Consulting with companies? Avoid these 3 pitfalls
By Cassandra Shepard

With today’s challenges in building a practice — insurance limitations, rising costs, and increasing competition for patients — it’s more important than ever to diversify your offerings to enhance, and sometimes just protect, your practice viability.

Corporate consulting can provide increased revenues, stronger practice scope and improved community exposure.

However, scores of chiropractors are already seeking to establish industrial consulting partnerships. This presents two challenges:

• How to differentiate your services from those of others to attract corporate interest; and

• How to connect with decision makers so they will open their doors — and their employees — to you.

Here are three pitfalls you might fall into as you attempt to get into industrial consulting.

PITFALL #1: WRONG PROBLEM

The first pitfall is not focusing on a company’s real problem.

Most chiropractors concentrate on two areas when seeking industrial consulting: lowering workers’ compensation claims and reducing insurance premiums. The trouble with this approach, however, is that these areas may not be at the top of a company’s list of problems.

Although general managers and CEOs want (and are responsible for) a safe workplace, top concerns of many executives today are attrition (a reduction in numbers of employees as a result of resignation, retirement, or death) and absenteeism (employees not showing up for work when scheduled).

A recent study by Hay Group, a management consulting firm known for its studies on employment trends, revealed that attrition can cost a company as much as 4 percent of its revenue and up to 40 percent of its profits. This includes money spent on direct replacement expenses such as advertising, recruiting fees, and employee training and development. It does not include key indirect opportunity costs such as lost sales, lower productivity, and customer defections.

The Hay Group's #1 suggested strategy in reducing attrition was “Show them you care.” Companies need to show their employees that they care and do so in a way that is most meaningful to the employees.

You can provide solutions to companies to help them reduce absenteeism and ultimately affect attrition. This is your ticket. It’s also the second pitfall.

PITFALL #2: A LACKLUSTER PROGRAM

Companies want employees to love working with them as much as they want their customers to love their products or services. If companies accomplish that, they will attract and retain the top talent in their industry and ensure that they have the right teams in place to achieve their goals.

A positive work environment and vibrant company culture are essential to help an organization achieve its objectives. Your mission is to help them acquire all of the attributes that make their organization a place where employees want to come to work, give their best, and stay throughout their careers.

Your consulting program must be enticing enough to leave employees chomping at the bit to participate. Some programs to consider include:

• On-site massage therapy. Employees usually enroll by the dozens to participate in this program. Offer a program like this and watch referrals for additional care go through the roof.

• Health awareness seminars. Design them around today’s most pressing problems such as diabetes and weight management.

• Stress reduction. Managers today are so often faced with the challenges of doing more with less that it’s become a cliché. Share tips and techniques for helping them cope with the burdens of their responsibilities.

PITFALL #3: Being self-centered

Just as each country has its own customs and traditions, so too does the world of human resources, the department in which healthcare decisions reside. You’ll go a lot farther when you learn and follow the critical dos and don’ts.

• Asking too much, too soon. Calling a company’s benefits manager to see if the company’s insurance covers chiropractic care is a premature action. And because it is self-centered (focusing on benefiting you, not the company), it doesn’t build rapport.

To tap into this market successfully, talk to your top 10 favorite patients. Chances are good that if they are seeing you, their companies have insurance benefits to cover their care.

Share with these patients what you want to do (offer wellness programs) and ask them for the name of their HR manager.

They may even be able to share with you insights on the best time to call and what the HR manager’s personality and work style is like.

• Not protecting the company’s interest. Most companies have no-solicitation policies to prevent any union-organizing activities. If you were to ask employees to fill out forms for a free screening as part of your wellness program, you would be guilty of solicitation.

It is acceptable for you to hand out business cards and giveaways, but steer clear from any activities that require disclosure of employee contact information.

• Covertly ‘hawking your wares.’ Companies today are acutely aware of consulting professionals who want solely to build their own businesses and do little to help the organization with its goals. Stay focused on helping the organization reduce absenteeism and attrition; your services will be in demand.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Industrial consulting can provide supplementary income to your practice while leveraging your time and maximizing your exposure to large audiences who are likely candidates for chiropractic care.

By focusing on the organization’s needs, offering an irresistible program to help diminish their challenges, and being respectful of their ways of doing business, you will gain a company’s trust and become its provider of choice. From this, new patients are bound to flow into your practice!

Cassandra Shepard, CPBA, CPVA, is president of Prosperity Solutions, LLC. She worked as a human resources executive for Fortune 500 companies for 12 years and is now coaching chiropractors and alternative health practitioners in boosing their practice income through corporate programs. She can be reached at 719-282-9355 or www.bookyourpracticesolid.com.