Every doctor wants to influence positive change in their patients’ lives. Skills in sales and selling are needed, and Dr. Steve Vargo is here to explain why! Steve is an optometrist, a published author, a speaker, and IDOC’s Optometric Practice Management Consultant. With his vast experience, he shares insights on how doctors should approach sales by influencing change rather than merely selling a product. He joins Harbir Sian to give tips and offer a new perspective on selling. He grabs insights from his new book, Prescribing Change: How to Make Connections, Influence Decisions and Get Patients to Buy Into Change. Tune in to learn more about this customer-centric service first approach!
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Prescribing Change: How To Influence Decisions Of Patients With Dr. Steve Vargo
I have the amazing Dr. Steve Vargo, who is an Optometrist but also has an MBA. He graduated from ICO in 1998. He joined Prima Eye Group, which is IDOC in 2014, as the Vice President of Optometric Consulting. He has published and authored four books. The most recent of which we're going to talk about is called Prescribing Change. I read it this past week in preparation for this interview. I loved it. It was easy to read. You're a great storyteller and you use story as a way of educating and imparting that knowledge. I absorbed all of it. Thank you, Dr. Steve Vargo, for being here and joining me on the show. I appreciate it.
Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me. I appreciate the kind words as well.
I didn't mention in the bio because I clearly wasn't prepared enough that you also have a show, which is this cool short-form show called Can I Ask You One Question? It's such a cool idea because normally, I'm sitting here. I sent you these lists of ten questions that we get to get through during this conversation. What a cool idea to say, “I'm going to ask you one and you can go in-depth on that.” How did you come up with that? Why don't we start with that?
My short attention span was what’s led to that. I would see segments and I think you've done them too pulled out of longer-form podcasts and realized that, “I don't have 45 minutes, but I have 5 minutes or 10 minutes.” I would click and watch the whole thing. I thought, “That's a good idea. Why don't I have a podcast where I ask one question and keep it short?” I tried to find industry experts and people that are thought leaders and find the one thing that I could ask them that someone might want to ask if they had an opportunity to learn one thing from that individual.
One thing when it's expanded on, there's a lot of information in there. I watched a few of them. You had one of my favorite people Solomon Gould on there. He's always a wealth of knowledge. That was cool to see. You have many years of actual clinical experience. You practiced for fifteen years but now you don't see patients anymore. You work primarily as a business practice consultant. Can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like and what you do?
Years ago, I transitioned to a full-time practice management consultant. I joined a group where there was already a consulting team. I was probably the least pigeonholed at the time being the one OD in the group. We had somebody who handled marketing, HR and different areas. I cover a range of areas, but I have found certain areas I have a passion for. Patient communication is one, leadership and topics around selling it. It led to the topics that I write about in my books. There is a wealth of questions that doctors have in private practices, not getting that training in school. We are there to give them a lot of guidance to help them operate a successful practice.
You've been doing that for a while. I saw that you'd done over 3,000 consultations. I can imagine that there is a lot of things that you know. There's probably a lot of overlap or consistent questions that come up over and over throughout those consultations. What would you say is maybe 1 or 2 of the most common questions or concerns that ODs have?
A lot of it is around staff management and hiring issues. You could pick the problem, off the top of my head. I don't know if I could pick a specific question, but categorically, a lot of HR issues. As you can imagine, it's hiring, which leads to the broader discussion of how I make sure that I retain people? These discussions tend to grow into leadership aspects as well. That would be something that comes up a lot with what we're seeing as a labor shortage.
A lot of associate OD questions, too. Whereas we work with our practices and they're growing and revenues are increasing. They find that they can't see all these people on their own. There's also a shortage in the market of available associate ODs looking for work. We work with them a lot on how to recruit and create an attractive job offer to bring them and expand their business that way. There are a lot of different areas, but I would say off the top of my head, those are two that have been very topical.
