#142: One Thing to Boost Your Consultation Conversion Rate by Over 300%

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Don’t let costly form-fill leads go to waste, here are 5 game changing speed-to-lead stats that can transform your sales process—plus how to turn these leads into meetings

Responding to leads quickly is crucial for boosting conversion rates. Studies show that contacting leads within the first minute can increase conversions by 391%, while waiting longer than five minutes decreases the odds of connection by 80%. Furthermore, organisations that respond within an hour are seven times more likely to qualify leads, and 50% of leads choose the first responder. Slow response times also contribute to prospect churn. Therefore, speed to lead significantly impacts success.

I’m your host Huyen Truong, a Strategic Marketing Consultant for medical clinics. Over the past decade, my team and I have helped clinics across Australia, the UK, the US, Singapore, India, Canada, New Zealand, and beyond to thrive using our proven patient generation system.

After years of generating 1000’s form-fill leads from paid ads channels for clients, with the objective of these leads turning into new bookings and creating more pipeline, I wanted to share a very solvable problem that I see arise all the time - Speed to lead.

Whether it be from clients themselves or patient coordinators working in the clinic, a lot of the time the feedback I keep hearing is ‘I haven’t been able to reach them’, ‘they said they were interested from the form but never ended up responding to the call or message I sent through’.

It then turns out, all this communication was sent hours after the lead had completed the form or they went through to a scheduling page, didn’t finish adding in all their info and dropped off that page.

To get form-fill leads to book a meeting on your calendar, the key is to remove every friction point from when the lead completes the form to receiving the availability to book a meeting with a team member from the clinic.

What is Speed to Lead?

Speed to lead is the elapsed time between a prospect expressing interest in your clinic and your representative earliest response. This interest can vary by organisation but, generally speaking, we’re talking about a contact form or consultation request. The second they hit submit, the clock starts ticking. One thing worth bearing in mind: Speed to lead doesn’t prioritise any method of communication over another. It accounts for how quickly you respond to a lead, be it by phone, email, text, etc.

Speed to lead statistics support the value of why this is important and we’ll be dropping plenty of interesting stats to make sure you know how important this is.

Why is Speed to Lead Important?

There are a few reasons why speed to lead is so important. First and foremost, the faster you respond to a lead, the more likely you are to convert that lead into a paying patient.

In addition, responding quickly to a lead shows that you are attentive and interested in helping them. Lastly, speed to lead can help you win more bookings by allowing you to get in touch with prospects before your competition does.

What would this episode be without some cold-hard lead response time facts, here are just a few speed to lead statistics.

5 Speed to Lead Statistics

1. After five minutes pass, the odds of connecting and qualifying with the lead drop by 80% (vendasta.com).
2. Organisations that contact a lead within the first hour are seven times more likely to qualify the prospect than an organisation that responds in two hours (hbr.org).
3. Responding to leads within the first-minute increases conversions by 391% (xoombi.com).
4. Fifty percent of leads will work with the organisation that contacts them first (hubspot.com).
5. Slow lead response time increases customer churn by 15% (servicebell.com).

As you can see, it’s pretty simple. Speed to lead matters!

Friction Points To Scheduling A Meeting With A Form Fill Lead

Scheduling pages:

Scheduling pages are usually separate landing pages from your website, requiring the prospect to go through waiting for an email with the scheduling link through (hoping that email doesn’t end up in spam), a potentially slow loading page keeping in mind 41-55% will leave the page (Storyly) and then - you're asking the percentage of leads that haven’t left the page, to fill in their contact information again.

Does that sound frictionless to you?

Speed of receiving availability:

Form-fill prospects are in the market looking to engage in conversations with potential service providers now - so while they have completed your lead form, they have probably completed others at the same time.

This is why being faster than your competitors gives you an advantage, because you are providing your availability faster than your competitors, significantly increasing the likelihood of booking the consultation.

Lead fields:

Lead forms have a non-completion rate of around 70%, meaning even if they do begin the lead form on the scheduling page, a good portion of these expensive leads will probably drop off.

You can say goodbye to guessing if form fill leads get on your calendar with Go High Level calendar integration with your Google or Zoom or Outlook calendars  - and make sure the meeting or the call happens.

What Is The Ideal Speed To Lead?

Before we dive into this new ideal time frame, keep in mind that the leads contacted with this new time applied will have a superior all-around lead experience. Not forgetting that the benefit experienced is not just on the lead side, but for all representatives engaging with these leads, as more leads turn into meetings, leads begin to move through your sales cycle, lifting your sales pipeline almost immediately.

Most experts take the first stat from the speed to lead statistics above as the most important, that the ideal speed to lead is within five minutes of receiving the initial inquiry.

How Fast Should You Respond To A Lead?

Ideally, your speed to lead should be within five minutes. However, we understand that not all clinics can respond that quickly. If you can’t achieve a five-minute response time, aim for within 15 minutes.

You should also make sure that you have a system in place that allows you to initiate a form of communication at that speed, whilst also being able to track and measure your speed to lead so you can continually improve.

Track lead-to-consultation insights with Go High Level CRM our dashboard will enable you to uncover what percentage of discovery calls or meetings are scheduling and how many of those calls or meetings ended up actually taking place.

What Is The Speed To Lead Metric?

Speed to lead refers to the duration it takes for a clinic representative to react to a lead. This measure is valuable for assessing the sales team’s efficiency since it has a direct impact on conversion rates.

Determining the optimal speed to lead time varies depending on various factors, such as the nature of the product or service provided and the level of interest exhibited by the prospect.

It is crucial for clinics to carefully examine accessible data and take into account the variables that impact their customers’ buying choices. An initial data point to consider is the duration it takes for the patient coordinator team to reach out to leads and the subsequent conversion rates that follow.

Wrap-Up

Now, just some takeaway points from today’s episode that you can apply immediately to improve your new patient conversion rate;

📌 Recap:

1. Respond within 5 minutes, if not 15 mins
2. Have a system in place that allows you to initiate a form of communication at that speed
3. Track lead-to-consultation insights between your current speed to response and what we suggested in this episode

🎯 Take Action:

Audit your lead process this week. How fast is your response time? Where are people dropping off? Are you nurturing leads who didn’t convert right away?

Want help building your marketing systems and improving the conversion rate of your sales process? Let’s chat. Head to www.onlinemarketingfordoctors.com to book a free strategy call with our team.

Thank you for joining me today. If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe and share it with your colleagues. For more insights and resources, visit onlinemarketingfordoctors.com.

Until next time, stay proactive and keep nurturing those leads!