Sell Second Opinions

Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported on ExpertConsensus, LLC, a New York-based services business that reviews medical advice. A patient diagnosed with lung cancer, for instance, could contract with ExpertConsensus to convene a panel of top specialists to critique and possibly suggest augmentations in the treatment plan developed by the patient’s physician.
     ExpertConsensus is an example of the current interest in second opinions. With the overwhelming abundance of information available to consumers, you might find a lucrative market in helping people filter through it all.
     There are considerations of business law and ethics in providing second opinions. There are also considerations from a consumer psychology perspective:

• Recognize that giving second opinions is nothing new or unusual in product and services retailing. Consumers shop around and ask for free quotes. They’re collecting second, third, and fourth opinions. What’s different here is charging for the advice. According to the Bloomberg Businessweek article, the starting fee for ExpertConsensus is around $20,000. Your fee will probably be substantially less than that, but you’ll need to tell people what value you’re adding. Distinctive expertise? Speedy analysis? Guaranteed no-fee follow-up if the consumer wants additional advice about the same issue? In fact, the true value-added from almost all second opinions is the consumer’s peace of mind that they’ve made a great decision. But research indicates people will want quantifiable benefits claims in order to justify spending money for the peace of mind.
• An important part of the value-added promised by ExpertConsensus is group decision making. This also is not a truly unusual service in an Internet era. Consider online product and service rating sites in which groups of people interactively shape up recommendations. The “risky shift” isn’t new either. First described by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the risky shift refers to how groups of people will make more extreme recommendations than if those people were giving advice individually. A shift in the risky direction is a particular temptation when people are paying the group for advice. Imagine a cancer patient putting out $20,000 and being told, “You know, we really have nothing at all to add to what your hometown physician already recommended to you.” So in this situation protect your client and your business by making your value-added addition something like, “Based on the very latest information, here’s why we concur with the opinion you’ve been given.”

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