I’m somewhat consoled by the fact that this is not just happening here. I thought it was just us. We are struggling to acquire new staff and associate docs and locums to cover and all this stuff. It's a challenge. The one topic that I do want to talk to you about, which I imagine comes up at some rate, is selling and the discomfort that ODs have with the idea of selling. I put myself in that group. I'm not an exception to that. The book is called Prescribing Change, but the original title was Even Doctors Are Salespeople.
I liked the title, but I battled with what reception that title would get.
This is a very good and smart title because it hits on a few things. We like prescribing, we don't like selling, but we still want to incite change in people. Let's start with this. Why do you think we are so afraid of selling? What is it that we're so afraid of and how can we change that behavior and that mindset?
You'd have to look first at where you are putting your focus. There's a mindset shift that takes place to make selling or whatever we want to call it. I'm not too hung up on the semantics of it. There are people that say, “I don't like the word selling.” That's fine. We can use whatever word we want. My version of selling is a little bit different in most cases than traditional selling. I look at almost an area that you might call non-sales selling, which they’d done the research and found that most people in the workforce spend about 40% of their day doing what's called non-sales selling, which is trying to motivate somebody to change their behavior and mind on something, develop a new outlook on something.
Being able to be more effective at that right off the bat can make you more influential. Again, we have to look at where we are putting our focus in any situation where we're selling. If our focus becomes on us, our revenues and our products, it's going to feel like we're trying to manipulate the other person. To some degree, you may be trying to manipulate the other person. This is how I was taught to “sell” in the beginning. You want to talk to people about all these different features. It turns into a feature dump. No one said to ask these questions to learn about the individual, peel back the layers and find out what's important to them.
It became, “We want you to go over these different things that they should upsell.” I work on the patient communication side to a large degree in how do we ask better questions? How do we learn more about the other person? Shifting that focus off of yourself onto the other person, once you've done that and my approach, in the beginning, is to spend more time learning about the other person. It’s what I call this discovery phase. All of a sudden, you get to a point where you don't feel like you're selling. You genuinely feel like you're trying to help the other person get what they need.
An important shift is taking the attention off of yourself and putting it on the other person and then you're helping them, not trying to sell them something.
Think about how easy it is when somebody comes in and tells you, “I need this.” When they tell you right off the bat, “I'm here because I want to get prescription sunglasses.” How easy does that conversation become? You know that's what they need. You feel like you're helping them. Devoting more time in the early part of an exam to understanding what the other person needs and wants and what's important to them makes it much easier for you to have those conversations that we would normally feel uncomfortable having.
Prescribing Change: How to Make Connections, Influence Decisions and Get Patients to Buy Into Change
That makes a lot of sense when you put it that way. If you're asking all these questions, then the patient divulges what their pain point is as you use in the book. You're able to say, “I can help you with that,” versus, “I'm trying to sell you eye drops or Omega-3s or whatever because it's going to help you with this thing that you told me you're struggling with.” There's one word you used in there and I'm jumping ahead because this was a little lower on my list of questions since you referenced it already. It’s influence.
When we're sitting there in the exam room, the doctor would like to influence the patient to take a certain action. Many of us like to be influential in other areas, whether it's within our practice or friends and family. Can you describe to me how we can become influential in those different aspects? What types of things do we need to be thinking about?
If we're going to use the word selling, we can almost substitute that with influence, your ability to be influential. Doctors spend a lot of time educating and informing other people. It's the influence that is directly tied to your ability to get somebody else to do something or change something, which our effectiveness is contingent on that. We can educate all we want, but if the other person doesn't do anything, if they don't stop smoking, if they don't lose weight, if they don't buy prescription sunglasses, whatever it is we want them to do, that'll improve their vision or their quality of life. If they don't take that action, it's an indicator that your influence is low.
How do we change that? A lot is how we communicate with other people. I put together a course, which I'm continuing to refine in different areas. It's heavily grounded in areas of human psychology, neuroscience and how do we talk to people in a way that they're not going to hear us, but they're going to be willing to take action. A lot of it is contingent on the questions we ask and making them curious.
