Ep #76 - Why Your Best Employee Still Can't Sell — And What Actually Fixes It

Every hire is an A-player. So why is your sales conversion still flat?

This week on Beyond Hormones, Jody tackles episode two in the six-part series on the biggest marketing and sales gaps hiding inside growing hormone and functional medicine clinics — and this one isn't about culture, it's about staffing structure. Jody breaks down the single most common mistake she sees in clinics that have grown just enough to bring on a team: handing the sales conversation to whoever happens to be friendly at the front desk.

Using a real walkthrough of the numbers — a patient liaison's salary versus what that role can actually generate in revenue over three years — Jody makes the case for why sales needs to be its own dedicated role, not a task squeezed in between charting and phone calls. She digs into why being "friendly" doesn't equal being "skilled" at sales, why privacy changes everything about whether a hesitant patient says yes, and why even the best-designed role eventually needs a system underneath it to catch what one person can't.

If you've ever wondered why your team is great but your conversion numbers say otherwise, this episode is for you.

Topics covered:
• Why giving one employee too many roles quietly costs you patients
• The real difference between "friendly" and "sales-skilled"
• Why privacy is often the deciding factor in whether a patient starts treatment
• A simple math exercise to justify (or design) your next hire
• What KPIs a patient liaison role should actually be tracked on
• Why sales and marketing have to work as one loop, not two departments
• Where automation fits in once your team still runs out of hours in the day

Connect with Jody:
www.acceleratedmedicalpractices.com
https://www.instagram.com/acceleratedmedicalpractices
https://www.facebook.com/acceleratedmedicalpractices

The Accelerator: accelerator.acceleratedmedicalpractices.com
Practice Automation System: acceleratedmedicalpractices.com/automation

This podcast is powered by Accelerated Medical Practices, where we believe hormone and wellness care should be both life-changing and profitable.  If you own or run a clinic and are interested in being a guest on the show, please complete the form here and let's connect!  Or email Jody at Jody@AcceleratedMedicalPractices.com.

