Bad Phones and Weak Consultations 2 deadly sins. Converting new plastic surgery leads IS getting more difficult for all sorts of reasons.
You most likely are paying pretty hefty monthly fees to your SEO/hosting company, your digital marketing agency, your directories that help you get found and so on.
They, in turn, send you leads of prospective plastic surgery patients wanting your services.
And that’s where the trouble starts…..
Your staff complains these leads are awful. They are not serious about moving forward. They are wasting their time. Ever hear that?
Sometimes it’s true. Some of the leads are a waste of time. When you put your message out there in the Universe to millions of people, it’s a crap shoot what comes back to you.
You have to take the good with the bad.
If you aren’t happy with the leads coming your way, take a look at what
you are doing to attract them.
The quality of the leads is dependent on your marketing message and
media used to attract new patient leads since the goal of marketing is to attract serious plastic surgery candidates to you and repel those who are
not serious.
But let’s say you know you’re doing a good job marketing YOU. You make videos, you post on Instagram, you
answer questions online, and you pay to advertise.
Why aren’t these leads you’ve spent a fortune to get NOT converting?
Thanks to the sheer amount of marketing messages, stiff competition, confusing information about cosmetic
procedures and fickle consumer patients are three big reasons you are struggling.
That’s what is leading to a waste of your valuable time and holes in your surgery schedule. Not to mention the
anxiety you and your staff feel when your efforts go to waste.
But after working with plastic surgeons since Year 2000, another huge part of it is what happens to that lead.
When it comes to lead conversion, the 2 deadly sins are bad phones and weak consults.
I’m sorry to point the finger at your staff but the good news is, it’s easy to fix so let’s break it down:
Deadly Sin #1: Bad Phones
A big mistake that’s ruining your marketing efforts is having bad phones.
Here’s the scenario….
You have spent a fortune re-designing your website to ensure Google and their rules don’t ban you from the
Internet and you work with a company to get your SEO in shape so prospective patients can find you online.
You are most likely spending advertising dollars on Real Self, Google Adwords, banner ads and directories
which isn’t cheap.
Next, you tackled your physical office by spending another small fortune designing your office to cater to
cosmetic patients who have the disposable income for your services so you give them a nice atmosphere
when they visit…
Then, you conquered the world of social media. You’ve hired a team to blog for you, write content, and update
your FB page regularly. You even assigned an internal staff person to be your “social media ambassador”. This
is costing you time and money but you’re sure it’s helping.
So, the stage is set and you are ready for new cosmetic patients.
And all your efforts are working!! Prospective cosmetic patients found you online, they learned enough about
you and they are confident you are a great choice to help them with their needs.
They eagerly call your office with anticipation knowing you are a first-class practice ONLY TO HEAR….
“Doctor’s office. Please hold”…. Click and now waiting?
A disinterested receptionist with no enthusiasm?
A friendly receptionist who doesn’t know anything?
This WAS NOT the image or experience your callers expected.
That “incongruence” between your image portrayed to the prospective cosmetic patient is lost when that image
is not carried through to your receptionist and how they handle new callers on the phone.
What a waste to lose that cash-paying patient before you ever got to meet them.
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A Complete Guide to Understanding Your Aesthetic Patient and Growing Your Aesthetic Practice. Catherine Maley, MBA went straight to the aesthetic patient to get the answers you need to succeed with your patients.
Let’s say you have great front desk staff and they booked the new patient consultation.
The patient comes in and is greeted by that friendly front desk person. The visiting patient now goes through
your consultation process of completing paperwork, having photos taken and meeting with you, the surgeon,
to discuss your recommendations.
So far, so good.
Now your patient coordinator takes over. Her job is to present the numbers, answer additional questions and
book surgery.
But is that what happens?
How often do you hear they walked out the door without booking, never to be heard from again?
When asked, your coordinator tells you things like:
– They were just price shopping
– They can’t afford it
– We (you) oversold them and on and on
If that really true? I guarantee at least 15% of those consults were lost due to your coordinator not being
experienced enough to convert them.
Your patient coordinator can be a game-changer for your bottom line so choose carefully.
Just be sure you have the right patient coordinator representing you who looks, acts and feels the part.
For example, your coordinator must have a process set up to bond with and qualify the prospective patient by asking powerful questions.
