This Episode is Worth Millions of Dollars [Part 2]

Andrea (00:04):
Well, hi there. I am Andrea Watkins. And if you're listening to this, while juggling three patient calls, checking in a couple patients, taking a payment, selling skincare, and trying to catch your doctor in between procedures, you might be working in an aesthetic practice.

Blake (00:18):
And I'm Blake Lucas, and this is Practiceland. This is not your doctor's podcast. Welcome back for part two of our deep dive into conversion. If you missed part one, go back and start there. In part two, we look at how to rescue low consult rates, re-engage patients who ghost, and answer the big question, what's a good conversion rate? Alright, let's dive back in. Once you get the patient in and booked with the doctor, how much of the burden to convert that patient should fall on the surgeon or the doctor themselves to get that patient booked?

Andrea (00:53):
It's a team effort. I don't think that it can be like you got to do 50% and I got to do 50%. It is 100% a team effort, and I think for some younger surgeons that I've worked with, they very much think it's all on them and they want to be the hero of the story and ultimately they are the hero of the story because it's their hands that are doing the surgery, that's changing the patient's lives. But getting the patient to the OR table is a complete team effort between the patient care coordinator and the doctor.

Eva (01:24):
I would include that the marketing team is part of the team here too, and it is

Andrea (01:28):
Oh for sure.

Eva (01:29):
The unseen, right? And so one of the things that I've gotten better and better at over the years of looking at conversion is how do you create content that helps people be ready to convert when they show up in the office and there's a magic sentence that tells you it's working, which is when the patient is in front of the doctor and says, I feel like I already know you because I, fill in the blank. Read every word on your website, watched every video, listened to your podcast.

Andrea (01:59):
Followed you on social media for three years.

Eva (02:01):
Yeah, social, any one of those. Have you done anything to help people get to know that doctor ahead of time? And that is a huge part of it because that part of the process is making everyone's job in the office easier.

Blake (02:14):
It seems like, yeah, there's just a lot that goes into this. There's so many different pieces to get this conversion. Are conversion rates a one size fit all? Is there a percentage that fits everyone that you should fall with in this range?

Eva (02:26):
No, but this is why benchmarking is so, so important, Blake. And that is I think the hardest thing out there to find for a couple of reasons. One is that doctors don't like to tell each other the truth about their conversion rate.

Andrea (02:39):
So true.

Blake (02:40):
A little bit of pride.

Eva (02:40):
It's like, you can be out at the meeting and they'll be like, my conversion rate is 90%. And you're like, well, for every procedure? There's so much nuance here. So I know that something like revision rhinoplasty has the very lowest conversion rate of all the procedures, and that's true across the board. But there's also data that says for the procedures you don't do often your conversion rate will be lower, which also makes sense. So if you do something all the time, then you have more photos of it, more reviews about it, more people who've had it and tell other people that you were great at it. If you take something that you don't do often you would expect your conversion rate to be much lower on that. It used to be arm lift was the thing that was always the lowest because no one did them, but that's actually growing a lot now.

Andrea (03:28):
Also, some things that are going to affect the conversion rate are market. Where are you located? I've worked with a practice in the middle of the Midwest and hired a PCC for them, trained them, implemented Lead Loop. Their conversion rates are higher than anyone in the nation that I have access to in Lead Loop as far as their lead to procedure completed. Part of that is because they're great and they have a great internal process and they have great data to go from and all of that. But also, I can't say like, oh, it's because of me. It's truly because of where they're located as well. They don't have a ton of competition, there's only a few other practices that do what they do, they have a really, really great reputation. And so there's so many things that feed into it, on top of what Eva has shared is that location and where you sitting in the market and your competitors really make a difference as well.

Eva (04:24):
I haven't brought this up yet. I spent five years just surveying patients and it was the most impactful work I ever did because we looked at 60 different touchpoint in the patient journey, both at consult and after surgery. And so we had hundreds of thousands of data points to work with and we did a key driver analysis, which is kind of boring, but it's like that having the keys to unlock every single problem at consult, and that's kind of why I know so much about where to put content to affect each one of those touch points. Well, the price one is super important in this moment of conversion because when people were prepared for the price ahead of the consultation, they were twice as likely to book on the day of consult. So this is a really important nuance that you want them to be ready to make the decision when they're there in front of you.