Another example is making someone uncomfortable. Comfort is the enemy of change. Having conversations with people that get them to recognize that they probably should change or lead to other problems with their vision, health or quality of life. Being able to make a clear presentation to somebody. If we confuse somebody and doctors do that all the time, they're going to be much less likely to take action.
Even as far as getting a commitment from somebody, when you get to that point where you've learned a lot about them, you've made it a clear presentation, but we stopped short of getting a commitment. How do you do that in a way that doesn't feel intrusive? I won't go too far into all those different areas. There is a science to being more influential with people.
There is the book by Cialdini, Influence, which is a great book. I know you referenced that in your book as well. You say it in your book too. When you're learning these techniques and the science behind them, it's not to manipulate people in a negative way. It's simply to understand how to communicate better with that person.” There was something in there that you talked about as well as getting people to do the small commitments.
As those little commitments add up, it's hard for that person then to back away from these little commitments that they've made as time goes on instead of getting them to commit to this one big thing at the end of the conversation. You talked about it in the book. You feel like it's useful. Can you talk about what that would look like in a conversation with a patient?
First of all, sometimes, you do have to shrink the change. To use an example of a patient, let's say who smokes two packs a day. They might not be ready to commit to going cold Turkey because you want them to, but would they be willing to cut back to 1 pack a day or 1.5 packs a day? The idea behind commitments is leveraged on, we're much more likely to follow through with something when we've made a verbal commitment to somebody else.
I would tell you to make sure that you communicate your commitment to the other person to say that, “I'm 100% committed to doing everything I can to help you with this vision problem, but I can't do it all by myself. I'm going to need your commitment on this as well. Is that something you can agree to?” If it is, I've got their commitment and then we're going to say, “Let's follow up again in three months.” Based on research, you probably are going to be much more likely to follow through once you've made a commitment to that, but maybe you're not ready to make that step.
Let's have a conversation about what you are willing to do. By the end of the exam, I want a commitment to something that's going to improve. It doesn't need to be all or nothing but something that moves us in that direction. I'll say one more thing about the influence. It popped into my mind was that the interesting thing about influence is people of influence don't spend a lot of time telling other people what to do. They are masters at getting other people to come up with their reasons for changing something. A lot of the conversation revolves around being able to explore somebody else's reasons and being able to elicit those reasons.
That's something that many of us strive to have is more influence. The other thing that we strive for is enthusiasm, which I know is something that you also talked about. Why is enthusiasm important? Where does it fall in? How can we be more enthusiastic?
Enthusiasm is important. Enthusiasm sells, which is something most of us probably have heard. It needs to be genuine. While enthusiasm sells is accurate, it's misapplied in many situations because it presumes that the enthusiasm is going to be directed at what you're selling and that can be problematic. That can even come across as you can lose trust with the other person because enthusiasm can quickly be perceived as a promotion. What I would say is address the enthusiasm at the other person's problem.
People are always going to be more passionate about their problems than they are about your products. That's a misconception that we need to be enthusiastic about the glasses, tent, coding or eye drop we’re selling when in reality, nobody cares about your products. They care about themselves and solutions. The interesting thing is once you understand somebody else's problems and you're in a position to help them, they're going to become much more interested in your products suddenly. Direct that enthusiasm at helping at the other person and helping them.
That's excellent to put it that way as well. Naturally, I would think, “Look at this amazing new frame that we have or amazing new lens design that we have,” versus being enthusiastic about helping solve the problem for the patient. The product would be the avenue or the way of you doing that. When I think of enthusiasm, I think of being boisterous and big personality-wise. Is that important too? I'm sure there are introverts out there who are like, “I don't want to have to do that.” Is that part of it or is that different?
