Leveraging the Power of Products Q & A with Dr. Dan Davidson
INTERVIEW
TAC
FROM THE OUTSIDE, THINGS SEEMED GOOD FOR DR. DAN DAVIDSON, A SECOND GENERATION CHIROPRACTOR PRACTICING IN SALEM, VIRGINIA. HE HAD BEEN VOTED “BEST CHIROPRACTOR” BY THE AREA’S BIGGEST COMMUNITY MAGAZINE SEVERAL TIMES, HIS REPUTATION WAS STELLAR, AND HIS PATIENT FLOW STEADY. BUT IN REALITY, THINGS WERE CRUMBLING. DAVIDSON’S 3 1-YEAR MARRIAGE WAS UNRAVELING. HE HAD GAINED A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF WEIGHT. PERHAPS MOST PAINFULLY, HE HAD LOST HIS PROFESSIONAL ZEAL AND FOCUS, AND WITH REVENUE DOWN, HE FEARED HE MIGHT HAVE TO CLOSE THE DOORS OF HIS CHIROPRACTIC OFFICE.
Fast forward five years and Davidson’s practice—and life—is again booming. Revenue is up 30% over last year, he’s lost weight, he’s in a relationship, and he’s more passionate about Chiropractic than ever before. For Davidson, the “spark” to turning things around was retooling his business—and mentality—to one more focused on products. As success mounted in his practice, he became more confident in other areas of life, and the doors of opportunity kept opening. As is the case with most transformations, the journey was long, the work hard (but fun, too), and “there were lots of miracles along the way,” as he says. Davidson tells us his transformation story here.
TAC: Tell me about your background as a Doctor.
Davidson: I’m the son of a Chiropractor, in my 30th year of practice, so the profession is in my heart and soul. I’m also very creative—I studied music as an undergraduate, I write, and I’m a photographer. Some people know me as the Singing Chiropractor because I bring my guitar to health fans and sometimes perform. And I’m more excited today about the profession than I’ve ever been.
TAC: Yet five years ago, you almost abandoned the profession. Tell me about that.
Davidson: I was going through a divorce after 31 years of marriage; I almost lost my practice. Even though I had a good reputation, I wasn’t making it financially.
Some days it was hard to get out of bed and go to work. I considered another career, but I knew it wasn’t right. It wasn’t Chiropractic. It was my management of it.
TAC: Now yours is one of the most successful in your region. How did you turn it around?
Davidson: I refocused the practice after my associate doctor’s retirement three years ago. Quite simply, product integration saved my practice. Percentage of services from products was less than 5% and now it is 15 to 20% of total services. I look at each product as its own separate profit center. We hack sales and inventory each month. I’m up 30% over last year and much ofthat is thanks to products.
I have also doubled my patient volume and now our clinic sees many more patients with one doctor (me) than it previously saw with two.
TAC: Yet you weren’t too excited about product integration at first. How did you get over the hesitation?
Davidson: Docs don’t want to be salesmen, and I felt that, too. But I realized we aie already “selling” what we believe in every day. We [Chiropractors] have a mission and a calling, and if people don’t hear the mission from us, who ai e they going to heai' it from?
Products aie tools that engage patients at a higher level. They’re working on their on their health on their own time, at home, with a product they considered, selected and invested in. They’re seeing results and feel empowered. When patients aie engaged, they get better quicker, they’re happier and they refer. Products aie an important paid of patient satisfaction and practice growth.
TAC: How has introducing products into your practice affected patient satisfaction, overall?
Davidson: Patient love to shop. They love to look, touch and feel. They aie highly interested in any product that will help them get well and stay well.
Think about the Optometrist’s office. There aie two sides: the clinical side, where you get examined, and then there’s the beautiful gallery of products that fit with the [Optometrist’s] health model. Well Chiropractors, we just stuff our pillows and our Thera-bands in a back closet. We should take products from closet space to showcase.
TAC: If a patient is hesitant to invest in a particular product you think he or she needs, how do you approach/overcome that hesitation?
Davidson: I give everyone three sets of options and recommendations: Good, Better and Best. “Good” would be to staid on the recommended chiropractic program of care I have recommend. “Better” adds home exercise with products to help. “Best” adds additional products and resources like Foot Levelers, etc. It's up to the patient what level they would like to invest in.
Then I back away. In this way I do not feel like I am dying to “sell” to them. People place a high value on their health and they often will find a way to pay because of this higher value.
TAC: Tell me about some creative ways you’ve encouraged sales in your practice.
Davidson: I decided I wanted to sell 100 Foot Levelers products in 90 days. I instituted a bonus system for my staff: for every sale, $5 went into a bonus pool. So if we sold 50 Foot Levelers products, it’s $250. If we sold 99, it’s $495. But when we hit 100 sales, every one of those drops in the pot doubled—$5 per sale became $10 per sale—and it instantly became a $1,000 bonus pool.
My Office Manager created a poster depicting a “spine” with 50 vertebra—and each vertebra represented two Foot Levelers’ products. Each time we sold a product, we’d color in half of a vertebra. So I had the staff engaged not only financially, but visually. They were literally arguing on who got to do the coloring!
We were down to the wire, but I knew we would make it [to 100 sales], and we did. It was empowering. Now that we have that shared experience as a staff, we know we can do anything we put our minds to.
TAC: What other creative endeavors have you used to grow your practice?
Davidson: We have a Home Care Rent-to-Own program utilizing TENS, Twin Stim and Portable Ultrasound units. Patients can rent devices for a small fee for daily use and then at any time convert the amount paid in “rent” toward purchasing the device. We usually get a 90%-plus conversion rate.
No one has ever said “no” when I prescribe a TENS unit for $10 a day—so there is 100% compliance on the front end. We set a goal a while back to convert 20 combined rental units in a month to sales and we met our goal.
TAC: Tell me more about how foot/postural health fits into your practice. The huge wall of Foot Levelers Shoethotics in your reception area is one of the first things I noticed when walking in.
Davidson: After investing in a Foot Levelers digital foot scanner, I started scanning every patient. It’s something I had wanted to do for a long time, but I had never gotten around to it.
When patients see their foot scan, it’s amazing. It’s so simple and the light bulb—it’s not a light bulb, it’s more like a disco ball—goes off. And then when you address [their biomechanical problems] with an adjustment and the Foot Levelers, and they might get a massage, and start doing some home exercise, they get better. It will change their life.
Whether it’s Shoethotics or orthotics, we have not had to “sell” one Foot Levelers product this year. They sell themselves.
TAC: What’s next for you?
Davidson: I’m totally jazzed up now. I’m more excited now about Chiropractic than I ever was. Losing weight, getting healthy, using the products in my practice; it’s all paid of a journey of rebirth, refocusing.
At first it was about surviving. Now that we’re thriving, I want to find ways to give back to the profession that means so much to me. I’m just getting over that threshold and it feels great. ES3
