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Podcast: 07 – Energy: One of the Most Powerful Persuasion Tools on the Planet

It’s easy to focus on scripts and word tracks, but your *energy and excitement* are even more powerful persuasion tools to help you book consults and surgeries. In this episode, we talk about why and where to amp up the energy in your practice.

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Transcript

Let’s get excited!

What is up my friends? It’s your boy Troy with a fresh, piping hot episode of the Practice Growth Machine Podcast, where we teach you the persuasion tips and tactics you can use to command higher prices for your premium procedures, and fill your surgery schedule.

Today we’re talking about one of my favorite topics, and that is energy. This topic came to mind as I was speaking with a water filter lady, her name’s Mandy. All right, so a little background for you here. I live in the country-ish sort of, just outside of Fort Worth, Texas.

Rather than having city water, we actually have a well. A well out in our yard that pumps water out of the ground and it’s awesome, but the thing is, there’s a lot of minerals in the water and we have a water filter that is hooked up to our house to take care of filtering some of that stuff out. So every now and then we have to have the filter serviced.

I called the company that normally does this. This is just a few days ago. I need to book an appointment, and Mandy answers the phone, and from the moment that she answered – she was kind, she was energetic, she was happy to be doing her job. I could tell. She was happy to help me.

She took this normal, humdrum situation – me booking an appointment for servicing on my water filter and she actually lifted my spirits, made me feel good, got me excited about the service, and she got me taken care of. Let’s talk about how, and why we want to be more like Mandy, let’s get into it.

We often focus so much on the scripts, and on the specific word tracks, and those things are important, but we sometimes forget that the majority of our communication is delivered not with the words that we say, but with the tone, and the energy with which we deliver it. You can have the best scripting in the world, but if you sound like you hate your job, or you’re just moseying through the day, it’s not going to do you any good.

On the flip side, I’ve had practices who hire new folks, and maybe they don’t know all the answers and all the scripting, and everything down just perfect but they’re so happy, they’re so energetic that they’re able to book consults right out of the gate, and so, I want you to take a minute here. Think about examples in your own life where you’ve met people like this. Maybe it’s your favorite barista down at the local coffee shop, or the lady over at your dry cleaners.

I’ve even had memorably pleasant experiences with AT&T customer service believe it or not, and it’s all because they have that energy, and that excitement about what they are doing. Let’s talk a minute about why energy is so powerful.

Why is energy such a powerful attractor? Well, there’s a few reasons here. Number one, it’s noticeable. When someone loves what they’re doing, and they’re not afraid to show it, it’s very clear. It automatically stands apart in that way.

Number two, it’s rare. We encounter so many people every single day, and they’re going through the motions. When someone’s energetic, and they engage you with energy, and excitement, and happiness, again, they really, really stand out against all the other interactions that you have going through life.

Number three, it creates this natural curiosity – why? Why is this person so darn happy, and excited? I need to know.

When it comes to your practice, that excitement, and that energy is reflective of the experience that they’re going to have when they come in, and when they see you. For all of these reasons, energy, and excitement in your voice, in your tone is very persuasive when it comes to booking your consultations, and even turning consults to come in, and do surgeries. Let’s talk about a few areas where you can amp up the energy.

All right, where can you amp up the energy in the practice? First and foremost, on the phone. That’s the first area. The phone, think about it, is often the first human interaction that somebody has with the practice, it’s the first voice to voice engagement, and it’s a critical first impression. You want your people on the phone, they’re staying fresh, they’re amped up, they’re excited for every single call. I know that’s not easy, but it is critical to set that first impression, and set the tone for what they can experience when they come in and see you.

The phone really is just the start though. That energy has to carry into the consult, into the meeting with the doctor, because at that point it’s clear, you’re not just dealing with one awesome person on the phone, but a culture, and the whole practice.

A culture of excitement across the board. It’s kind of like “What is in the water over here? What are you guys drinking? Because this place is amazing, and I want a piece of it.” Going back to that curiosity point we talked about in the last session, and you’ll also find other creative ways to showcase your energy. For example, I intentionally have a very high energy, and excited voicemail message, not the typical, “Hey, this is Troy leave a message.” But, I really, really get into it.