(05:24):
Right, Andrea, you don't want to have to call them a bunch of times after they go home. We should still do that if they're not ready to make the decision on that day, but we want to do as much as we can to get them there because we know that they will be ready to make the decision if they're prepared financially. So really I think if you're overwhelmed by all the crazy things that we've touched on as we've gone through this, the million places where people either move forward or pause or make a different decision, that's the one that has the most impact, is that they're prepared ahead of time.

Andrea (06:01):
100% prepared. And in addition to that financial aspect, I don't know what your data showed when you were doing those studies, but not just prepared for the price, but also are they prepared, do they have a caretaker? Are they prepared for the time off work that they need? Are they prepared for the recovery and the fact that, hey, I'm going to need six to eight weeks for a full mommy makeover before I can hop on a plane and go somewhere. All of this preparation, that's why I always say on the consultation call, you have to build trust and rapport, educate your patient and differentiate your practice. And that education is the preparation part about what does this all entail and what is not just the procedure and the recovery. What's the pricing range? How do I even get on the OR schedule? What's the deposit policy? How far are you booked out? All of those things need to be talked about on that call so that patients walk in the door and they feel confident in the information you already stated to them.

Eva (07:02):
I heard a couple cool additional conversion tricks around financing recently, and one was the patient herself didn't get approved, but her husband did. I thought, oh, I'm going to put that one in my pocket because that's good. If the coordinator knows that that's also an option, then it's not over. We're not dead yet. What was the other one? Blake, do you have any?

Blake (07:26):
Yeah, I think the payment calculator there is an amazing resource for you. I mean, most lenders are going to have some type of payment calculator that makes it really easy for you to get to a number. Having a filled out application, seeing what they qualify for can really help. Most of these lenders, including us, offer a soft inquiry, so there should be no real risk or any type of impact to them financially or through their credit profile. And then get to a real number here and see, okay, what interest rates might be and get to that as low as monthly payment very quickly and providing that in a quote, I'd say, yeah, to bring up that conversation early, utilize things like calculators and monthly payment plans that you can print out that make it really easy to talk about.

Eva (08:07):
Can I tell you guys the secret?

Andrea (08:09):
Yeah. Secret.

Blake (08:10):
Absolutely.

Eva (08:11):
I started putting a link to the payment calculator on the thank you page after they fill out the form.

Blake (08:18):
Oh, nice.

Eva (08:21):
But I don't have any numbers yet, so I'm just going to tease that that's coming.

Andrea (08:25):
Yeah, I want to see the data.

Eva (08:27):
Do you guys have any other reasons why you think they might be twice as likely to convert on the day of consultation if they're prepared for the price?

Blake (08:35):
It's really interesting you bring that up. We just had a really interesting conversation with a provider and their staff, and they were really trying to analyze patients that applied and got approved for financing before coming in, what they experienced with those patients was that those that had the money piece taken care already before coming in, were more intent or more, they were listening to the doctor. They were able to have a lighter, more fun conversation with those patients. There was a, like you could physically see the burden lifted off of that patient in that moment, which was fascinating to hear that once the financing is kind of taken out and taken care of before they're even in the consultation, now the doctor and their staff can spend time talking about the thing that they're so passionate about and helping this patient. Obviously that's going to lead to more bookings, right? That's going to convert itself. And so it's just amazing to see how important taking care of that cost barrier before getting into the room, how important that can be to increasing book procedures.

Eva (09:38):
I dunno about you guys, I still have anxiety when I have to do the real credit check, the hard inquiry, because I still don't know what's going to come out. And I can imagine myself thinking the whole time I'm in the consultation, I haven't applied for financing yet and aren't they going to know my score? And it's going to be embarrassing.

Blake (09:56):
I think most people kind of have a basic understanding of where they sit, and if you know, you're maybe on the lower side of that, if you're in the low six hundreds, that can be a very stressful feeling, that's just in the back of your mind all the time, just distracting you from receiving important information about this procedure that you want to get right? And now you're less likely to remember what they talked about. Ultimately, you may leave just with a little bit of anxiety still there, which no patient wants. Let's remove that anxiety or that weirdness.

