Brand Your Practice Podcast

Alright. Hey, welcome in everyone. This is Brent Stutzman with Brand

Your Practice. We are recording a podcast and a webinar. today

and this is part of our webinar series from

clicks to clients and we are actually combining parts

four and five today because there's a lot of

overlap on those topics that we're going to be talking about. So

we're going to be talking about closing client leads and turning them into paying

clients and how to be using automation and also

live calls. Um, so really using kind of

what, what their SAS CRM offers and a live intake coordinator to

actually have a really great one-two punch when it works, uh, when

you're trying to close client leads. And it's really all about sales and

building trusted relationships with them in automation and on

that phone call. So we're going to jump in Chris Morin from

Moonraker AI is with me again. Uh, he's been a

major part of this series, which has been great. Uh, Chris is an

SEO and content marketing specialist who works with private practices.

And also joining for the first time is Shannon Mardis, who's

an Intake Coordinator for Intensive Therapy Retreats, and Chris wanted

to have Shannon on, so she can share, uh, some of

the things that she's doing with those intake calls. So, I'm

gonna turn it over to Chris, uh, to get going, and I'll go ahead and get the slides.

As always, go ahead and put your comments and questions

in the chat. So, here we go. Here are some

Thank you so much, Brent. So, as Brent mentioned, this is

part four and five of From Clicks to Clients. So, the part four

that we're going to get into now is about strategies to maximize booked call

attendance. So, we have a lot to cover, so let's get rolling. So,

why should you attend this webinar? Well, the biggest issue is that you

have clients that are booking calls in your calendar, but then they're not showing up. And

on the flip side, maybe you're getting clients to show up to your consultations, but

you want them to be more highly engaged. have more positive

momentum that they're carrying into that conversation so that it

cuts out some of the work that you need to put into actually book a new client. So

a review of the entire client journey up here in this

gray area is a whole bunch of strangers that don't know that you exist. We're

using various traffic generation techniques like SEO to bring them

to your website. Once they get to your website, we want to make sure that they

actually follow through with your call to action, which is, in this case, to

book a consultation on your calendar. And now the next step that we're

focused on today is we need to make sure that they actually show up, and

we're going to cover some strategies to make sure that we

can convert them to a client when it's appropriate to do so on those

calls. And a little bit about me, I'm Chris Morin,

so I run Moonraker.ai. We are an agency focused on therapists, and

I've been in the wellness industry for decades, and I also have a

lot of marketing experience that has led me

here today that I'm going to share with you. And I'm going to zip through all this part. We're

really great. We do a lot of work with solo therapists, small

and large group practices, training programs. We're getting people to show up

on Chat GPT and Claude, so check us out. What

are some common challenges regarding the actual pre-call

process? So maybe that process is quite complicated. This

is more what we covered in the previous webinar where having

a tool like TheraSas where you can have an automated booking calendar on

your website so clients can go on there. Schedule a

time on your calendar without needing to send an email or a contact form

submission that makes the process much more streamlined But

after they book that call there's this gap between when

they decide I want to speak to you and when they actually show up and

if that period of time is left open

without any touch points, then they might lose interest,

they might meet someone else, they might feel a

little overwhelmed and nervous about talking to you. So this is an opportunity where

we can really fill that space with something of value. So Maybe

you're struggling with vague pre-call expectations, and how can we address that?

Maybe there's insufficient reminders of the appointment coming up,

so they just totally whiff it and forget that it's going to happen. Or

maybe you're missing an opportunity to add additional value that will make

them feel more enthusiastic about that call. So

why is consultation attendance important? Obviously, if you don't

speak to these people, then it's really hard to book them as a client. But if

we look at the entire funnel and all of the work that goes into traffic

generation and converting visitors on the website to

actual consultation calls, this represents a lot

of wasted marketing time. and investment on your part that

brought that lead to you in the first place. So when they get to the point where

they actually schedule with you, we want to do everything we can to make sure that they

show up and that they're really enthusiastic about that call. So

the strategy that we use to increase the call attendance rate, we call it

a pre-call engagement system. And that's a really fancy way of

saying you are going to send various touch points like

emails and maybe text messages that is going to provide information that's

going to let the person know, this is the expectation of the call. Here's

how you log into the platform. Here's a little bit about me.

Here's some stuff about the practice, et cetera. And in

terms of how we measure attendance success, this is all pretty basic

metrics. This is the kind of stuff that you can see in a platform like Therosots. How

many books calls did we get? How many people actually showed up? That's

a really simple one. And of course, how many people did you actually convert to

a client afterwards? So let's get into the

details of building a pre-call engagement system. So

there's a lot of information on these pages. I'm going to zip through this rather