Even when someone leaves me a voicemail, I want folks to know, hey, this Troy guy is loving what he’s doing over here. If I miss a call, it’s not uncommon for someone to leave me a message that starts with, “Wow, that’s an awesome voicemail.” I can tell that it’s had an effect on their energy just based on the tone of the message that they’re leaving.

I can hear it in their voice, which is another critical point is, your energy reflects on to others. You will set the tone, whether it’s up, or whether it’s down, you’re going to set the tone for interactions with patients who call in, and come into your practice. Set that tone, set that energy high.

Let’s do a recap on everything we’ve learned today.

To summarize, more than scripting and word tracks your energy is one of the most impactful forms of communication that you have. When you have high energy, you display something that’s noticeable, it’s something that’s rare, and it creates curiosity, all of which is persuasive and attracts others to you.

You want this energy to be palpable on the phone, in the consult, and all the way through the patient journey. All right? So get out there, get energized, you love what you’re doing, you’re changing people’s lives.

Make sure that you show it, make sure that they know it, and have a positive impact on the lives of your prospects, and patients.

We’ll see you on the next show.

To dig deeper into the ways you can use persuasion to grow your practice, head over to troycole.com and check out the free Resources tab right there on the homepage.

Podcast: 06 – Avoid the “Right Answer Trap” on the Phone

“The Right Answer Trap” is an easy yet costly mistake to make on the phone. In this episode, I explain what it is, and what to do instead.

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Transcript

You don’t want your phone team falling into this trap.

What is up my friends? It’s your boy Troy with a fresh episode of the Practice Growth Machine podcast. Today we’re talking about mind-set and specifically we’re talking about a situation that happens a lot on the phones. And it’s what I call, the right answer trap. The right answer trap.

When I’m working with phone teams and I ask, “So, what’s your job on the phone? What are you doing?” A lot of them will say, “Well, we’re answering questions. We’re trying to answer questions for people who call us.” Then others will say, “We’re trying to book a consult or book an evaluation.”

But if I dig deeper and say, “Okay, literally how do you do that?” it still comes back to, “Well, we need to make sure that we’re answering all of their questions when people call in.”

And the thing is that answering questions is the one thing that we should not be doing on the phone. So, let’s talk about why.

Your office takes calls every day and you are well versed in the ways of your procedures, the language you use, all the technical aspects of it et cetera. But think about this. How well versed are your prospects? In a lot of cases they don’t know much about what you do at all.

They may know that you offer a certain type of procedure and they’ve heard of that procedure. They’ve heard of Lasik or a face lift or whatever it is but they probably don’t know a lot about what you’re actually doing or how it works. What that means is, they don’t really know what to ask.

And so, what do they do? They do what we all do when we’re talking about things that we don’t really know about and they end up asking random questions to fill the space and try to carry the conversation. And a lot of times that’s a price question. Sometimes it’s a technology question. It doesn’t really matter. The thing you need to know is that people are asking questions on autopilot because they really don’t know what to say otherwise. And this is where the trouble starts.

The trouble starts when we start trying to answer these questions and we think we need to answer questions but that’s exactly what we should not be doing for a few reasons.

Number one, when we’re answering questions we are being responsive to the caller and at face value that sounds good. It sounds like, ‘Hey that’s good. We want to be responsive.’ But we also put in a position where we’re being reactive. We don’t want to be reactive to whatever random question a caller may throw out at us.

We want to guide and be in charge and take the lead on the call. So getting into a rhythm where they’re throwing questions at you and you’re answering those, really puts them in the driver’s seat. They’re the ones that are guiding the call and not you.

And that’s a problem because as we already discussed, these callers, the prospects calling into your practice don’t know a lot about what you’re doing, don’t know a lot about the value that you provide, how you’re different than your competitors et cetera. So we don’t want them guiding the call. You need to guide the call.

