeper understand about what wealth means to them, what they want and why they want it. These things are different fro different groups of doctors. Employed physicians have different financial concerns than physicians who have an ownership stake in the practice. Boomers behave differently than millennials..

For example, right now we are seeing an epidemic of burnout among physicians. When burned out physicians were asked, “What would you need to turn around burnout?” Their number one response was “More money.” Most doctors think, “To get more money, I need to see more patients. But I’m already exhausted. There’s no way out.” 

Instead of beginning a conversation with the doctor’s current retirement planning, you may want to ask a doctor, “How are you doing? We know that over 60% of physicians are burned out. How about you? What is you plan for turning things around?”

To build relationships with physician clients, understand what’s important to them and what they really want. Say to a doctor, “Let’s think of wealth as the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. What is it that you really want?” 

A campaign to successfully build business relationships with doctors begins with the recognition that you’re driving on a different side of the road.
Embrace the B2D Swap. Reframe the way you talk about money and about the value you deliver. Meet your doctor prospects where they are. What’s important to them? What do they really want?


What can you do today to help you sell to doctors? Begin by gaining a deeper understanding about doctors and their relationship with money. Follow the link below to get free digital copies of my books The Myth of the Rich Doctor and The 9 Money Mistakes Doctors Make. These books are well loved by doctors. Take away the insights about doctors and their relationship with money I uncovered by interviewing hundreds of doctors. Notice how I use medical metaphors. Notice what you like and incorporate that language in your conversations with doctors. Please leave comments to share what’s working for you.

Thank you for your time and attention. If you found value in this content, please like this video. Subscribe so you’re notified when new videos are released. This is the right place and the right time to mine the treasures in the medical market. Stay tuned and I’ll show you how.

“In our next episode, I’ll lay out out the 10 laws of Physician Engagement” This is a more granular description of the differences between acquiring doctor client and acquiring business-minded clients. Mastering the 10 Laws puts you in a better position to sell to doctors—so don’t miss it!”