 🚀 Grow your clinic with proven systems at AcceleratedMedicalPractices.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to Beyond Hormones, the Business of Wellness, the podcast for hormone and functional medicine providers who want a thriving, predictably profitable practice, and maybe a little less stress along the way. Hi, I'm your host, Jody Lane, and I've worked with lots of clinics in marketing, sales, and business development, and I have seen what works and what doesn't. And here's what I believe hormone and wellness care should be available to everyone who wants it. And while providers know the medicine, many struggle with the business side of their cash practice. And that's where I come in. See, this podcast is here to share real strategies, real stories, things you can implement in your practice right away. So I am so glad you're here. Come on, let's go. Hey everybody, welcome back to Beyond Hormones, the business of wellness. I'm Jodi, and this is episode two in our six-part series on the biggest gaps in your clinic's marketing and sales. The holes that let patients and revenue slip through, even when you're technically growing. Now, last week we talked about three of those holes, and they were following up with leads, the patient experience and retention. And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, do me a favor, stop right now, go back, because it sets up everything that we're going to be building on today. Because today we're talking about something that surprises people, your staff, not culture. And I say that because if you know this show, you know me, you know I could talk about culture all day long. But this is different. This is about what happens when you have done everything right. You've hired the great people, you've gotten the ones that have the great values, you've given them great training, and still you have a hole in your bucket because of how the work is divided up. So I'm gonna tell you about the front desk person that every clinic dreams of having, and why handing her your sales conversations might be quietly costing you tens of thousands of dollars a year. Yep. We're also gonna do some real math together. And I'm gonna show you exactly where a system needs to sit underneath your people so they can do their best work. All right, are you ready? This is for you if you have ever wondered why your great team that you worked so hard to acquire isn't converting prospects the way you hope they would. Or if you are about to hire your very first dedicated salesperson and you want to do it right the first time. All right, let's get into it, guys. Now, normally when we talk about staff on this show, as I mentioned, we're talking about culture, how to build a culture. And if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I am very big on culture. I truly believe that if you intentionally build it, meaning that your people feel appreciated, they feel respected and heard, they have room to grow, they're acknowledged both verbally and financially, and they're genuinely engaged in growing the business, then running your clinic gets so much easier. But here's the thing: even if you have all of that, even if everyone is working off the same core values, you've got quarterly reviews scheduled, you've got your meetings dialed in, you can still have real problems around your staff in marketing and sales. And that's what we're gonna tackle today. We're gonna look at two specific issues. The first one is giving one staff member too many jobs, and the second is what happens when there's no system underneath your staff to catch what they can't get to. You ready? Let's start with the first one. Because I promise you, this is happening in more clinics than you would think. We're gonna call this hole number four: one person wearing too many hats. Now, we want our clinics to be nimble, right? We want low overhead, we want healthy net margins, and we want a lean stuff. So a lot of practices bring on one, two, maybe even three people, and they divide up everything that needs to get done from patient care in the office, patient requests in between appointments, and follow up with leads and prospective patients who are interested but not booked yet, and just split it across the team that's there. Doesn't really matter what their job is, what their role is, what their skill set is, they just kind of divide up the tasks among whoever comes in to work every day. Now, here's the problem with that. Even if you've done the people analyzer, now if you don't remember what the people analyzer means, I want you to go back to episode number 50. It's called workforce, the people who make or break, because it breaks down in that show how to hire the best people for you and how to keep them working with you for many, many years to come using the people analyzer. But anyway, even if you have the right people in the right seat in your clinic and every single person is an A plus across the board, that doesn't mean this setup is going to work. Because just because somebody can do something doesn't mean they can do it well. Did you hear that? Just because somebody can do something doesn't mean they're going to do it well and get you the result. Let me give you an example that comes up constantly in our industry. The person who sits at your front desk, or if you're virtual, it's the person who is the first line of defense with your patients. But I mean the dream front desk person. I'm talking they are excited to be there every day. They're super friendly, organized, a great communicator, writes complete notes. Everybody in the office loves him or her. Because of all of that, a lot of practices also hand over the sales conversation to that person. She takes the treatment plan, and after the provider hands it off, she's the one to do the do you want to sign up conversation. Now, there is a lot of things wrong with that setup, and I want to walk you through why. I'm not just going to tell you don't do it. I'm going to really show you why it doesn't work. The first reason is friendly isn't the same as skilled. Being warm is a great starting trait for a salesperson, but it's not the whole job. A good salesperson has to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. They're not just the easy conversations. And it's it's more than that. It's being willing to sit with someone's objections and actually see past those objections. It could be fear, it could be worry, it could be financial concern, whatever is standing in the way between this person and the life they actually want. There's a real difference here between pushing someone into a sale and standing for a patient while they work through what really is their barrier versus what's just an objection that has an answer. And you want the latter to be for your patients. Now that's not an easy skill, but let me ask you: have you ever sat across from someone who's on the fence? I mean, genuinely confronted by real concerns, and you stayed supportive without being pushy. You were not dismissive, you were not patronizing, you were just present, honest, and steady until you help them get through their concerns. That's what it takes to sell in wellness. Being friendly does not automatically give you that. All right, reason number two. And this might matter even more than the skill gap. It's time and availability. Some practices treat the sales conversation as somebody's secondary job. Usually it's the medical assistant or it's the front desk because those two roles are really, really important. And if you're just starting out and it's only you, then I am not talking to you in this moment. I'm really talking to those practices that have grown enough to have brought on a little bit of