Gene St. Louis explains why marketing fails for medical and dental practices: you get the calls, but staff turn them away. Track your phone conversations. Train people to explain insurance and membership plans instead of saying no. Treat callers like they're ready to buy.
Let's talk about when you feel as if your marketing just is not working. And let's talk about why and how it's not working. First and foremost, are you tracking the phone calls? Are you actually listening to the phone calls? Because, believe it or not, you can do marketing and the phone can ring and. And you can feel as if that marketing isn't working because you're not seeing them in your schedule when really we're not working. The marketing, meaning we are not understanding the proper skill set on the phone to get that patient to schedule. And it isn't all about just get them to schedule, lie to them, say anything, just to get them to schedule. Of course we're not going to do that. That's not in the best interest of the patient. But we can be educational. I have often found that when I was answering the phone, I found that most offices were somewhat rude when patients would call and say, you know, no, we don't take that insurance, click instead of saying, actually, we are in network with this, this, and this insurance. However, we can still accept your insurance. You can? Sure. Come here. We also have a membership program as an example. In other words, educate the patient on what you have to offer them. This is a fact. When you are dialing out for dollars, when you're calling a patient to get them in for recall, to get them in for unscheduled treatment, you are trying to get them to buy. You're calling them, you're selling something for them. When they're calling you, they're ready to buy, they want to buy. And guess what? We do. We don't get it. We let them hang up without scheduling. Shame on us. We need to. When they call us, we need to get them excited about why they've chosen our practice. And I don't know about you, but doctors are typically not braggadocious. They're not going to say about how great they are. But you know what? As staff members, team members, we can go ahead and we can be braggadocious. We can say, what do you know about Dr. Jones? Let me tell you a little bit about her. She is awesome. And this is why. That's what's going to make that person endeared to your practice over another practice.
