Avoid 9 Costly Mistakes Financial Advisors Make When Engaging Doctors

If you are a financial advisor who would like to work with more doctor clients, here are 9 costly mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Deliver an unappealing message. Half of doctors report they are behind in retirement planning. However, most doctors are about as excited to talk about their retirement plans as kids are to eat the vegetables that are good for them. 

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Offer doctors messages they want to receive. Here are a few proven topics:
    •    How to legally and ethically reduce taxes.
    •    How to move up retirement by 5 to 10 years.
​    •    How to launch side gigs.

Mistake #2: Fail to fit in. Doctors divide the world into two groups of people: insiders and outsiders. In general, they trust insiders and worry that outsiders could prey on them. Further, they prefer to have conversations with other doctors in safe places that exclude outsiders, like private Facebook groups or on Doximity. 

Demonstrate your understanding of the culture of medicine and act like an insider. 
For example in the world of business, you default to a prospect’s first names—even if you’ve never met. If you do that with doctors, you have most likely lost the sale at hello. Use the doctor title until the doctor invites you to use his/her first name. 

Want to alienate a dentist prospect? Use the phrase “doctors and dentists” on your web site.
Dentists ARE doctors. Instead, your marketing materials could say, “physicians and dentists.”

​Run your marketing materials by a doctor who can pick up these subtle gaffes that would raise doctors' eyebrows.

Mistake #3: Move too fast. Doctors need to know that you care about them before they open their financial kimonos to you. Move slowly, just you would when dating the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life.

If you move too quickly, you will scare doctors away.

Offer your pearls of wisdom regularly, and put a “click here to schedule a phone call” on all outgoing marketing pieces. When the time is right and you have built enough trust, doctors will reach out!

Mistake #4: Give up too soon. On average, doctors who are not referred to you by another doctor will need to hear from you between 7 and 10 times before they become your client. 
The best way to approach practice-building is to build lists of doctors, and regularly deliver value. 

Mistake #5: Fail to harness the power of leverage. Imagine tightening an allen screw. Do you put the short or end or the long end of the wrench in the screw? If you put the short end in, you will have a longer lever arm and get more work done with your efforts. This is leverage.

Apply leverage in your marketing. Reach out to people who already know, like and trust you with the message, “You may not know this about me, but I’m on a mission to help doctors take control of their financial destiny. If you have any doctor friends, invite them to contact me to get a copy of The Myth of the Rich Doctor.” You can make a different offer once a quarter.
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Recruit a physician to open doors of opportunities that are generally closed to financial advisors. A physician has a much better chance of delivering a webinar or a presentation at a medical meeting than you do.

Mistake #6: Fail to understand the heartbeat of an encounter. If you have ever listened to your heart, you will hear, “Lub dub. Lub dub.” So, too, each ideal business encounter is made up of two elements. First, you engage doctors in conversation; I call this marketing. Second, you inspire doctors to take action; I call this selling.

When your personal doctors deliver medical care, they always end the appointment with instructions. “I would like to see you back in a week.” Or, “You’re doing great. See you next year! “ 
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Do you regularly lay out next steps with your doctor prospects? 

Mistake #7: Putting all your eggs in one basket. It’s easy to become emotionally invested in the outcome with any individual prospect or client. 
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If you find yourself pinning your hopes and dreams to any one prospect or client, step back. Urgency will scare doctors away. Instead, take a breath and make a plan for filling your sales funnels with more prospects. Diversification works in practice-building as well as wealth-building.

Mistake #8: Generate activity rather than results. I love playing Chinese checkers. It’s always fun to set up the board to make many jumps in a single move. However, whenever I do that I lose sight of what’s most important for winning the game: getting my marbles to the opposite triangle.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in activities that keep you busy. However, sit back and ask yourself, “What activities most reliably generate business results?” Then invest you efforts there. ​

Mistake #9: Fail to test and tweak. I recently took a course in Facebook advertising. The nationally-noted expert surprised me by saying, “Whenever I create a Facebook ad, I create 10 versions. Experience tells me that 9 of them don’t work.” 

How often do you test the title of your talk or copy on your landing page? Sometimes small tweaks can lead to dramatically-improved outcomes.
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When you avoid these nine common and costly mistakes, you are much more likely to accelerate your growth by acquiring more doctor clients. 

© 2019. Vicki Rackner MD. All rights reserved.  You may reproduce this post with the following by-line:
Vicki Rackner MD is an author, speaker and consultant who offers a bridge between the world of medicine and the world of business. She helps businesses acquire physician clients, and she helps physicians thrive. Contact her at (425) 451-3777.