Your practice phone rings.

It’s a new prospective client reaching out to learn more about what you do.

How you handle this phone call can mean the difference between this person receiving your life-changing help or them continuing their quest – and possibly never finding a therapist anywhere near as skillful and compassionate as you are.

Of all the places to focus on improving within your practice, your handling of the initial phone consult is easily in the top three most important.

Let’s dive in and look at nine steps you can take to make sure you’re conducting the best, most effective phone consults possible.

For the first time in recent memory, we’ve seen schools in the US close for extended periods due to a spreading virus.

The NBA suspended its season, travel to mainland Europe was banned for 30 days.

As a psychotherapist, this can be worrisome –

What if my clients are scared to come to the office? 

From one introvert to another: I get it.

Putting yourself out there and meeting new networking contacts can be nerve-wracking.

The whole networking idea sends shivers through your spine, gives you the willies, and leaves you begging to call in sick.

So what can you do instead, when the networking is unavoidable yet still icky-feeling?

Your practice phone rings.

It’s a new prospective client reaching out to learn more about what you do.

How you handle this phone call can mean the difference between this person receiving your life-changing help or them continuing their quest – and possibly never finding a therapist anywhere near as skillful and compassionate as you are.

Of all the places to focus on improving within your practice, your handling of the initial phone consult is easily in the top three most important.

Let’s dive in and look at nine steps you can take to make sure you’re conducting the best, most effective phone consults possible.

Our new clients usually think I’m joking.

“80% is perfect.”

I can hear the gears in their brain grinding.

“80%…” they struggle to let the full sentence escape their lips.

“…is perfect, that’s right.” I complete the statement for them if I have to.

Are you infected with the modern plague known as perfectionism?

If so, read on and discover a totally different way to live, learn, work, and grow.

Therapists all over the country ask us this question all the time.

“What is Therapy Practice Accelerator, anyway?”

“Is it a course?”

“Is it a program?”

“Is it a bright red button that will magically solve all my problems without me having to lift a finger or do any work whatsoever?”

(Spoiler alert: the answer to that last one is a definitive “No.”)

So, without further ado, allow me to paint a quick picture of what Therapy Practice Accelerator is.

When speaking with therapists, on occasion I hear bad advice they’ve received from other so-called “experts” or “gurus” who are trying to promote a website-less process to building a full practice.

One of the worst pieces of advice I’ve heard basically boils down to: “You don’t need a website for your therapy practice – what you really need is a funnel!”

In their proper context, marketing funnels are very powerful.

However, presenting your therapy work to the world is not a context where you can get away with a simple funnel and hope to be anywhere as successful as you would be with a well-designed, client-centered website.

Talking to over 2,500 psychotherapists and wellness professionals (none of whom are where they want to be in practice, or they wouldn’t be reaching out for help) reveals a LOT of patterns throughout the industry.

Something I’ve heard several times is the “I’m working for a group but I don’t receive enough referrals” problem. 

Which begs the question – why are you working for a group if you’re not receiving enough referrals?

They’re (sadly) a rite of passage.

The more successful you become, the greater the likelihood you’ll start getting them.

It only takes one person who’s having a bad day (or month, or year, or lifetime).

You don’t even have to do anything “wrong.” You can conduct yourself perfectly in every possible way…but someone is going to decide for reasons of their own to go online and defame you.

Since negative reviews are basically inevitable if you’re at all committed to growing a successful practice, the real question is: what can you do about them?

One of life’s greatest dangers is:

Not walking your talk.

Talking is easy.

Walking your talk can be quite hard.

Particularly when we’re talking about ever-present practices like how to relate to one’s own thoughts and feelings, or how to communicate with other human beings, or how to navigate fears and inadequacies.

If you have any aspirations whatsoever of growing a successful private practice, learning to walk your talk and actually apply the things you preach to your clients is one of the most powerful things you can possibly do.