If you wanted to grow your practice by 5 -10 more new patients a month how would you go about it?  Would you spend more money on marketing ideas?  Spend more time on marketing?  How would you measure the success?  Would you just measure it by new patients?

What if I told that you do not have to spend another penny to get those 5-10 new patients.  Those potential new patients have already called your office!   How do I know? The same way you should know, by tracking incoming calls!

When you spend more of your time and energy (not money) on lead conversion, your practice will grow.

When you track (measure) the calls coming into your office, then you have all the information you need to convert these phone calls into new patients.  The place to gather this information is on what I call the New Patient Call Log.  The New Patient Call Log is a place to gather data and start measuring multiples points that will help you add more new patients without spending a dime!   This Call Log can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or better yet, a Google Doc.  A Google Doc can be shared and viewed from multiple locations.

The information gathered on the Call Log is only slightly different than a regular patient intake form.  There are only two things to really keep in mind when setting up your Call Log.

1) Make it flow like a phone conversation so that the data points are easy to enter for the person taking the call.  For example, Patient name, phone number then DOB, etc.

2)  (KEY) you must ask two VERY important questions and the answers must get documented.  First, question is “who is the provider you saw?  Second, (AND MOST IMPORTANT) “who can we thank for recommending you to us?”   That second question alone will both drive and measure the success of your Marketing Program!……..By asking this one question you will know if it is a provider, a past patient, or current patient.  Or maybe it was the result of a High School Screening Program you did.  The point is you will have one column on the Call Log to gather all that data.   You will also learn what has been paying off for you on the Lead Generation/Marketing side.   You will be able to see if the callers are finding you because of your website, through certain providers, by the front desk at the provider’s office or through a community project.  All of this information will tell you where to spend your time and money.

So now you have multiple data points to measure the success of your lead generation.  You can track monthly calls.  That should be a steady or growing number.  You can track HOW people found you.  You can aggregate that monthly, quarterly, yearly to track your top sources of referrals.  You can then use as a measure of effectiveness of your lead generation program.  You can also use that column to reach out to providers and people as further marketing.

So get started measuring it, so that you can improve it!

Feel free to reach out to me below in the comments section or email me jerry@sfsspt.com to follow up or for further clarifying questions.

Stay tuned for the next post when we discuss how to properly handle these phone calls.