quickly. But this resource, these slides are available to everybody after

this call. And so you're going to have this to comb through and

extract the details as much as you want. But the core pillars

of a pre-call engagement system are communication strategy. You

have to send an immediate confirmation. Hey, thanks so much for booking

the call. Here's the date. Here's the time. This is

the link to the room. We're super excited to talk to you. You want to send

them a reminder sequence at strategic intervals. So let's

say they book a call 10 days before they're scheduled to have it with

you. Hit them up a week before, two to three days before. Maybe

you remind them 24 hours before. Really excited to talk to you tomorrow. And

I like to send another one, one hour before. We actually, for

our agency, when we have sales calls scheduled, we hit them again 10 minutes

before. Like, hey, our call's in 10 minutes. Can't wait to talk to you. And

if it's possible, And again, Therasas has this functionality to

send text message reminders when somebody gives you their phone number. That

can be a really awesome way to bug them because like 95% of people

are going to open a text when maybe emails are going to get

lost. And it's right in their face. And it's a good way

to bug them on top of the emails that might have more extensive details

in there. And if you can manage to put some additional

rich media in those emails or bring them to a page that

is talking about you, there's all sorts of options here

for you to enrich this experience. And so things

like video messages, bring them to a landing page that says, hey, thank you

so much for booking a call with us. We're really excited to talk to

you. Here's some things that you should know before that happens." And the idea is

to get them really comfortable and confident and excited to talk

to you so that there isn't that chasm that they need to go through

where they're waiting for the call to happen. And in terms of

the resources that you can share, there's so many different things, and

this is going to be different depending on the nature of the work that you do,

details about your practice, if you're a solo therapist versus a

group practice. things that might jog your memory, like

a pre-call questionnaire. Here's some questions to reflect. So

for example, for Moonraker, one of the things that we send off

about a week before we talk to people is start thinking about

the goals for your practice. What is it that you want to achieve? Are you trying

to go private pay only, or you want to scale

your practice and add associates, or you want

to travel and get away from the physical brick-and-mortar office? giving

them props so that they can start to reflect so that when they come to the call,

they have a lot of good ideas to share that are catered to

the conversation we're gonna have. Another idea is a

free downloadable resource. Hey, I'm a specialist in

high-achieving women that struggle with anxiety. Here's a quick

little infographic or cheat sheet that gives you five tips that

I give to all my clients to help anxiety. And now you're already

providing value and building a trusting relationship before

they ever even saw you. And these are the kinds of resources that

people might have. They don't know where to put it on the website. Like, what do I

do with this valuable piece of information? Once somebody signs

up with you, that's a perfect opportunity to share this with them because it's

going to build on that momentum and there's a very good chance they're going to open

it because they've already decided to talk to you. Other things, like I

mentioned before, what to expect guides. Here's what the call is

about. Here's what our services are about. Here's what onboarding looks

like. Here's what the actual care process looks

like. And of course, success stories, testimonials. I

think of that kind of like every three to five

emails, like here's some information that's of value to you, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, and here's what this person said about working with us. Now, this is

a little, you know, there's some ethical guidelines

that you might consider given the nature of your practice. But if somebody already

has left a testimonial on your website and they've given you permission

to share it elsewhere, then this may be something worth considering.

Yeah, and just a couple things you know you this can scale,

like I know for like intensives and maybe larger purchases, like

you probably need to maybe do more nurturing, but for also other

people, it could just be the schedule within 24 hours

of a consultation or 48 hours you don't need to have five

or six emails in between those two days. focus on maybe,

maybe there's like an FAQ page about your practice that

you can send in the meantime, or, you know, just little snippet, little things

here and there. But I think the idea, the overall kind

of ethos is value-based engagement in some ways. So

every time you're engaging with them, even if it's just a reminder of

when the appointment is, you could have something that would provide value. Maybe

there's a video or a blog post that you had that might be relevant. So,

and you can automate a lot of this, or it could be manual. But I think the idea is value-based engagement.

And I don't know if, Shannon, if you wanted to bring on any ideas

Definitely. I think to your point, it's really important that you

begin establishing that connection right away with

your prospective client, because people want to feel that they're

not just another number in your system. They're not just another client in your book.

They really want to feel a personal connection with you. So like Chris's

point about a video, I find that the clients I speak to

really love that because then they feel like intuitively, I

know a little bit more about who you are, about your communication style, about your

personality. And that versus somebody

else's just blank website, which has no personalizing information about

that therapist is going to lean that client more towards you than

Yeah. Great. Absolutely. Yeah. And

one of the one of the first value added steps

that you can take is after they fill out a contact form or after they

book a call, you can redirect them automatically to another page that

has that video or that image or that guide that says, thank you

so much for for reaching out. Thank you so much for booking with me.

Here's some things to understand. So it shows up immediately. It

tells them that they just completed the step they needed to and

that things are good. And it gives them a little bit of a guide for

next steps. Again, the kinds of things that you could feature in

an email sequence or on that landing page that they go to

Sorry to interrupt. I had, I

just had a really quick idea. So in Therasax, you can have a dropdown that

would say, would you like first availability or would you like to work

with a particular clinician? And so you

could have an automated email on that when they submit the form that

says, Hey, thanks for it. See, we saw that you're interested in working with this. Here's

their page. And maybe there's like a couple other videos about

that clinician that goes a little deeper and how they work with client, you know,

in the meantime. So you're just, you're building that trust on automation. So

Yeah, like the way that you can set up automations in Theracess, it's like, you

know, if someone books a call on this calendar, which relates

to Susan, then send them to the Susan landing page

that has information about her and her modalities and things like that.

