What do you believe is the biggest risk to this industry?
- Is it OTC?
- Is it the online channels like Lively?
- Is it Costco?
- A second wave of COVID?
Well, the biggest risk is a patient believing that hearing AIDS are the solution to their hearing challenge.
As soon as a patient believes this, then this industry is in trouble.
As naturally, with the belief that technology is the only thing that matters, a smart patient will look for the cheapest place to buy their hearing devices from (and in 99 out of 100 situations, that will be somebody else).
Yet the mistake that I see so many hearing care clinics doing is making the hearing technology the “star of the show.”
- Their website is dominated by pictures of hearing devices.
- All their marketing messages talk about hearing aids.
- … And their pricing is built around technology levels (with the features of each device being the core part of the key price differences).
This consciously (or sub-consciously) shows the patient that the only thing that matters is purchasing a set of hearing aids.
This naturally leads patients to price-shop, become a “tested not sold” lead, and likely go elsewhere to find the solution to the problem you helped them to discover.
You Need a “Neuralyzer”
In the 1997 movie Men In Black – they have a small device called a “Neuralyzer.”
It’s a bright light that you look into and it wipes your memories.
Your job is to use this on your patients to reeducate them.
You need your patients to understand that hearing aids are only part of the jigsaw of achieving better hearing, with the more important component being the right level of hearing care.
Once a patient understands this, then it becomes almost impossible to compare you to a Costco, Lively or anywhere that sells devices.
It’s no longer an apples vs. apples comparison.
The way that you achieve better hearing becomes the much more important part of the patient’s decision making process.
The question is, how do you do this?
Well, aside from building your website to show the value of your hearing care and ensuring that technology isn’t the star of the show, the most powerful way to do this is through your pricing packages.
Whereas most of the industry names their pricing packages around technology and solely talks about the obscure jargon-filled features of different technology levels … your pricing packages should instead be built around the different treatment plans that you offer.
For many of our “Inner Circle” members, we name their treatment plans things like:
- All Inclusive (which include 9’s)
- Signature (which include 7’s)
- Smart (which include 5’s)
- Essential
“All Inclusive” naturally has everything included, with the best-in-class technology, highest levels of warranty, and all the perks, with the “Essential” having entry level technology with a limited warranty.
Your job is to build out each of these treatment plans by adding important elements into each of them outside of the technology.
Here’s an example:
Can you see how these packages look distinctively different, yet only one line of each package shares details of the technology level?
Some of the additional benefits used in each package to create levels of difference include:
#1 – Your Repair Warranty and Loss & Damage Warranty
Does each level of your pricing package have different levels of warranty? For many of our “Inner Circle” members, their “All Inclusive” package has up to 5 years warranty, with their lower packages only offering 1 year warranty.
This is used to create distinctive differences between each package outside of the technology.
#2 – Minimum Guaranteed Trade-In Value
As shared in the “increase upgrade frequency” article – you can use minimum guaranteed trade-in values to set a precedent and a reason for patients to upgrade technology within 48 months.
You can also include this in your premium packages to give additional reasons why a patient should choose one of your higher packages.
#3 – Years of Care/Service
How long will a patient receive your service for? Are you going to offer unlimited service and keep reviving hearing devices after ten years, or are you going to limit the service that a patient receives?
Many of our “Inner Circle” members make their years of service in line with the repair warranty on each package, with the higher priced packages naturally offering more.
This also means that they can sell warranty packages to patients later down the line.
There is also a bunch of other things that you could include that are not included in this example, things like inclusive batteries, a complimentary accessory, bi-annual reevaluations, etc.
But by building the key differences in your pricing packages around things other than technology, you achieve two key objectives.
#1 – You don’t run the risk of being price shopped, as what you offer is distinctly different to anybody else (it becomes impossible to run a fair comparison).
#2 – You make the patient’s decision much simpler. They don’t understand the technical jargon of the small differences between levels of hearing technology, but they do understand the rock-solid differences of years of service/benefits.
This may feel significantly different to the way that you do things currently, and I’m not here to say what is right or wrong for you. That’s your decision.
But my hope is that this article, and the other articles, at least make you question some of the ways that you do things (because it’s the way that they’ve always been done) and gives you permission to try new things.
