In this episode of the Practice Profit System, host Matthew Gillogly answers a listener’s question about converting cold leads who call in asking only for price. He explains that leads generated from paid ads (Google, Facebook) have no relationship with the practice and tend to control the conversation by demanding price immediately. Gillogly argues that such ads are low‑quality, especially Facebook, and that relying on them alone leads to poor conversion. He advocates a content‑marketing approach—regularly publishing videos on YouTube, Instagram, etc.—to pre‑educate and pre‑qualify prospects, building trust so that when they see an ad they already know the practice’s value. He stresses focusing on the local market (typically a 25‑mile radius) rather than chasing national reach or social‑media metrics like likes and subscribers. For phone calls, he recommends using a scripted qualification process that takes back control before revealing price, flipping the conversation to assess fit first. Gillogly also promotes the Business of Orthobiologics (BOB) event, a two‑day conference that blends medical knowledge with business strategy, claiming attendees add $50,000 of cash‑based procedures within 60 days. Throughout, he dismisses the need to become an Instagram influencer, emphasizing content quality over vanity metrics. The episode concludes with a teaser about discussing appropriate rates for first appointments.
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So on today's episode, we're going to talk about the concept of price. And when I talk about price, what I mean specifically is when do you mention price? Hey everybody, it is Matt and welcome to the Practice Profit System. Today's episode, we're actually going to dive into The mailbag. Yeah, we got a couple of questions, and so the next couple of episodes we are going to dive into listeners' questions that they have sent into our company about some specific things. So let's get ready to dive in and let's see what's in the mailbag. So this comes from Dr. Tammy. I will not mention the last name. She is out in the desert, out towards the West Coast, and I'm not going to read the entire email, but here we go. So the biggest challenge that she is facing is converting a cold lead when they call in from Google or website into a consultation. Now, this is a massive problem that exists in the industry. I'll explain why in just a little bit. And she said, I remember when I was listening to one of your recordings, you coached someone on why the receptionist should never give the price of treatments and basically explained that as a non-licensed professional, it was outside their scope. Okay. And that the physician is the only one who can evaluate and give price. Now, even when the doctor— she said even when she would take the phone calls, they still want to know price. They want to know how much. They want to know an estimate. Why can't you tell me the price? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So how do we handle this? Well, first and foremost, we have to understand what this lead is. The reality is that a lead that comes in from paid advertising such as Google and Facebook— now, Facebook is the lowest life form of a lead. Google is better, but it's still not great. Okay. But you have to realize they have zero relationship with you. They don't know who you are. They don't know anything about you. They don't know anything about your practice. They don't know really, they don't have any relationship with you. So the big challenge that you're faced with is this is kind of like meeting somebody at a bar and asking them about what they think about Donald Trump or what do they think about whatever. Right? What are they thinking about religion or latest political thing? There's no opportunity to develop any type of relationship.
Have you ever gone to a medical event, medical conference, learn a great new medical skill, and you get all excited about how to go home and you're gonna sell this to your existing client base, and you go back and guess what? Nothing happens. Maybe you sell one or two of the procedures, but all those dollars that you had bouncing in your head of how much money you were gonna make, Well, they don't seem to materialize. Well, the reason why is there's a gap, and the gap is, is that no one has ever taught you how to marry the science of business with the science of medicine. That changes with what we call the Business of Orthobiologics. And this is an event that is hosted by Dr. Ariana Demers and myself. We host it a number of times throughout the year, and it's a 2-day event. And what it is, is that half of the event is about the medicine of orthobiologics and And the other half is about the science and medicine of business, if you will. So what we do is we show you how to marry all of that. And what we find is that our average attendee adds $50,000 of cash-based procedures to the practice within 60 days. Want to find out more? Click the button that is here below or click the link and it'll take you to the page where you can read more about the BOB, the Business of Orthobiologics. It's a one-of-a-kind event. No one else is hosting an event like this throughout the entire country. And we want to help you grow your cash-based practice. Join us at the Bob. Find out more details by clicking the link below.
