#59: How To Deal With Money Objections From Prospective Patients

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Steve: So the total cost of the procedure, including hospital and surgeon fees for a non-insured patient, is $12,500.
Huyen: Umm, that’s a bit too much for me to take on now.

Welcome to OMD TV the place to be to grow and scale your practice.

No matter what services you're selling, the money objection is typically going to be the most dominant objection that will keep coming up, especially if you are dealing with self-referring patients or you are selling high-valued procedures. But handling this objection well, will help you to improve your new patient conversion rate dramatically, so it’s a valuable skill to learn.

In this video, I’m going to show you how to handle this objection cleverly, this will be an essential part of your team’s new patient enquiry handling process, so I suggest that you pass on this video to the person who takes charge of this if you think it will benefit them.

What I'm going to show you is how to handle money objections. How to isolate them and handle them, so that you can move onto the next step in your selling cycle.

Typically, when someone says “Oh… that is very expensive!” , or they say…“Do you have a cheaper option, that's a bit too much for me!'”, or…“What are the payment terms?”, or…“How do the payment’s work?”; it's all relating to money, and whether you are able to justify the price that you are asking.

Before we get into the specifics of money objections, something that I want to remind you about, is that a transaction takes place only when value exceeds price.

When someone is having a problem with the price you are quoting, that is because you haven't established enough value yet for them to justify the price.

That’s why in our sales training with other medical and healthcare practices, we typically advise them to never tell a prospect the price of an item until the full value has been established.

Without establishing its full value, regardless of the price that you tell them, they are going to think “That’s expensive!”, and use it as an excuse to not go ahead.

Knowing that, let's dive into the specifics of handling the money objection right now.

When someone says something like “Oh… that is really expensive, do you have any cheaper options?”; this is typically the way that you want to handle it… “Ok, is there any other reason, other than the money that we couldn't get this done for you?”. Or, “Is there any other reason, other than the money, on why this wouldn't make sense to you?”.

What are you suggesting right now? We're isolating the objection and making sure that it isn't just a fake objection masquerading as a real objection.

We want to isolate it and say something to the effect, “If everything else makes sense, is there any other reason that this wouldn't make sense to move forward?”; and giving them the opportunity to raise any other kinds of concerns or objections at this stage before addressing this money objection. If we know that this is the only remaining objection we need to address... we can move forward.

So, how do we go about addressing it?

First, we want to establish the ground rules of your engagement… and what you want to communicate here is openness; “Look, you can shoot me straight, is this something that you really want to do because if it's not a good fit that's completely okay, like, I can take a no as easy as I can take a yes”.

Now, what are we doing here?

We’re inviting them to be okay with giving us a no, and we’re making it easier for them to say no because the last thing that we want to do is address a fake objection or this is not a right fit for them, and they don't really want to do it.

We want to open that door and allow them to walk out that door before we waste our time trying handle any real objections on someone who is already imagining their exit. Now, this is probably completely opposite to how other sales people will operate. But in our experience, there is little value in forcing someone into something that they don’t want. So, we’re giving the prospect a door to exit out of if this is just not the right fit, and really locking down that money is a real price objection for them, and that we need to handle it right here and now.

A prospect could reply with; “No, it really is the money,”. And what we've done is we've just validated that this is a money objection, and then we know that they're really telling us that our value is not exceeding the price that we’re asking.

And what we need to do is to go back to building that item’s value again and say, “Look, I apologize, I obviously haven't communicated this very well…” and do your best establishing those value-added components again.

And if we get to the end of our attempts to establish the value once again, and it still doesn't make sense to the prospect, then there is always going to be a disconnect with that prospect and they most likely do not have the money to go ahead or they don't see that value.

Not that has to be the end of your sales pitch. If they say that they don't have the money and they are really struggling to get beyond that, if you are flexible, we can simply ask them… “How can we make this work for you?'”.

Find out more about their current situation… “How much savings do you have right now for this procedure. Tell us, and maybe we can work out the rest of the payment in aggregable terms?”, and present any payment plan option you have to see what they say.

They might say… “Oh… I could pay it off under these terms”, or… “I could do this.”, or finally….”Is there a cheaper option?”, but this is a really great way to isolate the money objection for specifically addressing it.

Now, the next way we look at the money objection, is to look at the objection to spending the money. In this instance, what we like to say to a prospect is; “Ok… so you didn't get in touch because you wanted to save money, you got in touch because you want to achieve X (which is the outcome that they desire). “.

That is why we always talk about unearthing the 4 key elements of the purchasing decision process from a prospect using the N.B.A.T (Needs – Budget – Authority – Time) method.

One of the first elements that we need to know, is if they have a strong need or big enough problem that they want to solve it right now or if they are just thinking about having it done within the next 6 months to a year. From that, you can guess the temperature of the lead; how hot or cold they are.

To recap; before handling any money objections, and building more value into your offering, you want to isolate the money objection with the prospect and ensure that this is the only remaining issue holding them back from proceeding. This way, you know that if it still comes down to a “No” from the prospect, then it wasn’t the payment terms or your service delivery or any other issue, it was truly just about the money.

We provide comprehensive sales training for your team, showing you how to address all sorts of different objections and how to even qualify prospects before they come and see you in person, in our special sales guide called the “7 Figure Samurai Sword Sales Guide For Clinics”. We have both electronic and audio versions for you. So check it out and apply what you will learn in it, and watch your new patient conversion rate improve immediately after you start applying it. Check it out!

Thank you for watching and bye for now.