In this week's episode, Dr. Andy Roark is joined by Adam Christman and Louise Dunn to discuss their favorite tips for handling financial conversations. Together they tackle some of the common challenges we face as veterinary professionals and offer various resources to make sure we're keeping care accessible. They both offer insight into effective team training as well as the importance of creating a special veterinary experience for your clients. Let's get into this episode!
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RESOURCE LINKS
AAHA Article on Pet To Care Study
ABOUT OUR GUESTS
Louise Dunn is a renowned award-winning international speaker, writer and consultant. She brings over 40 years of in the trenches experience and her business education to veterinary management. Louise is founder and CEO of Snowgoose Veterinary Management Consulting. SVMC works with veterinarians who want to develop a strategic plan that consistently produces results. Most recently Louise received many awards including the WVC Educator of the Year numerous times and VetPartner’s The Life Time achievement Award in January 2016.
Besides all aspects of practice management and mentoring, Louise’s passions include her husband Joel, Annabelle her English mastiff Therapy dog and her little sister Afton, kayaking, opera , gardening and New England Patriot’s football.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, is the chief veterinary officer for dvm360®—an MJH Life Sciences® company —who oversees content strategy and development and is the brand voice and personality for dvm360®’s multimedia channels. As a charismatic leader, he brings wit, humor, and authenticity to animal health care as the host of a new web-based talk show, dvm360 Live!™, The Vet Blast Podcast, continuing education webinars, and live media broadcasts. Christman also has been in private practice and shelter medicine for 18 years and is currently a member and treasurer of the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association. He received his DVM degree from Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames, Iowa, and his MBA from Aspen University in Denver, Colorado.
Christman is a national thought leader, speaker, and author on practice management, social media, and rehabilitation, and coauthored, “Honey, Have You Squeezed the Dachshund? A Pet Owner’s Guide for Owners Who Are Terrified of IVDD”—a book on dogs with disabilities. He has been featured in multiple publications and appeared on various multimedia shows throughout the United States, sharing his expertise and passion on all things veterinary medicine. As an avid social media influencer for animal health care, he has over 800,000 followers on TikTok and 53,000 followers on Instagram. He loves to engage with fellow pet parents and veterinary professionals across social media. Christman is an advocate of Pride VMC and Pawsibilities. He is also the proud dog dad to 4 dachshunds and believes no one should be deprived of the incredible human-animal bond.
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Episode Transcript
Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got not one but two of my good friends on today. First of all, I have the one and only Louise Dunn. Louise is a dear friend of mine and a practice management consultant and expert. She writes for a ton of publications. She speaks all over the world. She's a genuinely wonderful, very knowledgeable person. And I have Dr. Adam Christman, who you may know from TikTok. He has a huge TikTok, Instagram following. He's also doing a ton of work over at DVM 360. I give them both much more robust introductions when we get started, but they are here with me today and we are talking about communicating with pet owners about price. We are having hard conversations and doing top tricks for talk and money with clients. Guys, this episode is made possible ad-free by CareCredit. Let's get into it.
Announcer:
And now The Uncharted Podcast.
Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast Louise Dunn and Dr. Adam Christman. How are you guys?
Louise Dunn:
Well, thank you.
Adam Christman:
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Andy Roark:
Oh man, my pleasure. You guys are some of my favorite people to talk to. I know you all, I know you very differently and so I'm thrilled to have both of you together on the same podcast. This is going to be a bit of a challenge because boy, there's a lot of personality here and it's kind of worlds colliding. So Louis Dunn, you are a guru in the business management vet business management world. You're one of my mentors. You have been since the very beginning. I don't want to get gushy here, but you introduced me to so many people when I was just a vet student and I was enthusiastic and in love with our profession and you are a big reason that I've had the career that I've had because you opened doors for me and you made introductions to me and you convinced people to talk to me when I didn't.