So it's it's adjusted depending on the the

adventure that this client has picked. So there's a lot of fun things that

you can do. And again, the whole purpose of this is to develop a

trusting relationship and provide value before that call even

happens, because then you're a few steps ahead already. They're not

kidding on the call. Like, tell me more about you. I don't know what you sound

like. Like there's that little awkward phase in the beginning where they need

to establish that you're a real human being and you're trustworthy. You

can move ahead and get into the real nitty gritty of that call much

faster if they've already seen that concept from you. And

again, other pieces of information that could reduce the

friction, you know, clear instructions on how to use technology because not

everybody is familiar with Zoom or other platforms that

you might be using for video calls, making sure that the

calendar integration tool that you're using is actually dropping an

event on their personal calendar, making sure that they know if

this all fails, here's my phone number, do a pre-call tech

check, things like that. They can be helpful to make sure that this

workflow is accessible to all levels of

Yeah. And don't make any assumptions because sometimes clients aren't sure.

Are you calling me? Am I calling you? So be very explicit so

that you're reducing any possible confusion

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And in

terms of the platforms that you can use to build all this out, obviously, there,

there is powerful, you can do all sorts of incredible automations, there's

an automated booking calendar, there's the contact forms, it's all HIPAA compliant.

So it's designed for this stuff. If that was an option that

was too expensive or you wanted a simple thing, a tool like Calendly, for

example, this is also HIPAA compliant. You can get involved for like 10 bucks

and you can set up a pretty rudimentary email reminder

sequence and text message sequence. So it gets the job done,

but it's a bit more, actually much more limited. But

again, compared to I fill out a contact form, expect

you to take at least a day, if not more, to get back to me. And

then you respond back to them and say, oh, here's my availability. And

by then they've already spoken to 20 other therapists. The

thing is that when someone gets on your calendar, They

tend to reduce or pause their search for others until they

speak with you versus a contact form submission where

as soon as they submit it to you, they're going to go submit it to any other places.

And it might not be that another practice is a better solution for

them, but if they're adequate and they get in touch sooner, there's a

chance that they're going to win that client instead of you. So the booking calendar

is really the way to go. And then all of the details that we're talking about here

is additional value to make sure that they show up to that

call and that they're really excited to do so. And

so that's it. We've zipped through that presentation. So

next steps would be to begin the process of implementing a

pre-call engagement system. So the very least you can do, send

them an immediate email that says, your time is confirmed. Here's

the information. And then consider other value building resources

and trust building elements and guidance that will make sure that they show up.

Of course, you want to test it on a whole bunch of devices, especially mobile,

because three quarters of your audience is probably going to book with

you on a phone. And so you want to make sure that all that stuff works. So

test it on your own phone, test it on your partner's phone, et cetera. And

if you're going to be using a system like Therasas, where there's a lot of data, then

make sure that you're analyzing your attendance metrics on a monthly basis. Is

this improving things? Did we struggle with no

shows before, and now we're actually seeing more people show up?

Or, of course, some people are going to be starting this for the first time, and

so this is going to be all new data, but you want to monitor trends over

time. And if all this sounds great, but it's super overwhelming, hire

someone to manage this process for you, like Brent's team or like us. That's,

that's the crash course on making sure that people show up

to your consultation calls so that you can do what you do best, which is

Shannon, anything you want to add before I move on to part five, which

No, I'm excited to get into this part. I think we covered that really

Okay. Great. All right. Well, let's keep

So part five, how do we turn consultation calls into lasting relationships? So

I've done a lot of intake calls. Shannon has done 10 times more

than me. And so we've been in the trenches with you. And

so we have a lot of experience having these calls and what

it takes to actually build that momentum so that somebody says,

you know what, I want to work with you, or this is really expensive,

but it feels like the right thing for me. and we're going to show you a framework

that we put together to ensure that you touch on all

the points you need to to build that positive trusting

momentum and also address any objections before they even come up.

And again, why you would attend this part, clients are attending your

calls, but they're not moving forward with your services. Or maybe you're

having calls and it's working sometimes, but it doesn't feel secure because

you don't really know why it's working. And you want a proven framework for

your calls to make sure that you follow something systematically each

time. And again, this is step four of this client

journey. So they've gone through everything. They found you from, you

know, in the forest, they discovered you, they came to the

website, they booked on your calendar, your sequence made sure

that they showed up and here they are on the call with you and how

can we make sure that if it's a good fit that they move forward and begin

work with you and stick around for a long time. So we're going to talk about what

we do in a way that Makes it feel more

natural because I've heard a lot of therapists. They say that they struggle with

consultations because it feels salesy They don't like to push people.

They don't like to sell and it's like I don't know I don't I don't

feel comfortable treating this like a sales call but in reality this

is a high-ticket sales call because most folks that I talk about

they say talk to about this they say Clients stick around

for 20 sessions, 50 sessions. I

can't get rid of clients. And so if you can get someone to move forward on

that call, that could be $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 for your practice.

So this is a really important moment in this client journey.

And if we follow a proven framework, we can make sure that we get the

best results from this. And again, that's me, and this is

what we do. So

what are some common challenges on the consultation calls? And this has

to do with the psychology of a person that is considering services.

