Have you ever eaten at a high-end fine dining restaurant? One of the first things that stand out about an experience like that is how small the food portions are.
Why do so many very expensive restaurants actually serve customers far less food for far higher prices?
Because these restaurants understand they are not really selling the food. They are selling the experience. They are selling the atmosphere, the feel of the linens, the heaviness of the silverware.
“You are paying 10x more for a meal to show the person you are with how much you care.” – Tony Maritato, PT
In this article, we will explore using this strategy in a CashPT business models to increase profits while saving consumers money.
Buying Decisions Are Fueled by Emotion and Justified with Logic
Do you think it is easier to sell a luxury item to a mother of three children under the age of 10 or sell or the husband of that mother who is looking for something to buy his wife that shows her how much he loves her?
Step 1 in selling cash based services is picking the right customer.
Selling post partum services might be far easier if you target the spouse of the patient rather than the patient.
The patient will likely feel guilty spending money on herself. But the spouse of the patient would feel good spending money to solve the patient’s problem.
In fact, the spouse would actually feel better spending more money than less when buying these services.
Step 2 – Buying decisions are based on emotion and justified by logic.
In step 1 we discussed targeting your marketing message to the spouse of your patient and leveraging emotion to make the buying decision.
In step 2 we need to provide enough logical reasons to justify the purchase and prevent returns or cancelations.
If a patient has insurance and the insurance plan has a $50 copay then that patient would be paying $500 for a 10 visit plan of care at an in-network clinic. But buying your program includes three 20-minute sessions and 6 weeks of online support, access to a community of patients expereincing similar challenges, email and text support, videos and blog posts. This value stack provides the logical justification needed to feel good about paying you instead of going through the insurance route.
Step 3 – Minimize buyer’s regret.
Immediately after closing the sale, start to exceed your client’s expectations and frontload the client experience with an amazing onboarding process.
Buyer’s regret is very real. It starts almost as soon as the payment is processed. You want to give as much value as is needed to deliver a positive experience immediately.
Anthony Maritato, PT
Private Practice Owner / Physical Therapist
After starting a private practice physical therapy clinic in 2022 with his wife Kathy Maritato, PT, Tony and Kathy grew their practice to five locations across two states.
Now, Tony and Kathy enjoy spending time treating patients in the morning, coaching therapists in the evening, and being home to play with their dog Tucker and 4 boys.