Maybe it wasn't obviously worth their time and I can't tell you how much I owe you, but you're someone that I respect the heck out of. I've had you at a speaker as a speaker at Uncharted. I read your articles and so I think the absolute world of view, Adam Christman, not so much Adam. We met, I think we met at a cocktail party one time. No, lemme tell you about you Adam Christman. You were a fascinating person. You have be friends just the last year or so of working together. You're doing a lot with modern social media. You have a huge TikTok following. Really, I think your work is really interesting in how you talk both the veterinarians and pet owners. And I can tell you as someone who's tried that, it's really challenging and hard to do. I think you do that really well.
You also are the driving force behind the Fetch conferences and DVM 360 I that I've ever in my career, seen someone get an opportunity like you got over there and just absolutely, as someone who makes content for a living, I know how hard it's to continually come up with good ideas and exciting things and interesting things and the amount of work that you have put into Fetch and DVM 360 in the last couple of years and now you've grown and you've, you've got a team around you that's really sort growing and selling, but just you took that opportunity over there and just have really done exceptional things with it. So I just admire both of you so much and I'm so glad to have you guys here.
Adam Christman:
Thank you so much.
Louise Dunn:
Well thank you. Happy to be here.
Adam Christman:
That from Andy Roark. Louise Dunn, my gosh, I'm glad I'm sitting down.
Louise Dunn:
It just shows how old I am.
(Laughter)
Andy Roark:
Well, I wanted to have you guys on today for, I saw that you guys, you were doing a presentation recently on top tricks for talking money with clients and I always like that. I think everybody wants to keep care affordable. Everybody wants to advocate effectively for pets and balancing those things. We're also going into a period where inflation is becoming concern and we're looking at is the economy it strong? Is it not strong? We're going back and forth. The world is changing and I think a lot of affordability and access to care are really important conversations. So I was really intrigued by this and I said, I think the world of both of you, and so I really like just have you guys start to lay this down for us as we start to walk through. So let's just go through this in a tip style format if that's okay.
I'm going to open the floor up. Louise, when I was looking at what you guys have put together and the message you've been bringing out, you seem to open up tips about transparency. Can you talk to me about what that looks like as you start to set up these difficult conversations?
Louise Dunn:
Absolutely. The answer that we seem to have is we don't like to confront yet. We want to give the best quality of care we can. We're in the service business and the service we provide is veterinary medicine. And so what happens is we're not trained. We don't do a good job in what's called axiology. Axiology is the study at the perception of value. So what do we do to help our clients not see sticker shock? We need to be transparent. We need to let them know we're in the service business and the service we provide is veterinary medicine.
And when you have a client that has sticker shock, you're putting them in a situation where they don't know what to do. So you want to start the conversation and just take one step at a time and open up, this is what we're going to do, but we're not going to do anything until we discuss a treatment plan. You're being transparent. In fact, there's some companies that are so transparent, they put prices on their internet, on their website.
Andy Roark:
So Adam, lemme hand that over to you. Real quick. Thoughts on pricing on the internet? I've thought about this a lot and I've seeing different practices doing this. There's real benefit I think in not having people come in and be completely floored about what they're getting into. I think a lot of doctors really grit their teeth and go and if they don't talk to me, they're not going to that. It's worth it. What are thoughts?
Adam Christman:
I agree, Andy. It's interesting because here we're, when I give these customer service lectures, we talk about “how much is it to spay my dog?” And that's a very classic question where you can say, oh, it's $500 and then they hang up. Whereas you want to make it not the experience, not so transactional, but actual. So who am I speaking to on the phone? Oh my gosh, how many weeks old is this new puppy? We're so excited. You're trying to create an experience and then it's like buying a car. Don't really want to, they're not going to give you the $35,000 sticker shock right off the bat. They really want to see what comes with all the bells and whistles. So I agree though. There's got to be a little bit of a fine balance because you need to put everything up on the internet, but maybe some of your high touchpoint items might be good to be transparent about.
Andy Roark:
I like this. Alright, so transparency up first. Where do we go from here?