And again, sometimes someone's ready to go as soon as they get on the call. But

what I've heard from a lot of clients in 2025 is that clients

are more nitpicky and less trusting than ever. And it

probably has something to do with the massive insecurity in the world today with

their shopping around. They're not making decisions quickly.

This is not 2021 when you could put a cardboard sign out in front and

have a line of clients. So we need to do everything that we can to help

them teach themselves how much this means to

them and why it's a good fit. Because what we're really doing here is

we're not having them tell us things for us, it's so that they can hear it

themselves. And so, you know, common challenges. Clients

don't understand how their challenges might affect other people in

their lives. And if they don't recognize that, they might fail

to recognize the full value of therapy. They might minimize their

emotional distress. Oh, well, that's just the way it was growing up. If

they don't understand how to acknowledge their suffering, they might not

recognize the true cost of living their life without support. They

might not feel that there's a sense of urgency, like why is it important to

start now? And they also might be missing an opportunity afterwards.

Like if you, like what we talked about with the pre-call sequence, you

can also do that after the call. Maybe they're still on the fence. There's

ways to set up a system exactly the same way. But instead of a

pre-call engagement system, it's a post-call engagement system. Don't let

them just float away because they didn't close with you on the call.

There's ways that you can continue to provide value so

that maybe two weeks later, maybe a month later, you stay top

of mind. And then when they're ready to go, they reach out to you instead of someone else. So

obviously this is critical because every unconverted consultation

represents a lot of wasted marketing efforts and a lot of time on

your part. And there's another person out there who might continue to struggle without

proper support. So I consider this a really important

step where we can teach somebody. by helping them

teach themselves why they need support and why this is an important part

of their life. We call this the COMPASS framework. And

each of these, I love a good acronym, especially ones that are related to simple

words. There's seven crucial elements that we're going to cover that

will help clients to articulate their needs, develop urgency for

your services, and also address objections as we go. And in

terms of measuring success, how many people are moving forward? Shannon,

did you want to jump in? Hey,

Oh, yeah. I wanted to say, just reiterating the importance of a framework. I know.

Oh, OK. Great. So I just wanted to reiterate the importance of

the framework. I know that those of us who are very social

sciences heavy feels really icky and uncomfortable talking

about marketing and sales. But a

lot of the most important research

about client success comes

from this idea of a script, of a framework, why

it's so important. It's like you're sticking to the same elements every

time. It may not be the exact same way every time, but

it is really important to hit all of these points,

whether it's in a roundabout way, whether it's in a stepwise fashion, but

the framework works and there's a reason that it works. So I

Yeah, and we're essentially ensuring that we can guide clients through

this call so that it doesn't take you two hours, that

they feel like you are somebody that has a really

good handle on what needs to be known in this first step. And so this

is like an audition, essentially. And so we want to make

sure that we address all these things and the things. the

elements. So what does COMPAS stand for? These are seven questions,

essentially, that are related to these concepts that

we want to cover because it's going to address everything. So who

else in your life is affected by these challenges? And also, should anybody

else be on this call? It sucks to have a really amazing call

and then have somebody say, well, I got to go talk to my partner

who hates the idea of therapy and blah, blah, blah. It would save everybody

a lot of time and trouble if everyone that should be involved is

involved from the beginning. So that's a big one to cover,

especially towards the beginning half of the call. Some

other things to address, and I just want to note that a lot of these, I'm

sure most of you are doing naturally. The point of a framework is

to make sure that we hit all of them every time. And so what

are the primary obstacles that you're facing? This is the kind of stuff that someone

is going to pour out for you, assumedly, in that call

anyway. But helping them to understand the real scope, like

how long have you been experiencing these difficulties? How

are these challenges affecting your daily life and well-being? Helping them

to really just marinate in that misery. And

the point is not to be masochistic, but it's to help them understand. It

sounds like you really struggled a lot, and it sounds like

you're carrying a lot, and that this is the kind of thing that can really help you

to shed that baggage and those burdens. Aspirations, what

does healing look like for you? What's your vision for yourself and for your life? Strategies

is important because it helps the client understand that they do need help.

Like, what have you tried so far? Have you tried other professional support?

And there's a good reason for them to be on this call, probably because they feel

like everything they've tried has not worked. but it's important for them to

state that out loud. And also the spark is, you know, why

is this a priority right now? What's the urgency come from? Why

are you not just doing what you did before? What changed? And when

they say all of these things for you,

but also essentially for themselves, every single one

of these things is going to address a possible objection. Oh,

well, you know, it's not that bad. Well, you just told me it was terrible. Oh,

well, I don't really have many goals. I don't know. I'm just not really here for anything.

Well, you just told me that you had a vision of having a wife and kids and living

in the country. And right now you feel like your life is hellish. Oh,

well, you know, I'm going to go try that other thing. I'm going to

try this. I got a meditation app, and that should probably help." Well, you

just said that you did that for six months, and where are you? Again,

I'm not using perhaps the language that you would use to

address those objections on a call, but when someone tells you

explicitly, I've tried a million things, it didn't work, then

it makes it a lot more uncomfortable for them to say, well, I'm going

to try a few more things. Why is this important

right now? If they say, I just can't live like this anymore, and

then they get to the end and they say, well, I don't know, I'm going

to think about this for a while. Well, you just told me you didn't want to live like this anymore.

