Use the full potential of your chamber membership


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Use the full potential of your chamber membership
By Daniel J. Cruoglio, DC

Are you scratching your head, wondering how to attract patients to your clinic?

Don’t overlook the obvious: Join an organization every community has — your local chamber of commerce.

Joining the chamber offers a number of opportunities to get your practice known in your community. Consider:

• Web presence. A member directory, available to the public, is accessible on the Web site of each chamber. If someone in your town is looking for a chiropractor, your practice will immediately pop up.

Even if several practices in your area are members, your practice will be listed among them.

• Welcome bags. Many chambers offer welcome bags to newcomers to the area. Find out if yours makes this offer and how to participate in it.

Consider including a small, useful gift customized with your name on it — a pen, calendar, notepad, sticky notes, or refrigerator magnet, for example.

• Meetings. One purpose of the chamber is to provide networking opportunities for its members. Often the meetings feature a speaker. If yours does, volunteer to speak. Tell members about yourself, your practice, and chiropractic.

• Resource table. Your chamber may provide a resource table at its meetings. Members who attend the meeting can put materials on display.

Consider placing samples of topical creams stapled to brochures about your practice. This is a great way to get your name into the public.

Which chamber?

The most logical chamber for you to join is the one that supports your local community. However, if your practice attracts patients from other nearby communities, consider joining and becoming active in the chamber for those communities also.

• Radio spots. When the chamber hosts an event and a member company in the community sponsors it, the chamber lists that company on the radio.

• Newsletter advertising. If your chamber sends out a newsletter, advertise or put a flyer in it. You can also submit press releases about your clinic to the newsletter.

• Networking events. Events are held at the businesses of various members. Commonly known as “business after hours,” they provide an opportunity to mingle with other professionals in your community.

And when you host one of these events, you bring people into your practice to see what you do.

• Committee work. Getting involved provides you the opportunity to build relationships.

Joining the chamber offers many more opportunities than merely acquiring a list of members. Most of these opportunities are included in the price of your membership dues — take advantage of them.

Networking works!

When attending a networking event, learn to listen. Here are a few examples of what can happen when you listen carefully:

• PR connection. A woman I was talking to at an event told me she did public relations for an occupational-medicine clinic. I told her my clinic provided physical therapy (PT). Because her clinic did not offer PT, she became a link for referrals. I have also sent many patients to her clinic.

• Post-offer tests. I met the human resources director for a large company at a chamber meeting. We talked about her company’s safety program and the challenges of workers’ compensation programs. I told her about post-offer testing and explained the benefits of functional examinations to see if new employees are capable of doing the job they are hired to do. She agreed post-offer exams benefited employers. Several months later, she called to arrange post-offer tests. I have been doing these tests for this company for many years now.

• Senior care. Another member of the chamber, who knew I was a chiropractor, used to complain about back pain, but never accepted my invitation to come in for care.

Although she never acted to help herself, she invited me to go to a senior center health fair as her guest. I acquired many new patients because of her invitation.

As a “P.S.” to this story, three years after I met her, the woman finally came into my clinic. She is now an active patient.

The moral: It takes time to build relationships. And it takes listening skills. Never badger people to come in for free exams — just be there for them and the results can be outstanding.

Daniel J. Cruoglio, DC, is a senior coach with Breakthrough Coaching and the director of First Choice Health Group LLC — a successful multidisciplinary practice in New Jersey. He can be reached at 800-723-8423, by e-mail at info@mybreakthrough.com, or through the Web site, www.mybreakthrough.com.

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