In this week’s episode, Gary Takacs shares 4 Tips To Convert Potential New Patient Calls To Appointments.
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Sadly in many dental offices, the dentist has no clue of what’s happening at the front desk office. They barely see an increase in new patients & assume their marketing isn’t working.
However, if you take a look at the statistics, you will often see find that you may actually be getting many calls & what really happened was that you were ineffective at actually converting those calls into booked appointments!
As of right now, less than 1% of dental appointments are made through real-time online scheduling.
This week Gary shares with you the best ways to convert calls to appointments and gives you tips on how to connect with your patients from the 1st call, creating an everlasting best impression.
Why do most of the patients don’t show up?
Because they have no connection to you! So connecting with your patient is necessary to build up a good rapport and to increase new appointments.
Typically an excellent practice would convert 20% of their calls coming in.
Which is your biggest concern? Is it you’re not getting phone calls or is the problem that you are getting the calls, but you are not getting appointments?
This episode will give you much insight into:
- The ideal way to start a conversation with a caller
- How to determine if your marketing is not working or your call management is not working?
- How do doctors get their data if the phone is ringing or not?
- Tips to ensure the 1st impression & 2nd impression are flawless
- New patient stats of Life Smiles practice
- 4 Tips to transform new patient calls to appointments
- What is Call Tracking & its benefits
- Tips for a growth-oriented practice
Patients who call you expect to learn who their dentist for the next few years would be. Picking the right dental practice & the dentist is a critical decision in their lives. Hence, this call is the key, and you have to ensure that they get to learn who you are!
Listen to the episode to learn how to convince your patients to visit your practice and not be a no-show & learn what Gary does at Life Smiles to have a 91% call conversion percentage by ensuring a new patient can get an appointment within a week’s duration.
Join with Gary this July 17th and 24th from 4.00 PM to 10.00 PM (EST), and learn the importance of a Hygiene Driven Practice of the 10 elements that creates your Ideal Dental Practice!
*Note: This competition is only valid until the 20th of July. Grab your Offer Now!!
Do you have a question you would like Gary to answer in the next episode’s Q&A Segment? Ask Gary now!
Tune in to the podcast to learn 4 tips on how you can improve your new patient call appointments and listen to Gary Takacs talk about how he has implemented these tips to have a 91% call conversion rate at Life Smiles.
TIMESTAMPS
- 00:25 – Introduction For today’s episode
- 00:48 – What is the conversion rate?
- 00:59 – Announcement on MBA workshop
- 002:39 – Naren’s introduction to today’s episode
- 04:01 – What is the misperception of the doctor regarding why they don’t get enough patients?
- 04:34 – What is the target of Gary Takacs’ marketing team as of today in the year 2020?
- 05:19 – Why not use the online real-time schedule in dentistry right now?
- 05:58 – Why is the open table app famous for restaurant clients?
- 08:11 – How do you know if your marketing is not working or your call management is not working?
- 08:45 – How can doctors track their calls?
- 09:21 – How have many offices been trained the wrong way regarding call appointments and how does it impact your appointment scheduling?
- 01:34 – What we used to think of ”First impressions”
- 10:43 – Where is the 1st impression today?
- 10:56 – Where is the 2nd impression today?
- 11:08 – Tips to make sure your 1st impression & 2nd impression are flawless
- 11:23 – Why does Naren argue that the second impression is the most important and not the first?
- 12:40 – Report card of Life Smiles call conversion rate by the marketing done by EKWA for Gary’s practice
- 12:53 – What percentage of calls will an excellent practice convert?
- 15:12 – What does Naren rate as a B-level practice regarding call conversion?
- 15:56 – Tips to improve conversion
- 16:04 – Tip Number 1
- 16:14 – What is call tracking?
- 17:10 – Data Number 1 you should know
- 17:45 – Data Number 2 you should know
- 17:57 – How long does a good caller take to make an appointment?
- 18:19 – Why is it not good to ask your receptionist for call data?
- 18:45 – Can an office have a dedicated number where we know that anytime that number is ringing it’s a potential new patient?
- 19:30 – Tip number 2
- 19:43 – What is the biggest mistake many offices make when connecting with a new patient?
- 20:34 – What’s the ideal way to start a conversation with a caller?
- 22:50 – How is the patient skeptic when they choose their dentist & practice for a long time?
- 24:18 – Tip Number 3
- 24:46 – What happens when you’re unable to give an appointment within 3 business days?
- 26:00 – Tips to have a growth-oriented practice.
- 26:10 – How appointments are scheduled at Life Smiles?
- 28:04 – Tip Number 4
- 30:11 – How to make a potential patient curious about visiting your website
- 30:45 – What is Pre-Suasion?
- 31:16 – Recap of the 4 Tips
- 33:50 – Q&A Segment:
- 34:10 – Q1: I recently discovered that many of my new calls are going to voicemail during business hours. How can I correct this?
- 38:07 – By the way, how can you find out if you don’t have Weave? How can you find out?
- 39:13 – What percentage would you consider an A on the report card of calls during business hours that we get?
- 40:50 – Q2: Gary I see that you have a chat bot on your website. Have you found that useful?
- 44:10 – Disadvantages of not having a chat bot
- 44:56 – Q3: Should I be recording my calls?
- 49:48 – Q4: I know my team members need phone training, how is the best way to train them?
RESOURCES
Gary Takacs
Gary became a successful practice owner by purchasing a fixer-upper practice and developing it into a world-class dental practice. He is passionate about sharing his hard-earned insights and experiences with dental practices across the globe. As a dental practice coach, Gary provides guidance for dental professionals on how to create a healthier practice style that lets them deliver excellent patient care while reducing depending on insurance.
More importantly, Gary’s insights are not just based on theory – as a co-owner of a dental practice, he has first-hand experience in making this transformation from a high-volume and low-fee insurance model to a fee-for-service approach that is more sustainable and promotes a patient-centric and financially healthy dental practice, and he is dedicated to sharing this knowledge with other dental practitioners via the popular Thriving Dentist Show!