You still want to be somewhat charismatic. We can agree to some level of charisma is a good quality in a salesperson but here's an interesting thing. There is some research that's been done on extroverts versus introverts and which one makes the better salesperson. It's not as clear-cut as you might think. People might think, “An extrovert naturally because they like people, they like talking to people, they're going to be more charismatic.” Extroverts don't do very well. What are we talking about up until this point? The value and the importance of listening, of asking questions, of listening to the other person.
That's something that introverts do pretty well. In fact, in sales situations, if that's what we're talking about, that they've studied, they listened in on sales calls and you know what the number one quality was and the top salespeople? They were the ones doing the least amount of talking. Charisma counts. I could look at two people that I had employed and say that someone who is more of an outgoing person might be more cut out for a sales position, but it's not always that cut and dry either.
Influence Change: If we’re going to use the word selling, we can substitute that with influence or your ability to be influential.
Those who are introverted, they probably are going to be happy to hear that. The consistent theme throughout the book is listening. To hear the other person, to hear what they're saying and connect with them. That's very important. I like the analogy of the rider and the elephant. I love that your book is this psychology/social human behaviors. I read a lot of those types of books. That's part of the reason I loved your book too.
You referenced some of the other books I've read and research that I've seen. It was cool to see that. We have our thinking brain and then we have our more emotional brain and that's where a lot of our decisions are made. It's important when we are speaking to this person and we'd like to incite change, we need to speak to that part of the brain. How do we do that? How do we get the response from that part of the brain that we're trying to get change from?
There are different parts of the brain. A lot of times, doctors will try to connect. To simplify it, we broke it down to the thinking brain versus the emotional brain, the neocortex versus the limbic system. Doctors spend a lot of time trying to give people a lot of factual, logical reasons that they should do something. The problem is that it's not the part of the brain that makes decisions. Do you know how many decisions we have to make every day?
One thousand.
Thirty thousand decisions. A lot of these are little micro-decisions like what did you eat for breakfast? Why did you decide to take that route to work? Our brain is in constant decision-making mode all the time. How would we do that? If you had to go through a deep logical analysis of every decision you had to make, we'd never get anything done. The brain has developed a shortcut. What we do is depend on feelings and emotions to help us make decisions. Here's how the brain works. When we're presented with a decision, the thinking brain looks over at the emotional brain and says, “What do you feel like doing?”
Most of the decisions you make, if I asked you, why did you make that decision? You could probably safely say for most of these, “It's what I felt like doing.” Ninety-five percent of our decisions are driven by emotion. What does that mean? It means, back to the topic of influence, if we want to be influential, we have to make a connection with somebody, not just intellectually, but emotionally as well. Again, it's back to the questions. Asking questions that peel back the layers and get down to the more emotional reasons somebody would want to do something.
Science backs this up that we're much more motivated to do something not based on external problems. We live with all kinds of problems. People live with emotional, financial, health problems. What motivates people to take action is more based on people's internal frustrations. Again, asking questions and getting down to the more emotional frustrations that somebody is having establishes a connection.
They're much more willing to listen to you talk about solutions, products and services that you have, which goes back to where we started. What can you do to make selling less awkward and less uncomfortable? That's it right there. Understand the other person and then you're having a conversation that they want to hear. They don't feel like, “Here comes the upsell.” They want to hear what you have to say.
As I was alluding to earlier, you're good at storytelling and using story to help understand a concept. You told this story about you're at the airport. If you don't mind sharing that quick story. I like how that brought this whole thing to light. I'll explain my interpretation of it as well.
I was at an airport and I overheard two people talking in a language that I didn't know. I had no idea what they were talking about, two young gentlemen. Suddenly for no particular reason, they started talking in English and they were talking about a party they had gone to and some girls they had met there. It was interesting to go from not understanding anything they were saying to have full clarity on what they were saying. The point I made in the book was that we need to communicate in a way that connects with people.
We have to be careful as doctors because sometimes we are overly logical. Sometimes we don't make that connection. We can make that connection on facts, logic, reason, science and research and the patient nods their head, but it doesn't change anything. The point I was making in the book is the ability to make that connection in a way that the emotional side of their brain understands it the same way I suddenly started to understand what was being said by the two people at the airport.
