All right guys. Hey, if you’re listening to this audio recording, congratulations. You have The Daily Marketer, which, in my opinion, is the best training on how to predictably schedule new patients every single day. So this is a protocol and a training that I put together over a course of years.

This isn’t just I all of a sudden created it. It started back when I was actually consulting with my good friend, Dr. Sonny Gill who is here today. So hello doctor, say hello Sonny.

Thanks for having me.

And we’re also joined by Dr. Chad Woolner. Chad, thanks for coming buddy.

No problem, man. Glad to be here.

I thought it would be really helpful in this audio recording to invite my two friends here to go through at one. Sonny, a lot of these protocols and a lot of these systems are derived from his protocols, and I have since taken them to another level because we’ve worked with a lot of clinics to try and get optimized results out of their leads.

So today I really want to cover the why, the how, and then the tactical approach to following up with leads. Ultimately to get them on the books and then get them converted to care.

And just for the record, we’re not Sam’s only two friends. He’s got more friends than us.

That’s true. Thank you Chad. I appreciate it.

You got it.

If you’re looking at the guide now, we’re going to go through this, and we’re not going to read the whole thing word for word, but we’re going to really highlight the most important parts.

So once again, most people think that when they start getting leads, they start getting into different problems. And those problems are, hey, people aren’t answering the phones or they’re not showing up for their appointments and so they ultimately default to thoughts like, hey, this lead quality stinks, or maybe this offer or this thing, that this idea that we have isn’t right. And they start going to a lot of these outside symptoms and they don’t really understand what’s happening.

The reality is when you look at marketing, and when you look at this follow-up process this isn’t a sprint, this isn’t something that you’re going to be rid of in your business, assuming you want to be in business long-term, this is something that you’re going to be doing for the long haul.

It’s a lot like when somebody looks at losing weight, what’s the most successful thing for somebody to do to lose weight long-term? Is it a binge diet or is it a long-term change and new habits?

A long-term change. Absolutely.

Right and [inaudible 00:02:42]. That’s exactly right. So, but I think one of the things that people, why do people go on diets? It’s a crash course.

Why do people change permanently? I think that understanding the fundamental level, the what’s behind all of these, what’s at the source of all these problems is really important.

So we’re going to jump down to the section where it says, “Let’s Start With Phase 1 Follow-up.” Now this protocol is broken up into two phases. Phase 1 Follow-up and Phase 2.

Phase 1 is lead generation that happens inside of a 30-day window. So that’s your new contacts, people that are, we’ll call them for all intents and purposes, hot. They are new prospects.

Once they go out of that 30-day window, they go into what’s called Phase 2. These are people that didn’t come in, they didn’t convert to care, whatever the case may be, and now they are prospects in pool number two or Phase 2.

So we’re going to start out with Phase 2 and a lot of times doctors, business owners, people, we expect staff members to do this initial follow-up. Correct. Is that what you guys do in your clinics?

Yes.

Correct.

And I’ve seen a lot of times that this is usually delegated, hey, here you go. Just do it. Follow-up with the leads. They say to call him like three or four times, can you just do that?

There’s a problem inherent with that and that is when you give somebody a task and you don’t explain or give them any why behind that, I think that’s problematic, wouldn’t you agree?

Well, absolutely and I think that’s the point is maybe it’s misunderstood that calling leads might at face value seem like a very straightforward process. But when you look at the effectiveness of just the blind just make some calls, give it a shot, not terribly effective at all.

And so that’s to your point there you’re exactly right is that if it’s handed off without some specifics, and again I think one of the reasons why often times it’s handed off without specifics is the assumption that calling leads, what is there to it? You just pick up the phone and press buttons and then when the other end answers you speak, or if they don’t answer, you leave them voicemail.

Right.

Done. That’s the protocol, right?

Right. Now that’s exactly right. So the first step in really, for staff to buy into this, for whoever it is that’s doing the follow-up for them to buy into this, I really think that it’s fundamental to understand why. Why do this? And so the first part of this protocol really dives into the data, the information.

And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on data information, but this data is extremely important. So I picked three of the biggest, the juiciest parts out of this case study to share with you guys.

Now this was a case study done by Velocify. If you’re listening to this and you want the actual case study, all you need to do is email sam@25thwest.com and I will send you the entire case study. It’s pretty long, but these points here are the most applicable to what we’re talking about today.

So they, in this case study, studied three and a half million leads and here’s what they found. So the first one that we’re going to talk about is the impact of lead response time. Now this is an audio series so you can’t see this.

And can I just interject real quick? Three and a half million leads trumps the 15 or 20 that you tried that didn’t get good results.

Right.

That’s my point, is that you can extrapolate a lot more conclusive data and or conclusions in general from three and a half million than the 15 or 20 that you tried and failed with.

That’s exactly right. It’s easier to get discouraged, but this information that we’re sharing, that’s why I’m sharing this is because I want data to be part of the conversation, right? So in figure number one, the impact of lead response time.