Adam Christman:
Well, one of the first tips that we usually recommend is to acknowledge all your clients because we have so many different ones that are out there too. So this could be from the client in the exam room to the scrollers like myself. We're always going through our social media feeds and seeing what's out there because there's going to be some Facebook ads or Instagram ads that are going to be in there. And phone shoppers we just previously talked about too. And so how do we go about acknowledging all those clients? And I think Louise and I, we chat about this around the country talking about how you can convert a follower to a client and how can they become your brand loyal clients at the same time. And one of the best ways, just like Louis was saying, is building that trust instantly and being transparent.
So you want to build trust, create value, and you want to get them bonded early on. I always say that 20% of your clients make up for 80% of your revenue. So when you find those cheerleaders that tend to be not just financial cheerleaders but also your brand loyal cheerleaders that will share and cross promote some of your social media content, that's when you have a home run. So it depends on, everyone's got these different financial buckets, but it's just a matter of how we work with them and what's comfortable for their allotment or for their budgets.
Louise Dunn:
Adam, can you unpack for me a little bit, because you do the social media thing, the value of finding your people and your brand, how do you balance that with idea of talking to all of your clients? So it yeah, I'll make it in my head around that. Are people or are we really focused on being inclusive of all pet owners? How do you that in your mind?
Adam Christman:
Thank you for this question. You're the very first person that has asked me this question. I have never been asked this, and I talk about this internally because when you have how many x amount, thousands of followers or whatever, but yet you're going to really focus on your community. But I think we do a service to the profession is really what I always say is we're brand ambassadors to our profession and how well we represent our profession. There's one thing that you'll never see me do and I highly recommend to the listeners out there, I never want you to make fun of clients out there because they notice that, they see that and it's not a good look on our profession. So what do you do? You change the narrative a little bit and you provide education. It can be fun and levity, but then what they're going to do is they're going to try to geotarget and find out where you go.
So many people, followers say, oh my gosh, I wish you were in Pennsylvania. I wish you were out west or whatever. But that's okay because what we do and what I love about this profession is I can find somebody for you too. And so I really stress that. May I not be able to help you in California, but I have clients or I have colleagues that can certainly assist. But what you want to do is you want those people to say, I have a cousin that lives near you in New Jersey. I would love for my sister. She would love to see you. And so that's how you work a little bit on your niche a little bit. You could build your clientele, your community. The second thing that I'll say, my last thing for this is that I do think the power of going live on social media is incredibly powerful and I know it's a vulnerable experience, but I challenge our colleagues out there to do this because people love it.
And you can again, focus on your community within your town out many miles out. You want to market them out. You could certainly do it, but I think there's some added value that you're offering. Again, we're talking about access to care, but also access to education. It's very hard for certain pet to maybe ask very simple questions like, I dunno how to clean my dog's ears a little bit. Can you show me? So by that you're creating this great bond, that word of mouth will spread very fast. So it works nicely if you want to really build your clientele up. I really do recommend it.
Andy Roark:
I like it. So we talked about transparency, we talked about recognizing all clients. What's number three?
Adam Christman:
So tip number three would be coaching the team because it shouldn't just be on, say the practice manager like Louise, it shouldn't be on Dr. Roark or Dr. Christman. We want to make sure that we role play the workflow together. What does this look like? And are we all educated enough to understand the available opportunities that are there for our clients? And what tools are we going to be allowing? So we want to choose tools for the clients and the team that can support cost of care conversations, and we want to integrate that cost of care information into the decision making treatment plans and patient visits. So for instance, if we have a client that says to us, listen, I really wish I can afford this right now, but I dunno, what are the options? Well, we want to make sure that we have provided all the education to our staff and our team to educate them.
For example, maybe your hospital can offer pay overtime options that don't require hard credit. Maybe there's other options like CareCredit for them to consider. And there's options like Variety, VetBilling or Sun that I talked about too. And there's financially friendly clinics that are out there as well that are nonprofit, that offer nonprofit or grant programs. There's a website that I like. It's called pethelpfinder.org. It's got over 4,400 resources listed on that site for available financial offerings. So again, those listeners out there may not even know what I just said about that. So I challenge your team to learn about all the different options that are out there in addition to, of course, pet insurance.