For me, it resonated significantly because we could be talking to the patient in a language they don't understand. The second you switch it on and you say the right thing, all of a sudden you're speaking English to them and they understand. I guess I didn't think about it until I read that sentence or that story. I was like, “I can see that.” I can see why patients when I do the like, “Here's my long list of reasons why you should listen to me.”
They just look at you blankly and walk out the door in a daze versus somehow you connected with something and they're engaged in the conversation. For some reason, that resonated with me. It's important to think that we need to be speaking a language that our patients understand, especially that emotional part of the brain where we want them to make the decisions.
One of the number one sources of miscommunication between doctor and patient is the head nod. You're talking and the patients nod their head. You naturally assume that they understand everything you're saying and agree with everything you're saying when in reality, it's a polite gesture to indicate that they're listening to you.
This happens all the time where a patient leaves the room confused and they'll go look stuff up on Google or they'll ask your technician what it was the doctor wants you to do. It's a real shame because that miscommunication, again, prevents change if people are confused. You have mentioned Cialdini before so I'll mention something he's quoted saying, “Confused people don't buy anything.”
They're sitting there like, “Okay.” Either they don't understand or they're already thinking about what they're going to have for lunch. How do if they're nodding because they are on the same page or if they want to leave? Is there a way we can tell?
For one thing, I would start by keeping things very simple. It's one thing I talk about as well when I do speaking or in the book. If anyone was reading and thought in the beginning, “How am I going to ask all these questions and take all this time to discover all these problems? I'm at a very busy practice. I don't have time for all that. I have to ask like, “Are you having any problems with vision and keep things moving along.” I'm going to give you that time back on what I call the presentation part because I think we spend too much time educating patients.
Influence Change: Effectiveness is contingent in that we can educate all we want, but if the other person doesn’t actually do anything, it’s an indicator that your influence is low.
I know it sounds like blasphemy to a lot of people, but the question becomes, it makes us feel good and we've done our part. We've sat there and given them all this information. Here's the problem, Harbir. What I'd like to see somebody do is call that patient three days later or a week later and ask them how much of that they remember. Studies show that once we hear new information, we forget 90% of it within three days. It gets even worse. For us to act on something and a lot of times, we're having conversations with patients at point A. We want them to take some action at point B. Maybe it's a lifestyle change or a service we want, whatever it is.
For us to act on something, it still has to be in our memory. You've got this double whammy there where if it's forgotten, then they're not going to take that action that they need to take. I'm very cautious about keeping things simple and very focused in my presentation. You can always cover things at future visits, have a tech go over it, give them more information to read at home, have them go to a website, but be aware of how much information you're giving somebody at one particular time. If it's overwhelming and confusing, they're not going to act on it. The reality is they're going to forget a lot of it anyway. While it makes us feel good that, “I spend all this time. We've had these long appointments.” You have to deal with the realities of people's brain capacity to retain information.
I had to deal with that in the exam room in a real-life setting here. I get a patient who's got dry eyes. Let's say this is a 50 plus-year-old patient. They've shown interest in multifocal contacts and they have dry eyes. I want to talk to them about the importance of UV protection. I have to start to streamline that like, “Do I want to have this whole conversation with them or do I want to get them in the multifocal contacts and come back and do a follow-up and then talk to them about the dry eye or vice versa?” It works better when I break it up.
I would ask yourself, “What do I want this person to remember a week from now? What are the most important things that I need to hit?” In school, we were taught to be very thorough and there's nothing wrong with that. We were almost taught to be thorough to the point of confusing. If we came back in the room and presented to the doctor and we hadn't gone over everything, every little detail, we were either marked down or sent back in. In reality, again, we're dealing with human beings, not information receptacles.