Number two, it’s important to remember that every question is born out of a concern. So if someone says, “How much is it?” what they’re really meaning, what they’re really getting at is, “Is this a good value? Is this a good use of my money? Is this a good investment in myself?”

If someone says, “Hey. Do you do all laser procedures?” they’re really getting at the idea of, “Hey. Do you have the latest technology? Can I trust the technology that you offer? Is it the latest, the greatest and the best?” So people are asking questions and they’re rattling off these inquiries but really they’re revealing what their true concerns are.

So if we can pull back a minute and not focus so much on the question but the concern beneath the question, that is what we want to address on the phone. Rather than answering questions, we need to address concerns.

I’ll say that again. Instead of answering questions, we want to address concerns. And there’s many ways you can do that. You can do it by telling stories, by talking about what other patients have shared with you through anecdotes. You can talk about what you’ve observed being in the practice and working with other patients.

That’s a topic we’ll deep dive in another episode. But the big takeaway here is that if you get a phone call and you answer 20 questions but if you get off the phone without some kind of a next step, then we failed.

You may think your job on the phone is to answer questions but it’s not. Ultimately, your job is to help someone make the right decision for themselves. Booking a consult is great. That’s not actually what our ultimate goal is we want to help someone who calls into the practice make the right decision for them. And in many cases, the right decision is to take the next step and come on in, meet with the doc, have a consult and see what their options are.

But think about this, if someone has 20 questions it doesn’t really matter what those questions are. The fact that they have 20 questions shows you that they need to come on in and take that next step for a consultation and learn about what their options truly are to move forward with a solution that you provide.

In closing, don’t think of yourself as a glossary but as a guide. Your job is not to answer questions. It is to address the concerns of the prospect as you guide them through the call and ultimately you want to help your callers make the right decision for them which in most cases is to take that next step. Come on in for a consultation.

So go forth today. Don’t just answer questions but address concerns and help your prospects make the right decisions for them.

We’ll see you next time.

Yes BOGO LASIK Works. Here are 8 Reasons That’s a Huge Problem.

In the last few of weeks, I’ve seen ads from 2 different parts of the country offering the same promotion:

Buy One, Get One LASIK Surgery.

aka BOGO LASIK.

Pay for your first eye, get your second eye free. Like a bonus box of saltines on Blue Light Special at the Piggly Wiggly.

Except it’s surgery. For your eyes.

I call this a version of the Deep LASIK Discount (DSD), a mega-discount offer that is detrimental to your practice and the industry at large.

To be clear, I’m not talking about ads from the chain shops who promote “lasik starting at $250 per eye.” We all know that’s a crock of garbage.

The two ads I saw were from independent ophthals who are running DLD deals to get people in the door.

So let’s talk about a Deep LASIK Discount. Is it a good idea? Does it work? Should you do it?

Before we get into the nutty gritty, I want to address 2 camps of people who will read this article.

Camp 1. You’ve never run a Deep LASIK Discount. Maybe you haven’t had to, or you haven’t thought about it, or you refuse to.

If that’s you, congrats.

What you’ll find here are compelling reasons to reinforce your decision not to run DLDs, reasons you can share with your colleagues for the betterment of the entire industry.

Camp 2. You have run Deep LASIK Discounts. Maybe you’ve even done a BOGO deal. Maybe you’re doing one right now.

This essay isn’t dumping on you. I understand the compelling reasons to create such an offer, but I’ve also seen the pitfalls that creep up as you run these types of promotions.

Regardless of your camp, my goals here are the same:

To build an argument against devaluing your practice.
To share the many ways I’ve seen Deep LASIK Discounts take practices in the wrong direction.
To convince you of your value so you can get paid what you’re worth.

First, a confession. I’ve run my fair share of Deep LASIK Discounts in my career.

Many years ago, we ran major LASIK discounts for clients. Now, I can honestly say I’ve never done a 50% off deal, or a Buy One Eye, Get One Free promotion. But I’m guilty of using DLDs.

So I do have experience with this approach. And it works. And I refuse to do it any longer.