Andrea (10:25):
And depending on the financing company that you're going to be applying for, if you haven't already done it before the procedure, even if you have a great credit score, you don't know how much they're going to approve you for. So it could be the difference between, Hey, I could get this breast augmentation for $12,000 and get it all paid for, or maybe I want to add on some lipo, so it's going to be $19,000 or $20,000, but again, I don't know how much I'm going to get approved for. What is the actual deal? So again, getting it done before the consultation,

Eva (10:59):
Oh, that's such a good point.

Andrea (11:01):
Know how much it actually is. Not if I'm going to get approved, some people maybe if, but also if we're confident, how much, yeah, what is my budget?

Blake (11:12):
Can I have it all?

Andrea (11:14):
Can I only do this and then I got to do that? Or what is actually happening? So it just really helps you plan better of what is available and realistic given your financial situation on top of everything else that you have to be considering.

Eva (11:30):
All right, we need to get to this rapid fire and we need to be really rapid with it.

Blake (11:35):
Alright, so it's time for a rapid fire round. We're definitely have some fun with this. I've got a couple of common scenarios here, so let's go round the horn. Give some quick ways to increase conversion for each one of these problems. I think a lot of these are going to be very relatable to our listeners. They're going to hear these things and be like, oh yeah, I've heard that, or I've even said that before myself. So first one, we need more leads.

Eva (11:57):
Okay. The first one I would do is map all the things you're doing to the stages of the marketing funnel and figure out where you're not doing enough, which that sounds like really lame and boring, but I have a worksheet that I'll put in the show notes. And what I will say is what I find most of the time is people do a lot of things in the awareness category, which is like advertising, billboards, magazine ads, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and they don't do anything to help people make a decision, which is content. If all you did was make an effort to post all of your before and after photos, get reviews and have your costs on every page, I will bet you $5 right now, your conversion rate will go up overnight. So those three things, photos, reviews, costs, you need more leads. That's what you do first.

Andrea (12:43):
I agree with you as far as the two things that I would say is before and afters and testimonials and Google reviews for sure, without a doubt.

Blake (12:53):
These leads are terrible, low quality. These people have no money.

Andrea (13:00):
My first question to that would be, is this a feeling that we're getting or is the data actually proving this? And if they are low quality, then you need to change how you're showing up digitally to try and get higher quality people in. But again, if you're not capturing that data, you're not actually able to really manage it.

Eva (13:18):
If you're not pre-education with your content about financing and price, then that's the first thing you need to do. And is it on your website? Is it in your messages on hold? Is it in your auto responder? There's a lot of places you can do this starting with cost pages. Yeah.

Blake (13:35):
Alright, number three. This is a good one. We're posting on Instagram all the time, or my tiktoks are getting millions of views, but we're still not getting any leads.

Eva (13:45):
Yeah, social media is not for leads. You will get some, they might be great. The way people use social media in aesthetics is to confirm that they like you after someone told them about you. This is an unverified stat, but a doctor once said to me, to get enough leads for Instagram to be a viable channel, you have to have 140,000 followers. That is not possible in this day and age. You can't get to 140,000. The other problem with expecting social media to do this for you is that you don't understand who the audience is there. It's only 16% of women between 35 and 54 who say Instagram is their primary social channel. Okay? So 16% are there and they love Instagram. Are you going to get as many leads as you need from 16% of Instagram? And those also have to be people who are willing to engage with plastic surgery on Instagram. And I can tell you that most people aren't, that's not what everybody wants to see on Instagram.

Blake (14:55):
So offices that their majority of their marketing strategy is just posting on Instagram is not a good strategy.

Eva (15:03):
It's not not a good strategy. It just can't be your only strategy.

Blake (15:07):
Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea (15:08):
Definitely need well-rounded. And I was in a practice where we had a very large following, this is years ago, we had over 250,000 followers on Instagram.

Eva (15:19):
Real ones?

Blake (15:21):
You had not bought.

Andrea (15:22):
That's a great question. Different story for a different day.

Eva (15:26):
Okay.

Andrea (15:26):
And what I will say though is at our height we had about 30% of patient reported data prior to us having Lead Loop where we could track the digital marketing attribution. From the patient reported data, we were at about 30% of our revenue monthly was coming from patients who reported being from social media.