They need to discover what the patient REALLY wants, why they want it and what it will take for them to say YES.
This one skill makes the difference between 25% conversions and 75% conversions.
But like anything else in life, it’s a learned and practiced skill.
If your staff could use professional plastic surgery converting training, check out www.ConvertingClub.com for
the strategies, practice and accountability they need to help you grow.
By the way, it’s a lot faster, easier and cheaper to fix these 2 deadly sins than it is to throw even more money at
advertising that doesn’t result in more plastic surgery procedures.
Just sayin…. These are the 2 deadly sins Bad Phones and Weak Consultations.
TESTIMONIALS
5/5
"Catherine outlined a plan that put key metrics in place, gave us a clear plan to follow throughout the year and trained our staff to increase their conversions by at least 10%. Since engaging with Catherine, I’m happy to report that revenues are up 15% over the last three months - 22% in the last month alone! I highly recommend Catherine’s consulting services to any practice looking for “best practice” additions to their operation."
"I have finally tapped into the most efficient way to grow my cosmetic practice and that is to “fish in the pond of my own patients”. When patients return to my practice, over 85% will purchase another service, product, or procedure. Not only was it worth over $200,000 in revenues this past year, it also reminds my patients I’m still around so they don’t wander off to my competitors. Catherine’s group has far exceeded our expectations and goals we had set up for them to achieve."
"Our consult conversions were running at 40-50%. Then we attended Catherine’s online training and implemented her strategies. They immediately increased conversion rates to 75-80%."
"I know how to run a profitable practice; however, it was not without major staff issues, inefficiencies and unproductive drama. With Catherine's guidance, I reorganized staff, set up processes for them to carry more of the workload and hold them accountable so I have more time to focus on patient care. The changes we put in place and the staff training to convert more callers and consultations will easily increase my revenues by 15% as well as save us time, money and costly mistakes. "
"Working with Catherine and her team has been very profitable. We’re only half way through the year and I’m up $200K and I’m booked out for the next 2 months even though we typically go into our slow summer months now. Her recent promotion brought in an extra $63,782 with more surgeries scheduled. I never realized how much money was sitting in my patient list but I’m a believer now!"
"Catherine Maley has one of the best Marketing Minds in the aesthetic industry, bar none. She understands the aesthetic patient and she also understands the challenges and frustrations we face as aesthetic surgeons. You will benefit from Catherine's tools whether you are new in practice or a seasoned professional.Turn to Catherine for guidance - she knows what she's talking about."
“Catherine’s Cosmetic Patient Marketing Service has been a great addition to our practice-building overall plan. While we still invest in our online presence, we also found immense value in the internal marketing efforts. We especially like that all results are tracked so we know we are getting a great return ... last year it was 1,148% and no staff time was used. That’s a much easier way to grow my cosmetic practice.”
"Catherine Maley turned our practice around. We converted more consultations in one week than we did in an entire month. Our practice went from a painful 50% no show rate to a remarkable 85% show rate. Even more impressive was our close ratio - from 35% to 80% and still increasing. We would recommend her to any practice that’s looking to not only increase their profits today, but sustain a healthy flow of income for many years to come. Thanks Catherine!"
"Catherine found me the best patient care coordinator I could have asked for. She worked out a payment plan that was fair to me and motivating to my coordinator. She also provided training tools to help my coordinator convert better, even though she was already experienced. The results have been phenomenal. So good, in fact, that my income increased 250% and I’m booked out for 3 months. Don’t waste any more time or money doing it yourself. Outsource to someone you trust!"
"Since we’ve been working with Catherine and her team for the past 5 months, we’ve brought in $79K in surgeries and have booked an additional 17 surgical procedures and 20 non-invasive body procedures since then. This does not include the additional new patient referrals and revenues we are seeing from the on-going nurturing of my current patient database."
"I had given my staff the goal to convert at least $35K per week in surgeries AND I gave them the tools to help which was Catherine’s Online Learning Center at More Patients Academy. They watched Catherine’s modules and implemented her strategies and converted $80K! That equaled a 2,550% ROI. Nice!"
Catherine is a business/marketing consultant to plastic surgeons. She speaks at medical conferences all over the world on practice building, marketing and the business side of plastic surgery. Get a Free Copy of her popular book, Your Aesthetic Practice: What Your Patients Are Saying View Author Profile.