So what is it? And again, I'm being very pushy because I'm

just being direct, talking to y'all on this call. But of course,

there's more tact involved in the actual delivery of these things on

the call. If you can address all of these things, then the

person on the call, who may be on the fence, or might be

intimidated by the process, or they're just uncomfortable with

the idea of opening up, maybe this is new for them, it will help them

to see, and they are painting a picture for themselves.

This is a really awful thing that I've been dealing with for a really long time. I

want so much more for my life, and there's a lot of

things I've tried that didn't help, and this is really important for me to

do, because I'm sick of waiting. And my wife is here on

this call with me. She knows we've been struggling together. I want this to be

so much better for us or whatever. So that's the

idea of the framework and some strategy points

Can I ask a quick question real quick for Shannon?

I have a music background. So we

all have, I have frameworks, right? Musical frameworks, a little bit like jazz, right? You

have the form. And then you can, once you know the form really well

and you know the melody, you can start to improvise a little bit and,

you know, play with it a little bit. So I'm curious of,

of this, like kind of what, how, how would your flow

be in the midst of, of, of

that, of a, of a framework that you might use, or if you use the compass framework or

Mm-hmm. Typically, I like to let the client lead

a little bit in the sense that I open the

call always asking what questions I can answer for

them right away. Typically, they'll have a burning

question. That's the reason that they booked the call. They couldn't find the information for

themselves on the website. And so I start off by

centering them, what are your questions? And then from

there, once we get those immediate questions out

of the way, the client feels a little bit more relaxed. Like, okay, my

burning questions have been answered. And then I circle back around to what have

your previous experience has been. So I always, I

don't use that exact wording and I always kind of tailor my approach to

how the client presents to me. Sometimes people will call They're

in distress. Sometimes people will call and they have sort of a flat

affect. And so there's a little bit of coaxing that needs to happen to get people

to come out of their shell a little bit. But yeah, like you said,

there's an improvisational piece to it where the client will

lead you sometimes with the question that they opened with to

logically kind of flow into some of these other pieces. And

I take notes, usually manually pen and paper while

I'm talking to them, just so that I can keep track of, okay, what

have we covered so far and what

still needs to be covered before the call ends? Because the last thing I

want is the call to be over. And I've not asked like

two critical, important questions. And sometimes, you know,

it'll be like, Oh, you know, you want to talk to your husband about finances, perhaps

like, is he available now? Maybe we need to reschedule. Maybe we

can, answer some of these questions now and table it

to have a fuller conversation when all invested parties

who are decision makers in this can be present. But

yeah, generally, it all starts from whatever question You

know, usually it's about money. Sometimes it's about if

it's a group practice, like, well, who on the team am I supposed to

work with? And some of those things are already answered as part of the pre-call engagement

strategy that we discussed previously. But sometimes

the questions, they yield like the obvious segue

into the next part of the framework. So hopefully, hopefully answer

Yeah. And I would imagine some people looking at the framework, like, well, that's a

lot of questions. This could end up being like a, you know, a half-hour,

45-minute phone call. And I know, Shannon, for you, you're selling intensives,

which I imagine are private pay. So maybe having a longer sales

call makes sense. But I'm curious, what's sort of like your

Typically, I would say most calls are wrapped up

within 15 minutes. Most people that call already

have an idea that they're going to do, they're going to commit

to a program like the one that

I'm talking to them about. They're just not sure which one it is.

And that's why it's so important to establish that personal connection right out

the gate. And they do that by also just some

self-disclosure. I know that for a therapist, it's a

little bit different. Um, because you have ethical

guidelines and boundaries and you don't necessarily always want to disclose a

lot of personal information about yourself, which is understandable. But for

me, I come at it as more of like a peer support specialist where

they say, Oh, I've just been struggling with this particular issue

for X amount of years. I can relate that to my personal

experience. And then I bring it right back into, and what has helped me

has been, and then I talk about how, you

know, the intensives that I work with, have been beneficial for

me, myself and other clients that I've seen go through

And yeah, longer if a client is in, you

know, some distress, but I always also emphasize the

importance of, Hey, I really want this to feel safe for you. I

would hate for this call to end and you feel worse when

you end the call than you did when you picked

up. So sometimes there's a little bit of

emotional co-regulation that will have to happen in order to get

to some of these deeper questions. But yeah,

I would say within 15 minutes, you have a pretty good

idea if a client is going to move forward or not. And

so at that point, it's good to just say, you know, either,

hey, maybe this doesn't seem like a good fit for you if they just keep

raising objections that you can't really address. Or maybe

they just there's some resistance there that you feel like they're not ready to commit.

Or, you know, hey, this is a good fit for you. And let's talk about

Yeah, and I would say in terms of these questions, it does seem like a lot, like

there's seven big questions, but a lot of them will be shared all

at once. Like a client will probably tell you what's going on, how long

it's been happening, and might get into like the depths of suffering that

they've experienced because of it. And so a lot of this will happen naturally.