Here are the 8 reasons why.

1. Deep LASIK Discounts Attract the Wrong Demographic

If you could wave a magic wand and get your ideal prospect to walk in the door, what would she look like?

Someone price shopping? A tire kicker? Someone who wants you to discount?

Or someone looking for value? Looking for a practice that cuts no corners. Someone who knows this is actual surgery, not a Labor Day sale on lawn chairs.

If you could pick, you’d rather the latter. But when you’re pushing a Deep LASIK Discount, especially something as stark as BOGO, that’s not who’s walking through your doors many times.

You get the high maintenance price shopper. You get the person fixated on price and can’t see beyond it. Here’s why:

2. Deep LASIK Discounts Make Price the Central Focus of Your Service

A lot goes into the solutions you provide for your patients:

Your education and experience.
The education, experience and care of your team.
Your facility
The technology you offer
Your pre-op and post-op care
and 50 other aspects…

But when your central messaging is around how great your discount is, that’s the thing people focus on.

Focus on price, and your prospects will too. Is that what you want?

3. Referrals Spread Your Deep LASIK Discount Far and Wide.

Maybe a short/term boost with a Deep LASIK Discount isn’t so bad, right?

The problem is that DLDs persist.

You know when you accidentally bite your lip, then what happens? That spot swells, and you keep biting it. It gets easier and worse every time.

For example: Someone comes and gets a BOGO LASIK procedure. They tell their friends. What’s the first thing they say?

“Wow! My vision is awesome!”

Right, but what’s the second thing they say? “…and I got it for half price!”

Question: If you know your buddy got a screaming deal on a thing, are you going to pay full price? Why would you?

You wouldn’t. You’d ask for the same deal.

People want the deal their friends got. Or the deal they heard on the radio last week. Or the deal they saw on your website that time.

So you extend the deal to that one person. Then to another. Then another.

“We were gonna run this just for a month… but why not let it go a little longer?” Seems like a decent idea, yeah? People still want the deal.

Of course they do. Who wouldn’t?

That’s why a lot of these types of promos go on… and on… and on. Then what?

4. You End Up with a Perpetual Price Reduction.

Once you’ve run your Deep LASIK Discount for a few months, people don’t see your retail price as your actual price anymore. Your actual price is a 50% discounted rate.

Jos A. Bank is a value-priced mens clothing store.

If you’ve seen their commercials, you know they always advertise a special – half-off jackets, 3-for-one dress shirts, buy a pair of dress pants, get two free pair of chinos.

Through this constant revolving door of promotions, they have trained their customers NOT to pay full price. How? Because there’s always a deal.

When your Deep LASIK Discount perpetuates month after month, eventually, you train folks not to pay full price.

And at that point, you lose one of the biggest advantages of any kind of sales promotion…

5. Ongoing DLDs Lose the Benefit of a Time Constraint.

One of the biggest advantages of any type of sale is time constraint.

“This weekend only!” “Black Friday deals!” “Act now or you’ll miss it!”

But when your thing is always on sale, the urgency disappears. The time constraint, which is one of the biggest advantages of a sale, simply dissolves.

”Troy, are you saying I should only do DLDs in the short-term?” No! Because they’ll turn into long-term, self-sabotaging traps.

6. Even Though You can Drop Your Retail Price, Your Cost and Liability are Fixed.

Profit trumps volume in most scenarios. If I had to choose one, I’d rather you do fewer treatments at a much higher margin vs. more treatments on razor-thin margins.

One of the main reasons is this fallacy that pops up any time we talk about discounting and profit margins:

“Well, we give 50% off, so we give up 50% of profit.”

But that’s bad math.

Your costs aren’t variable. Are Alcon and Zeiss giving you a 50% break on your click fee? I doubt it.

Do your techs take a 50% discount on their hourly pay? Of course not.

Your liability is also fixed. Do you assume half of the responsibility because they paid half price for their procedures? Of course not.

You may be taking in BOGO money, but your expenses offer no discounts. Don’t forget this.

