Seven Success Secrets of Hypnotism Practice by - HTML preview

#7 GETTING PAID FOR YOUR SERVICES

If you are in an institutional setting or clinic, billing is based on the old models of the physician and psychologist, and the client is billed monthly. No matter how few statements you have to send out it costs time and money. If you want to send out forty or fifty statements, you must invest in the forms, the ledger cards and the clerical labor to address them. All of these services add to your costs.

My question is, do you have clients who don't keep an appointment? How many weeks did you have 24 appointments booked on Monday morning and you said, "I am going to have some income this week," but at the end of the week twelve of the twenty four had not shown up.

I have been in the work for thirty years, and completed 40,000 hours of clinical hypnotherapy. I was always resentful when I looked at the end of the week and I had "no shows" before I adopted the principle I am about to explain to you.

Printed on your appointment card is the statement "Advance notice of a cancellation must be given at least 48 hours in advance or a charge will be made." An hour before, or 10 minutes after the appointment time, the client calls and says, "I'm sorry I can't make it." About seventy per cent of them say, "My car is broken down," or "There has been an accident on the freeway." The other thirty per cent say, "My child is sick and I have to take her to the doctor." Or "My husband took the car and he was supposed to be back but he is not back yet."

Rarely do they tell you the real reason, such as, "I had an unexpected expense last week, I had to buy Jimmy football shoes, and they are $68.00, so I thought and thought how could I cut back on
expenditures this week and save $50.00." They say. "My car is broken down".

The first reality of this practice is, of those who do it to you once, seventy-five per cent will do it to you twice and of those who do it to you twice, ninety-nine per cent will do it to you three times because that is their pattern of behavior.

The same principal applies when you send statements, you get down to a few who are always two to three months behind and your office manager says, "I thought you ought to see these three overdue accounts."

You look at them and say, "Mary Jones owes me for three months! What is wrong with that woman? I knock myself out doing age regressions and twice I let her
appointments run over time. Why is she so ungrateful that she is not paying me?"

Question: When Mary Jones walks in for her appointment and you are aware of her unpaid fees, do you have the quality of caring to do your best work with her?

What you really feel like doing is to say, "I work hard for you and give you the best service, but you don't pay me the money and you don't even try to explain why." Instead you say, "That is not professional, so I won't do that. "

The very same thing applies with the no shows. After a client has missed two appointments, unless you are booked months ahead, it is unlikely you will charge them the cancellation fee. You will say, "This was the first time so I will let it go."

The second time you say, "It is not really fair to charge money for something they did not get, besides I could use that time to work on my books." But when they walk in the office, you are going to have a resentful feeling that will interfere with the maximum effectiveness of your therapy.

I am suggesting there are many, many reasons that you alter your methods for collecting money, and one way to do that is by selling a block of time.