You have to look at it through the filter of, “A week from now, what do I want this person to remember?” A great way to communicate too. We talked about stories is use stories of other patients. That is going to be something that sticks in their memory. You can give people a lot of information, facts, and bullet points. Most of it's going to be forgotten.
Stories are a great communication tool to talk about success stories to say, “Harbir, I had a patient like you who was in a week ago, having a very similar problem and here's what we did for that patient.” Immediately, you've got that patient's attention, but they're also going to be more likely to remember that story than they are a long list of facts and details you could rattle off to them.
Again, from my personal experience, that does work quite well. You have to have those under your belt. You have to have that experience and those wins that you can then refer to afterward. Telling the story about that is huge. There's something that you talked about, and I've heard you talked about it on other shows in the past as well. I originally heard this concept through Tony Robbins that we either move towards something that we want or move away from something that we fear or like a pain point. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how that applies? Those are the two basic motivating types of action.
I referred to it as a desire for gain and fear of loss that we want to acquire reward or try to avoid loss. Again, from the standpoint of being influential, if we can dig down to that, one of my favorite questions to ask, it's not the first question you'd lead with, but once you understand the person better is to ask what I like to call what-if questions. “Harbir, what if we could make some changes that would solve that problem you're having? What would that mean and how would that impact your vision or quality of life?”
I'm going to shut up and I'm going to let you talk because now you're going to start to think about what does this mean to me? What does my future look like if I do make that change? Now, what are you doing? You're coming up with your reasons. I don't have to dictate that to you, nor should I, but if I say, “What if we made some changes now? How would that impact your vision and quality of life?”
Now I've put you in a minute, especially when I pause to think about that. You're going to think about, “What do I get out of that if I made that change?” Change is hard. We're slow. We resist change. “If I did, 1 or 2 things, what do I get out of it? What do I avoid losing?” I’m not dictating that. To be an influential communicator, I'm going to get you to contemplate that on your own.
That concept makes a lot of sense. Especially you're saying influential people get other people to come up with their reasons for the change. Something about asking a question that way is uncomfortable to me. Is that maybe I'm not there yet? Did I get to practice it? To ask the question of like, “What would it mean to you to go through?”
I feel like I've been asked that question by other people and the settings have put me off. If somebody was trying to sell me something and they asked me that question. I’m like, “I know you're trying to sell me on something here. That's why you're asking me.” When we're asking that in the exam room, is that my own comfort level? What do I have to do to get comfortable asking say, “Steve, what would it mean to you if we were able to resolve this issue for you?”
There are two things there. One is you have to find the verbiage that works for you. Secondly, I would say context matters as well. I'm not necessarily saying that's a question you would apply to every scenario, but when you genuinely want to know. If you're not sure what is important to somebody else or what's important to them, there's a time and a place to say, “What does that mean to you? Help me better understand. What would that mean for you in your job? You said you're having some trouble with the computer. I don't understand what you do. Help me better understand if we were able to solve your dry eye, what difference would that make in your job?”
There's a level of curiosity that's coming there as opposed to something that's more manipulative. Again, I'm trying to understand your reasons better, context matters. Take some time to come up with your questions and things that feel natural and comfortable for you. As we know, something that rolls off the tongue of one person might sound completely different when another person says it. By all means you want to feel comfortable with the questions and conversations that you're having.
The intent and the context are all very important. Now that you've explained it, that makes a lot of sense. You genuinely want to know how it would affect their life. Curiosity again, one of the common themes throughout your book. You start by saying that in the book is that you're genuinely a curious person. You like to ask questions. That's a good way to start any interaction is to be curious and ask questions about the other person
I had a guest on using the same thing. I was like, “How do you be comfortable working in a room?” We had our conference here in Vancouver and I was watching them go from one person to the next. He didn't know any of those people, but it seemed like he was having a natural conversation. He said, “I approached it with curiosity. I asked the other person questions. That gives you all the information and ammunition you need to go forward from there.” That what's super important.
