Teaching Marketing in the Helping Professions

by Patricia Kitchen patricia.kitchen@newsday.com

Originally published on April 4, 2009 in NY Newsday.
http://www.newsday.com/business/local/small-business/ny-bzskills0612618448apr05,0,404760.story

Clinical social worker Victor J. Goldman at his Port Jefferson Station office. (Photo by Richard Slattery / March 27, 2009)

Therapists are trained to ask questions, listen, nod, give insightful feedback - not to network and rustle up business. But such marketing skills have become essential with the advent of managed care, and certainly in today's environment, when some clients can't even afford co-pays or are losing their jobs and insurance.

Enter Victor Goldman, 65, a clinical social worker in Port Jefferson Station, who two years ago launched the V&W Networking Group to help mental health professionals develop skills for building their practices.

These are skills that come naturally to salespeople, said Goldman, who specializes in marriage counseling, but can be harder for those in the helping professions, many of whom are introverted. Among the group's approximately 80 members are therapists, nurse practitioners, a massage therapist and yoga instructor. Membership is $30 a month.

Activities have included:

Monthly "practice building" seminars run by Goldman and his partner, Carmine Angrisani, a clinical social worker, on issues such as making more contacts, refining elevator pitches and developing Web sites and blogs. At one session attendees brought their laptops and all joined LinkedIn.
Online "assignments" asking members, among other things, to commit to making a number of new contacts in the coming week.
Marketing teams of professionals with related interests, who create Web sites and brochures to market their services jointly.

This is all about coming "out of my comfort zone," said W. Crew Lauterbach, 49, a psychotherapist in Port Jefferson Village with a large gay and lesbian practice, who since joining the group has expanded his services to include hypnotherapy training for colleagues and fitness training. "It's so much easier now to present what I do for a living."

Sue Logue, 34, a clinical social worker in Rocky Point, said that at first she resisted marketing her new private practice. But she eventually found a practice buddy, learned pricing and networking strategies and since August has increased her client load from two to 18.

Of Goldman and his program, she said, "I've done everything he asked, and it works."