Uncover The Six Essential Steps For Having A Thriving Online Private-Pay Practice – Steps 4-6

Share your story with clients

Step 4: Share your story and help your potential clients make a decision

If you don’t tell your potential clients your story – that is, why you work in your specific niche and why you want to help them solve their problem, you’re missing one key ingredient that’s essential to the buying process for private-pay clients. 

Potential clients must know, like, and trust youYou must agree to work with us. To solve this issue, and to foster the Know, Like, and Trust factors at super speed, you need to, first of all – Know your story – and then ShareIt can be shared with potential clients.

• Your story could be personal – maybe you or a close friend or family member dealt with the problem you now help your clients with.  
• It could be you had an interest in this specific problem area from an early age because of something you saw – in real life, on TV, etc. 
• You might have discovered your interest area in your early career days, and from that moment forward you’ve dedicated yourself to helping others with this problem.

These Tips will help you to create your story

Here are some things to remember as you tell your story to your audience.

• Express yourself emotionally.Tell others how it was to be in your position and let them know. For example “When I hit rock bottom I felt awful, deflated, it was horrible…but then I had a breakthrough…”. Even if you think you’ve shared some emotions, I encourage you to try harder! It takes a while to naturally write in this way when you’re used to writing academically.
• Don’t make the story all about you.You must make your potential client the hero of your story at one point in your story.  For example, you might talk about “how you now do this for others”.
• Encourage hope.Show your potential clients that you are capable of achieving the same result.
• Write in first-personRemember that the purpose of sharing your story, is to foster the Know-Like- and Trust factors, and to connect emotionally to potential clients. Writing in 3rd person doesn’t do this anywhere near as well as writing in 1st person does.
• Consider video. You may be familiar with adult learning principles. Writing out your story and using that as a script to record a video – if you can do so naturally, in a way that connects with the viewer – will take care of potential clients who prefer video to text. People will also be able to get to know your personality better before they book their first appointment. If you’re brave, you can place both a video and the written blurb on your website. Remember, it’s not about you – it’s about helping potential clients to choose you if you’re the right therapist for them. 

Make an irresistible deal!

Step 5: Create an irresistible deal for your ideal clients

There are nine key factors that go into making an irresistible deal. In this article, I’m going to focus on the one factor that most therapists overlook. This factor is what keeps clients from hitting the “Book” button. I call this factor “The Objection Buster”.

To have an “IRRESISTIBLE” offer you need to overcome your potential client’s resistance to saying yes to working with you. 

As the business owner, it’s your job to uncover all of the objections people have and to come up with the antidote to these objections. People need your help to move through their objections – so that they have the opportunity to work with you and get the result they want. 

People have generic objections like “I don’t have time”, and “I don’t have the money”. Generic objections are limiting beliefs that can be used by many people, though not all. 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy might be a good option. These limiting beliefs can be gently challenged. For example, if money is an objection – If you have something priced over $97, it will be – you could say “For less than a cup of coffee a day, you can reduce your anxiety and feel more confident in the teacher-parent interview setting”. You’ll see here, that this objection buster is tailored to the niche. 

Clients might also have specific objections related to your niche. If your niche falls under the social anxiety category, one reason clients might not want to work with you is the uncertainty that comes with the first session. Potential clients don’t know what to expect, which fills them up with dread, and they decide it’s better to not book in at all! 

It’s very easy to solve this type of objection. You could create a five-minute explanation video that explains what happens after they click the book button. This video could be placed on your website to increase conversion rates.

Ask your clients if they were hesitant when they first booked. This will help you get started in overcoming objections. You can start to develop the antidotes by writing down all the objections they raise. 

Where can you share your irresistible offer

Step 6: Make sure your irresistible offering is noticed by traffic sources

Woohoo! You’re at the final step of the six-step process. 

• You now know what you’re aiming for with your business, and what the ripple effect will be once you’ve got this system up and running. You might get more holidays, take Fridays off or have greater control over who you serve and what your business does. 
• You’re investigating a viable niche.
  
• You’re connecting emotionally with your potential clients and fostering the know, like, and trust factors that are required in order for them to say yes to working with you.
  
• You’re developing your irresistible offer and helping people to overcome limiting beliefs that are keeping them stationary.

Now it’s time to put your irresistible offer in front of the right people and ask for the sale. 

I use the word ‘sale’ specifically because you’re the CEO of your business and you’re selling your services to the people who will benefit most from engaging with you.

It’s your job to help your potential clients make a choice. There are two options:

• Yes! Yes!
• No! I don’t want to work with you to solve my problem

If you don’t ask for the sale e.g. “click that book button, and I’ll see you very soon” or, “can I get you scheduled?”, “would you like to work together to solve this problem?”, you run the risk of keeping a potential client on the fence. This serves no one.

To request a sale, you must commit to a traffic source through which you can communicate with your irresistible offering and reach out to them. 

Here are some popular traffic options:

• Networking events (yes, even online clients)
• SEO (this is a long term play, however, and it’s not recommended if you need clients asap)
• Facebook and Instagram Ads
• Organic social media (if your audience is large and you have high engagement rates) 
• Tiktok
• Google Ads
• LinkedIn posting and DMs
• YouTube Video and/or Youtube Advertising

Here’s the formula for choosing your main traffic source:

[Where my ideal clients are] + [What traffic source I enjoy]= Traffic Source #1

It’s best to get really great at one traffic source. When you’re earning $100,000+ you can then invest your time/money into learning and becoming great at your secondary traffic source. 

Once you’ve chosen your traffic source, it’s time to start putting your irresistible offer out there! Think about how people can reach out to you. If you’re running ads or doing organic social media, you are likely testing traffic going right to a website sales page, a booking page, or a contact me page. If you’re at a networking event, you likely have a business card with the link for that specific sales page on it (not a generic home page). 

Six Essential Steps to Creating a Successful Online Private-Pay Practice

These are the six steps that are essential to have a successful online private-pay business.