It puts them in a state of wanting to know more as well. The interesting thing about being curious about other people is they start to get curious about you eventually. I'll give you a quick example. I used this in the book as well, where a friend of mine, who's a financial advisor kept asking me to meet up with his father. I finally did.
Influence Change: People of influence don’t spend a lot of time telling other people what to do. They’re masters at getting other people to come up with their reasons for changing something.
I didn't want to go to this because I already have a financial advisor and he's a good friend of mine. I thought, “This is wasting my time.” I ended up going. I thought it was going to be where he asked me a couple of questions and then launched into almost a sales pitch like, “Here are the reasons our company and our services are better.” That's what I was avoiding.
The meeting didn't go that way at all. We went to lunch. For half an hour, he asked me questions, peppered me with questions. The farther we went, the questions became a little bit more personal, but they didn't feel overly intrusive, but it became, “How much vacation time do you have? How much money do you have in savings? Are you able to donate as much as you'd like? What would you do if you got hurt and couldn’t work? What would your family do?” All these different scenarios, but you know what it did?
It got me curious about him. I didn't even want to be at this meeting initially. By the end of the meeting, I was leaning into what he had offered. I realized there were things financially I hadn't even considered. I became curious about him. That's one of the real goals. That meeting got me thinking when I left is how we can apply this to the exam room? How can we take somebody who walks in and is thinking about a $10 copay and getting their glasses?
How do we take that person and make them curious about what we have to offer instead of trying to force onto them all the things that we could sell them? I felt that leaving that meeting with the financial advisor that this is much different than the typical approach. How do you ask me a couple of basic questions and then launch into a sales pitch? The meeting would not have gone anywhere like it did. I would not have had that reaction. I would have been looking at my watch, wanting it to end.
Did you switch financial advisors then?
I still work with the individual. One of my best friends is my financial advisors. I have worked with them on other projects, though. Not completely switched over, but yes.
Steve, I could ask you a lot more questions, but then I think you're going to start charging me by the hour for all your consulting services here. I'm asking for the audience of the show. I'll be implementing this stuff in my practice, which is why I think it's so valuable is because everything you shared specifically is actionable and valuable. Thank you for that. Are there any specific or important topics that you would like to cover or anything you think is important for ODs, in general, to know that they can use?
We've talked a lot about how to be more influential and how to communicate with people and some of it is trying things differently. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. One thing I've done is study how to be more influential, how to communicate better. I'm still learning. It's an ongoing process. There's always something new out there that you could learn. What I would say is if you're not getting the results you like and you can get any patient to listen to you, but at the end of the day, are they taking action on your advice and your recommendations?
If they're not or not to the degree that you would like, it may be a matter of how you're communicating with people. We've learned more about the human brain in the last years than we've known about the brain ever since they've been studying the brain. A lot of that has implications for being a better communicator. We don't have to guess at these things anymore. A lot of the things I talk about are not based on opinion. They're based on actual research that they've done in terms of how to make better connections, how to get through to people, how to motivate people to want to do something.
Something has to change. Otherwise, you’re talking to people all day, but they don't do anything differently. Try communicating differently. Do your study. Try your methods and measure the results. Is it making a difference? Keep working until it is. Once you capture things that work for you, your patients and personality, different ways of asking questions and presenting a product or service, learn from that and keep doing the things working for you.
It does require some effort. The other problem is sometimes we get a little comfortable or complacent ourselves. We maybe don't put in the effort that we need to go through that process that you described. Where can people find you?
Influence Change: If you had to go through a deep logical analysis of every decision you had to make, we’d never get anything done.
Probably the best way, which links to other things as well, is my website DrSteveVargo.com.
It's not just ODs. We constantly referenced ODs in this conversation. I'm fortunate to have other people in other industries who read. The whole conversation that we had here was applicable pretty much across any industry. You're very careful to mention that throughout the book as well that it's not for Optometrist. It's other healthcare professionals, any professional who's having these conversations one-on-one. Prescribing Change, it’s a great place to start. Steve has three other books that you can dive into as well. They'll help you get going on changing the way you communicate with your customer, client, patient and whoever it might be.
