Question from a reader last week:
“It’s now clear to me that virtual consults have a role in growing our refractive volume. My thing is, we don’t want virtual consults to cannibalize the pool of people coming into the office for in-office consults. How do we keep that from happening?”
As you should know by now, we’re bullish on Virtual Consults. Practices that are pivoting to the Hybrid Model of Patient Engagement (Virtual Consults + in-office consults) are seeing massive growth in their refractive volume.
This question about “cannibalization” holds a lot of practices back from fully embracing (and promoting) virtual consults. And we understand why.
You know if you can get a prospect into the office to experience your awesomeness, they are much more likely to schedule surgery, right? So you don’t want to do something that would reduce the number of prospective patients who are coming in. Makes perfect sense.
But here’s what we’ve discovered…
Through our Prime Positioning Framework, we market the virtual consults in a way that attracts a different segment of the marketplace than you’re reaching right now.
By taking this strategic approach, the virtual consults are additional to the in-office consults you’re already booking. And I’ll explain why that’s the case…
Remember you’re catering to a large pool of potential patients in your market. Let’s look at them in 2 groups – the Traditional Bookers and Non-Traditional Non-Bookers.
Right now, your in-office consults are geared toward the Traditional Bookers. This is the segment of the population that wants to come in and see you for a consult. Just like patients always have. They like the old-school, in-person touch point.
The people in the other segment are not coming in for a consult. These are your Non-Traditional Non-Bookers. This group is comprised of people who need what you have to offer, but they don’t want to take the time off and travel to your practice to do an in-person consult. In short, it’s not convenient enough for them to take action.
Virtual consults, when done the right way that we will teach you, add a new avenue of convenience for prospects to connect with your practice. And as we see with Amazon Prime, InstaCart, Netflix and Peloton – convenience-focused services are what people crave.
So for your Non-Traditional Non-Bookers, this new level of convenience is exactly what they’re looking for.
To summarize – the people booking virtual consultations are not the same market segment who were booking in-office consults before. Those folks are still booking with you.
The people booking virtual consults were never coming to see you in the first place… and now they are. Because you’ve catered to their desire for convenience.
(At least that’s what we’ve seen across a dozen or so practices that have implemented our system.)
So if you were holding back on fully embracing virtual consults because you didn’t want to lose in-person consults, I hope I’ve put your fears at ease.
And if you want the full system and game plan for how to position, market and convert virtual consults to refractive surgeries – while still keeping a full schedule of in-person consults – reach out to me immediately.
- Troy “No Cannibals” Cole