If you look at the graph, this is a graph from left to right, one minute, two minutes, three minutes, 30, one hour, five hours, 24 hours. The impact of responding to a lead within these short time frames can make a huge difference. Meaning if you’re getting leads right now and you’re not getting to them within 15, 20, an hour, if you’re getting the… You can double, triple your results just by closing the gap on the amount of time that lapses. One minute, there’s a 391% greater chance of you getting success over if you wait, I mean a day.

And this is real, it’s okay to call someone after one minute of getting the lead. There’s a misconception that you’re being too forward or forceful. It’s okay to call within seconds to minutes.

We’re not talking about a girl chasing a boy or a boy chasing a girl in high school in terms of the taboos of should I wait to call. That’s not what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about business.

These are people in pain and most of the time they appreciate that immediate response because in the real world, most businesses will wait days before they even call their leads.

Well case in point, a manufacturing company that shall go unnamed, I’ve been reaching out to them to do some contract manufacturing for a topical pain reliever.

It’s been over two weeks, I’ve sent them three emails and two voicemails, they still have not reached out to me. So I can conclude one of two things, either business must be crushing it for them or they just don’t care.

Right. So you’re of mind take advantage of that opportunity, so that’s figure one. Figure two. All right. This is the other thing that I see all the time. And actually, so figure number two shows, it’s titled six calls equals success.

And to the right of it, it says, “Here’s a shocking stat: Nearly half of every lead generated is never called a second time.”

In my experience and from having monitored this through several clients of ours, even that’s generous. So the idea that a lead is going to show up on its own, is not realistic and it’s not the real world.

So what the six calls mean. So that means that you need to continue the fortune’s in the follow-up, right? You need to continue to at least six outbound calls at appropriate times before you say this person really needs to go into another mode of communication.

Because it’s not enough. We’re all busy and especially today, we’re all so busy. If you make a call to somebody right now and they don’t pick up, does that mean they didn’t want to answer your call?

No.

Well and I was just going to emphasize something you said there that I hope they highlight and underline and asterisk and really repeat over and over again. You just said something that was crucial there. This lead what? You said this lead needs to be put into a different mode of communication, right?

What I think a lot of people will do is say this lead is garbage. This lead is garbage so we’ll just throw it away and completely let it go. And the reality of it is, is that you’re burning money if that’s the case, because it may just be you’ve said that for whatever reason life is happening to them at that very moment. And they may be willing and ready just right not yet.

The chances are they didn’t opt in by accident. So six calls equals success, all right. Hopefully this is helping to clarify, again this is more of the context, more of the why. Three weeks, five emails.

So emailing people all the time, what’s the right number? What, based on the data? It’s five emails. One on day one immediately, one on day four, one on day, eight, one on day 15, and one on day 22 that’s what the data shows.

Now at the time of this study, they didn’t… Texting wasn’t a huge platform, this was 2012 but we know that today texting is absolutely huge. So here’s some data for texting that is applicable and I’ll actually, since both of you use texting to respond to your leads, I’ll ask anecdotally your experience with it.

But nine out of 10 consumers prefer texting over calling and the average click-through, now this is data, the average click-through rate of a text message is 17%. That’s huge for people that are using that platform. So texting, how important is it to you and your clinic, Sonny?

Absolutely. This is part of every protocol if it’s lead generation, filling lectures, calling back, patients were texting non-stop. We used, to about 10 years ago, call all of our reactivated patients now we text all of our reactivated patients.

Chad.

Same, texting is huge.

Great. All right, so moving on here. So phase two follow-up again, I think Tony Robbins kind of sums it up a little bit here. He says, “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.” So at the end of the day it’s again, it’s not that binge diet, it’s not doing the thing one time. It’s showing up every single day, and I learned this from you Sonny, between reactivation and recall. How often do you do those?

Recall is done three times a week. Reactivation is done twice a week. We never miss it.

Every week?

Every week.

That’s interesting, right? Because when you talk to a lot of docs, I actually asked that out of docs and how often do you do this? So a lot of them, you’ll be surprised. Any idea what the answer is?

Usually the answer is, “Well we do. At the front desk does it.” And when you probe further and there’s nobody doing it.

I hear it once a month. So that consistent… because the reality is it’s timing. Either the need isn’t as urgent now as it will be in the future or they’re busy now. There’s so many things that could happen, but the idea is we want to do this every single day, a portion of every single day, and it doesn’t take that long, right? If we have a system around it, it doesn’t take that long to do it.

Here’s another stat real quick. This is amazing and this is actually, if you want to check there’s… It’s cited on the document, 2% of sales are made on the first contact, that’s not real great odds there. 3% on the second, five on the third, 10% the fourth, 80% the fifth through the 12th contact. That’s everything.

Makes sense.

That’s your entire business. Your entire business is past the fifth attent. This is why we have the phase two. This is why this is important.

All right, plan tomorrow today when we show up. Whether it’s our leads, our re-activations, our protocol, our recalls, that needs to have a plan before we start. We need to know what we’re doing that way we are in a reactive state, not a reactive state. And-

Proactive state.

I’m sorry.

Proactive state.

What did I say?

You had said reactive and reactive.

Well, let’s not be reactive.

Yes come on.

Reactive or proactive. And again, I love that quote, “Failing to plan is a plan to fail.” Benjamin Franklin.