By Peter Fernandez, DC

I’m a “seminar junkie” …and proud of it! I attended at least two seminars per month during my more than 20 years of active practice. I learned as much as I possibly could on how to heal sick people as well as how to manage and build my practice.

By attending seminars and learning from other doctors’ successes, I avoided the “doing it on my own” mistakes, which not only saved me valuable time and money, it allowed me to learn a whole lot more in a lot less time!

With seven children to support, I was constantly looking for ways to increase my practice’s profitability. When my children entered the “brand name required” phase, I became motivated to become a master marketer and use my post-graduate seminars as valuable marketing tools.

Unfortunately, when I needed to market and grow my practice the most, any form of chiropractic advertising was illegal in Florida where I practiced. I couldn’t place an ad in the newspaper. I couldn’t mail out promotional material. I couldn’t put a commercial on television.

And yet, I learned how to market myself and build a big practice. How did I do it? The answer is simple: I built my practice by attending seminars.

Most chiropractors attend seminars, learn a lot from them and apply their new knowledge in their practices, as appropriate.
Although these DCs acquire a new set of effective tools and techniques, their patients and community don’t know it. The difference between these DCs and me is that I made sure the world was aware of every new practice skill I acquired.

I not only used the information I learned at the seminars, I also used the seminars to help me promote and build my practice. It was illegal to advertise, but it was not illegal to let my patients and the community know what seminars I was attending and what I was learning.

Here’s what I did to turn my post-graduate education into marketing appointments. These procedures can do the same for you, and you’ll have fun as you use them to build your practice.

Rules for marketing your post-graduate work

Rule #1: Pursue your interests. Take post-graduate seminars, technique courses, orthopedics, neurology, etc. that relate to your specialty or a specialty you would like to pursue.
For example, as a chiropractic orthopedist I took seminars on whiplash, disc problems, sciatica, sports injuries, etc.

Rule #2: Choose prestigious institutions. Attend post-graduate courses from named facilities the public will recognize. You don’t have to simply go to chiropractic seminars to learn how to take care of chiropractic health problems. You can take post-graduate work at John Hopkins University, at the Oshner Clinic in New Orleans, at the Mayo Clinic or at Harvard in Boston.

When you let the people of your community know that you have studied at one of these highly respected institutions, their opinion of you and your professional skills is elevated automatically. For example, if you studied at Harvard, courtroom judges, personal injury attorneys, medical physicians and others will be impressed with the quality and credibility of your post-graduate education.

Rule #3: Publish your calendar. Send a monthly calendar to each of your patients letting them know what your practice activities are for that month. When you are going to attend a seminar, put on the calendar — “Dr. Fernandez will be in Houston at the Texas Spine Institute studying the diagnosis and treatment of whiplash injuries. The instructor is Dr. Joe Smith, world famous orthopedic specialist who teaches at Texas Medical College.”

You’ll be amazed at how this calendar works. When patients received my calendar, they immediately scheduled an appointment before I left for the seminar. My seminar weeks were always booked with patients.

Rule #4: Post a notice on your bulletin board. Place an announcement regarding your upcoming seminar on your bulletin board in your reception room, such as: “Dr. Fernandez will be out of the office from March 1 through March 5, attending a post-graduate seminar in St. Louis, MO at the famous Logan Chiropractic College. Dr. Joe Brown, the college’s neurology instructor, will be teaching the “Diagnosis and Treatment of Neck, Shoulder and Arm Pain.” This is the institution that Dr. Fernandez graduated from and the institution where he does most of his post-graduate studies.

Rule #5: Use your newsletter. Feature the seminar you will be attending in your patient newsletter. Also, use the newsletter to report an “after the seminar” story. Reiterate the important who, what and where seminar information and add some specific information you learned that would interest your patients.

Rule #6: Tell your patients. Verbally tell your patients when you are going out of town to attend a seminar on a specific subject, who the instructor is, what college the instructor teaches at and what you are going to be learning.
And, when you return to the office after attending the seminar, tell your patients what you learned and the additional health problems you’ll now be able to help.

Patient newsletters and verbal announcements not only motivate patients to fill your appointment calendar the week before the seminar, they also tell your patients that you are dedicated to learning and providing the best patient care possible. This show of professional commitment is a superb patient confidence builder, which is directly reflected in the number of referrals you receive from patients and how closely patients follow your prescribed treatment plans.

Rule #7: Advertise in the newspaper. Place newspaper ads in your local newspaper, stating: “NOTICE – Dr. (your name),
a Chiropractor in (name of your town) will be attending a post-graduate seminar at xxxxx- (again explain where you are going, who is teaching, the institution he/she teaches at, the subject you are going to learn, the dates you will leave the office and the dates you’ll be back in the office). Patients who want to see Dr. (your name) before he leaves for the seminar are asked to call and schedule an appointment as soon as possible.”

Rule #8: Network. When you attend seminars, network with all the other attending doctors. All of you share a common interest – to learn how to fix the same problems. The more doctors who know who you are, where you are and that you are practicing the same specialty they are, the more referrals you’ll receive from these doctors.

On the average, I received 200 to 300 referrals a year from doctors I met at my post-graduate seminars. You can too!

Rule #9: Blast out news releases. Immediately after attending a seminar, send out a “blizzard” of news releases to both your daily and weekly newspapers, to your local radio and TV stations, to all medical doctors and attorneys in your town and to all your patients that you can reach via e-mail and/or a fax broadcasting program.

It’s amazing how our minds lean toward “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” concept when it comes to designating someone a “better” expert. Amazing but true, most of the people within your community will regard an instructor from outside your community as more of an expert than someone within your community. This is why it is important that your news release include where your instructor is from and what he/she is teaching.

In addition, your news release should state the name of the school your instructor teaches at, the topic you are studying and how it relates to the health problems you take care of in your practice.

A well-prepared news release lets your community know that you have traveled out of town to learn specific chiropractic procedures/treatments from an expert in that field. These news releases often generate requests for interviews on what you learned at these post-graduate courses.

Rule #10: And blast them again! Most post-graduate seminars are conducted in modules, two or three modules at a time. When you complete a module, send out another news release stating the same information as above. Include any certification you may have earned as a result of completing that module.

If you want to get everything you can out of attending seminars, follow these rules and let people know what you’re learning and from who. Three essentials to keep in mind:

• Feature the speakers at the seminars.

• Tell what is being taught and where it is being taught.

• Do not focus on yourself.

If you follow these guidelines, you will increase your newspaper exposure and reap more benefit from it than if you had paid for the space. And, the price is right…it’s all free.

Still not sure about this program? How would you like an increase in referrals from patients and others in your community to fill not only your schedule, but also those of five associates? That’s what this program did for my practice! It can work for you, too.

Dr. Peter Fernandez is now a seminar leader and consultant.
You can reach him by phone at Fernandez Consulting, 800-882-4476; e-mail at DrPete@DrFernandez.com; or through his Web Site, www.DrFernandez.com.