Louise Dunn:
Well, the thing that's really interesting is we think that we know everything and sometimes we underestimate or sometimes we overestimate our clients. One thing that we need to know and we need to make sure our team knows is that in the Path to Care Pet Finding study that was conducted by the Chadwick Bailey on behalf of CareCredit, it said that 52% of pet owners researched the pet's care. 61% of them researched their costs, and 59% of them say the variety of payment options is important. And 52% say finances is important. So it's not just about giving the best training to our team on how to know what catheter to use or what pain medication to use, or what side effects there might be on certain medications. It's helping clients understand and afford what they need to do.
Andy Roark:
Talk to me a little bit about where communications go from here, what we're trying to do, what we're trying to do a training, and so are we free styling? Is every client different? Do we have systems that we try to run people through? Talk to me a little bit about the pet owner as an individual versus trying to build a cohesive system in our practice.
Adam Christman:
Yeah, so that's our next step is providing individualized care. I always say that VIP, everybody's important, Andy, right? Everybody wants to be seen. Yes. So I stands for individualized. It's very individualized, pet parent, very individualized pet. And what does that really mean? So it's not cookie cutter. Everyone knows I'm a dauchs-a-holic. So if I was to walk into a clinic and I have a person that dims the lights and offer me these warms, not a cat parent, but you're doing all these things for cats, that's not for me. That's great. But I would want to make sure that maybe you got ramps ready for me, maybe you got stickers or whatnot. That's going to show dachshunds things that are going to get me excited to really consent to be compliant and follow along with any of these recommendations. So providing that personalized care is so, so crucial in this day and age.
And the other things that we do, simple things that you may not know is DNA testing huge thing is providing individualized care because we want to know not only what they're made up of, but what are genomic sequences. Because what we're finding, what we're practicing in our hospital, we offer and recommend DNA testing early because we're finding that a lot of these pet parents are more likely to get pet insurance. And so that's a really huge thing. We also talk about liquid biopsy testing as they get older too, as pre-cancer screenings or identifying cancer markers and also talking about integrative modalities that could be more specific to certain needs. So for example, the large Great Danes or the large German shepherds or whatnot, they're going to need a little bit more work with maybe rehabilitation and movement versus some of the smaller breed dogs. So I think that's really important, providing individualized care because what we find is the money can go along for the ride. The fact that we're offering really one-on-one ideas, or whether it be get well cards, thank you messages, care packages, sympathy cards, Chewy for instance, does very well with this, making them feel like a VIP. So I think that's a good example. I know Louise talks about the four Rs of personalization. Did you want to share with them what that is?
Louise Dunn:
Yeah, I would. The four Rs are recognize, remember, recommend, and what's relevant. So again, recognize, remember, recommend, and relevant. We need to recognize that you can't always judge a book by its cover. We have to remember what's important. For example, if an animal came in and was euthanized and you didn't have a comfort room and you put them in the examine room two, that client doesn't want to go back in the examine room two. They remember it. But for us, we don't even think about it. When we recommend, we don't give ultimatums. We give ideas, we give recommendations because we're a professional, we're not in the amateur. The definition of a professional is not being an amateur. Every person, whether you're a veterinarian or an animal healthcare team member, you are a healthcare professional. So what you recommend the person is going to listen to. So you want to be relevant.
And when you're relevant, you're able to focus on that particular breed, that particular client, that particular type of communication style, that particular person's emotions at that particular time. If their animal was just injured by a car, hit by a car, their emotions are going to be very high. If you have bad news, tell 'em that their emotions are going to be all over the place. You have to be relevant and stick to the point and keep your eye on the ball. What you're trying to do is put your arms around that client so that you can communicate. They understand what's going on. You've taught your team how to do this and why it's important. So they together with you, can make the decisions that those animals need and deserve. So I love your for to recognize, remember, recommend and relevant. So we've talked about transparency. We've talked about recognizing all clients. We've talked about coaching the team, and we've talked about providing individualized care. What's our fifth and final tip?
The last tip that we're discussing is know what your clients value.
