05 - How Fast to Follow-Up? If You're Not First, You're last

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'll 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 consult 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 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 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, okay? 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 there really, 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 this so important to get on the horn so fast with these folks or to connect with them so quickly within five minutes? How can it 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 nine in the morning and we call them back at four 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 happen to you today between nine this morning and three 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? I 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 email alerts. I really like text alerts, alerts that pop up on your computer screen. A lot of CRM tools have this where you can have alerts pop right up on your computer screen so people see it immediately. If email alerts come through, that needs to pop up right in the middle of somebody's screen. What can happen is that an email 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 a new web lead from your online web form. 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 prospects. 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.