Let’s switch gears and talk competitive advantage for a moment.

7. Unless You can be the Cheapest, Competing on Price Offers no Real Strategic Advantage.

Credit business strategist Dan Kennedy for this simple yet vital reminder.

Walmart can compete on price because they’re giant. They have major purchasing power, which means they can cut costs, and they make up their thin margins in volume.

Amazon falls into a similar boat.

For Wal-Mart and Amazon, their low pricing is an advantage because it’s the lowest available, and they can sustain it.

You aren’t them.

Unless you can be the cheapest in town (which I would never recommend, see reason #6 above), price cuts don’t afford you a true strategic advantage. You’re a few hundred more than one guy, a few hundred less than another.

Why break your back doing cut-rate cases, taking home next-to-nil profit, when it’s not even giving you a strong position against your competition?

8. If you think price is the only way you can compete, it’s time to reassess.

Let’s get down to brass tacks on exactly how you got to this point in your life.

You spent an extra decade+ on your education.
You absorbed hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost / debt to get a medical degree.
Then you had the audacity and fortitude to open your own practice, serve patients, and create jobs.
You continue to invest in ongoing training and technology to stay at the forefront of your field.

You didn’t do all that just so you could compete on price with the discount chains down the street.

You’re worth more than that. The value you provide is more than that. The value you bring to your community and your patients and your team and their families – it’s all worth more. And it’s time to act like it.

in closing: Are You Going to Chase Profit or Volume?

Do you want to be the surgeon bragging about how many treatments he did, dealing with discount-chasing clientele, as you barely keeping the lights on?

If you’re totally volume-focused, go for it. BOGO LASIK does work to get folks in the door, but at a major monetary and positioning cost to your practice.

OR would you rather care for your high-end, value-based, happy-to-pay-full-price-for-your-services clients and grow a healthy, profitable practice?

The punchline is this:

You don’t have to choose just one. You can raise volume and prices.

Nearly all of my consulting clients increased their prices and their volume in the last 12 months. They are all some of the highest if not the highest priced practices in their markets.

And that, in my humble but accurate opinion, is where you want to be.

It’s not complicated. Here’s the roadmap:

Stop the mass-market discounting.
Raise your prices.
Demonstrate value that exceeds the new price.
Repeat Steps 2 – 3 at least once a year.

Now let’s go.

This is Not a Picture of Keith Urban. (Cataract Marketing Lessons from a Country Music Concert)

I wouldn’t call myself a Keith Urban fan.

But when I was generously gifted a pair of tickets to his Dallas Arena show, I knew Susan and I should check it out.

(Before I get into the meat of this thing, one piece of advice: if you ever have a chance to see Keith Urban… GO. It was a fantastic show.)

We head into the arena and find our seats, which happened to be third row from the floor. We were close. I could have thrown a lime skittle in his mouth.

The second thing I noticed, after the skittle proximity, was the demographic of the Keith Urban fans in this particular section.

80% of the Keith Urbanites around us were age 55 and up –

As you know, this is your primary demographic for your high-ticket elective procedures – premium cataract and refractive lens exchange patients.

“This will be solid people watching,” I thought to myself. I was not disappointed.

Here’s a tip: when you’re out and about, observe other people’s behavior on their mobile devices.

Watch what they’re doing on their phones, what apps they’re using, what pictures they are taking.

Is it creepy? Eh, only if you get caught. So don’t be that guy. But do go to some effort to try to understand and observe how people around you are behaving on their phones.

You can look at statistics all day long, but it really hits home when you see people “out in the wild” actually using their devices.

So I’m sitting there, in this crowd of mostly seniors and baby boomers. The perfect opportunity for market research.

Of the dozen people immediately beside and in front of us, the majority of them had their phones out most of the time.

Several of them were posting comments, check-in’s, and photos on their Facebook pages. Additionally they were going back to Facebook to check comments and notifications and reply to those throughout the concert, while also texting their friends photos they were taking and messages about how fun it was.