Adam Christman:
How many of us value our pets as their fur babies? I probably would do anything and anything for them. I would give my left arm for them, but not everyone feels that same way. So understanding the value system of pets when they walk in is interesting and it must be respected at the same time. Some pets are considered, pets are property, but humans as a pet owner, there's that fine line that they're saying, I'm just here for the rabies vaccine doc and that's all I want. And we have to be mindful and respectful of that. At the same time, we can always make our recommendations, but there's a fine line between pushing versus making recommendations. And what we also find is that the hierarchy of the roles of the pet pyramid is what we call it, has certainly changed. We know that our Gen Z clients are really celebrating them and going crazy with their birthdays and happy gotcha days and so forth. And they want that same enthusiasm to be reflected at the veterinary hospital that they choose. And if it shows again, they're more willing to pay for certain things and to do certain things. If they see that that enthusiasm is infectious along the team,
Louise Dunn:
Well, I mean, look at what Starbucks has done. You go to Starbucks for your coffee, you pay five bucks for a cup coffee, but you go because you want to get that puppucino. Why do they have puppucino? Is it because they buy too much cool whip and whipped cream? No, it's because they want to have the experience. I'll tell you, if I go to the bank without my pooches or I just go to the night deposit at the bank and it's not open, my pooches are upset because they know when they go bank that they're going to get their milk bones. If I go to the bank and the bank is closed, I get attitude from my English Mastiff. Oh my gosh, why is the bank giving Milkbone? Because it's an experience. Why is Starbucks doing puppucinos? It's an experience.
Adam Christman:
I do want to add Andy too, because in this day and age, it's so different for the vet to be a pet parent. There are hospitals around the country now that are offering step and repeats. They have a whole thing. They have the whole ring light, they have the background, or there are hospital logos in there, like a step and repeat with a red carpet rolled out. There's one hospital in LA that caters specifically to the pet influencers, and they have, I mean, it's like when they're walking in, they have a fake round of applause that's coming..
(laughter)
Andy Roark:
Oh, that's funny.
Adam Christman:
…but they eat this up. So knowing your audience, knowing your clientele, that's clientele is not going to work, obviously, in another area. So knowing that is so important. But I agree, Louise, it's all about having that experience when I went to my bank and the bank teller, I was holding up two of the wheens I'm like “Look at them, check it out!” And I didn't get a biscuit. Do you know, I said something? “Did you not Griswold and Capone right here?” You know? But it's so funny that that's memorable and impressional enough for me to be upset about it. So I love that you share that.
Andy Roark:
Oh man, you guys, thank you so much for being here. I so much enjoy these conversations with you guys. I love thinking about this. I'm going to, I love the step and repeat makes me happy or reminds me of a clinic in LA that I used to know that did this organic lavender bath and it was like a $300 bath that they offered, but it was the clientele that they had and where they were located, it was something that was wildly popular. They couldn't do enough of them. I think that part of understanding who your clients are and recognizing what they value and the experience you're trying to create, I think all of that makes a ton of sense. Before I let you guys go, I always like to collect resources. So Adam, you mentioned pethelpfinder.org. I'll put a link into the show notes about that. What other resources do you guys like? Where should people go to learn more?
Adam Christman:
I like Pawlicy Advisor. I think that's a good one to check out for Pet Insurance Ones and Pets Best Vets is another good one that I like. What about you, Louise?
Louise Dunn:
CareCredit, Of course. So that we're not put in a position of us being the banker, letting them set up credit before they actually need it.
Andy Roark:
Yeah, no, I'll put links to all that stuff down in the show notes. Guys, thanks so much for being here, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I hope you got as much to think about as I did from it. Great. Thanks everybody. Take care of yourselves, gang. I'll talk to you later on.
Adam Christman:
Thank you.
Louise Dunn:
Thank you.
Andy Roark:
And that's what I got. That's it. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you got a ton out of it. Thanks to Adam and to Louise for being here. I very much enjoyed them. Gang, take care of yourselves, everybody. Thanks again to CareCredit for making this possible. I got to say that. Be well. I'll see you guys later on. Bye-Bye.
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