stuff. For all you longtime listeners, you know how much I love supporting hormone clinics to become the best version that you can be. So if you don't mind, I want to stop and share for just a quick minute about a product of ours that I think can make a real impact for you. And it's called Practice Automation System. Now here's something most clinic owners I've spoken to never realize. They think their marketing doesn't work. When the truth is, most clinics are often wasting up to 75% of their marketing budget without even knowing it. Not because their marketing is bad, no. It's because of what happens after the lead comes into the clinic. Now, according to studies, 87% of people don't answer calls from unknown phone numbers anymore. Can you believe that? I know I didn't know the number was that high. So when your office calls back a lead and the lead doesn't pick up the phone and you don't follow back after that, the money you spent to get that lead is gone. Look, the Practice Automation System is what we built to fix this problem. The moment a lead comes in, the system texts them in five minutes. It sends nurturing emails for weeks if they're not ready. It helps them move through a sales pipeline your team can actually keep up with. We built the foundation for this inside an actual hormone clinic, the one I worked at, the one I helped to scale to over $4 million in revenue. So every campaign tactic, every text, and every email language and timing was tested on real hormone patients before it ever became a product. For most clinics, as few as four patients a year covers the cost of the entire system. To find out if practice automation system is right for your clinic, go to accelerated medical practices.com slash automation. That's acceleratedmedicalpractices.com slash automation. Alright guys, now let's get back to what we were talking about. Here's why sales doesn't work to be a secondary role. Ask yourself, what comes first in your office? The patient in front of you or the patient who wants to come in and see you? It's always going to be the one in front of you, and it should be. If your medical assistant walks in with 25 tasks from existing patients, refills to submit, symptom messages to respond to, charts to prep, patients to room, the leads from last night are never going to be first on that list. Either it's the follow-up call to the person who had their consult yesterday or the patient who's confused about a charge on their account. Medical care is always going to come first, and it should. Then there's privacy. And I can't stress this enough. When it comes to the initial consult, this is just another Tuesday for you and your team. You've done this hundreds of times. But for the person sitting across from you, this might be the very first time someone hasn't told them that all their symptoms are just in their head. They walked in scared. They're dealing with brain fog, with weight gain, with sleepless nights. They spend 45 minutes to an hour with you. They're overwhelmed, but they're excited. And then they get handed a number that's more than they expected. They most certainly have questions. They almost need a little mini therapy session with somebody after that whole consult. You cannot do that at the front desk. You can't do that in the waiting room. No, you need a private space and someone with the time to sit in it with them. It's honestly the difference between whether a person has those reason to, and this might matter even more than the skill gap. It's time and availability. See, some practices treat the sales conversation as someone's secondary job, usually the medical assistant or the front desk. And that makes sense because you know those two roles are really important. You have to have them. And if you're just starting out and it's just you, then this part isn't for you. I'm talking to the practices that have grown enough to start bringing on a few staff members. Here's why sales can't be a secondary role. Ask yourself this question. What comes first? The patient in front of you or the patient who wants to come in and see you? It's always going to be the one in front of you, and it should be. If your medical system walks in with 25 tasks, refills to do, symptom messages to respond to, charts to prep, patients to room, the leads from last night are never going to be first on that person's list. Neither is the follow-up call to the person who had their consult yesterday just to check in to see if they have any questions, or the patient who's concerned about a charge on their account. No, medical care is always going to come first for them as it should. That's why you need someone dedicated to just those tasks. Then there's privacy. And I can't stress this enough. When it comes to the initial consultation, this is just another Tuesday for you and your staff. You've done this hundreds of times. But for the person sitting across from you, this might be the first time someone hasn't told them that all their symptoms are not just in their head. They may come in scared. They're probably dealing with brain fog and waking and maybe even sleepless nights. And they spend 45 minutes or an hour with you and they're overwhelmed, but they're excited. And then they're handed a number that's more than they expected, and they can't use their insurance. So they most certainly have questions. They might even need like a little mini therapy session with someone. You can't do that at the front desk. You can't do that in a waiting room. No, you need a private space and someone with the time to sit in it with them. It's honestly the difference between whether a person has what they need to start treatment or they walk out the door. Now, the patient who walks in pre-sold, who already has a friend on hormones, who's done all their research, who just needs to come in and have you confirm the treatment plan, they probably don't need any of that. And here's the catch. If you don't have a dedicated role or a private space for these conversations, then my guess is you're only converting mostly those types of people. The ones who need more hand holding, the scared ones, the unsure ones. They're the ones who are falling through the cracks. And you may not even notice because the easy ones are still saying yes. So your patient roster is still growing. And the cost of that isn't just revenue. Although let's not pretend that isn't real. It is important to grow your revenue, but it's also about that person's life. It might take them another month, another six months, even a year to work through their hesitation and get on treatment somewhere else, which means that they have much longer time to deal with their fogginess, their sleeping badly and not feeling that themselves. Now, if I'm doing a good job convincing you of the need for this extra role, then my guess is you're wondering if it's worth it financially. At least that's what I would be thinking. So let's do the math here. Let's say you hire someone brand new, you don't use somebody else that is already in your practice on your staff, and we're going to call this person a patient liaison. And let's say it costs you $50,000 a year. Instead of thinking about the $50,000 as an expense, I want you to divide it by what the revenue of a hormone patient is worth to you annually. Now let's keep the math simple. Let's say that that patient is worth $2,000 a year. If that role brings you 25 extra patients a year than you would have otherwise gotten, then that person has already paid for their own salary in just patients alone. Now, let's stretch it out a little bit further. Because hormone patients typically stay with a good clinic for three to five years, especially if you've got the patient experience