How do you follow up after the patient consultation? Or, don’t you bother?

You may be under the belief that once a prospective plastic surgery patient leaves your office without booking the procedure you and your office just spent an hour talking about, all is lost. You may be assuming they are a lost cause, but is that true? Not necessarily….

There are all sorts of reasons the patient didn’t say yes at their consultation.

Maybe they didn’t agree with your recommendation.

Maybe they got sticker shock.

Maybe they chickened out or a whole host of other reasons you’ll never know about if you don’t follow up.

Patients today can be fickle consumers who shop around. There is a very good chance they visited you as well as several of your competitors, so they feel as if they did their due diligence to make an educated decision based on comparison shopping.

But maybe that left them confused as to who to pick, so they are stuck. So now they go back to procrastinating because of their uncertainty.

On the other hand, 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. I always find that comical because you should much more afraid of losing that patient to your competitor.

The biggest reason you don’t follow up is because you don’t know how. And that uncertainty makes you uncomfortable. Instead, use these tactics to follow up professionally and close the procedure:

• Send a handwritten note to the prospective patient immediately. Express how much you and your staff enjoyed meeting them and that Sara, your coordinator, will be following up on Friday if you don’t hear back sooner;

• Now be sure Sara calls back on Friday to check in and attempt to close the procedure by saying you still have surgical dates available this month or she’ll have to wait until next month;

• Have your patient coordinator call the patient with an important development that just came up; i.e., CareCredit is offering a new 0% financing program or there’s been a surgery rescheduled, so if they can book now, they can save $500. The point is to make it compelling.

• Lastly, mail/email them a current article you wrote, or found on the Internet talking about the very procedure they are interested in and, again, ask for a decision.

And, if none of that works, simply add them to your database so they can receive your invitations, newsletters, and email blasts because you just never know when they are ready for you.

For more tips, strategies, and videos to learn how to follow up after the patient consultation, visit The Converting Club to train your coordinator to be a converting rock star.