So this is why I'm not a real big fan of running Facebook and Google AdWords campaigns to bring in patients. One, you don't have, like I said, you don't really have an essence or an understanding. They don't have an understanding of who you are and what you stand for. Basically, what's happened is they've Googled their problem. They saw a bunch of ads and they clicked on yours. They probably went back and clicked on about four or five different ads. And so what they're doing is they're calling around, and so they're basically in control of the conversation, which means that they're going to immediately if they don't know anything about the industry, if they don't know anything about PRP or regenerative medicine or functional medicine or whatever, they're going to go right to the point of what's it going to cost. But they don't have any context or understanding. Of what that price really means and what they're gonna be getting for that. Okay? So in this situation, I would say is that if Dr. Tammy had videos, lots and lots of videos out there, YouTube, Instagram, things like that, what will happen is that people will actually reverse the process over time. What'll happen is they'll see your videos, they'll see your content, they'll get to know you, they'll get to like you, they'll get to trust you a little bit. And then they'll see your ad and click on the ad. Or if they see your ad and they click on it, they're going to have an opportunity then to see more and more of your content. So the whole key is that the content is king. What we want is we want to create an environment where the prospect is pre-educated, pre-qualified, and predisposed to doing business with us so that there's zero selling that has to go on. The whole role of marketing is to make the sale. You shouldn't have to have this really elaborate sales process in order to make the sale. You shouldn't have to rely on a bunch of neurolinguistic programming. You shouldn't have to rely on a bunch of trial closes or traditional salesy type of methodology in order to get people to buy if you are creating the content and you're building that long-term relationship. So that's the first big challenge that is, is happening there. So my advice to Dr. Tammy is Put yourself on a path of generally and regularly creating content. Now, a lot of people go, well, I don't want to be an Instagram influencer.
I don't blame you.
I don't want to be an Instagram influencer either. That's the last thing I want to do. You have to remember your market is only 25-mile radius around your facility. If you really look at it now, right now somebody's going, but Matt, I have people flying in from all over the country. That may be the case with some of your patients. It's not the case with all of your patients. Your patients are going to come to you within 25-mile radius. If you're in LA, it's more like a 4-mile radius, or you might be in Montana, it might be a 50-mile radius. But again, you only have to dominate that little area. You're not interested in your videos of getting a lot of likes, getting a lot of shares, getting a lot of comments. In fact, that rarely happens. Okay, think about you. You listen to my podcast, you watch my videos.
Do you like it?
Do you subscribe to the channel? Probably not. I know because I see the numbers, but I also see the numbers of the number of people who watch. I see the numbers of the number of people who listen, and I watch that number go up every single month.
Why?
Because we create quality content. You see, content is not about getting likes. Content is not about getting subscribes. I just got off the phone with one of my doctors out in Arizona. And they were just telling me how, gosh, we really don't get a lot of likes. We don't get a lot of responses. We don't get a lot of shares on our videos, but we get people that walk in all the time saying, I've been watching your stuff for 4 months or 5 weeks or 6 weeks or whatever it is. And I've decided to come here because I liked what you had to say. Okay. So let me go back and bring this full circle. This isn't really about you having a great closer on the phone. While that helps, But they're harder to find. And if you're not used to training them, it's not necessarily gonna be easy to do. But when, if you are getting people that are cutting right to the chase and they're asking about price, biggest thing, they don't have a relationship with you. They don't already know you. The second thing is, do you have a script? And here's how we handle that with regards to price. A lot of times people will say, you call in and they say, hey, you know, I'm calling about your ad, blah, blah, blah, blah. I wanna know how much it is for, Whatever it is, and you say, well, great. Before I do that, let me ask you a couple of questions to see if you qualify. What you've done is you've taken back control. If you get people that are asking about price, you've actually lost control of the call. And so again, you wanna make sure that you're taking them through a script. If they try to truncate it and, and cut it off, you just explain to them, I'll be happy to get to that in a minute, but I have to ask a couple of questions first to make sure that you're the right kind of fit. You completely set And switch the whole concept to them and completely flip it around. So there you go.
I hope that helps.
So, and our next one from the mailbag, we are going to talk specifically about what should your rate be for your first appointment. Thanks for listening to the Practice Profit System, and we will talk to you very soon. Have a great day, everybody.