Eva (15:46):
That was the answer to how did you hear about us?

Andrea (15:49):
Exactly. That was back when Snapchat was super popular and then moving into Instagram. And so what I definitely agree with you on is the social media channels, those are really where patients decide if they like you and if they trust you, it's not where they find out about you anymore. But to your point, Eva, they're not just finding you randomly. They typically have heard about you somewhere else and then start following you start earning that trust.

Eva (16:19):
It's an important piece of a much larger puzzle and you can't just have that one piece.

Andrea (16:24):
Absolutely not. It's got to be a well-rounded strategy, and I really do love it as part of a well-rounded strategy, but that's not really for lead gen.

Blake (16:33):
So this one I think is very with the times right now, so it's the economy. People can't afford it right now.

Eva (16:41):
You should really leave California.

Blake (16:44):
It's so expensive out here. It's killing me, oh my gosh. I want the house on the lake in the middle of Idaho or something, just some beautiful that I need to move out somewhere where there's a little bit more land. But how do you handle this conversion issue?

Andrea (17:00):
It's not that they can't afford it. We need to provide the value and we need to provide the tools to help them overcome the objection that it's harder to afford it right now. I do agree with, it is harder. It is harder right now. So our job in the practice, we've got to show them why they should figure it out and how they can figure out to afford it.

Blake (17:21):
We just need to pivot. I think we talked about it a little bit earlier and finding ways of getting the monthly payment I think is an amazing tool that a lot of practices aren't utilizing just yet.

Eva (17:32):
So don't tell as low as $192 a month. I think we did a breast aug example the other day, not here, but in the one practice where I work where we got it, I think we got the breast aug down to $142 a month. I was like, now I want one. Yeah.

Blake (17:51):
How about, I don't want to be too salesy.

Eva (17:55):
I'm going to let Andrea, you can have a little extra time on this one, but before you go, I'm going to say, I used to say this myself: I'm not a salesperson, but someone gave me one sentence that changed my life around this, which was if you believe they're better off with you doing what you do, than without you, then you can sell anything. I believe the work I do makes the practice better. They would be worse without me. I truly believe that now and I never feel like this anymore and it's because of that one thing that she told me.

Blake (18:32):
That's a great, yeah, what a great way to put that.

Andrea (18:35):
I don't want to be salesy at all, but if we are educating patients, if we're truly invested in them finding out what are your goals, and then it's our job as salespeople to figure out how we can help them achieve those goals. There's nothing salesy about that at all. At all. They've told us they need something and it's our job to figure out how to make that happen. In what world is that wrong? In what world? So just fun fact on the hot tip line, to sell, and I looked this up, to sell is to exchange money for goods and services. In a fee for service environment, like we work in aesthetics, they're getting a good or service and we are getting money. That is the meaning of to sell. We are all selling, but it doesn't have to feel salesy if what we're doing is actually being invested in another human and helping them reach their goals. There's nothing bad about that.

Blake (19:33):
The consult schedule is weak. Something is terribly wrong. Not enough consultations.

Eva (19:37):
There's no such thing as a marketing emergency, by the way. However, I have had this question as the lead gen person many times, we need more leads and we need more leads now. As recently as I want to say, this happened to me yesterday. I can't believe that happened yesterday. And I was like, well, I need to see the data. However, this is one of the tactics that came up in this challenge, for this challenge, which is what I call the wishlist. Okay? I know we teased this at the beginning, the thing that got 400 leads with one email, and it's true, it did do that. I have implemented this tactic in multiple practices at really slow times. Like I used it at the beginning of summer. I've used it in December. I've combined it with other things, with events to try to get people to do stuff. And it works every time. What does Ron Burgundy say every

Blake (20:35):
60% of the time, it works a hundred percent of the time.

Eva (20:39):
Okay, so what you do is you basically come up with a contest and invite people to fill out their wishlist. You make it an open-ended form. You can use a Google form, you can use anything that will let people write freely in a box. You can have your web company make a secret form just for this called wishlist. You ask them, tell us what's on your wishlist for a chance to win, fill in the blank. I've done $500 gift cards in the med spa. We've gone up as high as $1,500 gift certificate for the med spa. It just depends on how big you want it to be. And then you send it out and you say, tell us what's on your wishlist for a chance to win. It is really that simple. At the bottom, so you have to do name, email, phone, open-ended box for the wishlist, and then at the very bottom you include a, would you also like to schedule a consultation, yes or no?

