In this video Dr. Vince Leone addresses the common problem of prospective patients—generated from external marketing channels such as Facebook, TV, radio, or newspapers—failing to show up for scheduled appointments. He presents a concrete solution: a $25 no‑show/no‑call penalty fee, delivered via a concise phone script that staff can use immediately after booking. Dr. Leone explains how to enforce the fee using a PayPal invoice tied to the patient’s email address. He then expands the discussion to a broader “magnetic niche marketing” system, which combines education‑based Facebook advertising, a pre‑qualification survey, and a 20‑minute webinar that educates prospects about specific niches (spinal decompression, neuropathy, knee). He shares a case study where a client spent $613 on Facebook ads and generated $7,000 in revenue from just two patients, illustrating the funnel’s ROI. Throughout, Dr. Leone emphasizes positioning the clinic as an authority, filtering out low‑commitment leads, and ultimately increasing the proportion of appointments that convert into high‑value treatment plans. Contact information (drvince@drvinceleone.com) and a reference to his “Million Dollar Phone Script” are provided for viewers who want additional resources.
Chapters
Hey everyone, Dr. Vince here, and let me ask you a question. Do you ever get frustrated with patients not showing up for their appointments? Now I'm not talking about your typical chiro patient, and I'm not talking about a referral. I'm talking about prospective patients that are coming from external marketing— Facebook, newspaper, radio, TV, etc.— and they're typically for niches, right? I mean, that's my deal. Decompression, neuropathy, and knee. Those are the niches that I focus on with patients— or sorry, with clients. And so, um, so I have a very simple solution for you if you're spending money on external marketing and, and you like to reduce the number of no-shows. I have a very simple solution and a very simple script for you. And so let's take a look. I'm just going to flip the camera around. I call it the no-show, no-call penalty fee script. And this is after your staff member has made the appointment, okay? And by the way, if you would like, because, you know, you're on my email list, if you'd like a copy of what I call the Million Dollar Phone Script, just email me, drvince@drvinceleone.com. I can get you a copy of that script, and it just helps your staff member create authority, trust, and rapport on the phone. But so she's made the appointment, or he's made the appointment, and this is how it goes. Staff member: Okay, great, Mrs. Jones, we have you down for Wednesday at 3 PM, and I wanted to make sure that you're aware of our no-show, no-call fee of $25? You know, in, in the tone of her voice. The patient says: No, I'm not sure, what is that? And the staff member says: You know, I'm sure this won't be an issue for you because you seem really committed, To finding out if we can help you with your neuropathy or disc pain or knee pain, et cetera. But in the past, you know, patients have made appointments but they didn't show up. And to be honest with you, they didn't even call us to cancel. And it really kind of threw us into a tailspin. So it made it very difficult on the doctor's schedule because he's extremely busy. It also took that appointment away from patients who could have used that time with the doctor. So we started a new policy that if patients don't show up for their appointment, And they don't give us a 24-hour notice call or email to change or cancel, they're subject to a $25 no-show penalty fee. Is that a problem for you? Okay. And then you're— now, if the patient— and that's it, right? I mean, that's it. So if the patient says, well, what the heck is that and why would we have to do that? Well, I just explained that in the past we've had patients take advantage of this really cool opportunity. I mean, we're doing a free consultation or we're doing a complete evaluation for $65 or $85 or whatever, you know, you're— please don't tell me you're doing $27 anymore. But, um, but, um, the point being is, you know, the— it's, it's, it's really affected our clinic. We're trying to help a lot of people, and if people don't, you know, don't even have the You know, the respect of the doctor in the clinic to call us. So in other words, if they're not going to agree to that, they're not even going to show up. And if even if they did show up, they're not going to pay $5,000, right? So for a care plan or $3,000 or $8,000 or whatever it is, right? So what you want someone to say is like, oh, no problem. I'll make sure. And, you know, if I have to change or if I have to cancel, I'll absolutely call you. Look, I, I still pay for my, my chiropractic adjustments and my massages. They have a $50 no-show, no fee, and, and, and I'm subjected to it, you know. So I call if I'm not going to make it. I call. Um, and in fact, the, the office manager is the doctor's wife, who's a