Steve, there are two questions I ask everybody before we wrap up the show. The first of the two is if we could hop in a time machine and go back to a point in your life where things were difficult, you were struggling, having a hard time. You're welcome to share that moment if you'd like, but more importantly, if you could share what advice would you give to yourself at that time?
Some of the things that I have studied came from self-interest in wanting to understand people for personal reasons better. It's too much to get into on a first date here Harbir. Some people in my own life close to me that I was not connecting well with. I wanted to understand better what did I need to change and that was probably the impetus that led to wanting to understand this better and a lot of the things that I can apply to healthcare and help other people with. I don't know if I could cite one particular time, but if I were to go back, at least in my mind, there are some situations in my personal life where I would go back. I would start with being a better listener.
A lot of the things we're talking about around asking questions and better understanding. What I've learned over the years, I wish I understood it better when I was practicing. I've tried to understand it much better as a consultant and it doesn't come easy for me is to be a better listener and try to understand other people's points of view. I've found that your ability to be influential with somebody else is not as much getting the other person to see things from your point of view, it's your ability to climb inside their world and see things from their perspective.
That's something everybody can use. We have 1 mouth and 2 ears. The last question is everything that you've accomplished to this point, how much of it would you say is due to luck and how much is due to hard work?
It's hard to quantify that, but I'm going to throw 30% on luck and 70% on hard work. I have worked hard. Seth Godin said, “It took me six years to become an overnight success.” Anyone who gets anywhere can look back and be like, “A lot of things you did that were behind the scenes and took you a while to get to a certain point, but there is an element of luck.”
Influence Change: We’re dealing with human beings, not information receptacles.
I could point to times where the right place and the right time. I knew the right person and I happened to be in a situation that worked out. I'll tell you the same thing that I would tell anybody and certainly, what I tell my kids is the hard work only gets you so far, but you open up opportunities for yourself that you wouldn't have had opportunities if you weren't putting in the hard work. The opportunities will come. There's an element of luck involved.
It is tough to quantify. I asked that question. I know it trips people up sometimes. We don't always think about exactly how much of each thing is involved in that. I like that quote from Godin. Your people will be like, “He just popped up out of nowhere. He became famous for nothing.” It was all that behind-the-scenes work. I've heard from multiple authors that writing a book is one of the hardest things you can do. You've done four of these. You've clearly put in the hard work. Great work on the book and everything else that you’re doing, Steve. Thank you again for coming to the show. I appreciate it.
Thanks so much, Harbir. I appreciate you inviting me in. You keep up the great work as well. I love your show and everything you're doing. It’s a privilege to be asked to be on it.
Thank you to everybody who's reading. I truly appreciate the support. Don't forget to throw up a screenshot on your Instagram Story. Tag Steve and me. We'd love to hear what you took away from this conversation.
Important Links
Can I Ask You One Question? - Apple Podcasts
What Does the Younger Generation Expect From Their Optometrist? [Interview with Dr. Solomon Gould]
About Steve Vargo
Steve Vargo, OD, MBA is a 1998 graduate of the Illinois College of Optometry. In 2014 he joined Prima Eye Group (now IDOC) as Vice President of Optometric Consulting. A published author and speaker with 15 years of clinical experience, he now serves as IDOC’s Optometric Practice Management Consultant.
Since transitioning to a full-time practice management consultant, Dr. Vargo has performed over 3,000 consultations and coaching sessions with hundreds of independent optometry practices across the country.
He speaks regularly at industry conferences, has been published in numerous industry publications, has a regular column in Optometric Management titled “The CEO Challenge”, and is a contributing author to the widely read “Optometric Management Tip of the Week” article.
Dr. Vargo has also authored 4 books on the subjects of staff management, leadership, selling and having greater influence as a physician.