(“What the heck, how can you read what they’re saying, Troy?” Because the text size on their phones looks like the headline on your local newspaper. Definitely time for a reading vision procedure. Jumbo Font is not a good look.)

There’s more:

The lady in front of us literally had a selfie stick she was using to photograph herself and her friends.

Speaking of selfies, check out the image below that I took of not Keith Urban.

Sure he’s in the photo, but I took this pic so you could see the ladies taking selfies in the middle of the concert like a bunch of sorority girls.

Why am I telling you all this? Who cares what the grandmothers at Keith Urban are doing?

Too often we think about our senior patients as old people. The problem with that is… they don’t.

Your senior patients not only want to look young and feel young, they believe themselves to still be young. This is their worldview.

They are trying to bring their physical reality in line with who they believe themselves to be.

Have you noticed how you don’t hear the names ‘Grandma’ and ‘Grandpa’ used much anymore?

I definitely had a Granma and Grandad growing up, maybe you did too. But my kids have no Grandmother, no Granpa. At least not by those names. They have a Pop and a Cici and a DocDoc and a G-Pa and a Mizzy.

Neither my mom or my mother-in-law ever said “Ooooh, I want to be Granma!” Why not? Because they aren’t Granmas. Or at least they don’t see themselves as such. They are too young to be that.

Our smartphones and social media addictions are only feeding this feeling.

Your cataract patients are not immune to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), or the desire to share the most flattering parts of their lives on social media in an effort to gain social points and relevancy.

If you’re using old geriatrics in your advertising… stop. If you think seniors aren’t using social media… They are. If you aren’t using text messaging because seniors don’t text… You hate money.

The people you want to come in your practice and spend $10, $15, $20k on your cash-pay procedures are the same ones buying $500 Keith urban tickets and taking selfies to post on Facebook. Don’t forget that.

That doesn’t mean treat them like teenagers.

But it does mean you better remember who they are and who they want to be – as young as they feel they are. Then help them reach that goal.

Podcast: 05 – How Fast to Follow-Up? If You’re Not First, You’re Last

When following up with your leads, the sooner the better, right? But do *minutes* really make a notable difference in your conversions? You might be surprised what the data shows…

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Transcript

If you’re not first, you’re last.

What is up my friends? It’s your boy Troy, coming at you with a piping hot fresh episode of The Practice Growth Machine podcast. I hope you are well.

Today, we are getting back into lead follow up. You remember that we talked on our last episode about the frequency with which to follow up with your leads and why it’s important to continue to follow up after that first, after that second initial follow up to keep going because the longer and the more often you follow up the higher your chances of connecting with your prospects actually turning them into a console and getting them into your practice for a surgical consultation.

Now, we’re going to talk today about follow up speed. We’re going to revisit that same Harvard Business Review study that looked at 15,000 prospects across 100,000 phone calls and we’re going to see what that study data had to say about the speed with which we follow up. And I think you’re going to be surprised at the results, let’s get into it.

So going back to the study that we referenced last week, not only did they look at follow-up frequency and in the success that these businesses had when they followed up with prospects multiple times. But they also looked at the response time, how quickly were these businesses that were a part of this study responding to leads that came in?

And as you can probably imagine the faster they responded, the more likely they were to connect with the leads. Now, here’s where it gets a little crazy. I want you to imagine for a minute that a lead comes through your website. And someone who’s interested in what you have to offer comes through your website, how quickly do we need to contact them?

When that lead is contacted within the first five minutes of it coming through your site, you have a 10x better chance of connecting with them if you call them within five minutes compared to after 10 minutes.

And you might say, “Well, is it really that big of a difference. I mean, shouldn’t we just try to get back to them today at some point, if they came through? We’ll call them back same day that’s normally what we do?”

I’m telling you it does make a difference. I’ve observed this with my clients the ones who get their leads on the phone who get them booked are the ones who are following up immediately, and why does this work? Why is it so important to get on the horn so fast with these folks or to connect with them so quickly within five minutes? How going to make such a difference between five minutes and 10? It’s for a few reasons. Let’s look at those.

