This is one of the biggest areas most clinic owners lose out on a ton of money and profit.
You're probably spending a lot of money and time on generating new leads for your business but you're probably not getting everything you can out of those leads.
Far too often I see owners call or email a lead once or twice and if they don't hear back they think it's a bad lead and don't do anything else.
The truth is that majority of sales come after the 9th attempt at contacting a lead. People are busy and while they might be interested in your services, most aren't waiting around for your call.
How many times in your own life have you signed up for something or reached out to a business only to have life get in the way and not come back to it for weeks or months?
Only about 10% (or less) of leads will be ready to do business with you right away. They have a bleeding neck problem that needs to be solved immediately.
The rest would like their problem solved but it isn't their main priority right now. That's ok, it will eventually become a priority and it's your job to make sure your clinic is top of mind when it is.
It's almost impossible to tell where exactly someone is in their customer journey when they opt in so you need to have a variety of follow up processes in place to give yourself the best chance of connecting with that lead.
The first couple of days you should be attempting to contact them multiple times by phone or text. You aren't annoying them, you're trying to help them.
After that you should still be making attempts to contact them a few times a week. A variety of calls, texts, and emails is a good way to make sure you give them an opportunity to reply in whatever way is most convenient for them.
Remember, we want to be making at least 9 attempts very soon after they raise their hand and say they're interested.
You should be reminding them who you are and why they asked to hear from you because people do forget.
Implementing this process will skyrocket your return on your marketing efforts and give your business a great boost in revenue. But we want to go a step further.
On average it takes someone 45 days to go from a lead to a customer. Remember this is an average so those few leads who convert right away skew this timeframe shorter with a lot more sales coming even later than 45 days.
This means you need to be following up with prospects for several months. The best way to do that is through automated emails and sprinkling in a phone call and text every few weeks.
Being successful with your long term follow ups is a matter of continually providing value about your services and the problem you solve. Keep that as the focus so leads actually want to read your emails.
Everyone is on a different timeline so that email you send 6 months later might be at just the right time for them to say yes.
The main thing is to stay top of mind for when they're ready.
-Jason Duprat, MBA, MSA, CRNA