down, the retention pieces in place, and you have someone in this role to follow up and make sure that your patients are being well taken care of. Now, let's say those same 25 patients stay for three years. That's an extra $6,000 instead of $2,000. That's $150,000 in extra revenue off of $50,000 salary. Everyone has different annual plans. So I want you to run through your own numbers because it's a great reframe to understand how the role of a patient liaison more than pays for itself. Now, when you're ready to bring someone into this role, I want you to give them a real target tied to that math. Replace their own salary and patients within a set number of months and treat them like a KPI-driven role from day one. Track their phone calls, track their appointments, a real yes-to-no ratio, ongoing follow-up with the not nows, and a tight partnership with whoever's doing your marketing. Because sales and marketing are 100% symbiotic. Marketing brings in the leads, your liaison qualifies them and feeds insight back to marketing can bring in better qualified leads next time. That loop is what makes both sides better. They work beautifully together. All right, let's move over to whole five. Even the right person getting run out of time. So here's the layer underneath all of this, especially early on. You may not have the revenue for a dedicated role, and that's fair. You have to build up to that. But even once you do, even once you've hired a patient liaison, there's still a ceiling about what one person can physically get done in a day. And to understand why that ceiling matters so much, I want to go back for a second to what we talked about in episode one, because this is where really these two episodes connect. Remember, we said in episode one that follow-up isn't one thing. It's actually three categories. There's the person who's sure, they're ready to move, who just needs a handful of the right touches to get them across the finish line. Then there's the long-term nurture category, the person who isn't ready yet, but will be eventually, and as long as you stay in front of them, they will choose your clinic. And then there's everybody in between, working through all their real objections that need to be met with the right information at the right moment, not just a generic check-in text. So now think about what that actually looks like across a full patient roster. Every new lead needs something somewhere between five and eight touches just in the first sequence, tied to whatever they opted into. Every patient who has a consult tomorrow needs a check-in to make sure they have their labs. They know where to go, they have their questions that they want to get answered. Every patient is already on treatment needs the retention touch points we talked about last week. So they don't quietly drift, get discouraged, or start Googling around and land on another clinic who gives them the answer. And every one of those categories needs to be tracked separately, followed up on its own timeline and adjusted the moment someone responds, or when they don't. Sound overwhelming? It is. It's genuinely an enormous amount of tracking and timing. Even a full-time, highly motivated, KPI-driven patient liaison, the exact right hire we just talked about, cannot hold all of that in their head and execute it perfectly every single day. Especially as your marketing keeps working, more leads coming in behind the ones that are already working. No matter how disciplined they are, something is going to fall through the cracks if it's all done manual on post-it notes and Excel spreadsheets. There are only so many hours in the day. And there are only so many hours, and this is simply more touch points that any one person can carry manually, no matter how good they are. So what do you do instead? Yes, the most overused word right now in marketing, you need a system, some kind of automation, working quietly in the background, handling all that volume, the touches, the check-ins, the alerts. So a human only has to step in when it really matters. It's really going to move the needle, when someone needs a real conversation instead of a scheduled touch. Once that kind of system is built, and yes, that is exactly what our practice automation system does for hormone clinics, someone does still need to check in, make sure it's running smoothly, follow through when red flags come up, follow through it when flags that a real conversation needs to happen. And if you don't have a dedicated liaison yet, this becomes even more vital, not less, because your front desk, your medical assistant, or you, if you're on your own at this point, you simply don't have the bandwidth or the time or often the experience to keep up with the volume of communication all on their own. Look, at the end of the day, if you own a hormone clinic, staff is almost certainly your biggest expense. In a mid-sized clinic, it often is around half of everything you spend outside the cost of goods, things like medications and pellets and all of that. So the people costing you the most deserve to work at their absolute best with real support in place to do their jobs well. And underneath that support has to be a system doing the quiet, unglamorous work of catching up what people can't get to. Because at the end of the day, it's about results for you in revenue and in patient roster growth. And for your patients, whose questions and follow-up keeps them engaged instead of drifting, guessing, or clinic hopping and interrupting their own treatment. We want them to be taken care of. We want them to feel like they're supported. We want them to have somebody they can reach out to. So here's where that leaves you. Right people in the right seat, invested in carefully so you're set up to win, someone who can genuinely pay for themselves, and a system underneath them, mapping every touch point, your leads, and your patient needs. So nothing depends entirely on one person's bandwidth on any given day. Now, if you want help building that, the role or the system or both, you know where to find me. Just go to accelerative medical practices.com slash automation to learn more about our incredible system built just for hormone clinics called the Practice Automation System. And if it makes sense after you're on that page, go ahead and grab a demo. It'll either be with me or with Patrick, and we'll be delighted to go through all that with you. There's no pressure, just an open door if you want it. Look, my old boss used to say this all the time. You stay on hormones until either you don't want to feel good anymore or you're dead. So let's make sure the people helping your patients get there have what they need to do it very well. All right, guys, that is all for today. Thank you so much for being here with me today. We have our next gap coming to you next Thursday, but we have another interview coming up on Monday. So I hope that you catch us from Monday's show. Thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to Beyond Hormones, the business of wellness. I hope that you're walking away with fresh ideas and real strategies you can use to grow your practice with profit and purpose. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow the show so you never miss a conversation. And if something you heard today resonated with you, do me a favor, share this episode with a friend or colleague. It's one of the best ways you can support the show, and it might be exactly what they need to hear right now. If you want even more tools and support, go ahead and head over to accelerated medical practices.com. Until next time, keep doing the work that matters. Your patients need you, and I am cheering you along every step of the way.