How frustrating is it to spend a ton of money, staff time, and resources on internet marketing for new cosmetic patient leads only to have those very leads come in as prospective patients and leave as prospective patients….STILL.

You can’t afford to waste any more time or money on marketing if you are not converting these leads….It’s too competitive, it’s too crowded, and it’s too expensive NOT to do everything within your control to convert these Internet leads into paid procedures.

Here’s a typical consultation scenario…

Hmmm….

You thought you had a great consultation with your prospective patient, Sara.

Sara had a good consultation with you and your staff, and she asked lots of questions, and you had a good connection…at least you thought you did.

But then you find out from your coordinator, Sara ended up saying, “I gotta think about it” and walked out the door.

Now what? Maybe your staff emails or calls them, and then they are dropped in the “dead leads” file.

You move onto the next consultation that you hope converts, and the cycle of waste continues…

Why Don’t Patients Book?

Since cosmetic rejuvenation is a very personal and emotional decision, there are all sorts of reasons why prospective patients don’t book….

• Maybe they have other consultations lined up

• Maybe they don’t have a comfortable way to pay for it

• Maybe they’re confused about something you said, so now they will research it more before deciding to move forward

Or maybe…..

They received the bad news that morning or

They got flack from their family when they told them about meeting with you; or

They have a million things going on in their life;

Or a dozen other benign things could have happened that had nothing to do with you.

It could have had everything to do with the patient’s frame of mind at the time that prevented them from moving forward.

The point is people change, their moods change, and their circumstances change, so you can never assume anything.

What Do You Do When You Can’t Convert Consultations?

Let’s say you did everything right, and now you are stuck because you don’t know how or even if you should follow up for fear of looking as if you are chasing the patient. Use these strategies to follow up professionally and close the procedure:

Follow Up Protocol

Develop a follow-up protocol to follow every time to follow-up on revenue-generating consultations that didn’t book….YET.

Otherwise, it’s too easy to never got around to following up because there are a million other things to do. The protocol takes the emotion out of it, and it becomes what you do automatically… no matter how busy you are.

Collapse Time

Time is your enemy in the follow-up process. The more time that goes by without the prospective patient hearing from you, the more distant you become.

Collapse time by following up quickly, repeatedly, and often. That’s how you differentiate yourself from your competitors who follow up weeks later (or never).

Add a Sense of Urgency to Your Follow Up

Since it’s human nature for prospective patients to put off making a big decision, you want to counter with a sense of urgency to get the patient off the fence. Give them very compelling reasons to stop procrastinating. For example:

1. Your schedule is filling up quickly, so book now, or you’ll have to wait

2. Your prices are going up next month

3. If they can have surgery on a Wednesday next month, they get a $500 price reduction

4. If you want it done before [wedding, summer, etc.], they need to take into account the recovery time (IE., even though the downtime is less than 7 days, they are still a bit limited in an activity like swimming and dancing,) so they’ll want to get it done before this [date].

You need to customize these to your liking and use them in your standard protocol, so you get comfortable telling the prospective patient WHY they need to make a decision now rather than later.

The most successful cosmetic practices have systems in place to follow up quickly, strategically, and consistently. They spent a lot of time, money, and effort attracting prospective patients, so they do all they can to see it through to a YES.

These fix your follow-up for plastic surgeons strategies “pave the way” for your staff to do all they can to confidently convert these valuable consultations.

If you need help with your follow-up, go to www.catherinemaley.com for the details, and let’s do a call to determine if it would be helpful to outsource this part of your lead generation plan since SOMEBODY needs to follow up on your leads.