And it's just important to remember like, what are all the things that I

want to touch on? This person is giving me all this great information, but

are they able to make a decision for themselves? They've told me

how much everything is terrible, but what do they actually want instead? Or

I don't know what else they've tried. Does this actually make sense for them?

Like, have they tried anything? Because maybe it isn't a

good fit if you decide, like, you know, you could actually just, like, go

and do some yoga and you'd probably be better. Again, I'm not

quoting here. I'm just saying, like, it might turn out that, well, I

haven't tried anything. This is it. Maybe it does make sense for

them to try something else. So these are questions that not only support your ability

to close clients and help them move forward, but also understand

and identify if it's not a good fit for you as well. some

notes about this. Like we kind of said already, clients may

share answers in a different order. You don't need

to remember all this stuff. Again, a simple guide is

helpful. These are the seven things that I would like to take off to make sure that

we've covered everything that will give us the full breadth of what we need to

know and also address any objections. You might know some of

these answers already just from your experience about Clients

struggling with a certain set of issues but the point here

is that it's important for them to share it for themselves because Maybe

they've never told anybody how much it sucked before or how

much they're struggling before and when they say it out loud Not only

is there a moment of relief just from that, but it proves

to them, wow, this is really hard. I really do want to

move forward with professional support for these issues. And

in regards to price objections, which especially this year are the number

one, if you can address all these other things, then

you're going to limit the likelihood of a price objection. There

will always be people that don't want to pay for your services or just can't.

But the best case scenario in that situation is that everything

that has led them up to this point, the website,

the booking process, the call, they feel such

positive regard for you and momentum on the call that

if they can't afford it, they will say, is there anything else that I can do to

work with you? Like this is how I know that the sales calls that we're

having lately have been good because if somebody doesn't want to sign up

for the whole year, they say, well, can you just do this thing instead? Like I

want to find some way to work with you. I just can't commit to

this big thing, but is there anything else we can do? And it

gives you a good opportunity to provide some, you

know, down sales, cross sales. Like maybe you have an information product, like

a, course or a

infographic or some e-book or PDF that can provide them

some support in the meantime, and it adds value, it gets you

a little bit of revenue, and then it keeps you top of mind so that when they are

ready or financially prepared, then they can move forward. I

wanted to also touch on some really powerful negotiation tactics and

I'm going to be clear, this is all from an awesome book called Never Split the Difference

by Chris Voss. But these two tactics are incredible because

I use them every single day in my professional

life and in my personal life and they're incredible. And this

is something that I wanted to bring up because you can use these kinds of things on

a call and they will help to develop a trusting

and comfortable environment for the client to feel like they want

to move forward. And the first one is the power of no. And I find

this fascinating because I've done experiments with past

girlfriends where we both have read the book and we've both talked about this

and just tried it out. And the idea is that people are naturally more

comfortable saying no. It provides a sense of control. And

people like to be helpful versus put up resistance. And

so, for example, instead of saying, like, try this at home, can you

give me a glass of water? And then the partner says, yeah, OK.

But in their mind, they're like, I don't want to do that. And there's like a micro resentment

that's formed, maybe. versus like, do you mind getting me

a glass of water? Would it be impossible for you to grab me a glass of water when

you get up? No, no problem. I got that. Now I'm helpful. I

feel like a little hero. And it's the

same exact thing that you're asking, but when it's phrased in a way where

someone could say, no, don't worry about it. I'm helpful. It

just takes that resistance and eliminates it. And it's

crazy that people can even react to this being fully aware

of what we're talking about here. So I use this in relationships constantly.

I use it in emails constantly. Would it be impossible to

hop on a call with you later this week? Would it be crazy to consider,

are you opposed to? And so the simple examples are

like, can I ask you some questions about your mother? Do you mind if I ask you some

questions about your mother? No, no problem. Let's talk about that.

Versus yeah, okay, I'll talk about that psychopath. So

it's like, There's different ways that we can phrase the same things

that provide deeper access and greater rapport, because

they're giving you permission in a way that feels safer for them. And an

awesome follow-up to that is in the book, what he calls labeling,

and it's about saying it looks, it sounds, it seems, it feels

like, and then you speak to the emotional core of what they shared. Simple

example, I was on a call years ago with a client who he this

was before I did mental health I was working with auto body shops, and he was talking

about this nightmare that he went through with another agency Oh,

they ran me around and this was supposed to be fixed and the website broke

and then my Google listing got canceled. And so there's all these

things that he said. And what I followed up with was, it sounds like

you had a real shit time with this person. And he said,

yeah, it was a nightmare. And I saw him visually relax

and kind of settle into the chair like, yes, thank you for acknowledging

the emotional depths of my struggle and so that's the power of

this because labeling I know that we're taught like don't label like

don't judge but this is a way of of asking a question in

the form of a compassionate statement and if you happen to

be wrong somebody will be more than happy to correct you

but the goal is that you can make a connection in the process of

doing that and they're probably going to share more information whether

you're right or you're wrong anyway. And so I could have asked

that person, so would you say that it was a really challenging process

with that other agency? Yeah, obviously. But instead it

was like, man, it sounds like that was a real nightmare. And he was like, yes, totally.