(21:41):
And so of that, however many people fill it out, you can expect about 15 to 20% to say yes to that. So then you roll it out on email, you roll it out on social, you put it on your website, you run it until a deadline, and then you actually do the drawing and make a big deal about it. And in the meantime, all those people who said, yes, I would like to schedule a consult. You call them and talk to them about scheduling a consult. And you keep track of the things that people said and they will write amazing things to you. They will say, this happened to me and I really want to change my life, but I can't afford it yet. That timing is not right.

Blake (22:22):
Yeah. All the things, all the barriers.

Eva (22:24):
This is the best thing I've ever come up with to get consults really fast and it does work. And if you're lighthearted and fun about it and you don't make it look like you're desperate, it will crush.

Andrea (22:36):
That's awesome. Of the 15% that say, yes, I'd like to have a consultation, what is the percentage of those people that we get ahold of and schedule?

Eva (22:45):
I think in Portland, the one that got 400 to fill it out, last summer we got 35 consultation requests and I think probably half came in and had a consultation, but other down funnel factors at play here that are out of my control.

Andrea (23:04):
Of course.

Eva (23:05):
They don't have Lead Loop yet, so I can't give you the answer.

Andrea (23:08):
So you can't get the tracked information. No, that's good. I love that. I've never heard of that or considered it. That's really great tip.

Blake (23:18):
Yeah, we're going to see a lot of providers all of a sudden start pushing this.

Eva (23:22):
Wish list.

Blake (23:22):
Yeah, I love it.

Eva (23:23):
Well, it's fine because it's to your existing audience, so there's no reason not to do it.

Blake (23:28):
Consults are taking too long and not moving forward, or I'm tired of repeating myself.

Andrea (23:35):
This is all solved with highly trained and professional patient care coordinators. They're educating the patient, they're taking a lot of that work off of the doctors, and as we talked about earlier, we're not bringing in patients that aren't qualified and ready.

Eva (23:49):
And can you meet the doctor online or are they an enigma wrapped in a riddle?

Blake (23:56):
Not enough people booking surgery at consult or after consult.

Andrea (24:00):
It's not even just what they're saying and the content of the education and everything that's occurring. It's the experience that you're providing, the investment that the patient feels into them, that they're just going to trust you more and feel about the whole process when you have a PCC really completing a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to this whole booking process.

Eva (24:26):
I'll also throw in a reminder that after they come in, we'll go back through all of your content again with completely different eyes to validate their decision, to not move forward or move forward. It's a good idea to think about your content from that perspective and see how it hits.

Blake (24:44):
If you have a patient that comes in, doesn't schedule on the day of consult, do you just let them go or how does that work?

Andrea (24:49):
Hell no. You've already invested so much time in that patient. You've tracked them down, you've called, you've emailed, you text, you've finally got them on a consultation phone call. You spent 15 minutes on the call developing this relationship. You spent an hour of your time as a PCC meeting with them in the practice. Your doctor spent 15, maybe 30 minutes, maybe 45 depending on the practice and the doctor and the questions and how wordy. You've just invested all of this time and energy on this patient. And just because they don't book day of, Nah, you would never just let them go. You send them a text the next day and say, oh my gosh, it was so great to meet you and learn more about your goals and why you want to have a breast augmentation or mommy makeover or facelift or any of these things. Can't wait to walk you through the rest of this process. And then you call them two days later and you say, hi, I know that you needed to go home and talk to your husband or whatever the case was, make sure you had the time off. Whatever their reason was for not booking day of. You follow up with them a couple days later with a phone call and say, did you get all that worked out? Is there anything that I can do to help? You don't just let them go.

Blake (25:53):
Do not. It is my favorite thing when Andrea starts getting real. It's like, oh, hell no.

Andrea (25:59):
Hell no.

Blake (25:59):
No, no, no, no, no, no. You can tell us, there's a little bit of passion behind that one.