friend, but they're both friends of mine, and they still— I'm still subject to the $50 no-show, no fee. So Cool, right? I got this at the Star Wars exhibit at Disneyland a couple weeks ago. Anyways, sorry, I digress. Point being, this is going to reduce the number of people that don't show up, right? And by— and, and if they don't want to, um, uh, abide by those rules, they don't get to take advantage of the offer. They don't get to see you, doctor. Okay, so we have to start switching the tables here And be the expert, be the specialist, be the one in demand that people want to come see us. Okay? So is this going to reduce the number of, you know, consults on the schedule? Yeah, because some people are going to bail on you, and that's okay, right? That is okay. You don't want those people in your practice. You don't want to do your consultation with them because they don't respect you enough to even agree to call 24 hours in advance to change or cancel. Okay, so, and then you may be thinking, well, how do we enforce this $25 penalty fee? Well, you're gonna have their email address, right? So you just get a PayPal account and send off an invoice for $25. Super simple. Now, if you want to take this to the next level, right, then you start to install education-based marketing, or what I call magnetic niche marketing. Okay, so what we're doing, I have a client in Southern California, hypercompetitive market, right, for all things marketing, whether it's Facebook, TV, doesn't matter. I mean, it's saturated, it's crazy competitive. So in the last 30 days, we spent $615— $613 on Facebook ads, and he's made $7,000 in revenue. Now you may be like, how? Wait, what? That is 2 patients. Okay, now obviously this is a small sample set. He only spent $600, but he got 2 patients, and he has a low case fee, by the way. So he spent $600— excuse me— and signed up 2 patients, and it was $7,000 in revenue. So cash, right? Full pay. Now you're like, how did you do that? Well, we have— I have a new funnel that it puts people through A survey, and most importantly, I put them through a 20-minute webinar, okay, on decompression, and I'm building one for neuropathy and building one for knee, but it goes through signs and symptoms of disc patients, typical treatments and why they don't work, why you don't want surgery, why you don't want the drugs, you know, what we do, what is spinal decompression, why is it so special, why does it heal the disc, what, you know, the disc is 85%, 86% water, you know, there's no other solution to heal The disc, you know, except for spinal decompression. And then we go over why does insurance not cover it, right? And then we talk about, hey, what are the rough costs? Now we don't say, well, it's gonna be $5,000. No, we say, well, it's anywhere from $75 to $150 per visit depending on what the doctor determines what you need in terms of therapies. And then based on your severity is gonna determine how many visits you need, right? So when they come in, And I just got off the phone with this doctor yesterday. When these patients come in, they're not asking about price and this, that, and the other. They know, right? Now, they want to know what the final price is because after they've been evaluated, they want to know how many visits. Now, one patient was 24 visits, one patient was 30 visits, but boom, took out the credit card. No big deal, right? Now, the reason why we created this funnel is because this doctor's busy. He's a successful doctor. He has a big insurance practice, right? And he's like, um, because we started with a traditional Facebook campaign, he's like, I don't want all these leads. I can't— I don't have time to call these— all these leads. No problem. So we created this funnel for him. This is the future of Facebook marketing, okay? Education-based marketing. You know my quote, he who educates the most patients wins. All right, so if this is of interest to you, um, you know, hey, shoot me an email, drvince@drvinceleone.com, and we can talk more about how we can install something like this in your area. Of course, I have to do exclusivity because I don't want to compete with myself. But this is the future of Facebook marketing because the people are out there, okay? And they're on Facebook. But the problem is we just have to weed through tons and tons of leads, right, to get people that— the ones that are actually serious. Okay, so anyways, um, but regardless, start using that no penalty no-show, no-call penalty fee script. You'll start to see better— you'll actually start to see people show up. Okay, and higher— well, you'll have less consults, but you'll have more people actually show up for their appointments. So implement that. You know, that script's obviously for private clients, but big deal, just go back and pause the screen and just write it down, right, so you can use that. So I hope this was helpful for you. I'm Dr. Vince, and I hope you have an awesome rest of your week, and we'll talk to you soon.