So for example, a client says, I tried this, I

tried that, I tried yoga, I tried medication, I tried everything. It just feels like

nothing actually helps my problems, you know? Yeah, it sounds like you're feeling super

frustrated that nothing is working. Again, this is

nothing groundbreaking here, but it's important to remember these

kinds of things because the goal of that call and

what really triggers someone's action to make a decision, I

want to work with you versus 20 other people, is I feel

emotionally safe. I feel seen. I feel acknowledged. I

feel like they really get it. And so letting them say no,

and then moving forward in a way that you need them to, to continue that

call, helping them to feel acknowledged in the

way that they've struggled. These are really simple, but powerful things that

can transform the calls that you have, but also your personal

Can I ask Shannon on that? What are some of the things you

like to say on like

some of these calls you could be labeling, but like, what are some of the things you found like,

Oh, it's helpful if I do this or if I frame things in a certain way,

Validation is huge. Like I think this late, the concept of

labeling to me relates directly to this idea of validating, you

know, like validating clients distress, validating

a client's efforts, their resilience, um,

their adversity, you know, I think that, um,

that's something that, sometimes, especially

certain clients, I would say they haven't got a lot of that

in, you know, their life outside of a therapy

space. Sometimes it's the first time that they may

have heard that, you know, like, wow, it sounds like you had a really childhood

and sounds like, and still showing up for you in all of these

ways in your relationships with others and your

relationship with yourself and how you're showing up in the world. And

I think just that, that simple bit of validating, like,

yes, you have been doing, you've told me all

of this work that you've been doing, all the efforts that you've put into your

recovery process, and you're still feeling stuck, or you're still feeling like

you're not getting the results that you're seeking, and

that sounds really hard. Another thing I like to do is

just acknowledge, like, this is a big first step, just

booking this call, you know, is a huge step, and I hope you're

giving yourself credit for that. feeling proud, you

know, that you're able to take this step, because you've

been dealing with this for a really long time, it sounds like. So

just those little things of acknowledging, hey, I

hear you, you're suffering, and it sounds like

you've tried everything that you know how to do on your own, maybe with

help, and now you're at the point where we're on this call right

now. And just, I don't know, celebrating that a

little bit is always received really well, sometimes

you know people don't get that. I think especially um men

a lot of a lot of men clients that i speak to

they tell me like, hey i don't hear that a lot outside of

you know therapy. Maybe a little uncomfortable for them

um but also it's i think it's

it's heartening and it's it's something that just

humanizes the relationship and it makes someone feel like oh wow like

chris said i feel seen. I feel like you

get me And that, to

me, just even from my own personal experience in therapy, is

what I really want to hear and how I want to feel when

I'm on a consultation call and trying to find a mental health professional

Yeah. Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you for sharing that. Absolutely.

Yeah, because I always think, I know intake coordinators are always kind of looking for maybe

ways to better frame things. So thank you for sharing some of

that. Yeah. So yeah, I'll

Yeah. And I just wanted to to build on what Shannon said, which

is that there's a good chance that a lot of the folks that listen to

this are doing these things already. And that's great. And I'm not

here to judge anybody's communication style or process, but

just suggest these are the things that have helped us to succeed in this particular

regard. And like, don't discount the healing power of

acknowledgement. And, you know, you have a lot of incredible modalities that

are powerful. Maybe some people, they want to jump into helping mode right

away. I have this amazing hammer. I just want to hit and nail. But

maybe that's not the right moment to do that. And just

to show up for them and see them is just as powerful as

it needs to be and also very simple. So in

terms of platforms, again, Therasas, we want to make sure

that people actually show up. If you want to keep notes

about people, this is the place to do it. You

can build a little form for yourself and make sure that you go through these steps

when you're on a consultation call. Having a tool like that is

really helpful because it's going to be your central repository

for all information that you've gathered. pre-client relationship and

also post-client relationship before things get transferred into your EHR. So

just wanted to give another little shout out for Brent

and his team as well. So next

steps. Memorize the framework. Repeat these seven

elements until they're committed. Come up with your own name. It doesn't matter. The idea of

the framework is to make sure that you address those seven big questions because

they are going to help you to address objections before

they come up. If they do come up, you have something to fall back to.

It's going to help a person develop trust with you and feel seen, and

also build on the positive momentum so that they feel

by the end of this call, it is irrefutable that this is the right decision

for me and I will do whatever I need to to begin this relationship because

I really believe it's going to help me. And those are the ideal clients that

are going to jump through hoops for you. Those are the folks that are going to pay full

price for whatever you set it to be. And so this is a powerful

tool that will help you to create that security and

abundance that you want to in your practice. And it's a system that you

can fall back to, and you can use it every single time. You don't

have to wonder how the call is going to go. You have a system that you can rely

on, and it will help you feel more natural in that process. And practice it.

Practice little negotiation tactics, like when you go

home tonight, ask somebody, do you mind if you grab that for me instead of

can you grab that for me? See what happens. These

are simple things, but it's amazing how just a subtle adjustment

can make a real change in the energy in those relationships.

And if you need more support and you want specialized training and

someone to consult you as you go through these calls, then let

us know. This is the kind of stuff that we do every day. And so

we're always there to help you. And sometimes all you need to make positive changes is

guidance and accountability. So that's my spiel.