Andrea (26:03):
Are you crazy?

Blake (26:03):
You're crazy. Absolutely not. So we're going to wrap up here, but of course we cannot end without. She did what? So Eva, what do you have for us?

Eva (26:14):
I got you. And it's a conversion theme, She did what?

Blake (26:18):
Oh, even better.

Eva (26:19):
Lead Loop is not paying me.

Blake (26:22):
Lead loop commercial.

Eva (26:23):
Because of Lead Loop, I could see a pattern that the phone calls were not being answered. And I was talking to the front desk and I said, can you guys help me understand the phone system? The first thing I did was not blame the front desk people. And I always start with, is there a technical issue, every time. Is there something I can do with the technology that makes their life easier? Because I assume good intent. These people are not there to not answer the phone, right? They're like, oh, I don't want another phone call. I mean, I have seen that too, to be honest. But I called the front desk and the girl who I was talking to, woman has been working there for a very long time, and I said, tell me what's going on. And she said, Eva, we're getting so many voicemails, we cannot keep up with all these voicemails. And I was like, well, how many? And she was like, well, it's like 20 to 30 voicemails a day. I said, okay, well, we can't get someone hired fast enough to solve that problem, obviously, that's part of it. I worked my way through the whole phone system myself, and what I realized was that you could not stay on hold. You had two choices, either they answer the phone, they don't let it go to voicemail during the day unless nobody's available. So during the day, the staff are answering directly, not even a tree, or they go straight to voicemail. Those were the only two things. Well, what's wrong with that? It's that if you want to wait on hold, let's say it's two minutes maybe, or five minutes. You're driving down the highway in Houston and you're like, dang it, I don't want to leave a voicemail.

Blake (28:08):
Yeah, I just want to wait. I can wait five minutes.

Eva (28:09):
Your only other choice is I got to keep calling back. That sucks. So we reworked the phone system. We got the voicemail countdown to under five a day because people were able to wait on hold for the next available representative, instead of just leaving a voicemail and waiting for someone to call them back eventually. Which that hurts. I don't know.

Blake (28:35):
I can only imagine a number of people just hung up like, I don't want to leave voicemail.

Andrea (28:39):
80%. Remember we talked about it earlier.

Eva (28:39):
I don't even want to think about it.

Blake (28:42):
This just came full circle.

Andrea (28:43):
Literally 80%. 80% of people will rather call a competitor than leave you a voicemail.

Eva (28:49):
Yeah. And when is the last time you listened to your phone system with a critical ear and said, could we be losing people in here? That one little thing had a massive, probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars impact on the business.

Blake (29:09):
And it's just a setting a guarantee that's just a checkbox somewhere in some phone tree that all of a sudden turned on revenue. How easy is that?

Eva (29:18):
That's all it was. We just called the phone people and said, can you do this instead of sending them straight to voicemail? And they were like, sure.

Blake (29:24):
Yeah, of course.

Andrea (29:25):
They're like, check done.

Blake (29:27):
I can do that right now.

Eva (29:27):
This episode is worth millions of dollars. Yeah.

Blake (29:33):
One check. Well, Eva, thank you so much for being with us today.

Eva (29:38):
Oh, you guys are the best.

Blake (29:39):
Awesome, awesome conversation.

Eva (29:40):
Thank you for letting me from behind the screen.

Blake (29:42):
Yeah, absolutely. It's great to have you here. Where can we follow you online or how can we learn about more about what you're doing

Eva (29:50):
On Instagram, we're @AxisPodcasts, A-X-I-S podcasts. Send me a message on practicelandpodcast.com because I'm the one that gets those. And then

Blake (30:00):
There you go. Yeah. Perfect. Love it. Well, thank you everyone for listening to this has been another amazing episode of Practiceland. Remember to share and follow our podcast for more. Thank you so much.

Eva (30:13):
Thanks, Blake.

Blake (30:14):
Got a wild customer service story or a sticky patient situation? Send us a message or voicemail if your tail makes it into our "She did what?" segment, we'll send a thank you gift you'll actually love. Promise no cheap swag here.

Andrea (30:26):
Are you one of us? Subscribe for new episode notifications and more at practicelandpodcast.com. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and everywhere you can listen to podcasts.