Consider the following. As you stand in front of an audience in your community, you feel at ease, confident and prepared. You deliver your chiropractic message with just the right balance of humor and emotion. As you near the end of your speech, you maintain this balance and level of comfort. You close with the talent and expertise of a top professional speaker – no hard-sell closing techniques or gimmicky giveaways. As a result, audience members choose you as their family chiropractor, because you’ve connected with them in a positive way.
I know what I just described flies in the face of what most of us have been taught about giving chiropractic presentations. We were told that we have to “step outside of our comfort zone” and depend on a confrontational close. If we were not willing to take such a bold approach, no matter how uncomfortable, we would lose our opportunity to convert audience members into new patients.
However, this simply is not true. There are more effective and professional ways to create new patients through speaking. To help you grow your practice through speaking with professionalism and ease, you need to keep in mind three powerful principles. These principles will strengthen your chiropractic message, enable you to speak with greater confidence and help you achieve the positive marketing results you desire.
These principles include:
1. “Connect to direct people to chiropractic” is the first principle for strengthening your communication skills. We may believe that when we speak to groups in our community, our primary objective is to educate them. And naturally, once they learn about chiropractic, they will choose our care.
Now, of course we want our audiences to learn more about chiropractic when we speak to them. However, simply teaching people about chiropractic by using straight facts and figures does not usually inspire them to choose chiropractic. Logic alone is rarely strong enough to move a person to a new level of awareness so he or she can make more informed health-care decisions.
Instead, our primary aim should be to allow our listeners to connect with us on an emotional level. The first step is to create some rapport with our audience members and earn their trust. Then, the main focus of our presentation must concentrate on touching them emotionally by speaking to their hearts and souls.
One of the best ways to accomplish this objective is through the art of storytelling. Share exciting stories of real people who have overcome challenges with the help of chiropractic (only use names if you have permission, of course) – and your talks will be on target with your listeners. In other words, when you deliver a chiropractic presentation, use more stories that are filled with real people and a range of emotions, and fewer statistics.
The most successful advertising and marketing campaigns sell products or services by appealing to a consumer’s emotional needs. As a chiropractic speaker, when you apply this same principle, you will successfully attract an abundance of new patients. So connect with your listeners to direct them to your office.
2. “Refrain to retain a connection” is the second principle that will enable you to be a more effective chiropractic speaker. Providing too much content in a chiropractic speech may cause listeners to experience “information overload” and lose interest in your presentation. Similarly, a chiropractic presentation that is too long can actually weaken your connection with audience members.
To maintain and retain a positive connection with your listeners, consider delivering shorter, more concise chiropractic talks when speaking at community groups and local businesses. For example, a 20-minute speech that highlights one main point regarding your chiropractic topic is a powerful way to captivate and hold the attention of most audiences.
3. “Slides may collide with the message.” This is the third principle for your speaking and marketing success, and it simply means that audiovisuals may not always enhance your chiropractic talks.
Audiovisual aids, including 35mm slides, overheads and computer-generated slides, are an excellent way to help audience members retain information. However, they are best-suited for longer presentations and must be used in conjunction with solid speaking skills.
When you give a chiropractic speech, you need to depend on the same thing that top speakers depend on: stagecraft. Stagecraft, otherwise known as presentation skills, will help you connect with your listeners more effectively than expecting slides or overhead projections to deliver your message. The bottom line? Audiovisuals don’t make your chiropractic talks successful, you do! So polish your speaking skills and you will have maximum impact on your listeners.
These three speaking and marketing principles are easy to apply and will help you communicate chiropractic with excellence and ease. These guidelines will strengthen your message and will help you captivate and inspire audience members to choose you as their family chiropractor. So make a commitment to share the chiropractic story with your community, and start talking your way to the top.