I want you to think for a moment just how busy you are with life, you have a thousand things going on, so do I. So does everybody else, all of your patients do, all of your potential patients do. So when somebody comes onto your site or goes through your self-test or clicks on one of your Facebook ads and they complete a form or they send you their info, they are immediately moving on to the next thing.

Which also means that their brain and their attention is moving on to the next thing as well. If we can catch them within the first minute, two, three minutes of them becoming a lead there’s a decent chance that they totally haven’t shifted focus, and we can actually get in touch with them and continue the thought that they started when they filled out our form in the first place, compared that to if they fill out your form at 9:00 in the morning and we call them back at 4:00 in the afternoon.

Or heaven forbid the next day at some point we might as well be calling them back a year later. How many things happened to you today between 9:00 this morning and 3:00 in the afternoon? Your mind’s completely gone from what you were doing this morning, and it’s the same way with your prospects. We want to get in touch with them while their mind is still on this action. That’s number one.

Number two, you have to assume that every single person who comes through your website, through your social, however they get in touch with you is also calling three of your competitors. Three other practices in town, you’ve got to assume that this person has decided, “Hey, I’m going to have a procedure. I am ready to solve this problem.”

So they reach out to you, they reach out to other practices and they’re going to see, who wants their business? Who’s going to call them back? Who’s going to make them feel good? Who’s going to take great care of them? Who’s going to solve this problem for them?

All right, so every minute after they become a lead is a minute that your competitor, another practice in town could swoop in and call them back first. And you always want to be the first mover when you have somebody that is in buying mode, you want them to come to you first. You want to be the first one to connect with them.

The reason is you’re the one that’s able to set the stage for what they can expect, what they need to do. You become the educator and the trusted advocate for them, you want that not your competitors. That’s why follow up immediately is so, so important.

You might be thinking, “Oh Troy, we’ve got a thousand things going on over here. I understand it’s important, how do we actually do it? Because it sounds like it’s pretty tough. How do I make sure that when leads come through my team is ready to talk to them and someone is standing there waiting to give them a call back within 60 seconds? How do we do that?” Well there’s a few ways. Let’s talk about it.

Number one, you need some kind of alerts that are coming into your team. I like e-mail alerts, I really like text alerts, alerts that pop up on your computer screen. A lot of CRM tools have this where you have alerts pop right up on your computer screen so people see it immediately if e-mail alerts come through that needs to pop up right in the middle of somebody’s screen.

What can’t happen is that an e-mail alert comes through and it dumps into some generic inbox that gets checked once every day and a half, and at that point somebody might follow up with the leads.

And yes, I see this happen often. Those alerts need to go to people, they need to be real time alerts and they need to be red alerts maybe not literally red, but the team needs to know when these leads come through and this alert pops up, it is time to stop what you’re doing and call these people back right now.

Another way you can do it is you can actually use tech tools to connect your practice with leads even when they come in through the web. So for example, we have a tool that we use when somebody submits a web form, it actually triggers a phone call to the practice. The practice picks it up and it says, “Hey, you have any web lead from your online web form. The person’s name Sally Spectacles. Press one to connect,” and then the practice presses one and it immediately dials that prospect. They’re connected within 30 seconds.

That automates the whole process takes the whole alert thing off the table because it’s automating the process through technology. Super easy tool to use and it absolutely cuts down on response time by taking all the manual work out of it.

So to recap the episode today, if you can call your prospects back within five minutes, you are going to have 10 times as much success connecting with them as if you wait 10 minutes or longer. Of course, every minute after that it just gets worse and worse and worse. It is important for you to be the first one to connect with your prospect.

Do not let your competitors beat you to the punch. And finally use technology to either alert you in real time, of leads that are coming through or to actually connect you with the leads as they come through your practice.

And whatever you do, make sure that your team knows when those leads come through, that is now number one priority. It is time to put down anything else, pick up the phone and dial these folks and get them into the practice.

Hey remember, if you’re not first, you’re last. See you on the next show.