Thank you for running through that. Yeah. but

I'll do is I'll leave that up here for a minute. So I want to do a couple of questions. Uh,

I have a couple, so I have, I've written down here some

things for intake calls for therapy practices. I'm

going to run through a few and then maybe Shannon could get some, like, these are the

ones, these are the questions that we have to nail on an intake call just to see if

they're a good fit. But a couple of one is like, how did you hear about us?

So if you don't have on the form and fill it out, I think that's

always good to get up front in case they don't become a client. Um,

What stood out to you on the website that made you want to

work with us? And this question could be helpful

in that it allows you to know why they chose to reach out

to you and to help you better understand maybe what their struggles are. Another

question you could ask, and this is all that you could put these in the framework, you know, what

are you looking to get out of therapy? Could be one way to put it. How soon

are you looking to begin? So what's the urgency there?

And then maybe ask, like, are you new to therapy? Is

this something new? Because then that can be a guide, like, you know, here's

what to expect, really, in some of these sessions. Now, if you're doing

intensives, like you're saying, like, that's like a whole nother education process, you

know, what to expect. But for some people who are doing just the hourly week to

week, They may not know what therapy is and you have to do a little education

there. And that helps, you know, making the unknown known also

builds that trust with you. So those are kind of like a few of

my questions that I'm like, you could try asking those. I'm

curious, Shannon, like what are you, what are some of those questions that

For sure. I always like to ask, what have your experiences been? in

therapy previously, you know? Have you had some experiences that

were amazing? Have you had some experiences that were not so good? Tell

me a little bit about that. This helps me get to the heart of, you know,

why somebody might be avoided, why they might not have

been engaging and attending regularly in therapy. It

helps me understand, oh, has this person experienced a previous psychiatric

hospitalization so that I can know what level of care they

They say something like, I've

started, like I've been with three or four therapists and just

doesn't seem to work. At that point, is that like a flag? You're like, well,

maybe this is actually not a good fit or tell me why they didn't work, you

Yeah, exactly. It's definitely a point to go a little bit deeper

and assess further to say, oh, what was it about it that didn't

work for you? Sometimes it's just, hey, the vibes were off.

Sometimes it's, oh, they didn't communicate something

important to me, or I felt invalidated. Sometimes

it's, I feel like I had to keep telling the same story over and over

and over again, and they just weren't getting it. lot of the time you know

in the context of intensives it's like I show up every week I

just have one hour and in that one hour it's just not enough time to

get to the real root of what I'm actually in therapy for. We

just spend all of our time talking about what happened in the last week.

So this helps me get a feel for, okay, well, what might some of your goals be in an intensive?

Um, and you can adapt that to, you know, whatever type of

service you offer. Like, well, it sounds like, you know, you,

you didn't really get your needs met in that last relationship and

just validating that for them because yeah, I mean, there

are a lot of amazing therapists out there, but also with the advent of

some, um, some therapy platform services, it

becomes more widely available and then, you know, people

run into quality issues. Sometimes it's a matter of expectations. Like

people expect the therapist to solve all their problems for

them and they don't really understand, Hey, what's the point of therapy? You

know, why do I do this? And so just getting to the heart

of it through, through asking about those experiences can

help me understand a little bit more of like, Hey, this sounds like it would be

a really great fit for you. Or, you know, maybe we're not such a

good fit, but I'm going to find some resources that might be better. Another

question I love to ask is, have you seen the reviews? Have you seen the

testimonials? Because we have a lot of those on

the website. And that's always something I like to direct people toward if

they haven't seen it, because I feel like that's just another element

of building trust. Like, look at all of these clients who,

you know, have gone through our program and

the results that they've seen. Like, that speaks for itself. And that's really powerful.

And if you're not collecting testimonies, you got it. Because this is a powerful

page that makes people get on the calls with us, for sure.

It's just, you know, it's a large team. There's 10 clinicians.

And so collectively, there's probably 50 testimonials from

past clients about like, you know, singing their praises. And that's a

really powerful conversion tool because people say, wow, I

want that so much. That's me. I want to feel different

like this person did. Oh my gosh. And just a quick note,

to toot our own horn, like this framework that we're talking about, the average

lifetime value of a client for intensive therapy retreats is $4,700. So

it works. And that's upfront payment. So this might

actually work better if it's the kind of thing where you're billing insurance, or

there's a lower cost of entry, and then that value is going to be

realized over the course of a relationship. But this has been tested

in basically a high-cost environment,

which I think is probably one of the harder forms of

Yeah. Well, thank you so

much. If you don't have anything else to add, there's the QR

code to get in touch with Moonraker. And Shannon, thank you so much for joining on

Yeah. And thank you, Chris, for slamming two presentations together

into one. Well done. And our final one is going to be next

month. And I believe we're talking about like, after

they become clients, sort of like continue those relationships. And I think we

How do we ethically extend client care in a way that provides the

Yeah. Yeah. Love that. So thank you. All right.

We'll have everyone listening. Thank you. Or watching. Thanks for joining on

the brand new practice webinar and podcast. And