02 - Why "Spam Calls" Are Your Problem

Spam phone calls are a problem for you. Hello, friend. It's your boy Troy. We're talking about spam phone calls today, namely on your mobile device. I get spam calls on my smartphone multiple times a day. This wasn't the case 12, 18 months ago. You get spam calls a couple times a week. But telemarketers, spam calls were pretty much a landline situation, and that's not the case anymore. My phone blows up with spam phone calls. I ask friends, colleagues. A lot of folks are experiencing the same thing. I even did a little online research to see, you know, is this just me? Does this just seem this way? But no. The robo dialing technology that's out there, you know, the new, what they call phishing scams and other ways that scammers try to get your info, has led to a lot more of these telemarketer, spammy, fishy, whatever you want to call them, phone calls that are coming to cell phones. Here's the thing. If you're like me and you get those kind of phone numbers, phone calls, you're not answering your phone. All right? So I ignore any call that comes through my phone that I don't recognize unless I know I'm expecting a call from someone. If I know someone's going to call me from a certain city or a certain area code, or maybe I'm expecting a call from a local business, I will answer my phone if I don't recognize the number. And that's pretty general behavior these days. A lot of folks are just straight up ignoring these spam calls, letting them go to voicemail, and then dealing with them later. Why is this a problem for you? Well, let's talk about it. This is a problem when you're in an industry where you're generating leads that require you to call them. If you think about the way leads come into your practice now, a lot of those are coming in from the web, contact forms, online lead generation through social media sites, self tests. These are all good things, and they're great ways to engage with prospects out in the marketplace. And we see a lot of success with that. The issue comes when it's time to call those folks back. What happens when you're calling a prospect that comes in through your website, Your phone number is an unknown phone number to them, and a lot of times those numbers get ignored. You're not a spam call. I know it, you know it. But the marketplace, with all the spam dialing that's happening, has led people to change their Behavior. And fewer people are answering that phone call on the first ring when they don't recognize your number. So what are your options? Well, a few things. Number one, we're not gonna stop calling folks. We're definitely gonna keep doing that, but we need to augment it. What do I mean by that? Well, you've got text messaging at your disposal. You've got email at your disposal. We need to be reaching out to folks across multiple media, multiple channels, text, email, and phone to let them know, hey, this is who we are. This is why we're reaching out to you, and we look forward to talking with you soon. And then we're going to call them back later on. We. One of the things that we do is that any communication that we put out to a prospect early on in the relationship, let's say that a prospect fills out a form, we immediately hit them with a message that says, hey, we're going to call you shortly, and you're going to get a number that you may not recognize from XYZ area code. If you do, it's probably us, so pick up the phone. That's what we are doing to encourage people to engage with us, even though we're a number that they may not have seen or have in their phone, and they most likely don't if they're a new prospect for the practice. Okay, so you've got spam calls that are going on out in the marketplace. They're causing people to not answer their phones as much. What do we have to do to get around it? We got to be texting people, we got to be emailing, and we got to be following up with those phone calls. All right, One phone call is not going to do it. We need multiple touch points across multiple channels. You'll engage more people, you'll get them into your practice, and you'll get them booked for surgery. That is the lesson for today. Go forth and prosper, my friend.